This turquoise beauty is Madam Glam Caribbean Island, one of their regular nail polishes. It’s similar to China Glaze Too Yacht to Handle but a little bit lighter.
Two coats with top coat, in shade:
With flash:
I stamped using Colour Alike “b. a Fairy Forest” and “b. a Sunshine” and designs from Born Pretty plate BP-L015.
Here are some Halloween nails featuring two Pretty and Polished dusty cremes! I started with two coats plus top coat of In The Buff, a mustard yellow with the tiny dusty speckles characteristic of this collection. This first Ott lite photo is the most colour accurate; in the other flash photos it appears more orangey than in real life.
With flash:
I then sponged on a gradient using the orange polish from the dusty cremes collection, called CD 255,165.
Finally I added some Halloween stamping using Kleancolor Metallic Black and Bundle Monster plate BM-H08. They went on a little patchy, but I’ll just say they’re ghostly bats and cats and eyes!
Here’s a subtle single-dotted mani I did with China Glaze Sun Upon My Skin and Be More Pacific, using a dotting tool to add one dot of the other colour on each nail near the cuticle.
I used three coats plus top coat for both of these. The formula wasn’t my favourite; I found them a bit runny and not very self-leveling, and got some small bubbles in a few nails. But the colours are pretty.
Here’s Thor hanging out in the background!
With flash:
I wanted to compare these pastels to a couple of similar Ellagee pastels from their Beach Bum collection – She Sells Seashells (yellow) and Seaside Cottage (green).
Unfortunately I didn’t write down how many coats I used of the Ellagee polishes, but I’m pretty sure it was also three coats plus top coat for them. They did have a significantly nicer formula than these China Glazes in my opinion!
Left to right/top to bottom: Ellagee She Sells Seashells, China Glaze Sun Upon My Skin, Ellagee Seaside Cottage, China Glaze Be More Pacific. As you can see the Ellagee yellow is lighter and brighter, and while the greens are more similar to each other than the yellows, again the Ellagee is a little bit lighter and brighter.
I then added a matte neon circle glitter topper, Ellagee Gumballs, over my comparison to try it out.
While I love the colour and shape of the glitters, overall I was disappointed by this polish. I had only had it a few weeks before trying it, but the base had already developed a bit of a pink tint from bleeding glitters. As you can see in the photos it’s muddied the colours of the base polishes.
I also found it pretty thick and ended up with some bubbles trying to get a good amount of glitter onto the nail and distributed. Ah well. I do really like the circle shape and the neon pastel colours. Placing the glitters individually with a dotting tool or orange stick would probably work out better!
Dichromate is a thermal polish from Polished by KPT, shifting from yellow when warm to orange when cold. It has lots of silver shimmer in it giving a foil effect. Shown in various degrees/various finger combinations of warm/cold.
I stamped over it using Kleancolor Metallic Mango and a pattern from Messy Mansion plate MM-13. I really like how it turned out!
A few random things, some of them pretty old photos! In reverse chronological order…
China Glaze Metro-pollen-tin, three coats plus top coat, taken with flash. Love this yellow-orange!
IndiePolish Spring Lilac, two coats, plus two coats topcoat (the formula was a little thick so the glitters got a bit lumpy).
China Glaze Ray-diant layered over black.
OPI Do You Think I’m Tex-y with a jelly sandwich accent nail. I *think* the iridescent glitter in the jelly sandwich was Butter London Tart With a Heart but I’m not 100% positive!
And of course, I can’t post a polish with Tex in the name without posting a picture of handsome Big Tex!
Today I have a mani from a couple months ago to show you (trying to finish up with my backlog of posts before starting on all the more recent swatches I have!), as well as a fail from the mani that directly preceded it!
The blue is Milani Golden Sea, an older shade, and the metallic/shimmery pastel green on my ring and pinkie is Zoya Dillon from last year’s spring collection. These first two photos are in sunlight taken with my phone.
