Walmart Hard Candy swatches, Part I of III

AAAAHHHHHH!! Busy busy busy week! I'm flying cross-country to Boston for the annual Psychonomics conference this Thursday and then taking Amtrak down to NYC on Sunday. (And then on Wednesday, I'm to SO's family's home for Thanksgiving.) 4 states in 10 days. 3 of those are conference days. Anyone who has been to a conference can probably attest to the fact that they can fry the brain up good and crispy. It's information and social overload. Tons of people. Tons of new and interesting research. Tons of opportunities to feel really, really, really dumb and insecure.

I'm so totally nervous about the travel aspect of it all: I always get sick, I'm always jetlagged, and, let's face it, I'm not smart enough to understand how a big metal tube with engines doesn't just fall out of the sky for no good reason. (The statistics make me feel better though. We are, after all, more likely to die from a car crash than a plane crash. Stats, I understand. Physics and engineering, I do not.) For someone who hates travel, that's waaay too much travel for me. I try to focus on the positives though: I get to see about a dozen of my friends (not to mention my family) and probably a few of my former professors as well. Grad school, for me, has been a pretty alienating experience so it's a real treat to spend time with people I only will realistically get to see once a year (or two, or three). I will also get to revisit old stomping grounds and, you know, experience the joy of being in a city as opposed to a small town.

Anyway, the point of my outlining my plans for this week and next is to say that I have more HC polishes that I haven't had a chance to swatch and so will not post them until I get back from my travels. But I have had these swatches for about a month now and don't want to wait any longer to post them. :)

Hard Candy Hot Pants

Sheer dark dusty purple jelly with large and small holo hex glitter. Impossible to build up to full opacity (the above shows three coats -- doesn't look like it, huh?), which sucks because this would be incredible if it weren't so sheer. Probably would make a fun glitter topcoat... although you need at least two layers of it to get a decent (imo) amount of hex glitter on the nail.

Close-up of Hot Pants

Bottle pic of Hot Pants:

Whimper. Looks so fun in the bottle. Really disappointed with this one.

Hard Candy Envy

Extremely dark green with forest green shimmer. Was pretty easy to apply and could've been fine at two coats (the above is three). One of those polishes that just lights up when the sun hits it.

Hard Candy Sweet P

Left to right: four coats (index), three coats (middle), two coats (ring) and one coat (pinky)

I really like the lime green color of this fine glitter polish but omg, it takes a long time to build up (and needs some time in between coats). It's also practically nonexistent at one coat... but then builds up really quickly for the second one. I'm starting to get really picky about my glitters. I have so many of them that ones that don't apply in predictable ways kind of annoy me. But I'll be keeping this one (probably) because I don't have any other fine lime green glitters. Really gorgeously sparkly in sunlight though!

Video of Sweet Pea

I'm a little disappointed in the rings. I had some Hard Candy back in the day and I loved the jelly-textured rings. These are just hard and plastic that have no traction on the tops of the polish bottle and I've probably lost most of them already. These bottles are also small for $5 (plus the $1 shipping each that I paid for at Walmart.com): 0.35ml! I guess that's better pricing than before but considering the difference in volume, probably not by much.

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