Gold Holly Stamping

I'm kinda obsessed with Gilty Pleasure for Christmas. It's just such a gorgeous, real gold, I hope I have enough time to use it again in another Christmas design as well. But here is just a quick, simple stamp with Gilty Pleasure.









iPhone photo that I think shows that the stamp was much more opaque than the other photos make it seem




2 coats Sally Hansen Gilty Pleasure
1 coat Poshe
Holly from Bundle Monster plate BM14 with Orly Enchanted Forest for the leaves and Orly Poison Apple for the berries.

I had intentions of putting a tiny red rhinestone in place of the berries. But I realized that I didn't have any and wasn't in a position to be able to go get some. So it stayed as is. Wish I had gotten a chance to do that, though.

Sally Hansen Gilty Pleasure

Can someone tell me why this is spelled gilty and not guilty? I'm not getting the reference. Luckily, that's the only thing that bothers me about this polish! I think it's lovely...















2 coats Sally Hansen (Complete Salon Manicure) Gilty Pleasure
1 coat Poshe

This is a VERY nice shade of gold. It's very "real" looking. Instead of being an "artificial" yellow gold, it's more of a brassy gold. Like an old brass, not with a ton of luster or shininess, but an aged, antiqued brass while still holding true to it being gold. It's metallic as opposed to a shimmery or glitter gold. I don't know how it'd be on different skin tones, but I imagine it won't clash too badly with anyone.

The formula was lovely. It does show some brush strokes, but only when you look closely and concentrate. This was a very forgiving polish. It stayed where I put it despite my numerous brush strokes I used on each nail. No streaking, was opaque in 2 coats. Very nice to work with.

MAC Bad Fairy

Remember when people were ALL OVER this polish? It came out fall of last year when the duochrome foils were HUGE. Bad Fairy was the only one of the MAC Venomous Villains polishes that wasn't a dupe for an Orly Cosmic FX polish. It was its own polish.



















2 coats MAC Bad Fairy
1 coat Poshe

I snatched 2 of these suckers up when I caught it just right online when they were back in stock at Nordstrom. I'm so glad I did! Not only is this one of my fav polishes, but its one of my sisters as well! I'm about 1/3 of the way through the bottle so I'm glad I have a backup!

This is a gorgeous dark pink/warm orange duochrome. At first glance it seems like a simple foil polish, but as soon as you move the duochrome is very prominent. I love duochromes because they're like an "indoor holo" to me. You know how you need good light for a holo to really look amazing? Duochromes look special and awesome in any light.

The formula was ok, but the brush was freakin' horrendous. The polish is kinda streaky, but these types of polishes can be finicky anyway. Definitely tolerable and not frustrating. You just can't do a ton of strokes of you get bald spots. So long as you use a light touch and don't go over it a ton of times you'll be fine. But the brush was just bad. I had to trim it because there were bristles going whichever direction they felt like, and it's not a very dense brush it it flares at the tip. Not in a good way. Again it's tolerable, but for $13 I expect WAY more higher quality packaging. I have 99 cent polishes with AMAZING brushes that make MACs look like a brush from a pack of 10 watercolor brushes from the dollar store complete with 10 bristles per brush. Point being, I really expected a better brush for $13.

Fishnets For Your Nails

I wore Orly Rage yesterday, so when I went to do something to my nails today, I just had fishnets stuck in my head. These look nearly identical to the Sally Hansen Salon Effects in Misbehaved. I can't compare directly because I don't own them, and they're hard for me to wear because I'd have to take them off for work (which defeats the purpose of them and their lasting abilities) and because I become very easily bored with the same thing. So this is my take.









2 coats Orly Rage
1 coat Poshe
Bundle Monster plate BM-209 with Sinful Black on Black
1 coat Poshe

Rage At A Wedding

Today I'm off to the forth of five weddings I'll be attending this year. All very different from each other, which is so interesting. Today's wedding is a backyard, casual wedding. I'll be wearing a cotton halter dress with a taupe, pink, and cream design. I almost went with pink nails, but decided I didn't want to do the matching thing, I wanted something complimentary. So I went with Orly Rage.