Golden Sea has a metallic turquoise blue base with some gold shimmer and sparse, hard-to-tell-they’re-holo holo particles. I didn’t even realize that’s what they were until I did the water marble fail I’ll show at the end of the post, and saw them under the halogen light on the very thin film of polish. So, I wouldn’t call it a holo polish but it actually does have these tiny (smooth and flat, non-glitter) sparse holo particles! As always you can click on any photo to get a larger version; I think the particles show best in either the halogen shot below or the first sunlight ones…
In the shade:
Under halogen light:
With flash:
And here is my first ever attempt at water marbling, which did not work at all! It was really cold in the apartment a couple months ago when I tried it; that was probably my first mistake! The polishes dried on the cold water before I could do any marbling. The polishes I used were the two from the mani above plus Zoya Piaf, the shimmery yellow that was also my base polish. The first marble attempt is the one on my ring finger, where the polishes spread out super thin and dried that way. That’s where I saw that the particles in Golden Sea were actually holo. I kind of liked the effect even though I didn’t get to do any marbling, so I tried for another finger, the index, but for that attempt the polishes barely spread out at all so I got this ridiculously thick mess! It doesn’t show that well in the photo, since the angle is pretty much head-on, but it was like a big, thick, lumpy decal that I decided to just put on my nail anyway, haha! Planning to try water marbling again some time, now that the weather is warmer!
I’ve been tempted by these Nicole by OPI “Roughles” textured polishes that came out this spring, but didn’t want to spend full price on them (10.99 each here in Canada!). Since they seem to be starting to disappear from some of the drugstores without being put on clearance I decided to try my hand at frankening something similar.
Here are the ingredients I used to try to dupe the yellow one, Sand in My Shoe: mostly Color Club Coastline (white texture) with Jordana Yellow Madness (yellow texture) added, along with one drop of the green China Glaze In The Rough and three drops of the orange Toe-tally Textured, and one small scoop of tiny coral-pink matte glitter.
I think maybe it could use a touch more of the matte coral-pink glitter, but overall I’m pretty happy with it! 😀
A few random manis from various points over the past year or so!
Pretty and Polished Phoenix over Joe Fresh Mustard:
China Glaze Trendsetter with foily gradient accent – the green is Nicole by OPI My Favourite Gold over Brilliant Idea, and the gold is either Orly Glitz & Glamour or OPI Goldeneye, I don’t remember…
Soulstice Spa Crete… I still don’t like silver on me!
Indie brand Pretty and Polish has a number of thermal colour-changing polishes; this one is Sundown, released earlier this year. All these photos are taken with flash. The second one is also near a window so it appears lighter.
In its cool/room temperature state, Sundown is a light apricot orange colour, with matte hex glitters in orangey yellow, pink and pale yellow.
In its warm state, the base turns to a soft golden pastel yellow, and the golden shimmer in the base becomes more apparent.
Yep, my fingers are extra red in that warm photo, due to dipping them in hot water!
Here is Sundown in a transition state, I love it! When I was in a warm location (i.e. not my cold apartment haha) I would sometimes find that it would stay in a state of yellow nail bed and orange tips. 😀
These photos show three coats of the polish, plus top coat. You could probably get away with two coats but I didn’t want to take chances that it would end up appearing streaky when warm, since the warm colour is notably paler than the cool colour! I found the polish easy to apply; I did a little bit of “placement” of the glitter, but not too much. The formula is fairly thick, as most thermals are due to the nature of the colour changing pigment. All in all, a great polish!!
More random old stuff!
Nubar Pink Flame, under artificial light:
Comparison: left to right, Finger Paints Catwalk Queen, Butter London Bumster (middle and ring fingers), Misa Hot Couture. The Butter London and Finger Paints polishes are quite close, Finger Paints just has slightly more orange, while the Misa is noticeably darker.
Butter London Bumster by itself:
OPI Pepe’s Purple Passion (in light box and camera wouldn’t focus properly on the polish surface!):
I’ll admit, while I ended up really liking Pepe’s Purple Passion, I mainly wanted it for the name, because of this handsome guy whose name is Pepe. Although we usually call him Tex. 🙂
Essence Wanna Be My Sunshine with accent nail in NYX Girls Pure Green, all layered with LA Girl Zesty Citrus overtop:
Illamasqua Elope:
Vegan Claws 
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