SHCSM Greige Gardens + Lynnderella Connect the Dots

SHCSM Greige Gardens is a relatively new core color. I don't know details of the release, but I started seeing it in stores last spring. I love these types of greige/purple-y colors, but I always worry about how they'd look against my skintone, so I never bought any, but I recently found Greige Gardens on clearance at Target, and decided to cave. I'm glad I did, because it is lovely.

This is 4 coats, without top coat. It dries glossy, and the formula is smooth, but it's a lot more sheer than I think a creme should be. 4 coats for a creme is a bit much. I'm hoping this will go the way of Dorien Grey and improve with time, because I really like this color.

Then I decided to top it with 2 coats of Lynnderella Connect the Dots, and one coat of Gelous. I am in love with this combination.

YAY, square glitter! Those black squares are my favorite part of Connect the Dots, aside from the gigantic black hexes. I know there are tons of alternatives and approximations of Connect the Dots out there, and lots of drama associated with all this, but I still think this one is the nicest. Even with the bar glitter. Can't believe I'm saying this, but I think the bar glitter fits in really nicely with the other glitters, without reminding me of bacilli or beard trimmings.

It's also worth noting that I've now had this polish for roughly a year and a half, and I've had no issues with sinking glitter, or warping/bleeding/melting, so I'm very pleased in that regard. I totally understand why extensive testing isn't practical for indies, but it is still one of my concerns as a consumer, so I thought I'd throw that in there. If only Lynnderellas still cost $12...

Now, let's talk about similar polishes. For Greige Gardens, three polishes come to mind: Parlez Vous OPI?, A-England Guinevere, and China Glaze Below Deck. Parlez Vous OPI is warmer, more purple, and discontinued; Guinevere is more purple, although I have a hard time judging warmth vs. coolness because of variations between swatches; and Below Deck is darker, warmer, and more purple. Below Deck is definitely the most different of the four.

Connect the Dots, as I've previously mentioned, has a buttload of cousins. I vaguely considered listing them, but ain't nobody got time for that. Except for Chalkboard Nails. Her black & white glitter mega post is awesome and really helpful, so I'll just direct you over there, and you can see for yourself.

Greige seems to be one of those love it or hate it sorts of colors- how do you feel about it? Have you tried Greige Gardens, or Connect the Dots? Or perhaps any of the other black and white glitters? Thoughts?

Thanks for looking and commenting, and I hope you're having a great week!

Top 30 of 2012! (part 3)

I don't post a whole lot of layering combinations, but that's mostly because I don't get around to photographing them. Here are the colors that I've reached for the most. First up, the base colors.

Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Dorien Grey

A nice, simple, clean light grey creme. It's so versatile!

Ruby Kisses Regaled Out Blue

Dark blue goes with a lot of things, and I can't resist a nice jelly.

China Glaze VIII

An excellent basic eggplant creme. Smooth formula, dries quickly, completely solid in 2 coats.

Nails Inc. Kensington

Inky teal jelly, almost black. Works really well for water marbling, too!

New York Summer Hot Sky Blue

Another squishy blue jelly! This is great for jelly sandwiches, and also looks awesome under flakies.

And my favorite layering polishes:

Lynnderella Connect the Dots

Yep, it's on two of my lists. It's that good. With black and white glitter, there are so many layering possibilities!

Nails Inc. the Wyndham

This has the distinction of being my first flakie polish, and it remains my favorite. The green is so vivid, and there is a very evident blue shift.

Finger Paints Asylum

It has blue flakies!! I have been lusting after a flakie with just blue, but since I loathe Nfu Oh bottles and find Inglot to be too much of a hassle to get ahold of, this is as close as I will get for a while. It is lovely though.

Essie As Gold as it Gets

Sheer gold flecks. This is really delicate and pretty, especially over dusty, mid-toned colors.

Essie Shine of the Times

A basic orange-green flakie. It's very dense, so you don't need  much at all for a single manicure.

So, there you have it! My 30 favorites from last year. Thoughts? Do you like layering too, or do you find it troublesome?

Top 30 of 2012! (part 2)

Today I'll show you my favorite indies. To be fair, I don't own many indies, 13 or 14, but for the most part, I really like the ones that I have!

HARE King of Carat Flowers

Unique glitters in a light grey base? Sold. And hello, there's square glitter!!

HARE Cast in Bronze

Application with this one was difficult, but I can forgive that for such a beautiful color. And look, more squares!

HARE Star Tropics

Can you tell I like square glitter? This was my mani for New Year's, and while it is quite thick, the end result is fantaaaaaaastic.

