OPI It's Totally Fort Worth It + China Glaze Crushed Candy

       Firstly, sorry about the last post. Some of you may have noticed that it went poof, and the reason for that was the pictures were really inaccurate, and it felt like a lie to leave them up. But anyway, for today, I have OPI It's Totally Fort Worth It, from their Texas Collection. 

 

Fort Worth It is a slightly frosty lavender toned silver base with teeny, light pink microglitter running throughout.

The stupid glitter refused to show its sparkly little face in any of the pictures, but it does show in real life.

 

Sunlight, no flash.

 

Sunlight, no flash.

 

Sunlight, no flash. 

       I think I'm kind of ambivalent about this polish. The silvery-lavender color is very pretty, as is the hazy, nebulous quality of it. Also, the pink microglitter is fun and sparkles so nicely in the sun. But for me, it doesn't feature prominently enough, and I don't like the finish of Fort Worth It. I think they needed to use this guazy-type of finish to make the pink glitter work, but it's still not very nice. It's kind of brushstroke-y and unless you look at your hands from far away, it looks kind of messy. So yeah...meh on this one. 

       Fort Worth It's formula was okay for me. It was sheer, so what you see is four coats, and I had to give it a few minutes between coats or drag and bubbles abounded, but besides those, there were no issues.

      So then, I got bored right, and decided to do some crack.

 I used a thin layer of China Glaze Crushed Candy. 

 

Sunlight, no flash.

   And that is all I've got for today! Thanks for reading, and have a nice Monday! ^_^

Black History Month Nails

    As many people know, February is Black History Month in the U.S.  I didn't want to let the month end (I know I'm cutting it close) without doing some kind of nail thingy to commemorate the occasion.  So using the colors of the Pan-African flag, I came up with this:

Sunlight, no flash.

Sorry for all the glare...I took these later than I normally do and the sun was acting funky.

 -___-

Sunlight, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

     To do this, I drew a diagonal line across my nail and filled it in with Nubar Unfaithful Red. Then, I covered the other half of my nail with Nubar Greener.  After letting that sit for an hour, I used a thin layer of China Glaze Black Mesh on top, let that crack up for like ten minutes, and finished the whole thing with topcoat.

   I wish I could have done something better conceived, but there just wasn't much time. In any case, I like it. I got lots of compliments on it too.

And that's all I've got for today. Thanks for reading!!

China Glaze White Cap

        For today, I have China Glaze White Cap from the Anchors Away Collection. 

White Cap is a very sheer ivory base, stuffed with gold iridescent glass fleck shimmer. As well as gold, the shimmer shows bits of orange and lime green, depending on the light. I couldn't capture it in the pictures but you can definitely see it in person.

Sunlight, no flash.

Natural light, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

Natural light, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

    I felt so irritated with my camera while trying to take pictures of White Cap, because it just could not pick up the details in the polish. So the pictures are lame, but White Cap is awesomeness. In person, the shimmer catches the light and gives the nails this lovely golden sheen.  Within the sheen, you can see the individual bits of gold, orange, and green shimmer sparkling. It's so lovely, and made my nails look like abalone shells on crack. Another plus is that the golden iridescence kind of cuts and softens  the whiteness of the polish, making it much more palatable for people like me, who can't really get with white polish. China Glaze really did a great job with this one.
   I also found White Cap's formula agreeable. It's extremely sheer, and my nails are gross and stained, so I prepped them with one coat of Seche Ridge Filling Base and one coat of Essie Limo-Scene. Then, I applied three coats of White Cap, followed by one layer of topcoat. Even though it was kind of alot of work, I didn't mind, because White Cap was quite easy to work with. It wasn't streaky or draggy and even though the formula was thin, it wasn't watery or uncontrollable. I really think that White Cap would make a great addition to anyone's polish collection...it's so versatile and pretty.


And that is all I've got for today! Thanks for reading!

China Glaze Below Deck

         After like weeks of glitter and shimmer, it was time to cleanse my palate. That desire, combined with my new resolution to at least make an effort to keep up with the polish world, made me put on Below Deck, from China Glaze's recently released Anchors Away Collection. 

Below Deck is a taupey-lavenderish-greyish creme.

Sunlight, no flash.

Natural light, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

    Below Deck is such a weird color. It's like...if taupe and grey both had a thing with lavender, and then lavender had Below Deck. But lavender couldn't tell who the daddy was just by looking at baby Below Deck, because it looks like both of them, so everyone had to go on Maury. That's what it's like. But despite its convoluted and scandalous origins, I like Below Deck. It's subdued without boring, and I don't really have many of this type of polish, so it fills a big gap in my collection.

   And I have to give China Glaze a high five for Below Deck's formula. They did such a good job! It was so creamy and smooth, and went on so nicely with no streaking or dragging. The pigmentation was also excellent, and Below Deck reached opacity in only two coats. I added a layer of topcoat for shine, and the whole thing dried really fast. In the pictures, I feel like it looks like there were leveling issues, but that was from my topcoat, not Below Deck. 

