Galaxy Girl

Continuing with my vampies-in-spring thing, here is ORLY Galaxy Girl, another much-lusted over color from the Cosmic FX collection! I first spied this color on Lacquerized's blog in a tutorial post, and then proceeded to read every single one of her posts until I had figured out what color it was. I should also note that this color was the color that got me into looking up the entire Cosmic FX collection (and then promptly falling for each and every one of them). Plus, it really has such a fun name! Out of all the names for this collection, Galaxy Girl is my favorite.

Galaxy Girl is a striking foil-duochrome with a burgundy-purple base and turquoise and purple sparkle. It reached opacity in 3 coats. The formula is quite thin and a little watery, not the easiest thing to handle but not a complete nightmare either. I did notice that I got tipwear rather quickly with it...but it may be due to the Seche Vite (which I'm still testing, tentatively--I've confirmed it gives me shrinkage on occasion) so I'm holding off on blaming Galaxy Girl just yet, since I've never had any problems with ORLY's wear in the past.

Cosmic Daylights

My mani for this week is one of those colors that you've wanted for forever, and yet when you finally get it, it sits unworn in your drawer for months while you're distracted by other pretties. As previously mentioned, the ORLY Cosmic FX collection is THE collection that got me into polish, and Hailey's Comet is one of my favorites from that collection--teal is one of my favorite colors, after all, how could I not? Hailey's Comet is a dupe for OPI Catch Me In Your Net and Zoya Charla, but ORLY is definitely my favorite brand in terms of wear and price.

After wearing Hailey's by itself for a few days, tipwear was starting to appear thanks to the shrinkage I got while testing Seche Vite. I wasn't ready to give up my gorgeously sparkling tips just yet, so I patched them up with an extra coat of Hailey's Comet and did a glitter gradient mani with OPI The Living Daylights.

Hailey's Comet is a foil that applied in an easy 3 coats, and had a nice, thin formula that wasn't too watery. The gold particles among the teal was completely stunning! Topped with The Living Daylights, which is a mix of champagne gold, silver, copper, and teal hex glitters, made a great contrast. I don't much like it simply layered over the entire nail, but it's so much fun when done into a gradient mani! The dab method was most effective in depositing glitters with this mani, as the glitter pieces didn't seem to want to leave the brush.

Overall this is one of my favorite manis in a while! It really screams summer to me--I'll definitely be wearing this combination again throughout the warmer months.

Prismatic

This is 3 thin coats of Wet 'n Wild Speak when Spoken To. I rarely purchase every polish in a collection, but the Be Jeweled collection was one of the exceptions. I love these so much that I actually kind of want the China Glaze series (of which the WnW collection is a dupe of) too.

All of the polishes in this collection follow the same basic idea: small multicolored glitter in a shimmering duochromatic base. Speak When Spoken To happens to have a blue-magenta shift. The entire series is pretty ethereal and magical looking, so much so that I'm surprised it hasn't garnered a unicorn-bodily-fluid name, like Unicorn Sweat or something.

Jeweled Lizards

Nail of the Day is OPI Just Spotted the Lizard from the Spiderman Collection, one of the many dupes of last year's very popular Chanel Peridot.

JStL is opaque at three thin coats and has pretty decent duochrome action going on, pale gold with turquoise-green flash. Just for fun, though, I stuck it underwater to bring out the full strength of the duochrome:

BAM. Underwater you can see the strong teal shift that appears in the corners of the bottle but never makes an appearance on the nail...under normal circumstances, at least.

Just Spotted the Lizard has a very thin, pleasant formula that is easy to work with, and that coupled with the OPI Pro Wide brush (which not everyone loves, but I do) makes applying this color a cinch. Since it is a metallic, it will have a tendency to show brushstrokes, but if you have good technique it shouldn't be difficult to get a smooth application.