Across the Ocean

This is a franken that I made over the summer! Although I'm not an indie seller (and do not ever plan on becoming one), I threw this one in here because it doesn't really fit in anywhere else. I'm sure you can guess what my reference was when I made this ;)

Contrary Polish Firebrand

I've told you time and again of my love for reds, vampies, and jellies, so it makes perfect sense that I love Firebrand.

Contrary Polish Inky Fingers

Just a note: Inky Fingers is more purple than it looks in my picture. It's like the dark, inky, moody sister of Sephora Pantone Parachute Purple. Excellent formula, and really cool shimmer.

Contrary Polish Anna Maria

Contrary Polish makes some really cool, unexpected shimmers. Murky teal with yellow shimmer? LOVE.

Twili

This one was a custom, and I am absolutely in love with the result. Great formula, and the balance of shimmer to base color is just perfect.

Pahlish Toxic and Timeless

I have an older, barless version of this polish, and it is just so freaking cool. The wear is amazing too. I wore this for ten days! When I get to blogging about this properly, you'll see the end result.

Lynnderella Connect the Dots

Even though this was released in 2011, it has a spot on my list because it's that awesome. Yes, there are 75083672308573028 different versions of this out there, but this has the distinction of having the only bar glitter that I don't hate. I actually like it. What.

Thoughts? Do we have any indie favorites in common? I know it took me a very long time to warm up to indies (aside from Lynnderella, whom I ordered from a few months after she opened), so I'm curious, have you jumped on the indie bandwagon?

Thanks for looking and commenting, and I hope you're doing well!

Revlon Chic + Lynnderella Connect the Dots

So, I've probably told you many many times of my love for Chic and Connect the Dots, but for some reason it didn't occur to me to wear them together until now. WHY DID IT TAKE ME SO LONG? I'VE HAD BOTH THESE COLORS FOR MONTHS.

This is two coats of Chic. I used one sort-of coat of Connect the Dots over top of it, but I kinda dabbed it on rather than applying a "proper" coat.

It might be because I haven't pulled out Connect the Dots in a while, but I did have a bit of trouble placing the glitter, and I had to fish for the big square pieces. I was able to get one of those giant hexes though, so I am pleased with that! They usually don't lay flat, but if you give it 3 or 4 minutes to set, and then gently press it down with a fingertip or something, it stays, and doesn't snag on everything.

Of course, I had to try wearing this matte. Under artificial light:

So cool. And almost entirely smooth! No Gelous required.

As I've mentioned before, Chic is part of Revlon's core lineup, so that shouldn't be hard to find at all. Connect the Dots (and all other Lynns, for that matter) is another story. I believe they're currently being sold on Ebay for $20 each.

There are a TON of indie alternatives to Connect the Dots if you'd rather not buy the Lynnderella (or if you'd just rather not pay $20 for a polish that was once sold for $12)......... Chalkboard Nails put together a fantastic comparison.

Thanks for looking and commenting, and have a great week!

Nails Inc. Baker Street + Lynnderella Connect the Dots

Baker Street is a fairly new offering from Nails Inc. I first heard about it when photos of Beyonce wearing it started floating around the intarwebs, and even though I don't really care for her, the nail color piqued my interest. 

A lot of times, when I've spent a lot of time drooling over a particular color, I'm left rather disappointed once I actually get my hands on it. Not the case with Baker Street! It's quite a chameleon. Indoors, it's dusty and fairly muted, but outside, it's ridiculously bright and vivid. Even one of my male friends (who ordinarily couldn't care less) looked at my hands and remarked, "Those are the bluest nails I've ever seen."

The formula, however, leaves something to be desired. It was pretty thick, which is easily remedied with a few drops of polish thinner, but it was also streaky and bubbled a little. In order to disguise these flaws, I applied 2 coats of Baker Street over my usual base (Essie Fill the Gap), waited for it to dry completely, applied a coat of Gelous, and then a final coat of Baker Street. Problem solved! It's more effort than I'm used to putting in for cremes, but it works.

I should mention that these photos are not even remotely color-accurate. Baker Street, in person, is a little darker, and has a touch of purple, but I tried photographing it under a few different lighting conditions and could not get it to look right. My dad even let me use his Nikon D3000! But that was even worse, LOL. Ironically enough, the closest I got...was with my cell phone. My Droid 2 and it's crappy camera did a better job of capturing the color than 2 proper cameras.

It's still not totally accurate, but it's a lot closer than before.

Here's Baker Street with 1 thick coat of Connect the Dots dabbed on:

I didn't use any top coat in that photo, so you can still see some texture from the glitter, but I actually kinda like it that way. Connect the Dots is just a bottle full of awesomeness and win. Which reminds me, I still haven't posted Very Pretty Vampire...I need to get around to that, haha.

