NOTD: Revlon Ocean Breeze + Sinful Colors Nail Junkie

Seche all over the place! Click for full size.

My daughter went to bed at a decent hour last night, so I actually had some time to paint my nails. Everything is "green" to her right now, and she really likes looking at my nails and my "colors" (her word for polish) so I thought I would do a sparkly green for her (even though this is kind of blue and green.) It doesn't hurt that October is Depression Awareness Month, and I have been struggling with depression for almost as long as I can remember. I will be doing more green manis this month, as well as some pink ones for Breast Cancer Awareness!

Click for full size.

These photos show two coats of Revlon Ocean Breeze (which smells like Irish Spring soap to me) and two coats of Sinful Colors Nail Junkie. Both polishes had no application issues and dried fairly quickly. I sort of slapped it on because I was worried my daughter would wake up and start crying for me while I was sitting in the living room with wet nails, so I apologize for the sloppiness!

The biggest issue I had with this last night was actually with my top coat, Seche Vite. I had a ton of tip shrinkage with this mani, but that isn't the real problem. It's suddenly all gross and stringy, and made my mani look lumpy. I'm hoping there is some magical way to fix this, since I don't have $10 for a new top coat. Boo!

I hate not forgotten about my 100 follower giveaway! I am very excited to see that my follower count is now at 101! Thank you guys so much for following my blog. Keep your eyes peeled for a very colorful and sparkly giveaway post soon! ;)

Hard Candy - Zombie

I feel like I post more about why I'm not posting than I do with actual content! I'm trying to get all of my nails to the same length right now, and they're pretty close. My index finger looks a lot longer in these photos, but trust me, it's really not. My camera is close to death so I snap 800 photos and pick out whatever photos come the closest to "focused." These are all the usable ones I got today. -_- Hurry up, tax refund! I need that pretty new camera!



Hard Candy Zombie is a really pretty glitter, but it turned out super lumpy for me. I had to use 5 coats (5?! Yep. It's a glitter, so I'll allow it...) and the formula was strangely thick for a glitter, so I guess everything just turned into goopy bumpland. My index finger came our especially uneven. Seche caused some tip shrinkage, too. Blah.



Zombie was a limited edition Halloween Wal-Mart exclusive release last year.




Tomorrow is my birthday! I'll be 24. We don't have any birthday plans because real life plans have taken over. My little girl has a pre-op physical in the morning, then we have to go view a new apartment in the early afternoon. We found black mold in our current apartment and the health department told me they can't do anything about it. Actually, they said "What's the name of your complex? Oh...uh...we can't help you at this time." Right. Now we have massive water damage to our front wall and the management just wants to paint over it. My husband manages a home improvement store. He has seen this kind of damage before. The building needs a new wall.

We've got to get out of here.

One more thing! I'm still gathering goodies for my eventual 100 follower giveaway. I think you guys are really going to like this stuff!

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!

Adventures in Layering!

China Glaze Ruby Pumps and Dorothy Who? over Wet n Wild Black Creme. I put the Ruby Pumps on before Dorothy Who? and you can't see it very well. Next time I'll pick one or the other. I was just curious to see what it would look like with both! I think I need to pick up some Seche Vite to try over polishes that aren't totally smooth (like this).

What are your favorite combos for layering?

Revlon - Silver and Galaxy Top Coat

My husband went to get an oil change (the first one in almost a year...men...) and while he was waiting he went into a random discount store in a nearby strip mall. He gave me a call to let me know how long he'd be there, and of course I asked him to check for polish. They had a bunch of these Revlon polishes with coordinating top coats for $1 each. I told him to grab whatever colors looked interesting, and he came home with Silver, Rcok (which I will be posting about later), and Galaxy.



Silver is a grey creme. It's actually my first grey polish and I'm pretty excited about that. I used two coats and it looked fine in real life, but the photos make it look riddled with bald spots. Silver is definitely a three-coater for photos.



The formula was pretty watery, but workable.



And then there was Galaxy. This top coat looked really nice in the bottle, and reviews I read about it while waiting impatiently for my husband to get home (yeah, I do that) said that it had blue and silver micro glitter and large hexagonal holographic glitter. Galaxy's collection-mate was a plain black polish, but I figured I could throw it on top of Silver and see how it looked.



These two just do not mesh, in my opinion. It looks like I shook pepper over wet polish.