2 coats Rage
1 coat Poshe

The formula was amazing to work with. Just perfect, non-streaky, and totally opaque in 2 coats. The other awesome thing was dry time. I still used Poshe, just because of habit. But when I went to do the second coat of Rage, I realized the first coat was COMPLETELY dry. And by the time I put on Poshe, the second coat was dry, too!! Oddly enough, I didn't have problems with the polish drying on the brush and then pulling. It went on great. So this is an AWESOME polish if you're in a rush. Literally, the best polish I can think of for that.

Rage is a bronze "foil" polish that definitely looks like a super awesome metallic finish. It's super shiny and doesn't really look like polish at all. It looks like Minx or something. Some of my photos make the polish look kinda grainy, like you can see the particles on their own. But when you look at your hand as a whole, you can't see those particles, so it really looks like a metallic foil. It has shimmer, but it's definitely overpowered by the overall foil smoothness, which makes it look amazing.

Golden Cinnabar with OPI Silver Shatter

My first use of Silver Shatter!! As I've said before, I'm not a huge crackle fan. Black Shatter just didn't do it for me. And I'm convinced it makes my nails look fat. No, really, I swear. But did that stop me from speeding out to go pick up Silver Shatter (and 3 other polishes from the Pirates of the Caribbean collection)? Umm, nope. But I think that's a good thing because I actually like Silver Shatter. Maybe because it's spring, and black doesn't scream "spring" to me the way this silver does. It keeps the nail light and pretty. I'm hoping I like Black Shatter more in the fall. I just tend to follow seasons when I wear polish. In the fall/winter, I'm in the mood to wear darker colors. In the spring, I like pastels, and in the summer I like brights. Slight variations here and there, but you get the idea.

So obviously when I picked up Silver Shatter, I had polish on. So when I got home, I couldn't swatch it on my nails. In hindsight, I could've used a nail wheel, but eh. Oh well. However, my sister was at home with naked nails, so I took advantage of them. I painted 10 random colors on her nails, and Golden Cinnabar was one of them. This ended up being one of my favorite combinations!!







Closeup


2 coats Golden Cinnabar
1 coat Poshe
1 coat Silver Shatter

I know I said I loved this on my sisters nails, but I don't know how much I loved it on mine. Maybe because it didn't crackle super well on all nails, or because my nails are much longer than my sisters.

Sally Hansen Nail Prisms in Golden Cinnabar

I was initially planning on wearing a holo, but because I was doing my nails before bed, I didn't want to take the chance of it being overcast the next day (By the way, it was amazingly sunny today). So I was going through some of my older, "not salon brand" polishes, and I came across Golden Cinnabar. I bought this about a year ago from Dollar Tree and it came packaged with Sally Hansen Reddy to Mingle. So technically, this cost me 50 cents!! Yay for cheap polish!! And for the record, when it comes to polish, expensive does not equal good quality and cheap does not equal bad quality. You should never assume that because you're paying $8.50... or $14... or even $25, you're getting the best quality polish you can find. You can easily find polishes for $1 that are amazing all around, and you can also buy $25 polishes that are awful in every way. So keep that in mind when you're choosing a polish.

And for the record, despite that I've had this polish for about a year, this is my first time wearing it!! One of the things I love about duochromes is that means I get to take a ton of photos!! Woooooo!!















Closeup


2 coats Golden Cinnabar
1 coat Poshe

The Nail Prisms were probably some of the most awesome polishes put out by Sally Hansen. To some, they're probably some of the most awesome polishes put out by ANY nail polish brand. Nail Prisms have since been discontinued :( but you can still find them randomly at discount stores, dollar stores, or online. Some were more holo, some were more duochrome, but regardless they are all gorgeous in their own right.

Golden Cinnabar is a bronze-y/copper-y gold, coral-y rose duochome. The description I give it makes it sound pretty ugly. Haha. But I think it's super intriguing. I'm generally lucky in that I rarely come across a polish that really looks awful with my skintone. Either that or 1. I don't buy colors that clash with my skintone or 2. I just pretend all nail polish looks good on me. Regardless, I can see that this polish may not work with all skintones. I do think, however, that it is a polish that can be easily worn in all seasons.

