Delicate

I've been on the hunt for the perfect lavender for weeks, and it felt like I was never going to find it.

I wanted something pastel, but not chalky. Something that was clearly purple, but not too saturated. And it couldn't be too pink, or too blue, or too grey.

In the end, I found my perfect lavender...but not in a store. I found it in my existing stash!
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This is another beautiful Forever21 Love&Beauty polish, named "Dusty Lavender". It is the daintiest pale lavender with a whisper of fine magenta shimmer that only comes out in the sun. Shown here I've layered 2 coats of Sally Hansen Glass Slipper, an ethereal clear flakie, over Dusty Lavender.

Dusty Lavender has a really awesome pigmented formula that's 3 thin coats to opacity. You'd probably be able to pull off 2 if you do thicker coats, even more impressive considering how it's such a pale pastel. Application is a breeze, and this polish unexpectedly dries with a matte finish which is very nice on its own, almost a suede or velvety feeling and less chalkboard-like.

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.

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!

Lavender Dots

This is a mani from the vault today, because I've been testing out a new topcoat and as it turns out it has the constitution of a particularly moody teenager. Zoya Caitlin, Love & Beauty Lavender, Sally Hansen White Veil nail art. I've been playing around with my dotting tools lately, it's quite fun.

A note about Zoya Caitlin: this is one of those colors that seem to have a huge variation among swatches. Scrangie describes it as a "medium grey creme with purple tones" and notes that her photo is not color-accurate, but on me it's more of a dusty lavender than a grey; in many blogger's swatches it looks grey, but looking at my mani in person, it is definitely purple and looks more or less exactly like my photo here. It's also a shade darker and purpler on the nail than it is in the bottle...who knows why? q O - O p Must be a skintones thing. Ah, so mysterious...Either way though I'm a fan! This is my second-ever Caitlin mani, and given how large my stash has grown for a polish to be used more than once within the same year is quite an achievement.

I really ought to do a manicure more prominently featuring White Veil, though, it's one of the more unique drugstore glitters I've come across. In fact Sally Hansen has a pretty good track record of hitting it out of the the park with originality (Glass Slipper, anyone?)...a little recognition please? Sally may be one of the more underrated polish brands out there.