Woohoo! 1L done Glitter Spam! :)

Yay for my 1st year of law school being finished! Although by the time this posts, it'll have been over for 3 weeks and I'll be 2 weeks into summer school, it still calls for a celebratory glitter spam :) These are just some of my favorite glitter combinations within the past year or so. I'm leaving out the indie brand glitters because I'm making a separate post for that soon :D

And so here it goes!

my first try at layering glitters!
For the gold, I used CC Sultry
then Sinful: Call You Later
then NYX Girls: Turks and Caicos
then Nicole by OPI: Nicole... Spotted!
my base was NYX Girls Sea of Cortez

LA Splash Golden Seahorse + Brownie gold glitter thing (Japanese) + Milani FX Gold

American Apparel Hassid + OPI Divine Swine + LA Girl Glitter Addict Nostalgic

Butter London: The Black Knight + Butter London Tart with a Heart

Fingerpaints: Vintage Velvet + LA Girls Glitter Addict: Provocative

OPI Warm & Fozzie, Spoiled: Jewelry Heist (the bronzey glitters) & Essence: Edward (green glitter)

Piggy Polish: Among the Stars + Color Club: Very Merry Berry

OPI: Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous + OPI: Crown Me Already! on ring finger

Nerd Lacquer: Warrior Ethos + NYX Girls Frizz Spots gradated

Hope y'all enjoyed seeing those as much as I enjoyed wearing them!

Sinful Colors - Velvet Diamond

Well hellllo, layering polish! How long have you been hiding in my little Helmer? THAT LONG? Oh. Ummm. Errrrr. Sorry.

Sinful Colors Velvet Diamond over Ulta Envy

When you've had a polish so long that you need to thin it down before you use it for the first time... well, it's sort of embarrassing. I'm sorry, Velvet Diamond. You are lovely, I promise I will not ignore you again.

I've been on a layering kick lately, so I've been yanking some polishes out of my stash that I think will either enhance my manicure, or, let's be honest, make it look a little different for ONE MORE DAY so that I can convince myself that I don't have to remove my polish every fifteen minutes because I am bored. This lacquer looks fairly blah in the bottle, but on the nail it transforms the base color into an almost holo-like finish. Shown above is Ulta Envy with only one coat of Velvet Diamond which really changes the entire look, if you ask me.

One question, though... what's with the name? Hey, I'm in the Arts, I know that titles can get a little crazy, but Velvet Diamond? What the hell is a Velvet Diamond?

(for the record, this comes up when you google "velvet diamond" - a coffin-shaped drum stick holder. no thank you.)

On another note, have you found any layering polishes that you love?

Happy day, all!

Sinful Colors Dream On

We all know that neons are hard to photograph and so are purple polishes. What makes perfect sense? That the hardest polish that I have photographed so far is a NEON PURPLE polish.

Sinful Colors Dream On

Sinful Colors Dream On is a pretty fabulous color even though it likes to kick the garbage out of my sweet little unassuming camera. Neon purple sounds like a pretty good description for this shade, but I'd also suggest electric plum or Barney-fur-violet. Yeah, those are about right, too.

As far as application goes, this is three coats of quick-drying, satin-finished polish with a thick coat of Seche Vite as a top coat to add shine. The color is vibrant and lovely, and it lasted for a good two days with only minor chipping, which is great in my mind for a drug store brand.

The only issue I had with this mani was with my Seche Vite; do any of you lovely readers have any problems with scratches on your nails that aren't super noticeable but annoying nonetheless?

Cheap thrills: Sinful Innocent and Happy Ending (...and a short-term goodbye til Sunday)

Today is going to be a ridiculously busy day: my formal second-year talk is at noon and I'm leaving to go to Boston tonight for APS (another red-eye) to present my poster.

I recently spent some time swatching most of my Sinful untrieds and as usual, I find that the good ones are GREAT and the not-so-good ones make me want to return them because they still seem a waste of $1.99. (I have about 1000 polishes: I literally don't have room for cheap nail polishes that aren't of good quality.)

Here are two Sinful successes!

Sinful Happy Ending

The phrase "Sinful Happy Ending" makes me want to titter like a schoolgirl but I'll resist the urge to do so. Wonderful grass green with bright gold shimmer. I think this was two thick coats. A little brush strokey but I love the color.

Sinful Innocent

Extra thanks to Adrienne for getting me Innocent for my birthday (and for purchasing some LE FingerPaints for me)! :D Lime greens are my newest obsessions. (An offshoot of the mint green obsession, probably. Or maybe it's an offshoot of my yellow obsession. A convergence of the two obsessions perhaps... I'll shut up now.) This was an amazing creme: two coats, went on perfectly. Worth much more than $1.99 and a complete steal at that price. I haven't had time to compare the two but OPI Who the Shrek Are You is slightly darker and a smidge bluer than Innocent. It also looks very dupey to FingerPaints Lucky in Love Lime. When I get back from Boston-New York-Boston, I'll post a comparison of these three polishes.

Off to start my long, long day...! I probably won't be posting much between now and Sunday (my poster is on Saturday). So I hope everyone has a great rest-of-the-week!

Cheap drugstore thrills: Sinful Mint Apple and Wet n Wild Night Prowl

Evidence that nail polish can be good without being expensive or hard-to-find!

Sinful Mint Apple

I'm going to pretend like the name of this polish doesn't sound like the Essie polish "Mint Candy Apple". But who cares about non-creative borrowing when a polish is as fantastic as this? Blue-leaning mint green with silver shimmer. I'm used to Sinful polishes being a bit on the thin side but this was a surprising two-coater. Often, I don't think of Sinfuls as a great use of $2 but this was definitely worth it. The shimmer is really what makes the polish: it never quite looks like a creme but the shimmer becomes very obvious and extremely pretty when the light hits it.

