Orly Prelude to a Kiss

As soon as I saw the press releases for this polish, my interest spiked. As soon as I saw swatches, I knew I HAD to have it!! I've been searching for a similar color for quite some time. The right peachy, vintage-y, not too neon, not too pink, not too orange, not too dark color. I still want a polish a little darker, but I'm loving this for now. I saw Essie A Crewed Interest swatches and fell in love. Then I saw The PolishAholic's comparison to Prelude to a Kiss and obviously I'll pick Orly over Essie! Essie's pastel/light creme formulas frustrate me to no end!!
I went to my Sally's that doesn't usually carry new collections. I didn't see it out, so I started to walk out the door when the SA asked what I had been looking for. I told her I was looking for the new spring Orly collection but didn't see it. Then I re-asked to confirm that they don't sell new collections? She told me they're starting to get new collections in and she's sure she saw that collection in the back! I honestly couldn't remember the name of the polish so I looked it up on my phone quickly. She went to the back, grabbed that polish for me, and here we are!! Yay for AWESOME Sally's SAs! Not my usual experience with Sally's, but they're getting FAR better!! I'm so excited!

Side note, not gonna lie... I hate the name of this polish. I swear Orly really sucks sometimes at naming polishes. It's almost as annoying as Fancy Fuchsia.











2 coats Orly Prelude to a Kiss
1 coat Poshe
*photos taken on 3rd/4th day of wear (put on Thursday evening, photos taken Sunday morning).

This color is beautiful. As I said above, it is a light peach creme that does not lean too pink or too orange. It's not fleshy, I like it on my yellow/olive toned skin, don't know how it'd look on very pinky toned skin. It's a brighter pastel without being a neon pastel. It has a vintage feel that I am SO excited to do some pretty nail art to.

The formula was not fantastic, but it's what I expected for a pastel peach. The polish is thick and pigmented but very manageable. Completely opaque in two coats. Did have a little trouble with cuticle drag on the second coat, but the polish self levels pretty well, so it essentially fixed itself. This is one of those polishes where you need to let the brush rest in the bottle for a second before you go from nail to nail. But it wasn't bad.

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.

Forever 21 Love & Beauty Pink

L&B has the most obnoxious names for their polishes. Their names are literally the color of the polish. This one is called "Pink". More specifically, it's MA120 Pink, just in case you were curious.

I have been dying to wear this because it's so similar to a peachy color I've been wanting. However, this one is just a little too pink, so I think I have to take a trip to NYC and pick up Illamasqua Purity. Anyway, here's "Pink".

**This polish was EXTREMELY difficult to photograph accurately. This first photo is as close as I could get to the actual color**


Sunlight




Shade




2 coats Pink
1 coat Poshe

This polish is one of those neon (bright) pastels. Definitely not a true neon, though it photographs almost as difficult as a neon, which is a HUGE pain. It's a bright creme salmon that goes on several shades darker than the bottle. It has more of a peachy hue than the photos show, it has almost a coral kinda feel. It is also brighter in real life. From photos I've seen, it looks VERY comparable to Orly Cotton Candy, however I do not own Cotton Candy to compare directly.

The formula was totally fine. Opaque and streak-free in 2 coats. First coat seemed a little uneven, but that was totally fixed with the second coat. No cuticle drag, either. The brush is pretty average, and that's actually not a bad thing!!

Fun, Bright Summer/Spring Water Marble

I have to start by saying this water marble will make your hands look AMAZINGLY tan.

This was the water marble I intended on doing a tutorial with. However, I only got partially done with it using this water marble. I'll have to finish it another time soon. Anyway, this probably wouldn't have been the best because I did this around 1700 in the evening and the lighting wasn't fantastic, and I had initially started outside, but then all of a sudden the wind picked up and I had to move inside. So I took about half of the photos I wanted to take. Even worse, I was dipping my clean up brush into my bottle of remover and it FELL IN. What a gosh darn mess. So I didn't use it after that because the paint on the handle of the brush was smearing all over thanks to the acetone. So be forewarned that my right hand doesn't have as nice of clean up. I'll discuss another issue with the water marble at the end of the post.









