Lab Muffin's Top 13 Polishes of 2013 Part 2: Indies

A few days ago I posted my favourite mainstream and boutique polishes that I discovered last year. I'm back now with my favourite indies! The indie market grew exponentially in 2013, especially in Australia. In 2012, I'd only heard of about 4 Aussie indie brands - now, according to the Lacquerheads of Oz Indie Directory there are almost 30! So it's no surprise that the indies crowded the mainstream polishes out of my top 13, and I had to split hairs and move the boutique polishes to the mainstream section because it looked too lonely.

Now, I realise most of the Polish or Perish audience aren't Australian, and you therefore thought your wallet would be safe - think again! International stockists now have a metric shitton of Australian indie brands (I know, I've seen photos of some of the makers' shipments). For specifics of where to get what you can look at the Lacquerheads of Oz Indie Directory, but some of the stockists that ship overseas and have a few brands include Femme Fatale Cosmetics, Color4Nails, Harlow & Co, Norway Nails, Llarowe, Mei Mei's Signatures and Ninja Polish.


So here are my top 8 indies of 2013...

Gloss 'n Sparkle The Huntress is a new find of mine - I've always been a sucker for deep, complex jellies, and this is in one of my favourite polish colours, green. It's also included in my 2nd anniversary giveaway.

Alanna Renee Reptar is an incredibly cool, unique shade. I love these out-of-left-field shades - they're so satisfyingly interesting even without nail art.

Celestial Highgarden was my favourite from the Game of Thrones-themed collaboration between Color4Nails and Celestial. I love a special effects shade, and this has both holo and thermal colour change effects! This shade inspired me to write this sciencey article on how thermochromic colour change pigments work.

Brown and green is such a pretty colour combination in my books, but so few polishes contain this colour combination. Sayuri Mori has this rare foresty look, and is lovely over a golden base.

Arcane Lacquer Erudite Dreams is a pretty blurple creme with pinkish gold shimmer. I really love Arcane's elegant but pretty polishes - very work-safe and wearable for all occasions, without being plain.

Powder Perfect Decorate a Palm Tree is a very shimmery dense microglitter in a fetching shade of grass green. I especially love how the green jelly base means that the glitter in the lower layers are a deeper colour.

I posted Loki's Lacquer Omicron Persei 8 here in April, but it deserves revisiting! It's the most amazingly unexpected smorgasbord of sparkles, and jaw-droppingly stunning in the sun.

This one's a bit of a copout - I'm nominating the entire Mckfresh Sunnydale Collection as my #13! The Buffy-inspired vampy collection just looks so good together. But if I had to pick one polish, it would probably be Xander (top right hand corner) - the blue-green duochrome is so pretty, even though Xander is a bloody irritating character.

There you have it - the best indies I tried this year! I'm sure there are some glaring omissions I'll kick myself for a bit later, but I've agonised over this list long enough that I really just needed to hit the "post" button and walk the hell away. 

I realise that this list is ridiculously biased towards Australian indies, and that's simply because I had enough to try within Australia that I didn't feel the need to pay premium shipping prices for overseas polishes! I will endeavour to try out more overseas brands in 2014, but to be honest, given how the Australian indie market is growing, I think I already have my nails full.

Lab Muffin's Top 13 Polishes of 2013 Part 1: Mainstream and Boutique Brands

2013 was a big year of swatching for me, and it was the year where I think Australian indie polishes really blossomed. It was very difficult to pick just 13 polishes that I loved, but I certainly tried! I limited myself to one polish per brand only, and to polishes that I discovered in 2013 (though they weren't necessarily released last year). Here we go, with the mainstream and boutique (i.e. small company but not hand-mixed) picks...

First, I obviously have to mention my collaboration shade, piCture pOlish Ultra Violence. The literary amongst you will know that the name is inspired by Anthony Burgess's book A Clockwork Orange. I love the holo iridescent glitter against the rich purple! I've included a bottle of Ultra Violence in my 2nd blogiversary giveaway here.

I blogged about the stunningly pretty Pretty Serious BSOD here earlier. What happened next was that while wearing it, my laptop did actually have a heart-stopping BSOD moment, in the middle of thesis-writing! Luckily I didn't lose anything, but Kaz was too sweet, and in her usual above-and-beyond customer service style, she sent me a few polishes to dull the pain.