And that is all I've got for today! Thanks for reading, and have a happy Sunday! ^_^

China Glaze Crushed Candy (Quick and Dirty Edition)

         Oh man, I am sick of crackle polish. I feel like that's all I've been hearing about for like the past month...even Oprah is talking about it. Ahh it's driving me crazy. So when my own China Glaze Crackle Glaze polishes arrived yesterday, I felt annoyed with them and tossed them unopened into a corner of my room. I woke up in the middle of the night, and couldn't go back the sleep, so I decided to open the box and try out Crushed Candy. Instead of studying for my midterm. 

Crushed Candy is a Tiffany-blue crackle polish in a creme finish.

Underneath, I have on three coats of OPI La Paz-itively Hot Matte.

Florescent light, no flash.

Florescent light, with flash.

Florescent light, no flash.

Doesn't it kind of look like sunlight though?

Florescent light, no flash.

Florescent light, with flash.

The color in the bottle is accurate...the color on the nail is a bit too sky blue. 

     Even though I'm sick to death of this stuff, I have to admit that I really really like Crushed Candy. The color is pretty, and will make for lots of great color combos. I really want to try it over China Glaze Lighthouse...yellow and blue look so nice together. I was also pleasantly surprised at how much I liked the pattern that it made...I thought I preferred the look of the ones from Born Pretty, but this pattern looks really cool too.  

   As far as formula goes, Crushed Candy was not bad...it was fairly thick, but that's okay, because you don't really want a smooth finish with Crushed Candy. It's just gonna crack up anyway, so streaks and stuff don't matter. What I did was just to put a little bit on the brush and focus on covering the whole nail in one go, without overlapping. It dried almost instantly, and I gave it like ten or fifteen minutes to crack up all the way before applying topcoat. I wanted small chunks, so I tried to make the coats as thin as I possibly could and I liked how it came out. On my right hand, I used thicker coats, and ended up with thicker lines and larger chunks. It also looks nice, but I like the smaller chunks better.

And that's all I've got for today! Thanks for reading, and have an awesome Thursday! ^_^

China Glaze Pink Rox-E

           Today, I wore yet another pink polish. This time, it's Pink Rox-E, from China Glaze's Surf Collection. I'd been lemming it for a long long time, but I never got around to ordering it, until I noticed that Nicole from Magic Maid was selling it in a blog sale. And let me tell you guys....blog sales are my ultimate weakness. Someone announces a blog sale, and I always run to check it out, even when I'm not supposed to be buying. It's just that there are so many colors, and then the prices are so good. Plus it feels nice to buy from other bloggers instead of from faceless companies....I know, I need help. ;_;

Pink Rox-E is a warm, pale, peachy pink creme base with gold glass flecks. 

Sunlight, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash. 

Sunlight, no flash.

Natural light, no flash.

Natural light, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash. 

    Ahhh I love Pink Rox-E!! It's such an awesome shade of pink, and it's pretty funny that it's actually part of a surfing inspired collection, because as soon as I put it on, I was thinking about the beach. It's a very sandy shade of pink. Like, if you've ever seen pink sand...it's similar to that. Plus it makes me think of the inside of seashells. I also really like the golden shimmer. It's extremely visible (especially in the sunlight) and really warms up the whole look. Man, it's so gorgeous....definitely a lemming worth killing.

   However, Pink Rox-E's downfall was its formula...so streaky! I tried to be careful, but even after three coats, there was still unevenness and streaks. One more thick coat actually made it smooth and neat, but the end result was that my nails ended up looking a little thicker than I like. No bueno. Additionally, the formula is non-Big 3 Free. I don't care, because I like the smell of chemically goodness, but I know it's an issue for some folks. From what I've seen, a Big 3 Free alternative to this color would be Zoya Cassi. I don't have it, so I can't compare, but here's a really good one from The Swatchaholic. Although the Zoya costs more, they seem to be perfectly identical, so yay. 

  And that's all I've got for today! Have an awesome Sunday, guys! 

 (Icon courtesy of  lizbot)

Orly Galaxy Girl + Fauxnad

            Instead of removing Galaxy Girl yesterday night, I opted to do some stamping over it. There was no real reason...I just feel like I have a ton of nail art stuff and I never use any of it. So here's me trying to use some of this stuff. LOL. Also, the weather was so freaking blah today....it was raining rats and frogs all day, until the evening, when it suddenly stopped. So please excuse the blurry pitchas. 

I started off by stamping on the full nail ivy pattern from plate BM20, using China Glaze Let's Groove. Then, I used Color Club Pretty in Platinum to stamp on the like...flower string at the cuticle. That pattern came from a plate called B14. There's no brand name, but I got it from Hong Kong, and it looks like this:

I miss those nails.

But anyway, to finish it off, I stuck a purple gem in the center of each flower, and finished it off with one layer of Poshe.

Sunlight, no flash.

Natural light, no flash.

Natural light, no flash.

The duochrominess kind of blends in with Let's Groove, which is unfortunate. 

Sunlight, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

      I'm quite fond of how this turned out. It does look kind of like Beetlejuice, but I feel like many of my attempts at nail art come out looking like Beetlejuice. I guess it can't be helped, and at least it's not ooglay. I think once more, my favorite part is the background. The color and pattern are very subtle, and I like how the blue shimmer peeks through the empty spaces. It's also a little optical illusion-ish, like you don't know which color is the base and which is the stamp. Me gusta.

  And that's all I've got for today. Have a great evening, guys!