Thanks for looking and commenting!

Quirius Sunshine Energy + Lynnderella Connect the Dots

Quirius is a less well-known brand, and one that I don't have much experience with, but turns out they make killer neons! murkyDismal on MUA posted a photo of Sunshine Energy, and despite the fact that I don't like pink too much, I don't wear much orange, and I'm not big on neons, I really really liked the color. Luckily, it was at a nail supply not too far from my house, and it was pretty cheap. $2 or $3 if I recall correctly. It's so insanely bright!

I first showed you Sunshine Energy as a base for Connect the Dots in my Top 20 post, but here it is on its own. You have to be careful with application since it's a neon and neons are pretty prone to streaking, but this one isn't bad at all compared to some others. 3-4 coats.

It photographs more orange than it is in real life, but it's awesome either way. I also like the typical flat, matte neon finish. I think it goes well with a color this loud and vibrant.

I'm not really sure how, but Sunshine Energy made it into my Top 20! I didn't have photos of it on its own when I wrote the post, so I showed it to you as a base for Lynnderella Connect the Dots. This is that combination, with a matte topcoat:

Neon cremes and Connect the Dots are a match made in heaven.

It looks like there are flecks of white dust or something on the surface of my thumbnail, but that's actually the speckled white shimmer in Connect the Dots, and it doesn't actually look like dust in person.

Thanks for looking!

Revlon Devil's Candy + Lynnderella Connect the Dots

Happy Saturday! Today is a hair dyeing day, so I'm sitting here typing this with a plastic bag on my head. Cute, right? It's ok though, because I have red nail polish to go with my red hair dye.

Revlon Devil's Candy is a bright red jelly from the limited edition Masquerade Collection, which is for Halloween, if I recall correctly. It's the exact color of the candy coating on candy apples, but I've had such erratic lighting all day that I couldn't get a decent picture to show you today. I'll post that one separately later on. It's really great though; if you like red jellies you need this one! Very smooth formula, 2 coats for opacity, and insanely glossy, even for a jelly. Until I tried this, my favorite red jelly was Essie Jelly Apple. Not anymore!

I layered this with 2 coats of Lynnderella Connect the Dots. Like pretty much all of Lynnderella's creations, Connect the Dots is very special. It's packed with different types of white and black glitter, from bars to squares to small hexes to giant hexes, tied together with subtle white, speckled shimmer. Now, I usually loathe bar glitter, because it reminds me of bacillus bacteria. Not cute. Connect the Dots, on the other hand, reminds me of Jackson Pollock's paintings! I don't really like his work, but on the nail, it's a really cool effect. Check it out!

At an angle:

And here's a macro of my thumb!

Of course, since it's a glitter, I had to see how it looked matte. I absolutely love the result! I think I prefer it matte.

The speckled shimmer looks kind of like dust in that picture, but don't worry, in person it doesn't and you can tell that it's shimmer. And because I love giant macro shots of my awkwardly-shaped thumbnail, here's another one:

Time to go wash the dye out of my hair. Have a great weekend!

Illamasqua Rampage + Lynnderella All Hallow's Eve

Good morning! Today's post is a little bit out of order, considering I haven't even shown you Illamasqua Rampage (which is so amazing it deserves its own post) on its own yet, but it's worth it! I am so ridiculously excited about this one. It's a Lynnderella. If you haven't heard of her, where have you been? Google her, NOW. At any rate, All Hallow's Eve is a truly spectacular green glitter. It's my first green glitter, and honestly? I think it will be my last. I am a green lover, but I don't think that there are any other green glitters that will pique my interest quite like this one.

I love the look of glitters suspended in jelly bases (eg. Deborah Lippmann Ruby Red Slippers and Revlon Facets of Fuchsia), but rather than tamper with All Hallow's Eve, I elected to layer it with Rampage, a deep green jelly. It's an open-faced jelly sandwich of sorts. I layered in this order: 1 coat of Rampage, 1 coat of All Hallow's Eve, 1 coat of Rampage, 2 coats of All Hallow's Eve (though I really could have just gone with one). This way, I still get the look of glitter embedded in jelly, and it's still super sparkly. Now, enough with the talking. I have photos to show you!

A picture in my usual style:

In indirect light. This one's a bit blurry (sorry about that), but it gives you a pretty good idea of how this mani looks indoors:

At an angle:

At another angle:

And here is a macro shot of my thumbnail. This one is not color-accurate, but the colors are edited such that it is easier to see the different types of glitter in this amazing polish!

And now, I'm off to do Chemistry work...have a great week!