Pinkie Promise!

I have a sparkly, stunning confection of an indie polish on today: Rainbow Honey Pinkie Promise! I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a fan of My Little Ponies--yes, it's a kid's cartoon, but something about the series is just so, so fun and kooky and endlessly entertaining, even for a 20-something like me.

"Nopony breaks a Pinkie promise!"-Pinkie Pie

I really want to collect all of Rainbow Honey's Equestria collection someday, but Pinkie Promise is by far my favorite! It's a spectacular party mix of fuschia, pink, gold, and light blue hex glitter and fuchsia, gold, and holographic bar glitter in a fantastically sparkle-packed pink base. I'm showing it here 2 coats over 3 coats of Wet 'n Wild 2% Milk, because I wanted neutral undies so that the base color of Pinkie Promise can be seen clearly. Even though Pinkie Promise looks to have a very light colored, sheer base, the color is actually quite vibrant!

Pinkie Promise has the very thick formula characteristic of polishes as chock full of glitter as this one, which makes it tricky to apply. The dab technique doesn't utilize itself well here since it has a colored base; I handled the application simply by getting a good amount of polish on the brush and soldiering on. I won't lie, it got a bit painful at times, but the results were SO worth it that I'll probably just add a few drops of thinner to it next time and keep on swimming.

It's worth noting that this baby STAINS--I'm currently sporting a myriad of electric fuchsia splotches on my nekkid nails--so be sure to use a suitable basecoat, even if you're wearing this with undies, because 2% Milk did absolutely nothing to prevent ol' Pinkie from bleeding right through.

You can get Rainbow Honey Pinkie Promise for $10/15ml or $5/7ml on her site rainbowhoney.com!

Pastels...for Spring. Groundbreaking.

I'd apologize for the inconsistent posting, but let's be honest...this is going to be a regular thing. So, onward! Today's mani is Lynnderella Ghost of a Chance over Essie Marshmallow. I know, layering white matte and pastel glitters over a white is SO obvious, SO done...anyone care to guess exactly how many fucks I give about that? As far as I'm concerned, pastels over white go together like butter and raspberry jam (and if you guessed 0 fucks, you were correct).

I mean, look at this:

Ghost of a Chance is composed of multi-sized pastel matte glitter containing white and pink satin hearts and holographic microglitter. The formula was workable; most of the smaller glitters brush on with no problem. I did have to "place" the larger heart glitters, but it wasn't too difficult. My mani here was done with 2 normal coats of Ghost, with placed heart glitter. Marshmallow was streaktastic as usual, requiring 3 coats until it even began to resemble evenness, but until I find a better white jelly, it's here to stay as a staple base color.

Lynnderella Ghost of a Chance is available for purchase through her Ebay store for $23!

Valentine's Day

So V-day is a commercialized holiday. Still doesn't mean it's not fun to dress up! I'll be wearing my heart backseam tights and red cardigan at work today, with Revlon Candy Apple Lip Butter...and on my nails, OPI Guy Meets Gal-veston topped with Happy Hands Cadance.

Cadance is filled with pale pink and hot pink glitters of various shapes and sizes, blue/purple iridescent glitter, and pale pink heart glitter! It's a perfect pairing for Guy Meets Gal-veston. Cadance has a nice, easy formula and was very easy to work with. It was a limited edition polish created by by my pal Kristi of Happy Hands, with proceeds being donated to Covenant Pet Trust, a local non-profit organization!

This is 3 coats of Guy Meets Gal-veston with two coats of Cadance. You can get your own bottle of candylike goodness for $10 from Kristi's Etsy shop!

The Gardens on the Moon

 

I'm attending an office party today, and the attire is business casual but I was in the mood to be glam! Enter ORLY Lunar Eclipse topped with Lynnderella The Garden of Even. I was originally planning on wearing The Garden of Even over ORLY Bubbly Bombshell, but then I decided to pick undies that would help the fuchsia glitters pop more. I hear jewel tones are still in.
 