The formula was great. It seems very thin, but it's totally opaque in 2 coats with no brush streaks. Absolutely no complaints with the formula and application. I'm satisfied :)

Also, I don't have it to compare, but it looks very similar to Nubar Stardust. Maybe a dupe or at least dupe-ish?

Zoya Crystal

I got this back when Zoya did their three free polishes promo, along with Mimi and Veruschka. I had no idea what I wanted to put on, so I just opened my Helmer and grabbed the first polish I saw that was untried. It was Crystal. And here it is:













And here's a close up of the polish:


3 coats Crystal (opaque and fine in 2, I'm just ridiculous)
1 coat Poshe

First coat looked sheer-ish, but very easily and quickly buildable and went on smooth. I have no idea why I picked this, because I'm not fond of it for spring. It's a silvery metallic blue with scattered teeny tiny flakes of yellow gold. Despite the gold, it still gives an overall silvery blue metallic look to me rather than a gold-ish blue. I really wish it could pull the yellow gold out a little more. This would be a gorgeous wintery color. I don't know what it is, but I just really don't like it for spring.

On a side note, I actually know what I want to do for my Wednesday nails. I can't see myself doing anything else with this polish other than taking it off and storing it away for winter!! And I feel a water marble coming on. It won't be done this week or I wouldn't be able to wear my planned Wednesday nails, or I'd only be able to wear the water marble for one day (Thursday). The process is laborious, so when I water marble, it will stay on for at least 2 days. So possibly Sunday or Monday. We will see!!

Song:
Nickelback - Rockstar

Zoya Faye

So I had ordered Pheobe and Faye as my BOGO Zoya's. I ordered the first day and still don't have Pheobe (open order), but I received Faye last week. Super fast shipping for that one!!

So this is my first time wearing Faye, obviously. I had a problem picking which other polish I wanted besides Pheobe. I love mattes (two polishes in one when you add a top coat!! Yay for frugal people!!), and I love blues, so I knew Pheobe was it. I knew I didn't want anything from the Summertime collection because they're just cremes. But the Sunshine collection is GORGEOUS. I debated mainly between Rica, Reva, and Kimmy. I tried looking at swatches on a few blogs, but all photos looked different!! I just couldn't pick. So I asked my boyfriend. I showed him all of the swatches from several different sites. He liked Faye. So I figured why not? Let's go with Faye. I don't have a lot of purples.

When I finally saw the polish in person, it was nightttime when I got out of work, but when I saw it in the light the next day... OH MY GOSH!! What a beautiful duochrome!! I thought it would have been too not-spring-ish. I was totally wrong. This color is absolutely stunning. (If you're curious, after getting those awesome swatches of each collection from my Zoya order, Rica would have been my next choice).

This polish is super interesting. I chose to put up a TON of photos because it's so dimensional. And if anyone stumbles across my blog looking for Faye swatches, I hope this helps them out!!


















The two photos above show Faye in direct sunlight. It's so interesting because you barely see any gold once it's in sunlight, and the purple color looks very different. It looks far more like a true purple in the light. It's gorgeous. It's bright and sparkly. Definitely catches your eye. The sparkly-ness is gold, so that's where you see the gold. But it does not look how it looks when not in direct sunlight. It's substantially more purple, just with a gold sparkle.


This is the color indoors, not near a window. You can see why I take photos next to a window. It doesn't necessarily make the polishes look better, but it makes the photos so much more clear while still being very accurate. And it doesn't make my skin look dry and flaky like this photo does. I swear that's not how my hands and cuticles really look!! Gross. Anyway, I wanted to show this, though, because the duochrome really looks different in all lights.

This is 3 coats, and some photos have 1 coat SV, some don't. I thought it might make a difference, but it doesn't. This was a fairly opaque duochrome. It still had that sheerness to it, but not much. I could have gotten away with 2 slightly thicker coats easily. The application was fantastic and the color was very even. Absolutely wonderful!!

The thing about this polish, like most duochromes, is they change SO much. This one in particular. So if you like a certain photo but don't like another, I say get it anyway. Every way you move your hand it will look different.