Nail Sparks Royal Blue Jelly

I picked this polish up the same time as the one in my last post. I actually grabbed about five or six of these ones, they're really nice! So far I've been impressed with all the Winmax polishes I've picked up and there's quite a few of them. They have a number of different lines including these Nail Sparks, the Pedicure line from my last post and A-Rainbow which is a line of gorgeous holos! What I love the most is that these are a 100Y shop brand, with exchange I pay about $1.25 for them. Score!

Anyways, Nail Sparks #81 is a gorgeous royal blue jelly with shimmer. It has some distinct purple shimmer in the bottle but on the nail it only shows as a silverish color.

So all my bottle pictures were coming out almost black due to a lack of sun. I haven't seen that fireball for about a week now unfortunately. This was the only one I snapped that showed really any color and it happened to be super close up :P

This is fairly color accurate. Just look at that jelly squishyness!

I had to include this picture, look at that incredible purple shimmer! It barely looks like the same polish :P

And of course a few more angles of this beauty.

Now, being a jelly this is a minimum three coater. I ended up with four coats on my ring and index finger of my left hand as I had to fix a couple dings and I found the purple shows more on those fingers. I wasn't expecting this to be a jelly when I bought it but I'm kind of glad it is and I hope the rest them are too :)

Thanks for looking!

Meeka

A Pedi For My Mani?

So today I have a layering combo for you using a polish I picked up recently. I saw this one in the store and thought it was a gorgeous pink scattered holo! When I swatched it I realized it was very sheer, even 3 coats wasn't coming close to opaque, so I knew I had to layer. I decided to layer it over China Glaze's Heli-Yum, which is an awesome raspberry shade from the Up & Away collection. It wasn't until seeing it next to Heli-Yum that I realized my "pink" holo was definitely more purple than pink. This was... ok? It looked nice enough but since I'm not a fan of pink I'm fussy about which ones I use. I like Heli-Yum very much because it borders on red and the purple from the Winmax dulled that too much for my taste.

At any rate, this is two coats of Winmax New York Pedicure #172 over one coat of Heli-Yum.

Seeing this picture I'm not even sure why I decided this was the right combo.

I swear this polish doesn't look nearly as purple in real life except next to this pink.

This is much better to me, I guess I don't think this is bad it just didn't feel right on me.

In pictures it actually looks pretty nice.

Definitely very holo.

Funny enough, this was with no real sun, it still glittered like crazy.

This is indoor lighting. Just because I like all that blurry glittery goodness :P

The one part about the Winmax polish that I didn't like was dry time. Even with Nubar Diamont on top and 1-1.5 hours before bed I still woke up with some sheet marks. Nothing too noticeable but it still bothered me.

Now I want to try this over a purple and I'm trying to decide which shade to put it on. I'm thinking of using SOPI Just a Little Dangerous or possibly China Glaze Grape Pop.

Smell of the Ocean Breeze

I picked up a few of the Revlon scented polishes recently. I have mixed feelings on these, I dislike gimmicks and some scents have the tendancy to give me major headaches but on the other hand there's some cute colors. My husband picked Ocean Breeze out at the store and from my untrieds pile when I needed a mani change. Since it is a little sheer I layered two coats over WnW black creme.

The color is what I would describe as a bright metallic teal with a blue duochrome. It's not a super flashy duochrome but it's definitely there in certain lights. As for the smell, when I was younger I had a perfume from the Body Shop that had a similar name (and bottle color if I recall correctly) and this smelled almost exactly like I remember that smelling. It was quite strong the first night but had faded to tolerable levels the next morning and now three days later I can only smell it faintly if I sniff my nails.

You can see a hint of the blue duochrome around the edges of the bottle.

Sunny and teal.

This polish definitely seems to photograph more blue than it is, in real life it's much greener.

Trying to show the duochrome, I don't think it's working.

This is closer to color accurate and shows a hint of duochrome.

This polish is ridiculously shiny in the sun.

Overall, I really love this color, it's very bright and perfect for summer. I'm glad the smell isn't so overwhelming, I'd hate for this to be unusable due to that.

Thanks for looking!

212-Sephora

I had never heard of this polish until I was in Sephora one day browsing through the polishes and happened to spot it. I must have picked it up and put it down three times before I just said screw it, I have to buy it. $OPI polishes are rarely worth it to me lol. I'm so glad I bought this though, it's become one of my favorites. 

This is one of those polishes that's very hard to describe and so incredibly beautiful I think everyone needs to own a bottle! It's a brownish black base with strong gold shimmer that is packed with holo glitter and flakies. Glitter, Holo, Flakies. I don't know if it's possible to take a picture that truly shows how amazing this polish is. I used two coats over one coat of WetnWild Black Creme.

Here's a bad bottle shot, I had very little sun to work with so it was hard to capture all the elements in this polish. At least it shows some holo glitter and the brownish-black base.

Woo sunshine! My middle finger shows the gold and the flakies, click to enlarge :)

More flakies, more gold, more glitter.

This shows the base color really well, the flakies give it an awesome green duochrome effect too but it's hard to capture. 

 And full on sunshine bling!

One more angle just for good measure :P

I don't know if anyone noticed but yes my nails are nubbins. I had a bowling incident that caused this (caution, scary nubbin ahead):

About 1/4"-1/2" of nail ripped off. I'm thankful it was long enough that it didn't actually hurt O_o At any rate, it's so darn short that I had to chop off the rest, it just looked too noticeable :( I haven't had my nails this short in so long, it's very odd to look at. Oh well, I'm sure they'll be back in no time. 

Thanks for looking!

Inferno!

