Vivid Lacquer Woo:Tangent

Vivid Lacquer Woo: Tangent from the I'm Thankful For My Console collection.  I love Katamari Damacy, so this was hard to resist.  And it's everything I've been looking for in a multicolored glitter polish:  a little bit of everything!  This is over a base of Sinful Colors Jungle Trail.

Ketchup

Sorry about the long absence, y'all.  I took a break from blogging while on vacation and had a hard time getting back into it when I got back.  Part of the problem is that I suddenly developed very brittle nails and horribly flaky cuticles.  I blame overuse of acetone and cuticle remover. My nails and skin aren't too fond of either.  Anyway, I had chips and peeling all over the place and just didn't feel like doing my nails much.  They still aren't back in top form, but at least they've stopped breaking so much.

I do have a little bit of a backlog of pics from the few times my nails actually looked good lately, so it's spam time!

Ludurana Show.  This is a gorgeous multichrome that shifts between green, blue, teal and purple.  The polish is scented, but I didn't notice any scent after it had dried. It's a little sheer, like most duo/multichromes.  I used four coats for this photo and I'll probably layer one or two coats over black in the future.

Nail strips from Dollar Tree.  Okay, these are kind of crap.  I'm not sure what I expected for a dollar, really.  They're plastic-y (obviously not actually polish strips) and don't last long at all, even with a base and top coat.  Basically, if you want a quick manicure and only need it to last a day, they're fine. The color was a little surprising.  In the store and at home I thought they were navy, but when I went outside, they looked green.  

Unnamed Franken.  This is a fairly sheer sage green jelly with micro silver and teal glitter and larger silver hex glitter.  The photos above are three coats and there's still a little more VNL than I care for. I can't remember what I used in this one, but I'm pretty sure it involved at least half a dozen different polishes. 

I've been experimenting with my photography lately, working with different lighting and hand positions.  This is my homage to Chalkboard Nails. 

 

Unnamed Franken Number Two.  A deep purple jelly with various sizes of iridescent glitter and a small amount of holo glitter.  This one reminds me of grape candy.  

I've got a few more frankens I'll swatch one of these days..  I'm really happy with how most of them turned out and I've been thinking of opening up an Etsy shop and creating my own indie polish line.  Need to do some more research on that one, sourcing materials and whatnot.

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Day 24 - Inspired by a Book

Technically, this is inspired by a set of books:  Encyclopedia Britannica!  I used to love paging through our set of encyclopedias, especially the section on the human body that had the various systems of the body printed on different transparencies.

For this, I used Color Club Rebel Spirit, China Glaze Brownstone, L'Oreal The Perfect Trench, and Orly Luxe.  Stamped with a piece of the chandelier on BM8.


And here's a surprise bonus.  I don't have my camera with me so I couldn't take a good picture, but I doodled this the other day and wanted to share:

This is OPI Java Mauve-a, Pure Ice Super Star (white), something I don't remember the name of (and I'm too lazy to go check right now) and a teensy bit of China Glaze Passion.  Passion is dotted in the center of the circles, but it's hard to tell unless you look very closely.  Stamped with BM04.

Taking a Break

And again I disappear.  I'm currently out of town for about six weeks - without my camera - and thus will be taking a break from blogging for a couple months.

I have one more post in the 30 Day Challenge coming, so watch for that in the next couple days.

Vivid Lacquer - PMP, Daisy, and Ocean's Pixels

I'm sure those of you who read this blog regularly are tired of hearing me rave about Vivid Lacquer, but you'll have to suffer through another review today.  Anni is very generously offering minis for bloggers to review, so I had to jump at the chance.

Vivid Lacquer Paint Me Patriotic, Daisy, and Ocean's Pixels.

Paint Me Patriotic is a variety of red, white, and blue glitters  in a clear base.  Again, the glitter is fairly dense and I had no problem getting a little of everything on the brush.  And here's something I didn't realize before I got the polish:  this one has stars in it!  They appear fairly often without any fishing required.  I honestly didn't expect to love this one as much as I do.

Daisy is a white jelly with white diamond glitter, small round green glitter, and matte yellow hexes.  There's also a teeny bit of gold shimmer in the base.  It's subtle enough to be hard to photograph and is not immediately apparent, but it adds an overall richness to the polish that a plain white jelly wouldn't have.  The formula on this was great.  It went on a little streaky but it self levels if not applied too thinly.  I used two coats over Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Jade Jump.  This one is really gorgeous and is definitely my favorite of the bunch.  It's soft and delicate and pairs so well with other colors.

Ocean's Pixels is a clear base with small blue and pale green matte glitter.  This went on very smoothly and the glitter is fairly densely packed so it doesn't take much.  You could probably get full or nearly full coverage in a few coats. This is one coat over Revlon Buttercup. 

Vivid Lacquer can be found on Etsy.

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Day 23 - Inspired by a Movie

 About time, right?  I was going to do a mani based on Pretty In Pink, as per my Mom's suggestion (sorry, Mom), but when I got my Vivid Lacquer plate I knew what I had to do.

Jurassic Park!

Rawr.

I had a hard time getting a good photo of this one.  It is quite a bit clearer in person.

Of course, the whole time I was working on it I had this running through my head:

  

Vivid Lacquer Stamping Plate 002

I've got another indie review for y'all today.  This time, a stamping plate.  That's right, an indie plate maker!  This is the second plate VL002 from Anni at VividLacquer on Etsy.  It includes four full size images plus six (well, eight if you're splitting up the balloons) smaller images.  It came perfectly clean with no scratches; the streaks you see here are from the acetone I used to clean it after stamping.  Didn't think to photograph it until afterward : /

And when I say full size, I mean FULL SIZE.  Each large image is 2cm x 2cm, which is more than large enough to cover my thumb and is awesome for longer nails.  Because they're so large, you might need to practice a bit with the placement of some of them, particularly the butterfly wings.  I found it didn't matter too much with the honeycomb or stars because my only goal was to cover the nail, not focus on a particular part of the design.

I am quite impressed with how these turned out.  The plate is engraved deeply enough that it's very easy to get a good image, even as an inexperienced stamper.  I was curious about how the half-moon would work because it's such a large area, but it turned out fine.  It helps to scrape it in two different directions and use a light touch, but I didn't have an issue getting a good image from it.

At $8 each, these are a bit more pricey than other plates, but well worth the money for the quality, the larger images and designs other than flowers and butterflies.  I bought this plate solely for the snail, but I totally love all the other images and I'm sure I'll get tons of use out of it.

Vivid Lacquer also has some lovely handmade 3-free polishes and another stamping plate, VL001, with plans to add more in the future.  Anni's customer service is awesome and shipping on this plate was very fast.  

I used Essie Marshmallow as a base and stamped with China Glaze Passion.