Wet n Wild Night Prowl Blue Moon

How do you beat 99¢ polish? You don't! This was a bit on the thin side and required three coats for me to get to completely opaque (though it would have been passable at two). The gold-highlighted light blue shimmer in the polish sort of disappears on the nail but it still remains a solid blue shimmer. Honestly, I was a tad disappointed in this polish: I have had great experiences with Wet n Wild Shine polishes and I was hoping it would look more like the bottle color.

On a red-eye to NYC tonight. Sigh. I hate red-eye flights but it's usually 1. a direct flight and 2. the cheapest to boot. So... plan for tomorrow... get into NYC at 6:30am, nap for a couple of hours and then a day full of talks on sentence processing.

NOTD Nina Ultra Pro Leaf Me Alone with Sinful Call You Later

Hello! It has been a crazy few weeks in graduate school. Unfortunately, I spent the entire last week sick with a cold and although I'm finally recovering, I'm trying to catch up with the work I skipped out on while being sick while simultaneously starting to prepare for my final papers (already! jeez). Gah. :(

I wouldn't say grad school is getting easier but I'm starting to learn that "reading like a grad student" means not reading absolutely everything that is assigned. :P

So on to my NOTD...this is 3 coats of Nina Ultra Pro Leaf Me Alone and 2 coats of Sinful Call You Later. This mani was inspired/copied from a lovely, creative lady on the MUA Nailboard.

For some reason, the glitter came out very dense on my thumb but not on any other nails.




With flash:


And here is the Daddy Long Legs that lived on my door for awhile. I named him Dandy. He's back to being an outside spider now. :)


Well, what do you think of this mani? You can purchase Nina Ultra Pro at Sally Beauty Supply stores and Sinful at Walgreens (this particular Sinful is not available online anywhere yet).

Up next...Halloween manis!!! Stay tuned! Thanks for reading!

Brucci (and some Sinful) swatches!

All in all, trip to NYC was disappointing: so many things were out of stock! Try as I might to stimulate the NYC economy, I was stymied at every turn... oh well. I promptly hauled some Orgasm and Obsessive Compulsive polishes when I got home (because the concept of saving that which was to by NYC polish haul money is uninteresting to me at the moment -- unwise, I know).

I never knew what a gem of a drugstore Duane Reade was until I moved away from NYC. Such a nice, fully stocked selection of drugstore (and some salon) polishes: Milani, Revlon, Sally Hansen, Borghese, Wet N Wild (not a single empty WnW Craze display!), Tropez, OPI, Essie, sometimes Barielle and Toma. And, of course, Brucci, which I've only ever seen at DRs.

I have a soft spot in my heart for Brucci: it was my first nail polish brand and I used to have a bunch of them in my teens. So I stocked up on them while I was in the city, wore a couple while there, and have duly swatched most of them for you all. The two Brucci polishes I wore while home were quite durable: only a little bit of tipwear after a few days and no chipping. The color selection is decent: it's still very staid compared to other brands -- and has its share of frosty semi-sheers in semi-interesting colors -- but some interesting ones thrown in.

Application for these polishes, in general... a bit watery for me but by no means thin: most polishes were almost totally opaque in two coats. Warning though: this polish requires thin coats because it's so watery. It's not that quick drying and when I was swatching, I found that if I carelessly did a thick-ish coat, the polish would drip down and pool at the tip of my nail while I was photographing! Not attractive. Also, weird. It's a hard polish to control, IMO (again, because of its wateriness): allllll over the nail if I wasn't careful. But for $3, it's not bad. The cremes, especially, were very glossy and had a nice air of sophistication. Anyway, enough blathering...!

Brucci Explosive Meteorite

Pretty basic: dark grey with silver shimmer, giving off an overall charcoal shade. One of the easier polishes to apply. I believe this is new for fall.

Brucci Grape Galaxy

Also new for fall. Very dark purple with light purple and blue shimmer. It looks pretty plain in the shade but very pretty when the sun hits it. Also fairly pain-free in application.

Brucci Grape Galaxy with Sinful I Miss You on top

Multi-sized holo glitter (with silver glitter) in a dark purple jelly. A very silvery type glitter though it does have some holo thrown in.

Brucci Hunter Drive (in sunlight and in shade)

I always find reds hard to capture. This one was pretty watery and sheer: I used four coats for the above, and there was still some VNL. But I really like this polish: it's more burgundy than the photos would lead you to think and it has really gorgeous gold and red shimmer.

Brucci Daniella's Curve

Very glossy mauve-plum shade. One of the unfortunate watery culprits. You can practically see the polish starting to fall off of my nail there. But when applied carefully with thin coats, it's a very pretty color: sophisticated and something you can wear to the office (without feeling really dull).

Brucci Creme de Cocoa

Good basic chocolate brown. Darker and warmer than in the picture. Not something to celebrate but it fills a gap in my stash.

Brucci Creme de Cocoa with Sinful Smoking Hot on top

Everyone's seen opalescent white glitters but this one seemed atypical: it's a very dense, very fine glitter that reflects more green and gold than silver. I was taken aback at how much fire is in this polish!

Brucci Black+Blue

Dark blue jelly. Very pretty but I have several dark blue jellies; I bought this one mostly to franken with. :)

And now, the pièce de résistance...

Brucci Black+Blue with Sinful Nail Junkie on top

Check out this new Sinful glitter. OMG. Multi-sized blue, green, gold and silver glitter in a blue-green jelly. It SPARKLES LIKE WHOA. So f'ing worth the $2, if only for the name alone!

Close-up:

And because it SPARKLES LIKE WHOA, I need a video as well:

Remember to enter yourself in the BB Couture For Men polish giveaway (ends Labor Day). The submission form for the contest will be on the sidebar until the contest ends!