Blue glitter? No. It's black. It's black and nothing about the weird peppery little dots glitters. I'm not sure why they're even there. I'll try Galaxy over a black polish and see if it does anything ~magical~, but over Silver it is definitely not anything special.

Love My Nails - Angel Baby

Today's post is going to be a quick one. I am very sick right now so I am going to head over to my mom's house for some baby help. My whole body is achy and my nose will not stop running. It's not a good day.

Love My Nails is only $1 at WalMart, so I have tried a lot of their polishes throughout the years. In my experience the colors chip within hours of application and aren't really worth buying. They do make some pretty nice glitter top coats, though. I used this one in my franken glitter top coat.



4 coats of Angel Baby on index, 3 on middle, 2 on ring, 1 on pinky.





Angel Baby has some very pretty glitter in it. It doesn't dry very shiny, so if you want shine and glitter you will need to add another top coat over this. It gets kind of lumpy once you put enough of it on, so there's another reason for an additional top coat. You have to layer quite a bit of this in order to get a lot of glitter (and you guys know how I feel about glitter!) I'm glad that I have it, if only because it was super useful while making my franken top coat.

China Glaze - Dorothy Who?

I'm sorry that I haven't been posting consistently. My daughter has her first cold and recently began teething on top of it, so there has been little to no sleeping going on in my apartment. I took photos for this post earlier today while I was at my mom's house doing laundry, but her dog had a massive seizure while we were there so the day was pretty chaotic. I'm not sure yet if the dog is okay, but they're taking him to the vet in the morning. I will update everyone on his condition.



Now, on to the polish. Today I'm showing you China Glaze's Dorothy Who?. It's a beautiful true blue polish with tons of glitter. The little glitter flecks look both blue and silver, so I'm not sure if there are two colors of glitter or if they're all the same and some look blue because they're embedded more in the polish. I'm still learning what the terms mean when it comes to polishes, so bear with me.



I love glitter, as you can probably already tell, so this is definitely a polish for me. I only have one other blue in my collection (Sally Hansen Marine Scene) and this one is my favorite of the two (and not just because of the glitter.)The shade of blue is really beautiful. I can't think of skin tone that this wouldn't compliment.



China Glaze has totally won me over. Do they make any polishes that aren't amazing? I have six now, and they're all better than any other brand I've ever tried. Application was a piece of cake with all of them, including Dorothy Who?. I've had this on my nails for two days now without any chips or tip wear.



These photos show three coats with both a base and top coat (some Sally Hansen stuff that's name I can't remember right now). The top coat didn't add any shine or texture change to the polish, so this is basically how it looks without a top coat, too. If you don't already have this color, I strongly suggest you go pick it up!

China Glaze - Snow (+ franken top coat)

Natural light.

Snow is white. It doesn't seem to lean towards yellow or blue tint or any sort of different type of white, it's just white. I found this polish to be quite thick and it was pretty streaky for the first two coats. These pictures show Snow with three coats and no top coat. This is my first white polish so I'm not sure if streakiness is normal for this color.


Failed attempt at a shot in the shade.

Overall I like Snow. If you're looking for a pure white polish, this might be the one for you.

I live in New England, and my favorite part of actual snow is the sparkle. I wanted to try adding a top coat I've been working on to see how it would look with a white base.


Natural light.


Full sun.

I had a bunch of super sparse glitter top coats and I was not a fan of how they applied, so I spent 100 years fishing out glitter and putting it all into one bottle of clear. These photos show one coat of this stuff, so you can see how much glitter is in here. Some of the smaller ones are semi-transparent (is there a name for these?), which looks really nice in real life but translated to photos as weird pastel pieces.


Closeup.

I'm not a fan of how this photographed in the closeup, but I LOVE it in real life. I will be trying this top coat over other colors later to see if it looks better in photos.

Franken Berry

The title of this post makes me laugh way more than it should, but I had to do it. When I swatched CQ Cranberry yesterday and saw how un-cranberry it really was, I decided to try my hand at making my own cranberry polish. This stuff is kind of a mess, but I think I like it (for the most part). The pictures show the polish in two coats with no top coat, though it could use one to even out the bumps from the glitter.


Natural light.

I put so many different polishes into this that I have no idea what they were anymore. Something happened when I mixed them all and now this stuff is THICK. It's hard to apply in thin coats because it's thick, sticky, and dries in like 15 seconds.


Natural light.

