Polish All the Nails

I tell you, I can't remember the last time I did back-to-back posts.  The combination of having a job that requires a real commute instead of a five minute walk, said job being rather intense, then having my mum visit and going on vacation as well as managing The Sparkly Shop makes it difficult to manage.  I'm also old and get sleepy.  I'm not going to make sweeping statements about how I'm going to post every day from now on because that's not realistic but I just might be able to manage doing more.  You should follow me on Instagram  though, that I do keep updated.  Anyway, on to the glittery duochrome-ness! 

Ok so I love blue polish the mostest but never got around to getting Nails Inc Baker Street until Friday.  That's silly of me cos it's the most perfect cobalt blue that my camera doesn't even know what to do with it.  *I* know what to do though!  Bar glitter stripes!  I heard you like stripes so I put stripes in your stripes, etc.  

I'm really good at making sweeping statements and declarations about, say, posting everyday.  Problem is I'm terrible at following up on it.  What I am doing ok at is trying to actually use all the misc stuff I buy on the internet.  I've had these fruit fimo canes for ages and just haven't worked out a way to use them.  I've been playing with sculpey lately so I at least have the tools to slice canes thinly.  So then, considering I also have very strong nail glue, I thought I'd take the decidedly unsubtle route and just bung a bunch on.  Turns out that's actually an ok strategy!

So it's totally Day 2 of my Screw-it challenge - where I do what I want, as long as I post!  We'll just pretend for now that I posted yesterday, and didn't nap instead.  I love napping.  Anyway, I saw on Instagram a while back that holographic studs existed and once I'd resuscitated myself, I had to buy them.  I can't remember where now, just google it.  I tried them out once before but was kind of disappointed because they seemed all plasticky and not all that holographic!  Turns out, they have plastic over them.  Peel off and BAM most holo.  So let's take a closer look at these, shall we?

If I see an interesting nail polish, I'm prooobbabbbly going to buy it.  Using it is a completely different thing but I'm definitely going to buy it.  I picked up the pink Nails Inc Leather Effect polish Ladbroke Lane ages ago and I haven't really known what to do with it.  It wasn't until I caved and bought the black one, Noho, that I finally figured out what to do with them.  Leather chevrons!

I was really excited about the Nails Inc Feathers collection.  Bar glitter that looks like feathers and isn't giant, meaning it's unlikely to stick up?  Yes please.  When I finally found two of them at Sephora, I couldn't find a way to use them.  I tried with several different base colours either the white or the blue blended in, meaning I lost a lot of the texture that made the polish so interesting.  Sifting through my colours, I found one that seemed to fit my requirements and away I went. 

I've been doing a lot of glitter mosaics lately and sometimes you have to do something a little different.  I've done some gradients in the past but never had too much luck, mostly because I thought I knew more better than the makeup sponge technique.  Turns out that it's the best for smooth gradients, I'm silly and should listen to the internet more.  Just as well I did because now I get amazing vampy red nails! It seems that the trick to gradients is the base colour.  Light colours need white, dark colours need a dark base with a solid creme polish as the lighter colour.  Here, I started with two coats of Nails Inc Victoria, a beautiful deep, dark red jelly.  Once it was dry - seriously, let it dry otherwise you get dings like on my ring finger - I painted a stripe of Essie Fifth Avenue on a makeup sponge and laid a thinner stripe of Victoria next to it.  I then dabbed it on my nails, working up and down ever so slightly to get a nice blend. ...

I don't know about you all, but I should probably take a break from the glitter mosaics for a few days.  I'm going cross-eyed!  For a change, I'll be reviewing glitter polishes instead, which is surprisingly different.  I've been lusting after the Sprinkles Collection from Nails Inc for a while now so when I saw them in Sephora the other day I just couldn't help myself.  Rather than review them individually, a kind of Ombre mani it is!  Exclamation marks! The pink polish in this collection is a little too close to the Deborah Lippmann/Claire's Candy Shop polish so I skipped that one, getting Pudding Lane, Sweets Way and Sugar House Lane.  All three polishes are absolute glitter bombs in a creme base and all of them apply like a dream.  After the hassles with Butter London Knackered, these were so easy to use.  They were opaque in two coats (I used three, you know, cos) and absolutely packed with glitter.  Look how pretty they are!  ...

It's been a little while since I've done a haul post and the polishes I've picked up over the past week have just been too good not to show you!  I've been doing a lot to curb my polish buying over the past few months - part of the reason I've been doing so many glitter posts - but I just had to get these ones.  Less talking, more polish pitcurreeressss! L to R, top to bottom: Tokidoki Savana and Ciao Ciao, Sephora Base Coat, Sephora by OPI Cab Fare, Nails Inc Pudding Lane, Sweets Way and Sugar House Lane, and Butter London Knackered

I've been blogging for almost two months now and have posted over a hundred posts, which is quite a lot of different manis.  One polish type I haven't tried in this time are magnetic polishes as I've always found them a little uninspiring.  Sure, they create interesting patterns but it's a bit gimmicky.  As a last ditch effort, I thought I'd try experimenting with taping, see if I couldn't create something a bit different.  Hot damn, does it ever create an awesome look! First up, I wanted to find a good, bright complement to Nails Inc Trafalgar Sqaure, a charcoal grey magnetic polish.  I think one of the things making me less enthused about magnetics are that they all come in such boring, dark colours.  Hence my choice of another American Apparel polish, Neon Orange.  This polish I was surprisingly impressed with as I've had a lot of issues with neons being really sheer of late.  This one was actually opaque in two coats and is a nice, sunny ...

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Sephora.  I love that they created their own incantation of OPI for their in-house brand.  I hate that they want me to pay $18 for a magnetic polish (hate more that I did).  Right about in the middle are the Nails Inc polishes.  At $11.50, they're pricey and for the most part, unexciting.  However, they released a line of "3D Glitter" polishes (I'm still not sure what that means....) that are sparkly enough for me to overlook the price tag.  Bloomsbury Square is an absolute glitter bomb with purple micro glitter and pink hex glitter in a clear base.  With a lot of these, they appear opaque in the bottle but when you apply them, hole city!  This one was actually pretty good, building up a nice opacity with three coats.  OMG IS IT SPARKLY ONCE YOU HAVE IT ON.  So sparkly I think I'm still seeing glitter dots in my eyes.  I wasn't sure about the glitter combo in the bott...

Let's say, hypothetically, you get your annual bonus paid and you have a blog about nail polish which can help validate any polish purchases.  What would you do if you went to the mall for the day?  If you said BUY ALL THE POLISHES, you'd be correct.  I had great fun today with my friend Jen hunting these babies down at the Yorkdale Mall in Toronto.  Special in this haul is the purchase of my first two high-end polishes, one Dior and one Illamsqua.  I just tested and reviewed the Dior Perfecto and it really is something.  Check back shortly for the low-down.  In the mean time, look at all the pretties!