OPI Keeping Suzi At Bay is a gorgeous blue creme that is both interesting and elegant. It may be my favourite creme shade ever. I think dark blue is actually quite work safe, but definitely not boring.

ulta3 Triple Threat was a big surprise for me. This is a complex holo glitter jelly that's indie-worthy, but comes at the ridiculously budget-friendly price of $2.

Orly Digital Glitter is one of my top 5 Orly polishes, ever. I usually think of Orly as a brand which does salon-friendly classic polishes well, but whenever they come out with something a bit different it's usually ridiculously cool (Fowl Play! Space Cadet!). I love the unlikely brown/purple/red combination - it's a bit steampunk in my opinion, and makes me think of Neal Stephenson novels. To top it off, the purple shimmer is duochrome.

I will be back soon with some of my indie picks of 2013 - hold onto your wallets!

Different Dimension: Black Dahlia

I haven't worn that many holos this summer, considering that it's summer. This may have been the only holo I've worn so far, which is odd... I have a good number of them.

There isn't much to say about this ABSOLUTELY AMAZING polish. It's Black Dahlia by Different Dimension. It's a black leaning greyish purple scattered holographic polish with micro iridescent glitters. Hard to capture the glitters on camera but in person this polish was awesome. This is 3 coats on its own.

Love love love. This makes me want to wear more holos. Have you worn any this summer?

Information: Etsy // Facebook // Llarowe

Purple Use-Up-the-Polish mani number 1

During my Helmer clean out, I discovered that I have an obscene amount of purple polishes I haven't even tried. Obviously, this needed rectifying, so here's the first of my half/half manis where I jam two purple polishes together and try to make them work in a manicure.

First is Gloss 'n Sparkle Purpetual Darkness paired with OPI DS Original (two coats layered over Models Prefer Beam Me Up). DS Original is the most linear holo I own, but it's really sheer. I really liked this mani - it was interesting enough to last me a couple of days, but not too exciting that they'd become a conversation starter. For some reason I hate when talk centres around my nails, it makes me feel really awkward! Do other nail addicts have this problem?

Loki's Lacquer Omicron Persei 8

A quick one today: I recently came across this swatch of Loki's Lacquer Omicron Persei 8 again in my files, which I originally posted in my swatchathon of the Futurama collection from Loki's Lacquer. It's probably my favourite swatch of the whole collection, even though the polish in the bottle didn't wow me - but over black, it's a stunner!

Unfortunately Loki's Lacquer isn't widely available outside of Australia, but you can ask nicely and see if there's any way of getting it to you on their Etsy store here.

Happy New Year! A England: Saint George + nail art

This past weekend was Lunar New Year  -- I didn't do anything than the usual eat with my family on Sunday nights, but I did manage to wrangle up a Lunar New Year manicure... I wanted to go for a snakeskin manicure (since it's the Year of the Snake) but didn't have the Bundle Monster plate for it (which is what came up on Google when I searched for "snakeskin manicure") so I decided to try to freehand.

Kind of looks more like dragon scales or fish scales than snakeskin but I tried!

I sponged (with plastic) A England Princess Sabra over A England Saint George but it didn't show up well enough so I dabbed Jessica Hologram Chic: Disco Diva over and it gave more of a contrast that I wanted. I then used black acrylic paint and a small dotting tool to make little curves.

Here are my previous Lunar New Year manicures -- guess what the animals are :)

this is when I thought long nails looked good on me, lol

Happy New Year again! Hope everyone has a great week!

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Gold and purple all-over-the-place nail art explosion

Alanna of Pretty Purple Polish recently celebrated her first blogiversary by holding a nail art competition with a purple theme. She was one of my first followers and co-created Artsy Wednesday with me, and has really nice swatches and is generally all-round lovely.

For my entry, I decided to showcase a bunch of my favourite purples. I have a lot of purple polishes! I also had some big iridescent hex glitters, so I decided to explore a number of different nail art techniques on my nails. I only had 3 nail designs in total, because... I'm lazy :(

Thumb and ring finger: China Glaze LOL (Alanna grabbed this HTF for me from the mythical Bankstown nail supply shop - told you she's lovely! :D), glitter gradient with Essence Make It Golden, applied with a Q-tip

Index and pinky: These nails were the first I came up with. I wanted it to look like mermaid scales. The base is ulta3 Berry sponged over Rimmel Lively Lilac, then stamped with Mash-39 in ulta3 Gold Rush Fever and mattified with Rimmel Lycra Pro Mattifying Topcoat. I then stuck on hexes with clear polish.

