Halloween Nails 2010

Happy belated Halloween! ♥

My actual Halloween nails weren't that spooky, but this is what I was wearing a few weeks earlier. Orly Glamrock stamped with silver and black bats on my right hand and silver spiders on black webs on my left! Pretty terrifying, am I right? I put a top coat on it to make it shiny, although Glamrock looks amazing matte as well. It took two coats to be totally opaque. The problem lay in the fauxnading (the konad spider was fine), or maybe the Wet n' Wild black. The spider webs in particular were a real pain to get on my nails.

Maybe because the stamping was such a hassle, the sun decided to cooperate with the pictures:

Way to set the atmosphere! That one sunbeam falling through my window onto the desk sure knew what it was doing! Unfortunately, my camera's pretty much dead, so I had to use a phone for these and didn't realize until later that I only had one good picture of my left hand.

A Week of Orlys! Orly Lemonade

Welcome to day five of A Week of Orlys! This is Orly lemonade, with Essie Tart Deco sponged on the tips and konaded with some tropical flowers (plate m57). I didn't know what to do with Orly Lemonade at first. I think it might have been my first yellow nail polish ever, haha.

I was so surprised at how much I liked this. I was just experimenting, as I haven't really done much sponging, but I think it turned out great! I prefer sponging to french tips, and I've been trying to get better at gradient manicures, so I think this was a lovely success.

This was a lot of fun, because it was totally out of my element. I never wear orange or yellow, even in nail polish, so at first I didn't know what to think about this. But I loved it! It was so fun, summery and clean, I felt like I should be sitting on the beach in Hawaii!

Just for fun, I thought an action shot would be neat. I love how well the colors match! This is my favorite of Hawaiian Sun juice.

What do you think? Are there colors you usually avoid but have begun to enjoy?

Until next time!

Color Club Wild and Willing

I cut my nails short. Actually, I cut them even shorter a few manis after this. It will be even easier to tell my and Lacquermuse's posts apart! Now that I've warned everyone, let's move on to the pictures...

This is Color Club's Wild and Willing, stamped with Jordana Black with Konad plate m77.

Flash:

No flash:

The polish really does get both of those colors! Ignore how gross my skin looks in the second one, but that's the sort of greenish orange the polish is most of the time. When the glitter this polish is just packed with is at the right angle to catch the light, it turns that brighter orange of the flash picture. It will even go a bright pink that you can just see hints of in the top picture. It's really quite a stunner.

The glitter that I mentioned makes up the bulk of the color in this polish. You can see it coating the side of the bottle in these pictures. I was really uncertain about this color at first because at one coat the glitter just made my nails look gritty and dirty. It really starts to come to life after the second coat! I think this is four coats, but three would have been sufficient.

Orange Swatches

I remember in fourth grade all the girls in my class agreed that orange was the ugliest color because it didn't look good with anything. Except black, but if it wasn't Halloween, you just looked dumb. I never liked orange either, although I did get this set of two Old Navy mini polishes in a goody bag from someone's birthday party, one pink with gold flash and one orange with gold flash, that I thought were super cool. I justified that as being okay, though, because we had been talking about clothes, and nail polish wasn't clothes.

...Anyway.

Apparently that logic stuck with me because I love orange nail polish. I started buying polish again last year and ended up with a lot of orange near-dupes really quickly. They're not identical, I swear! See, let me show you...

(with flash) China Glaze Dreamsicle, OPI DS Treasure, Jordana Mango, NYC 112a, Zoya Penny

(no flash) China Glaze Dreamsicle, OPI DS Treasure, Jordana Mango, NYC 112a, Zoya Penny

Dreamsicle is a cute fun light tangerine but oh so chunky. :( It took me days to get it off my toes. ...It also flaked right off my fingers in big sheets. Actually, the parts on my toes that didn't have me scrubbing forever also chipped off really fast. I don't know what's up with this one, but China Glaze's Bad Kitty had the same effect. Must be a junk batch.

Treasure's my favorite out of the lot. ♥ As you can see here, it's actually a pink base with a LOT of orange and gold shimmer. I usually layer it until it's more or less opaque, so that it looks more orange than pink, but it wouldn't be bad sheer, either.

Mango is a softer sort of orange shimmer and... really doesn't look like a mango to me. It's yellowy, but the shimmer throws me off. Very pretty, though, but is kind of streaky. I thought it might be a match for the Old Navy mini I had (which, btw, is officially so old it doesn't dry), but it has more depth to it.

At the other end of the spectrum, I have no idea where this NYC came from. I asked my mom to mail me some things and this got included. I don't remember buying it and it must be from junior high. It's actually not a bad creme, though. Really streaky at first but evened out nicely after three coats.

Zoya Penny is very pretty and very opaque. I think this is two coats, although one is almost good enough to wear. It really does live up to its name. It looks exactly like a melted new penny.

(with flash) Zoya Paz, Jordana Hot & Spicy, Wet'N'Wild Inferno, Zoya Kaufda, Nfu.Oh 58

Breaking up the monotony with a family portrait. :)

Zoya Penny, NYC 112a, Jordana Mango, OPI DS Treasure, China Glaze Dreamsicle, Nfu.Oh 58, Zoya Kaufda, Wet'N'Wild Inferno, Jordana Hot & Spicy, Zoya Paz

(with flash) Zoya Paz, Jordana Hot & Spicy, Wet'N'Wild Inferno, Zoya Kaufda, Nfu.Oh 58

I think everyone is allowed to have a couple of polishes they buy just because of the name. Paz is one of mine. Except that I also like the color. So. Anyway. It's a really, really, really, really neon orange. Blinding. Takes two to three coats for full oh-my-god-my-eyes appeal.

I got Jordana Hot & Spicy to try and get a dupe for Treasure. It's close, as it is also an orange shimmer in a pink base, but this base is more berry and the shimmer isn't as intense. I think it looks redder when being worn. Still nice. Just not as magical.

Scrangie did a review on Inferno a while ago that was pretty dead on. It's a really vibrant reddish/gold orange. Very pretty! I'll wear it properly someday and show the color better then.

Zoya Kaufda is another one I should really look into wearing... It's beautiful. Deep orange to bronze, very opaque. I think Zoya gave it a 5/5 opacity.

This Nfu.Oh was kind of a mistake. The picture on the site is very misleading. In reality it looks like rotting leaves with flakies instead of dark red with rainbow as they would have you believe... Once you get over that, it's pretty cool! Brown-orange with warm tone flakies. It got used in the first mani on this blog! :)