Shown here is 3 coats of Lunar Eclipse, 1 coat of The Garden of Even. Lunar Eclipse had a great, thin formula as usual, and a stunning cobalt-purple color shift. It was part of the Cosmic FX collection, which is actually the collection that started it all, the polishes that birthed my obsession with polish, so I am quite fond of it out of nostalgia as well as because it's completely breathtaking.

The Garden of Even did not exactly apply completely even--it's from Lady Lynn's Summer Solstice collection, and contains "intentionally bleeding glitter" as a component to tint the base a translucent, slightly neon fuchsia. Unfortunately since the base is very thick (all the better to suspend the glitter with my dear!) while I had no problems with actual application and was able to get away with brushing it on like with a normal polish as opposed to using the "dab method", the slight tint of fuchsia in the base did apply somewhat unevenly because the formula didn't level well. It's hardly noticeable over a darker base like Lunar Eclipse, but I suspect it will be more obvious over pale underwear so something to keep in mind. Overall though, I'm extremely pleased with this mani and I can't wait to get to the party!

Lynnderella nail lacquer is available for purchase through her Ebay store for $22.50.

CrowsToes Hell Hath No Fury

It's another Indie day! 3 coats Sinful Colors Daddy's Girl with 1 coat CrowsToes Hell Hath No Fury. Leave it to Crowstoes to make me like bar glitter and ORANGE in one polish (for the record, I really dislike bar glitter and orange, forget ORANGE bar glitter). Hell Hath No Fury has a very nice formula for such a chunky glitter--application was super easy, although you do have to nudge the bar glitter around a bit if it protrudes over the edge of your nail, as is the nature of bar glitter. And how much do I love those giant red hex glitters?? This one will definitely be a contender for "most epic holiday mani" over a red...for now I'm enjoying it over the luscious grape-y goodness of SC Daddy's Girl. I like how the iridescent purple glitters peep out from among the red and sets this one apart from other red-themed glitter topcoats.

Disclaimer: This bottle of Hell Hath No Fury was sent to me as a gift. My undying love for it is my own!
You can purchase your own bottle of CrowsToes Hell Hath No Fury for $10 from Llarowe!

Welcome to the Dark Parade

I have another awesome indie on my fingers today: Pahlish Dark Parades, a deep indigo jelly with green glassfleck and confetti glitter.Shown here is 3 thin coats of Dark Parades by itself, plus 3 more coats of topcoat to smooth everything out.

This one is really glitter packed, so naturally the formula is very thick. It was manageable for me, but if you don't have much experience applying glitterbombs you might want to add some thinner!

The colors of the glitter are a perfect compliment for the indigo jelly. Also, may I say that adding the green glassfleck to the indigo base was a stroke of genius? It makes me think of creepy carnival.

You can purchase Dark Parades for $9 from the creator Shannon on her Etsy store, Pahlish!

HARE Cast in Bronze

In the aftermath of Sandy messing up the ENTIRE METRO SYSTEM (eff you Sandy, please go get a yeast infection), I decided I needed some cheering, and nothing does the job like my first-ever indie! HARE is one of the first indie polish makers to catch the nail community's attention, and she remains one of my favorites. I have a lemming for Bisbee that began practically the day of my indoctrination into polish hoarding, but I opted to pick up one of her new creations this time, the very amazing Cast in Bronze from her Fall 2012 Finder's Keepers collection.

Gorgeous. This was two coats of Cast in Bronze by itself, a beautiful lilac jelly packed with tons of shimmer and bronze colored hex and square glitters. If you look hard in real life you could probably see visible nail line, but to me the sheer, squishy jelly-ness of this is part of the charm so I opted to wear it alone.

Formula-wise, I had no problems at all. The base is thicker than most polishes to better suspend the glittery goodness, which is normal and expected and can be fixed by a few drops of thinner, but even without thinning I didn't have much trouble getting this on my nails. There was a brief moment after applying the first coat during which I feared the sheerness might also result in streakiness, since the distribution of color seemed a bit uneven, but the second coat erased all those doubts (and frankly it was probably my own fault anyway because I was using Revlon's 2-in-1 TC/BC, which is a terrible basecoat--so slippery, doesn't help with even polish distribution at all).

All in all, I had a great experience with HARE and can't wait to get more!