I really like the color. The hexagonal pink glitter looks a bit stupid in it, and I wish I hadn't added it. I was going a little glitter crazy at 2am and didn't think before I poured. The more I look at it, the more I like it, though most of it settles to the bottom of the bottle, so it would probably be easy to by-pass if needed.


Natural light.

If I could figure out how to thin and de-sticky this stuff I would totally use it again, as long as I could find a way to either keep the hexagonal glitter in the bottle or coax more of it out. I think that stuff works best in high volumes. When it's sparse on the nail like this it can look messy and stupid, in my opinion. The glitter problems are a definite disappointment.

I'd say this franken was a color success, and a formula mess (hardy har). What do you think?

Afterthoughts - Soul Mates

Natural light.

Soul Mates is a light grey (it looks silver in pictures, but it's not) with red micro glitter. I don't even know how long I've had this polish. It's a pretty weird combination.


You can see the glitter here.

The smell of this stuff is so strange. I know it's not because of how old it is, because I remember thinking it smelled weird when I wore it in middle school. I'm 23 now, so that shows you how I tend to hang on to things for a ridiculous amount of time. Application was alright. Three coats to cover without bald spots, but it dries quickly. The brush is pretty small, but workable. All in all it's an okay polish but I find it odd in both smell and look.

China Glaze - Ruby Pumps

I think I moved to the UK magically and nobody told me. Where is the sun? It's been cloudy and terrible for almost a week now! Sigh.


Ruby Pumps in natural light.

Ruby Pumps is a very popular color, and for good reason. This color is gorgeous. I've been in love with Oz since I was little, so of course I had to have this polish when I saw it at Sally's.


It's even pretty on crappy days! ;)

Application was a breeze. It's somewhat sheer and getting it totally even took 3 coats, but drying time was very quick. I'd recommend Ruby Pumps, but I don't think I need to since everyone seems to already have it and love it! I'm ending this with the photo I took of this polish in the bottle on the day that I purchased it, just so you can get an idea of the sparkle.

Sally Hansen - Rockstar Pink

I have not painted my fingernails in almost two years. The last time I did, I thought you were just supposed to slap it on. I'd get it all over my fingers and it would look like I let a four year old paint them until I jumped in the shower and the paint came off of my skin. This was my first attempt to paint my nails without making a gigantic mess. I think it turned out pretty well!


This is how it looks in natural light on a beautiful day!

I love this polish. It was really easy to put on and only needed two coats to be totally opaque. This was the fastest drying polish I've ever used. I don't know all the descriptions for polish types yet, but I know this one has a TON of glitter. There's blue, red, purple, and some teeny tiny gold flecks in here. It's pretty in the sun and inside.


See how pretty this glitter is?

I'm not sure how the wear is because I just put it on last night. A lot of the reviews I read online say that some girls' bottles of Rockstar Pink were goopy and thick. Mine was this way right when I opened it, but after rolling it between my hands for a little bit (read: maybe a minute) it was fine. I did have to roll it a few times during application, but I don't mind doing that when the end result it shiny glittery goodness. Another common complaint was removal, but I think all glitters are a pain to remove.

ETA (11/14): This is a first. I have used glitter polishes many times throughout my 23 years, and I HAVE NEVER HAD A POLISH JUST REFUSE TO COME OFF BEFORE. I spent over 30 minutes trying to get this stuff off after I got a big chip on my thumb, and it wouldn't remove. It took almost an hour of constant rubbing with a cotton ball and remover to get my nails clean, and I'm still covered in glitter 12 hours later.

Pretty color, not worth the removal time. :(

New Polishes!

Since I've gotten into nail blogs I've realized that my collection is AMAZINGLY SMALL. Every time I go out now I make a point to go to any store I can find that sells polish to see if they have anything interesting.



I've picked these two up over the past couple of days. The one on the left is CQ brand Mystical, and the right is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Rockstar Pink (I have this one on now). I only have access to WalMart and drugstores in the podunk town that I live in, so most of the polishes I have are less than fancy. I'm going to have to get out to Sally's more often to see what kind of stuff I can pick up there.

ANYWAY! I filed my nails the other night and noticed that they were kind of grossly uneven. They're now even, but a lot shorter. I don't mind, though, since now I can grow them and out just try to maintain the evenness I have going on.

The plan is to get some pictures of Rockstar Pink up tomorrow. I've got a few things to say about this polish, so stay tuned!