Middle finger: one of my favourite but time-consuming and hard-to-get-right techniques - drag/needle marbling. I painted the entire nail with a thick coat of ulta3 Orchid, spotted some Gold Rush Fever on top, then dragged loops in the polish with the needle of a compass. Finished with Rimmel Mattifying.

For everyday wearing this felt over-the-top, but I think each of these would make good manis on their own, and I'll probably revisit them. What do you think?

holla for holo! Layla Flash Black

My post for today will concern the utterly fantabulous Layla holo in Flash Black.

I don't know... if anything else needs to be said. 2-3 coats.

I used the special Layla file recommended for use with these polishes and I also used Nfu-Oh Aqua Base just to make sure it'd be at its holo-est holo.

This is with 1 coat of NYC Grand Central Station, which didn't dull the holo TOO much. :D

Have you gotten any of these lovelies?

THEME WEEK - My Favorite Holo!

Nfu.Oh 066

It's so strange to see photos of my nails this long when I've had shorties for the past year or two... but anyway, here is Nfu.Oh 066. Holy holo!! :D Give me a good linear holo any day... although, admittedly, it's been awhile since I've worn a really good holo like this one. 

THEME WEEK - My Favourite Holo

I don't have enough sun to swatch a holo properly - since I'm in the Southern Hemisphere, I'm sitting here shivering in my ugg boots with a mug of hot tea! So this is an old swatch of China Glaze TMI, a salmon-pink holo polish from the OMG collection. I don't know if it's my FAVOURITE holo - holo is holo is holo is awesome! Other ones I love are DV8, LOL and Nubar Reclaim... plus I have a DIY spectraflair topcoat, so argh. How is one supposed to pick a favourite??

I guess this is the dilemma that mothers supposedly have when they can't pick a favourite child. I used to think it was weird when people said they couldn't pick their favourite fur baby - I mean, it's an animal, not a child - but now here I am with my holo kids. Sigh.

Mmm rainbows! Here it is with some stamping - ulta3 Orchid with a BM plate.

THEME WEEK - My Favorite Holo :)

I remember when Ozotics first started popping up on the NB -- I was amazed and jealous that I couldn't get them easily. Now, you can get them from Ozotics from Llarowe easy peasy but before her, only obtainable through swaps with the land down under. [quick note: the 500 series multichrome/holographic/Elytra and Mish Mash series are being discontinued, so if you want some, hurry and get them!]

One of the ones I wanted the MOST though was Ozotic 518. A RED holo. Yumyum. I got it and then saw someone else post 621. A TRUE RED. I knew that I must have it and got it through another swap.

So pretties. But because I love both, I used both for this holo post. I mean, they are both red and from Ozotic... so it's okay, right? 518 is a linear holo, but more of a strawberry red than a true red. 621 is a scattered holo (which I actually prefer) but a true red. I love holos but prefer scattered holos over linear because I feel they have a bit more "oomph" and sparkle akin to real glitter. In the case of 621, it seems more like a firey glow, hard to capture on camera, sadly!

So here she is, the beauty that is red. 518 is on my ring finger, no top coat. 621 does have top coat, but only because it was matte when it dried. I use Aqua Base as my base, as I do for all holos. :)

in the shade

So, if you are into holos, what do you prefer? Scattered or linear?

THEME WEEK - My favourite Holo!

Nfu.oh 65. Massive pic spam ahead.

Would you believe it? It's another blue! I know, I know. This must come as a terrible shock to you all. I really love this one because a) it's blindingly holographic and b) it's such a beautiful shade, which I actually find quite wearable rather than being too OTT. I'm even wearing this to a colloquium today. What my supervisor thinks remains to be seen, but I'm sure it'll be fine.

It is, unsurprisingly, a bit of a pig to apply. It's kind of granular and it can be tricky to get it to even out. I used my usual base coat, then aqua base, then three coats and then top coat. I personally refuse to go without top coat - they chip quick enough as it is, so I can live with it being slightly less holographic if it lasts longer than two days - but if you're worried about this, I find doing a top coat sandwich works well with Nfu.Ohs. Just put an extra coat of polish over your top coat, and it'll last much longer but still retain the super holo finish. I don't actually think the difference is very noticeable either way, but at least that's an option that makes wearing the more fragile holos a little less of a chore.

