Wet n Wild - Sparked

It's a glitter bomb today! I used two coats of Sparked under two coats of Seche Vite, though another coat was probably a good idea as you can still see my nail beds beneath the glitter. I don't mind, though. I love this polish, but I got a big chip on my thumb about 6 hours after I put it on.

Photos are clickable!






The light was horrible when I shot these. Sorry! The color in real life is a very pretty dusty pink. Oh, and the weirdness going on on the skin near the base of my nails is badly-applied Seche, not mutated cuticle. I was in a hurry. :)

Fancy fancy lady!

I didn't have time to remove La Paz-itively Hot this morning, so I just decided to go crazy and try to fancy it up a bit. I added Wet n Wild Black Creme tips and Love My Nails Angel Baby over everything. It's really different for me, but I can see myself doing more stuff like this in the future.

The sun was being a jerk, but I did what I could. Photos are clickable!



Would you be interested in seeing more manicures like this in addition to swatches?



I also want to tell you guys about something really exciting. My sister (in law), Colleen, has been bitten by the nail polish bug. She's actually starting her own nail blog, which I will be sure to show you guys once it is up and running. Being the amazing and supportive person that she is, she want out and bought me 66 new polishes. Yes, you read that correctly. I am beyond excited and ridiculously grateful to her for helping me to more than double my stash. She lives in Texas while I'm in Massachusetts, so it will be a little while before I have all of these goodies in hand, but that's alright! Get ready for a lot of new polish on Dancing Phalanges!

Wet n Wild - Gray's Anatomy

I have to be honest. Gray's Anatomy didn't speak to me at first. I saw swatches on a few other blogs and read about how it is a supposed dupe for Deborah Lippmann's Wicked Game. While I really love the look of a lot of Lippmann polishes, Wicked Game never thrilled me and in turn I was quite meh about Gray's Anatomy. Then I saw it in person...



These photos show two coats (no base/top coat) in natural light. It really could have benefited from one or two more coats, but I kind of liked it a bit sheer. I plan on trying Gray's Anatomy as a layering polish at some point.



Sometimes this polish is a silvery grey, sometimes it's green, sometimes purple, and sometimes all three. And the way it looks in the bottle really makes me want to try a few more coats and see what full opacity will bring to the table.



Gorgeous.

Wet n Wild - Saved by the Blue

Saved by the Blue is another win from the new Wet n Wild Fast Dry line. What you see here is one coat (no base or top coat) in natural light.



There is some streakiness but I'm not sure if that is because of the polish or because I was a bit careless with application. I think my baby may be teething and she finally decided to nap, so I wasn't sure how long I had. Even if the streaks are because of the polish itself (though I'm 90% sure it was mostly operator error), it's not even remotely bad enough to outweigh the awesome color and amazing drying time.

Wet n Wild - Buffy the Violet Slayer

Last night I had a mild heart attack after my entire blog layout was lost. I took the opportunity to do a total overhaul, and I'm really pleased with how it turned out. I'd appreciate any feedback you guys might have on the new look.

And now for some polish!



I have never had such a hard time getting a polish color to show up correctly in photographs. The above picture (natural light) of Buffy the Violet Slayer is way more blue than it actually is. I tried to take some photos using a full spectrum incandescent and got a little closer to the actual color, but not really close enough for my liking. The color on the nail in real life is the color you see in the bottle in the next two photos.



Buffy is a really beautiful color, and it only took one coat for full opacity. This one actually did dry very quickly, unlike the last polish I reviewed from Wet n Wild's new Fast Dry line. It does dry a little gritty, so a good topcoat would definitely help it to look it's best. I didn't use a base or top coat for these photos.



I wish my camera would cooperate with this polish. I'm sure more reviews will be popping up for it all the time, and I'm hoping some of them will have more accurate photos so that you can all see how beautiful this shade actually is.

Wet n Wild - SaGreena the Teenage Witch

The names of these polishes kill me. I didn't even notice them until I got home with the four I chose, and I ended up picking polishes with names of shows I watched. Yey? Anyway, SaGreena the Teenage Witch was a little streaky, but nothing that can't be lived with.



The polish did not dry any faster than a regular polish, despite the fast dry claim. The brush was no doubt THE WORST brush I have ever used. I've swatched other colors from the new Wet n Wild fast dry polishes and this was the only one with this terrible brush. It was incredibly stiff and probably had a lot to do with the streakiness.



Even though the brush was a hot mess and I had to use three coats to cover the nastiness the brush caused, I really like the color. It looks good in bright and low light (as I hope my above pictures show) and if you can find one with a better brush I'd definitely recomend it. I'm very excited to have another good green in my collection.

I feel like I apologize for my cuticles in every post, but they're seriously getting crazy. My husband has the next two days off, so I should be able to do some serious work on them. Stay tuned for less disgusting fingers!

Can't win 'em all.

I was way over my head with this idea. Not only do I not own any real nail art supplies, but I have a limited amount of time to work since my husband can only entertain my daughter for so long. Everything is chunky, smudged, dented, and fugs. This was supposed to be a reindeer and some kind of candy cane-esque striping, but I think it looks like a melting mouse and a kindergarten art project.

Gold: Wet N Wild Goldmine
White: CG Snow
Brown: CG Goin' My Way?
Red: CG Ruby Pumps
Black: Wet N Wild 424A



The "stripey" nail's cuticle is nice and flooded. I need to learn cleanup.



Ho! Ho! Ho! Tacky Christmas!



Dent brought to you by my daughter's thumb.



Yes, that's a cat hair stuck to the polish on the right. Ugh.


Parts of the skin around my nails are pretty much callouses right now. I've dealt with some of the cuticle issues, but I don't know how to fix this. You can see it really well in the closeup of the stripes. It's really gross. The skin keeps peeling down to the edges of the nails and causing hang-nails on almost every finger. Does anyone know how to fix this?

My first attempt at nail art!

I have never done nail art in my life. Ever. I thought it might be fun to try, so I did. I suppose I did an alright job. I used a regular thin paint brush for the snowflake. This is also my first time doing an accent nail.

Black: Wet N Wild 424A
Silver: L.A. Colors Live



My cuticles are still disgusting and the light box is still being tweaked. All of my nails could really use a good filing but they're too short to try right now.







The black works in ONE COAT (but I used two for photos and applied the second way too thick). This polish was recommended to me and I'm so glad I picked it up. The silver is a really pretty silver foil which would probably work well for stamping, but it gets a lot of bald spots when used in a normal fashion and requires a lot of coats because of it.

I know I apologize for bad photos a lot lately, but the lighting inconsistencies in these...ugh. I could probably fix a lot of them if I had/knew how to use Photo Shop, but I don't (to both). I have a crappy photo editing program that doesn't do a whole lot of anything besides resizing. I drew a weird dark line around a finger in one of these because the lights blew the photo out all weird, but that's as fancy as I get. It's pretty pathetic, since I used to be a professional photographer. I really need a better camera and a better photo editing program. Maybe from Santa?