Holy Freakin' Unreal Emberstone!!

Be prepared to be bombarded by photos. No joke, I have like legit 8 pictures. I took these a while ago and this is quite a late post. I've been trying to cut down on the number of photos, but since I had already cropped and tagged all of these, I figured I'd just include them.



















2 coats Orly Emberstone
1 coat Poshe

Emberstone... is amazing. I'm a HUGE fan of the Mineral FX collection, as I posted Stone Cold back in December. Emberstone is beautiful. It has almost a coral type of feel. This polish is definitely easily worn in the summertime, I thought it was going to be more of a cold red. Some photos show it as a cherry red, but there are a couple that show the orange-y coral feel, and you definitely see that quite a bit in real life. It also has this hot pink feel to it. I definitely see hot pink flakes in this polish, just a little less frequent than the orange. This isn't really a glitter, they're more particles of shimmer than anything IMO. It's a little different than Stone Cold in that the particles aren't as separate. They're much more fluent with the base of the polish where as they stood out far more in Stone Cold. This does not make the polish any less amazing. I still stand by what I said with Stone Cold and that is words and photos cannot describe this polish.

Seriously, you have to wear these polishes. When you wear them, they're so much more lively that photos show, than they look in the bottle, or even how they look as swatches in the store. Don't underestimate these. They're not a regular shimmer.

The formula was totally fine. It glided on great, not too thick. Polish went and stayed where I put it. Amazing to work with, great coverage. Beautiful all around.

China Glaze VIII with Glitter Tips

As much as I'm not a huge fan of vampy colors, it's winter, and winter is the time for vampy colors (for me anyway)! I don't like when deep colors just look black, so I decided to add some glitter to China Glaze's VIII to help dress it up a little and maybe pull out some of the purple.















2 coats China Glaze VIII
1 coat Poshe
Glitter Tips with Ardene Princess Cut
1 coat Poshe

Now, the glitter is kind of in a gradient form. I didn't use anything special for this, just the brush. I was initially going to just cover the nail in the glitter, but figured I'd mix it up.

The method I used was EXTREMELY easy and you do not need any other supplies besides your polish. I just painted the tip thick with the glitter, wiped the brush on the sides of the bottle to get as much glitter off the brush as I could, then I took the brush and lightly brushed the glitter towards my cuticle. I went over the tip again to make sure the glitter was heavier there. That was it! I did top it with Poshe again because while the glitter dries pretty quickly, there were clear streaks from the base of the glitter. The Poshe just helped smooth it out.

I went a little too heavy on my index finger but didn't feel like fixing it. I was also doing this is very poor lighting so I didn't realize how thick the glitter was at the time. Lol. I did not drag the glitter all the way to my cuticle. I stopped a little bit before that. Had my lighting been better, I would've gone further. But after my index finger getting too much glitter, I figured I'd keep it safe!

Orly Stone Cold

Words and photos cannot describe this polish. But let's give it a shot.















Close Up




2 coats Orly Stone Cold
1 coat Poshe

Holy goodness. Let me start by saying that I was drawn to this polish because I love Orly and I heard people loved these polishes... and I had 15% off at Sallys =D. I chose Stone Cold because I love blue polishes and nothing else really stood out to me. But after trying this, I want all of them!!

This polish in the bottle does NOT do it justice!! Even the swatches on the displays do not do this polish justice. I just don't understand. I was reluctant to purchase it because it has a higher price tag than normal Orly's, and it just didn't look that special. Well it lived up to the hype and more.

It's a beautiful vibrant blue that is FILLED with these small, irregular shaped pieces of... glitter? I don't know if you'd call it glitter per say, it reminds me of like tiny flakes of a blue cellophane with kind of a blue iridescence in a matching blue jelly base. But it's packed with those little pieces whatever you wanna call them. Regardless, it makes for an effect that is so beautiful and unusual. You HAVE to see it in real life and on the nail.

The formula was lovely to work with. A bit on the thicker side, but I think that was a good thing. Very manageable.

Welcoming December with China Glaze Lorelei's Tiara

I went to several different Sally's looking for this polish. I finally found a Sally's that had the collection in, but it hadn't been put out yet. The super sweet sales associate brought out one of the displays for me, and I grabbed the one polish I really wanted from the collection, Lorelei's Tiara.

















2 coats China Glaze Lorelei's Tiara
1 coat Poshe
Please excuse several of my cuticles. That's dried Poshe (not nasty dried cuticles) and I didn't notice it until I uploaded the photos.

I know most of these photos are the same/similar angle. But they all show different angles of the polish, so I decided to not eliminate too many.

Lorelei's Tiara is an INTENSE glitter. It is PACKED with silver micro glitter and larger (but not large) lighter blue glitter. While there is a ton of silver, when you look down at your nails, they don't just look silver. You can easily tell there's blue as well.

The formula was great for what it is. If you use one thicker coat, it'll be totally opaque. Some of my nails were after one coat, but some weren't so I decided to just do another coat to all of them. It goes on easily, though it's obviously a bit of a thicker formula due to the amount of glitter and the successful intention for it to be opaque. But it stayed very even, it was very workable, it was great to use.