Base:
1 coat Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White On
For the water marble:
China Glaze Peachy Keen
China Glaze Lemon Fizz
Orly Basket Case

So here are the two things that I was annoyed at by the end of the water marble.
1. My initial pattern (as seen on my ring finger on my left hand, which are the first photos), ended up altered from the rest. Looking back at photos I took during the process, I realized why I wasn't getting the same pattern on the rest of my nails... because I wasn't doing the initial pattern in the water. Ugh. So I only realized that after I uploaded the photos and my nails were done. Sucks because I REALLY liked how that first nail came out.
2. I had horrible, horrible bubbles with this marble. Because my technique was no different than usual, I can only assume it had something to do with one or more of the polishes I used. If you hadn't noticed, go back and look at the photos and you'll see random little white dots. Those were bubbles that were popped with the top coat was put on. I definitely get bubbles sometimes, but NEVER this bad. I'm kinda confused. But in the future, I think instead of a white base, I might do the lightest color I'll be using in my water marble. Hopefully that will camouflage the bubbles if it happens this badly again.

I might just redo this entire water marble later on. It's more summery anyway, so it'll be perfect in a couple of months.

China Glaze TMI

Sunny days around here have been essentially nonexistant. That whole "April showers bring May flowers" is very much in effect. BUT... today it's WARM!! Not only is it warm, but it's SUNNY!! Yay!! So what better to wear on one of the first true sunny days than a holo? I thought about wearing a Tronica, but I'm waiting for a super sunny day that I'll be at the beach or something, because they require a lot of sunlight to really see the holo. So I chose to wear China Glaze's TMI!!

Be forewarned I went a little crazy with uploading photos. I liked so many different ones!! I figure that's ok, though. I always like looking at more than one photo because polishes always look different in different lighting and positions. I hope you don't mind!!





















1 base coat Essie Matte About You
2 coats TMI
1 coat Poshe

Song:
Hootie & The Blowfish - Let Her Cry

China Glaze TTYL

So I finally went into a dusty. I had actually gone to the same one a few months back with no idea what I wanted to look for. The woman told me they sell polish and I can buy any polish they currently use. Sounds good to me!! But I didn't get anything that time. So knowing already that they sold polish, I had a friend with me who is far more assertive than I am, so it made me feel more confident about going into this dusty. I went on a Saturday, so it was packed with people, and I don't think the guy understood that I wanted to buy polish, and this time mentioned nothing about choosing polish from the wall. I looked through the glass case and they had a bunch of random polishes of a brand I didn't know. I turned to look at the wall, and the polishes weren't organized at all. Not by brand, color, nothing. And they had so many random bottles, not your typical OPI, China Glaze, and maybe 1 or 2 other brands. Unfortunately, those random bottles weren't something cool like Zoya or Nfu Oh or Nubar. They were just random polishes.

Anyway, so I see a small Anchors Away display next to the glass case. So as I'm crouched down, I look over at it and see only a few of the polishes are from Anchors Away, but they are all random China Glazes. Then I see silver caps. 2 were holiday ones, and the other 2 weren't. I pick up one I know isn't a holiday one and read the label. "TTYL". No way!!!!!! I look at the other one, which was more of a bright/dark pink, but it doesn't have a label on the bottom. Well, I know at least TTYL is from the OMG collection, but it doesn't look holo at all. This salon definitely looks like one that would just refill bottles with any random polish, and the bottles were totally full, so I was skeptical. I grabbed both and walked over to a lamp they had shining against the polishes on the wall and I held the bottles under the light. There was that beautiful holo!! They were both definitely OMG polishes. So I gave the guy $12 for both and walked out, turned the corner, and squealed!! (Such a dork, I know). BTW, I'm pretty sure the unlabeled one is TMI.

I couldn't wait to get home at try them, but I knew it would be dark outside by the time I wore them, and you really need sunlight to truly appreciate a holo. I didn't care and put it on anyway!!
So here is a photo of my nails indoors with flash that I took last night:



And these were taken really early this morning, so this is very much morning sunlight:











1 base coat Essie Matte About You
2 coats TTYL
1 coat Poshe

Good thing I stuck with taking photos this morning. It was overcast the rest of the day!!

As for the polish, it applied phenomenally with no problems. I probably could have gotten away with 1 coat, but I wanted to do 2 just in case. I didn't have time to be able to see if it works better without a topcoat, but I'm pretty happy with the holo effect with Poshe. I was going to use Seche Vite, but I had my stupid Hazmat Ops class for work earlier that day, and Toluene was in the presentation so I was turned off by it, so I went with Poshe.
Even though it was overcast, the polish definitely still had an obvious holo effect outside and in some indoor lights. I like the idea of holos because it's like a surprise polish. Subtle indoors and striking outdoors. Lovin' it!!