"I'm burning, I'm burning, I'm burning for you." For the three days I had this polish on I could not stop singing that song. Even as I post this it's in my head, thankfully I like it lol. Oranges are not my typical color but I've been craving them lately, I snagged this one in particular because it was on sale for less than $1. I wish I had sun pics of this for you but sadly I haven't seen any in the last week or more.

This pic is with flash although it's pretty much what the color looks like in any light. Inferno is an apt name for this one.

This is late afternoon non-sun.

Again, this is with flash, again, this is pretty accurate.

Without flash.

This is such a rich, deep, burnt orange, very pretty.

My nails look like they're on fire in this picture!

I only have a couple of Wet n Wild polishes, I've been pleasantly surprised with them usually. This applied very easily and seemed to wear well. I did have a bit of tip wear by the time I took it off but nothing major. If you're looking for a nice in-your-face orange I'd definitely recommend this one!

Thanks for looking :)

M GR615

I have really got to get more creative with my post names, especially when I'm posting from brands that use numbers for their names. Oh well. Unlike the name, this polish is far from boring. I love the deep green of this color, it makes me think of Illamasqa's Rampage or a lighter version of Nars Zulu, except what made me HAVE to have it is the shimmer! It's very subtle but absolutely beautiful!

Here's a bottle shot next to a China Glaze so you can see the size difference, I'm sad that it's so small, I may have to buy a backup lol.

This is outside in late afternoon sun. I highly recommend enlarging these pictures to see how gorgeous this color really is.

A close up to see the sparkle, there's blue and gold shimmer in here, not silver as this looks.

A bit of a different angle, late afternoon.

Indoors to highlight the shimmer, you can really see it in the bottle here.

The downside is that the wear is not so good, I was seeing chips after the first day. It also seems to scuff easily, even with top coat it was looking a bit dull after a day or so. I don't really care though, it's too pretty :)

Edit: The other downside to this is removal, it's like rubber and half my fingers were stained green. I was scrubbing with acetone just to try and clean it off. Not so fun :P

Recent Goodies

I've managed to collect a few new polishes recently which makes me very happy :) I was so excited to see what brands were available here in Japan when I moved but sadly I haven't been that impressed. Most of the brands I've seen come in extremely tiny bottles, like 3-5mls. Oddly enough the "cheap" ones I got from the 100 yen store are larger than the more expensive ones, coming in at about 11mls. The colors haven't been that exciting either, there's a huge range of very sedate beiges and pinks, a bunch of somewhat average looking glitters, and then a few bright colors mixed in. The upside to it is that the bottles are usually super cute so I'm sure I'll buy some from time to time just for that alone :P

I found a big display of Revlon's at the BX on base so I grabbed a few of the scented ones just for fun. I'm not sure how I feel about scented polishes but I guess I'll find out.

Left to Right: 315 Pretty in Papaya, 370 Not So Blueberry, 310 Beach, 320 Ocean Breeze

I picked out the first two, my husband picked the second two. I'm teaching him lol.

These ones were also from the BX and on sale, it's hard to pass up polishes that are $1 or less :)

Left to Right: WetnWild 230 Inferno, 218 Blackmail, NYC 140 Empire State Blue, WetnWild Wild Shine 466 Blue Moon

The orange is more of a burnt orange than this looks and Blackmail is black with what looks like orange and silver glitter. This pic does not do justice to the NYC either, it's got an awesome green duochrome which I hope shows on the nail and Blue Moon flashes between blue and purple, very pretty. 

These are my Japanese purchases so far, excluding the one lime green I already posted. The first three are from Jusco, which is kind of like a Japanese Wal Mart I guess, the last two are from the 100 yen store behind my house.

Left to Right: Sweets NL14, M BL555 and GR615, AC-NED-81, LP-NEC-32

I have no idea how many mls the first one is but the second two are 3mls and 4.5mls respectively, the tiny blue is actually a "jewel liner" so it has a very tiny brush, I'll be posting pics of the green in a bit :) The AC is a prime example of the style of glitters that are popular over here, it's a deep purple with small silver glitter and larger round holographic glitter. The beige glitter is actually rather sheer so I'll have to layer it.

Thanks for looking!

Aquarium

 I had an idea for some fish nails after looking at one of my Konad plates. It didn't turn out quite as good as I'd hoped but I'm not really an expert at nail art so I guess it's not too bad. I had originally thought of using an aqua-ish color such as China Glaze Flying High but I grabbed this one instead. I also hadn't added the "bubbles" to the blue nails initially but it was too stark/bare so I felt like I had to put something on them.

Left hand. It's hard to see the thumb but I wasn't happy at all with how it turned out. I thought that stamp was going to be much larger than it was. I like the rest of the nails though :)

Right hand. I would have liked to use a different fish for the pinky but I love the one on my index. Of course being right handed the "bubbles" didn't come out so well on this hand.

Close up of my favorite left hand nails.

And my favorite right hand nails.

The polishes I used: Orly Snowcone and Sally Hansen White On

And the image plate: Konad m27

Also, please excuse the sorry state of my hands. They're dry right now to begin with and I'd just finished washing a few dishes which just made it look worse. Remind me not to do that again lol.

Thanks for looking!

Midnight Mission

This is possibly my favorite blue ever. It's very simple but there's a certain something that it has. From China Glaze's Vintage Vixen collection of last fall, this was one I grabbed without giving much thought to. The first time I used it I fell in love, maybe it just seems sophisticated to me.

There's two things about this polish that I love, it's always definitely blue, never black, and it's got silver... glitter? Nothing overbearing but it adds dimension to the color.

Here's a great picture showing the silver.

This is truly a gorgeous deep blue.

I always like China Glaze, they have such a wide range of colors, they're affordable and the formula is usually quite good. This one was fairly thick but very easy to work with despite that.