Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Sassy Lacquer Color-Changing Funky French


I love the Sassy Lacquers colors (found here)! I know a lot of artisan nail polish makers have color-shifting pigments in their colors, but so far I've only tried Carrie's color-shifting polishes, and I love them! 

In this funky french manicure, I used Pegasus Jizz (red orange shift) for the main part of the nail, and Electric Eel (green blue shift) for the tips. It looks so amazing! I used a dark green base for it, Chelsea Psycho Green (it looks black most of the time, so it sufficed). The colors change the closer you hold it to the light. I didn't notice a big change in colors for Electric Eel (it looked like a dark teal/blue shimmer most of the time), but the next time I wear it by itself as a mani, I'll definitely keep my eye out for it to change colors, from blue to green. Pegasus Jizz was amazing, and in natural sunlight, it sparkled and shimmered! In my office, when it was closer to the light, the bronze/red pigments shifted to green/gold, and it was just amazing to stare at when I didn't have any work to do lol :P

I didn't get to take pics of it while outside, so these are pics from the office, taken in my cubicle. Most of the time it looked like bronze/red with green around the edges. It's amazing even under fluorescent lighting! 






With flash (below). You can see the bronze color, and the green on the tips! I didn't get a chance to get outside, natural lighting pictures because the polish chipped fast on me since Psycho Green is older and doesn't have great polish chemistry with me :/

Neon Rainbow Nail Art

This is my attempt at rainbow nail art. I don't really do it much because it takes me forever whenever I try, and usually doesn't end up as perfect as I wanted it to be. I have no patience for painstakingly painting Spongebob on my nails, leaning over and straining my neck for four hours! I did this time though (it isn't Spongebob however) because it was part of my costume. 

Every year my school has a festival to celebrate the end of classes, and this year the theme was "Genesis". Some people went as the game console Genesis (remember that? So long ago!), and some people dressed up as Abe Lincoln (I didn't understand the connection lol). I dressed up as a rainbow! I had a friend who went as a rain cloud, and we just happened to match together. 

I did my nails with neon colors, using a white base (RBL Underwear) and a bunch of bright, neon colors to represent the rainbow! I can't remember exactly what I used, but I remember using OPI Big Apple Red, Revlon Royal, Color Club Disco Dress, some Essie neons, China Glaze In the Limelight, a neon orange from Color Club. I apologize for the weird stains on my hands, there was a small Holi celebration and I got pigments all over myself!

Pictures using flash:


This is my left hand. I made different patterns on each finger on both hands!

My right hand:
















If you were wondering how I did my nails this way, I used a small dish filled with pure acetone, and a very thin nail brush and just dipped and painted, like I would with watercolor. It turned out pretty neat! I even got some compliments from guys who were stunned and mesmerized by how intense and cool looking my nails were!



 The picture below is most true to life to what my mani looked like:









 That's it for now! I'll break up my post so there won't be a ton of pictures to load!

Chanel Quartz Swatch and Review


This is Chanel Quartz. I went crazy and bought all three of the Chanel polishes from the Fall 2011 collection, and wore all of them last summer. This was the most demure out of the three, IMO, but still very pretty. It's like a taupe-pewter color with small iridescent sparkle. My pics didn't effectively capture them, but they are definitely visible in the sunlight. I can't really think of similar colors to it (except the Jessica dupes), but I'm sure they're out there because it isn't particularly unique and neither are the other two Chanels anymore. I normally do not reach for these colors, but I like this one for the brand (I admit I'm a polish snob!) and the tiny sparkles that twinkle in the sun!













Dior Bond Street Swatch and Review


I'm breaking up my spam posts because it makes it easier for me to archive my pictures and posts, so if you've seen this before, I apologize, but if not, it'll feel new all over again lol!

This is Dior Bond Street. I literally hunted this down after its release in Fall 2010 I believe. It was so difficult to find because it was pretty coveted. I managed to find it after perusing the Dior website for months, after finding NY 57th Street. I'm not sure if Dior has put this in its regular line, but it's a very pretty staple polish. I think I was a bit disappointed when it was darker than I had expected. It's still very special to me because it was one of my long-time lemmings and is one of the dark fall colors I'll reach for often, especially because it has a great dusty look that works perfectly for the cloudy Portland weather in the fall (and all year round), and the secret Dior sparkles only you know are there, like a little secret between you and your mani.






Monday, August 13, 2012

Essie Bright Tights - A Neon Orange Summer!

Third post of the day, and the last! At least, until I take pictures of my current mani :)

I have for your Essie Bright Tights! It's the perfect neon orange. Like all neons, it needed white underwear, otherwise it was going to be a hot, streaky mess. I almost never wear orange but wow, this is one I'll wear all the time! I used Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear White Out for the underwear, only 2 coats of that. It's a really, really good formula white nail polish, almost on par with RBL Underwear, with the Prowide-like brush and non-streaky formula. It's about $2-3 too, which is icing on top of the cake. I used to use OPI Alpine Snow, but it just is streaky, and takes 3 opaque coats, and doesn't dry fast enough for me to put on the neon in the time frame I like (within a couple hours of applying the white). 

I wasn't able to get too many pictures of Bright Tights because it was very hard to capture the true neon-ness/brightness of the color. It's so gorgeous, but definitely needs underwear to be opaque and brighter than normal. Whites always boost the brightness of a neon, so always use underwear with neons, unless it can be opaque on its own. 

I love Essie's neons, they are so wonderfully bright and easy to put on (once you put on underwear, of course). They are the best ones I've used. It just sucks I couldn't wear it for more than a few days because neons, with white underwear, chips quickly, so I had to take it off after it kept chipping. No more talking, onto the pictures!

DISCLAIMER: The actual color is much more retina-searing than this!











Since I don't have my normal 30-40 pictures of my manicure (lol), I'm going to add the rest of the pictures I have of Coco that I had on my memory card.