Fall in a bottle!

Hi all! As I'm sure you've noticed, I haven't posted in a few weeks...I've been busy with work and classes, and I've been constantly breaking my nails at work. They've been slow to grow back...I need to pay attention to what I eat! Anyway, I've been itching to paint them, so...

Since tomorrow is the first day of fall, I figured some fall colors would be appropriate. I chose Glitter Gal Furnace Glow Soft, from their Shade Shifters. The "soft" colors have a finer shimmer to them, where the "brilliant" are more glitter. Furnace Glow is a multichrome that shifts gold, pink, orange, and copper, with a metallic finish. As such, there are definitely brushstrokes with this one, but they're not too bad, and the color is so worth it. I used three coats with OPI Nail Envy as a base and Out the Door topcoat. Application was great, but...I think my top coat needs thinner or something. No matter what I do, I end up with bubbles everywhere.

These pictures are all in natural light...I love how it almost looks like molten metal!

Here's some of just my thumb, to show the color shift a little better...

 

Pictures can't do this one justice. It's awesome, I love it!

You can pick these up from Harlow & Co, and probably Glitter Gal's website (though they ship from Australia).

Next up, I'm going to get back into the whole nail art thing, I think. Stay tuned - thanks for reading :)

What are your preferred fall colors? Tell me in comments!

The Show Must Go On!

Hi all! Today I have a very quickly done mani for you - I had to paint my nails before I played with hair dye, and you know me - I can't just leave it at clear coat. I went with OPI The Show Must Go On, from the Burlesque collection - one of my favorites that was, unfortunately, before my love affair with nail polish, so they've been tough to track down. I received this lovely in a swap! Shown is two coats - the first coat went on VERY streaky and patchy, but luckily, the second evened things out. TSMGO is a lovely duochrome glitter that's almost metallic - I get flashes of red and gold, depending on the light. I topped it off with a coat of Poshe.

On my middle fingers and thumb, I added a thin coat of Max Factor Fantasy Fire. The purple made those nails look slightly darker, but the multichrome goodness of FF was mostly lost in the flashiness of TSMGO. In super low lights, though, I could see the green shimmer - I just couldn't catch it on camera.

No cleanup here - I didn't expect the mani to last through my hair dye ordeal, but it did (and so did some of the unwanted hair color). Off I go to fix it - Thanks for reading!

Jade Magia Negra, and a layering experiment.

Hello all! First, I'd like to apologize for my absence. Aside from a few occasions, I have not felt like painting my nails. I blame work mostly - I work around heavy equipment, and nail breakage happens often. But things have slowed down for the moment - I am running part of VT Orientation, which involves hitting buttons only, and they have finally (mostly) grown to the point that I felt like doing this again...though I wish I had pictures of my mani for my sister's wedding!

Today I am working a concert outside, so it felt like a perfect holo day! I decided to dive into my unused holos (a rare thing around here). I chose Magia Negra, a black holo, though bordering more on charcoal grey. I got it from Llarowe, where it is currently available for $10. She has always had excellent customer service and lightning-quick shipping for me! If you have not bought Brazilian polish yet, you will find it smells VERY strong (moreso than the common 3-frees), but dries quicker, in my opinion.

Magia Negra has a good formula; smooth, not streaky, with two-coat coverage. I had a bit of an issue with bubbling, but I blame the excessive humidity today! It rained yesterday and now this whole town feels like a sauna. The brush was also slightly wonky, but nothing I couldn't work with - I hope this is a one-off issue, but I have no other Jades to compare it to - yet!

Here's two coats, pre-cleanup, no topcoat. Look at that great holo - it looks even better in the sun, but it was behind a cloud :(

I had read about layering thin multichromes over holo polishes to cool effect. This immediately made me think of how neat the Ozotic Mish Mash polishes are, so I had to give it a try! It was tough to pick a multichrome, as I have a lot of old Nail Prisms and the like...but I settled for Ozotic 505, which has a watery, sheer (but buildable) formula and insane green-turquoise-purple multichrome. How could it not be awesome? I added one coat once the Magia Negra dried.

The effect was pretty subtle, pre-topcoat. It changed the holo flashes towards the green-blue part of the spectrum - before, it felt more like an even mix of oranges and blues. In the sun, the multichrome was more apparent. Inside, the 505 is much more apparent; it gives the mani a little something in lower light. Holos tend to lose a lot of their glitz indoors or at night.

A coat of Out the Door enhanced the green flash from 505 in indoor light, but in direct light, had no effect.

Overall, I love how this turned out. It's fun and flashy both inside and outside - and it was done and dry fast, which is always awesome when I'm rushing out for a long work day!

What do you think? Have you layered jellies or duochromes with a holo polish before?