Sunburst After A Hurricane

Found this at Ocean State Job Lot the other day. It's from the Bloom Collection that came out in Spring of this year. OSJL also had Collecting Pollen and Cherry Blossom, but I passed on those two. Def woulda bought Garden Hose and Bird Bath if they had 'em. Anyway, in an attempt to find the perfect peach color, I grabbed this with the intention of trying to franken it (which I’ve never attempted) to be that color. In the meantime, I might as well give it a try on its own.









Direct Sunlight




3 coats Wet n Wild Sunburst
1 coat Poshe

I might think this color is ugly? Myabe not ugly, but I don't know how I feel about it. It’s a yellow-toned light orange crème. Wet n Wild called it pastel. I'd say it's definitely not pastel. Light, yes. Pastel, no. It starts to remind me of the orange powdered cheese that comes with Kraft Mac and Cheese, but ultimately, I don't think it does. It definitely looks more attractive in different lighting, though. By the end of the day I started liking it more.

The application was… confusing? Gosh this polish is ridiculous. From the bizarre color to the strange formula. Anyway, it seems to be decently pigmented, the consistency doesn’t seem thin and it‘s definitely not thick… but it’s SO uneven. You can kinda tell in photos. I’m surprised the macro didn’t accentuate it! But you can definitely notice the cuticle drag on my pinkie.
Its like my base coat straight up repelled this polish and I have no idea why. I have NEVER had this problem. I have two bases I use. Nail Tek Intensive Therapy II on my non-silk wrapped nails and then Sally Hansen Double Duty on my silk wrapped nails (only 2 are silk wrapped right now). The ones with the Nail Tek REALLY hated this polish. It acted similarly to a Tronica polish. It had the drag up that holos get, but not sticky like a linear holo. I’m truly dumbfounded, but I will say use a sticky base coat if you’re applying this polish.

BONUS!!


And I had to throw in this photo of Paisley squinting up at me in the bright sunshine! Haha! So cute.

Guest Nails: Lisa Frank Leopard Print

My sister Rachel always tries to con me into doing her nails. I generally don’t mind, but not gonna lie, she works with her hands SO much that they chip like the next day inevitably. I hate seeing my laborious efforts ruined in less than 24 hours (love you, though, Rae!!). Most of the time she just reads through my blog, finds something I’ve done that she likes, digs through my Helmer to find what I used, and recreates what I did. I love that she does that!!

Well, during the aftermath of the hurricane, we had NOTHING to do, so I did her nails. And spent quite a bit of time on ‘em. After flipping through all my Bundle Monster plates, picking colors for a few different designs to try, hating everything we came up with, then prepping for water marbling, then deciding no to water marbling, then choosing a leopard print design (she wanted to mimic these nails), but taking a different approach, then doing several failed attempts at getting the kind of rainbow effect I wanted, we finally got it!! And here it is…







Here’s the pre-stamped version of the rainbows. This was also pre-Poshe so it is not leveled at all:



White Base (intended for water marbling but it stayed) - Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear White On
Pink - Orly Fancy Fuchsia
Orange - China Glaze Peachy Keen
Yellow - China Glaze Lemon Fizz
Green - China Glaze Tree Hugger
Blue - Orly Snowcone
Purple - China Glaze Spontaneous
1 coat Poshe
Bundle Monster plate BM-221 stamped with Sinful Black on Black
1 coat Poshe

I used an ELF angled eyeliner brush I picked up at Target for $1 to do each line of color. I started with Fancy Fuchsia and started the rainbow in all different areas of the nail so they weren’t identical. I then did all the Peachy Keen, then all the Lemon Fizz, etc. I wasn’t too concerned about them being uneven, in fact, I didn’t want them perfect. The Poshe was going to even out the colors, and once stamped, you wouldn’t be able to notice any imperfections. Everything blended together.

I totally had fun doing this for her. As soon as my mom (who is all about my nail obsession and I’m pretty sure I’ve got her hooked, too! HI MOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) saw them, she immediately thought of Lisa Frank, so that’s where the title came from. By the way, I was definitely a Lisa Frank lil’ girl. My favorite Lisa Frank “characters” (this was the original Lisa Frank, not the new one with the girls. There were only animals back in the day) were the Kitten Bubbles. Here’s a photo of them:


[Source]
I think I had a folder with them. And probably numerous pens and pencils. And of course I had the white unicorn with the rainbow accents (mane, tail, hooves), the golden retriever/yellow lab puppy, more kitties, oh! the seal and the penguins… and probably others. But those are the ones that first come to mind. Lol.