And if you're curious, 1 thick coat of Poshe did NOT make this smooth to the touch. It was still textured. Not bad, but if you wanted it smooth, I'd definitely suggest 2 coats of topcoat. It's a hungry glitter!!

Revlon Facets of Fuchsia

I usually don't wear glitters because I frequently have silk wrapped nails. Removing glitters is laborious anyway, but it just plain SUCKS when you can't use acetone because of a silk wrap. Well, all of my silk wraps are off (not by choice), so I'm going on a glitter spree!!

















2 coats Revlon Facets of Fuchsia
1 coat Poshe

I saw people going CRAZY over this polish (and the other two that came out with it), and it looked really pretty for fall so I figured I'd give it a shot. I actually loved it and now want Blue Mosaic (but not gonna lie, I think Starry Pink is hideous).

Facets of Fuchsia is a lovely polish with tiny round and larger hex purple/fuchsia glitter appropriately suspended in a black jelly base. It's a fun balance of glitter in polish because it's not a BAM in your face glitter, but it's not so sparse that it barely looks like glitter. The jelly base is great because it really helps to give dimension to the polish. The other thing I loved was because of the depth of the polish, it isn't one that just looks black from far away. It's obvious enough that there's glitter and it's not just black.

The formula was actually great! I spent very little time trying to make sure glitter was placed evenly because it did it on its own. It was totally opaque in 2 coats and had no streaking or anything. A great formula for a pretty polish!

Lots of CG In The City

In celebration of removing all silk wraps from my left hand, I'm going with a glitter. I avoid glitters when I have a silk wrap on because removal is horrific because I don't use acetone on those nails. But I just picked up the two glitters from the Metro collection the other day, and I don't feel like waiting for the wraps to come off of my right hand.

I had intentions of just getting Skyscraper, but once I saw CG In The City, I just had to have it. So here it is...

1 coat CG In The City over 2 coats China Glaze Spontaneous

Shade

Sunlight


2 coats CG In The City over 2 coats China Glaze Spontaneous

Shade

Sunlight


3 coats CG In The City over 2 coats China Glaze Spontaneous

Shade

Sunlight



I didn't like the way the polish was without a base polish. I felt it looked just... not right. So here's a view on 1, 2, and 3 coats without a base color.

Sunlight

Shade


On its own, it makes me think of someone putting glue on their nails and then rubbing them in sand. It's natural like earthy and raw. Here in New England, we have some beaches that have dark sand (moreso TEENY TINY rock sand) that even looks sparkly because of crushed shells and whatnot. That description makes it sounds way more awesome than it actually is, so don't think you're missing out if you're not from New England lol.

Here's a stock photo that shows exactly what I'm talking about. This photo is apparently from a beach in Portland, ME.

Source

So I'm sure after seeing that, you can understand what I mean. Ironic that it reminds me of sand on a beach when the polish is from a Metro collection and called CG IN THE CITY. Haha.

Let's discuss the color
So China Glaze says this is a "glittering dusty purple, bronze and silver multi-tonal glitter". Well, I'm going to assume China Glaze knows what they're talking about since they made the polish, but I swear I see black glitter. To me, I see light purple, black, bronze, and silver (it's a clear base, by the way). It's such a bizarre mix of glitters. I put it over Spontaneous to try to pull out the purple glitter because the whole thing just confuses me. I might also try it over a bronze (Orly Rage would rock for this!!) and a gunmetal like Zoya Freja. Speaking of which, I have no idea why, but this polish reminds me of the glitter version of Freja. Strange.

Zebra With Some Accents

Another day of no idea what to do. I texted my friend this morning whining about how I had NO idea what to do with my nails today. She suggested houndstooth, so I had a go with my old BM plates, which are typically fine in width... however my nails are far too long to do that right now. I needed to try something else. I already had my nails painted white, so this is what I came up with...













Started with:
2 coats Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White On
1 coat Poshe

Pinkie, Middle, Index:
Bundle Monster plate BM-223 (zebra) stamped with Sinful Black on Black
1 coat Poshe

Thumb:
Bundle Monster plate BM-223 (zebra) stamped with Orly Royal Navy
Bundle Monster plate BM15 (feather) stamped with Sinful Black on Black
1 coat Poshe

Ring:
1 coat Orly Royal Navy
3 coats China Glaze Dorothy Who?
1 coat Poshe

Oh yeah. How amazingly tacky is this?? I'm all about it, obviously. I messed around with so many different ways of doing this because I had only an iffy vision of what I wanted. Plain zebra stripes was not an option. I debated about doing something red over the zebra (maybe a red rose or something like that), but then I saw Dorothy Who? and decided I had to go with blue. I chose Royal Navy as the zebra on my thumb simply because the feather didn't work over black, even when stamped with a dark, opaque blue (not Royal Navy). The feather, by the way, has zero significance. I just wanted something that wasn't too complicated, and was dense enough to go over the zebra stripes so you would still be able to figure out what it was.

Speaking of the friend I was texting, she doesn't get to see it until tomorrow. Unless she can find my blog. I think only one of my friends has seen my blog. And in case he comes across it again...
HI JIM!!!!!!!!!