But ultimately, who cares when a polish is this pretty?

THEME WEEK - My Favourite Holo!

Polish or Perish THEME WEEKS continue - this time with a sunshine-appropriate theme! Every day a PoP blogger will share their favourite holographic polish - will someone pick your favourite? Check back with us every day this week to see!

FAVOURITE HOLO WEEK

Picking my favourite holographic polish was easy! The hands-down (ha!) winner for me is OPI DS Design...if only because it is the only holo I own!

I'm not the biggest holo person, but this one I actually really really like! I think that the reason for that is because it's nude - that way the only thing going on is the unique finish. For me a coloured holo feels a little like overload and makes my brain hurt! (For the ultimate brain-pain polish see me wearing Claire's Yel here - taken while I was held captive by Piff.) DS Design is rather sheer though, so here I put it over Essie Jazz and I think it makes it show very true to colour. 

Now c'mon holo-heads! What's your fav??

kittytokaren

THEME WEEK - My Favourite Glitter

I don't own many glitters. Too much bling on my fingers makes me feel awkwardly overdressed and teenagery, I feel self-consciously like I have strobe lights on my fingertips - as much as I love how glitter looks in swatches, I can't wait to get it off!

That's why China Glaze Some Like It Haute is such a great glitter for me - it's sparkly, with round holo glitters, but the charcoal microglitter tones it down. The holo glitters are also always obediently weather appropriate, looking muted on cloudy days and blindingly bright in the sun.

This is two coats over one coat of ulta3 Metal, a gorgeous charcoal shimmer that looks like lead pencil, one of my top ten ulta3s. I can't stand how Some Like It Haute is translucent when backlit (e.g. when using my phone), and for some unknown reason it looked weirdly gritty in my photos of it on its own, so Metal is the perfect opaque underwear!

Can anyone recommend some other slightly-toned-down glitters?

How to drive a manicure over the edge: Orly Rock Solid... with LA Girl Inspire... with Color Club Smash Hit

This is what happens you're lazy and easily bored like I am. Let this be a lesson to you all. 

Orly Rock Solid

Part of Orly's Mineral FX collection, it looked so promising in the bottle. Black with strong silver shimmer and a heck ton of holo glitter. HECK TON. Yet it was kind of flat (and somewhat gritty) on the nail. The black shimmer ate the glitter almost entirely. Three coats. 

Closeup of Rock Solid

LA Girl Glitter Addict Inspire over Orly Rock Solid 

But I really wanted a glitter manicure that day, yet was loath to take off Rock Solid. So I decided to try out one of the LA Girl Glitter Addicts on top of it. (Btw, that collection was the most disappointing LA Girl collections ever but we can discuss that another time.) There seem to be two types of pink glitter: magenta and this old-fashioned rosy pink that seems to be the go-to pink glitter. Inspire was the latter and, as is usual for this type of pink glitter, it doesn't look so hot. I figured the polish wasn't going to be opaque so I might as well have a bit of contrast going by putting it over a dark polish, right? (Wrong.) Turns out, Inspire was even more sparse than anticipated: the above is three coats and the Rock Solid is still very visible. 

Closeup of the mess

Color Club Smash Hit over LA Girl Glitter Addict Inspire and Orly Rock Solid 

Having NOT learned my lesson -- and now having the double disincentive of removing a dark polish AND glitter -- I decided that I might as well layer on a polish that was sent to me by Color Club: Smash Hit, a black crackle. And I actually liked it better with the crackle than without. Still and all, it was pretty damn fug. 

Closeup of the coup de grace...

At this point, I had eleven layers of polish on my nails (bc, 3 Rock Solid, tc, 3 Inspire, tc, Smash Hit, tc). Well, this was just ridiculous. And kind of very unattractive. After I took this photo, I waited for the entire thing to dry and then peeled off the monstrosity off of all ten nails. (I know, I know. Gross. When you have that much polish on, once dry, it really just pops off with a little nudge.) Would it have been easier to just remove Rock Solid when I realized that I didn't like it? Probably.