Raindrops for a Hurricane

This was going to be posted yesterday, but we lost power AGAIN. Anyway... Only fitting that the day after a hurricane I finally wear Illamasqua Raindrops. I snagged this on Illamasqua’s website on clearance for £5 (which works out to just over $8). The unfortunately thing was shipping was still high. But still, this was a polish I never thought I’d own because it was a UK exclusive and the regular cost of polish and shipping was OUTRAGEOUS. I totally fell in love with this as I watched the progression of the winners of this collection. The promo pic and description totally drew me in, but I got a little nervous when swatch photos started appearing and reviews said Shrapnel and Eclipse (the other two in the collection) were not really like the promo pics had shown. Seems Raindrops eluded that. It was just as gorgeous as I imagined from the initial promo photo.













Closeups




3 coats Illamasqua Raindrops
1 coat Poshe

This is a blue-based light grey JELLY with the most interesting white/clear irregular pieces/flecks of… glitter? But it doesn’t sparkle, so I can’t quite call it glitter, that seems wrong. Illamasqua describes it as “sheer silver sparkle”. Eh. I guess. Lol.

The formula was that of a jelly. Squishy, took 3 coats to be opaque - sheer but buildable - but easy to apply. Wish I could talk more about the application, but I also want to mention that I applied this 4 days ago and haven’t had the technology to write my mini review (thank you, hurricane), and was too preoccupied whining about having no power to just write it on paper.





Direct Sunlight steals away the jelly-ness of it and makes it look more crème.

You might see little tinges of green on the sides of one or two nails. No, that isn’t mold or dirt or other nastiness. That was Zoya Shawn from this HORRIBLE fail the day before:


Don’t worry. I never wore this in public. I’m never that messy with painting, either. I think I knew it was going bad so I just said screw it and slapped the polish where ev with no regard.

Hurricane Irene

Obviously this has nothing to do with nails, but it’s the reason why I’ve been away from this blog for so long. Living in Connecticut, we were hit by Hurricane Irene. Apparently when it hit my area, it was only considered a tropical storm. Ultimately, it still did quite a bit of damage. While flooding wasn’t a problem at my house or really with anyone I know, the winds that caused trees to collapse and wires to go down was certainly the worst of it.

We lost power for 4 days and I know a ton of people who currently still have no power, including half of our town. Our Internet was still down when I typed this (and a bunch of other upcoming posts) so I could get to posting as soon as the Internet was back up. Ultimately, we were internet/cable-less for just about a week. We are on the same grid as a shopping complex that has stores such as Walmart, Target, Kohls, Lowes, and Home Depot among others. Lowes and Home Depot were running generators, but all of the other stores had no power… including Walmart.

We had no damage done to our house or cars, so we were definitely lucky. I started classes during the time our power was out, so I had to shower at work before class. The worst parts were definitely not being able to flush the toilet without manually filling it with overflow from our well by carrying buckets of water from the basement to the bathroom, and not being able to have running water. We cooked on the grill, which also has a burner, so that wasn’t bad. We had a generator that allowed us to keep our fridge and freezer cold.

I just wanted to share some photos I took during and after the storm. All were taken on Sunday, the day we were hit.


This is just a small tree in our front yard getting blown about during the storm. I tried to get views of the tall trees blowing, but the photos did no justice to what was happening.


Our back deck covered in leaves.


The only casualty in our yard. It missed our shed.


This was right around the corner from our house. We live on a dead end, so the majority of our neighbors couldn’t get down the road. We would have still been able to if it weren’t for…



This. These are downed live wires on fire. They were on for 2.5-3 hours.


The end result of the downed wires. Burning and molten asphalt.


The culprit. Tree down, smoking/flaming utility pole near the tree, and wires snapped.


The awesome people in my fire department (who I volunteer for) takin’ care of the flaming asphalt. Kickin’ ass, guys!!



Boiling water in holes in the asphalt.

Even driving around today, nearly a week after the storm, there are still TONS of roads closed, downed lines, and trees on lines. I know other people had flooding problems they're still dealing with as well. And what's this I hear about Hurricane Katia? *sigh*