A girl and her love of nail polish

Archive for July, 2012

Restock Radar – Week of July 30

Here’s a look at some of the indie nail polish restocks scheduled for this week:

Wednesday, August 1
1pmET
NORTHERN STAR POLISH (on Etsy)
Notables: Not Today (brown shimmer base with gold and copper hex glitter), Thousand Swords (black and diamond hex, silver bar and hex, holographic bar glitter in a clear base) and Dragon’s Blood (large bronze hex and small gold, red and orange hex glitter in a green jelly base), a trio of “Game of Thrones”-inspired polishes

8pmET
DANDY NAILS (on Etsy)
Notables: Four brand-new blue polishes with varying degrees of shimmer and glitter: Float On, Eager Eyes, Head Underwater, Hands of Time

time not specified
CANDY LACQUER (on Etsy)
Notables: Summer Sweets, Cherry Berry and Fruit Salad, atrio of fun, bright summer-appropriate glitters in clear base that look cute over white polish.

Friday, August 3
8pmET
ALL THAT GLITTERS (on Etsy)
Notables: a new line of “Princess” polishes (sneak peek; note that the name on the label is not the actual name)

time not specified
CHAOS AND CROCODILES (on Etsy)
Notables: She’s promising two to four new polishes, plus six re-releases. Details still to come.

And Keep An Eye Out For:
Harlow & Co. is planning to restock KBShimmer sometime this week, though there might be a delay due to some bottle breakage.

If you know of any planned restocks coming in the future, please let me know at polishgroupie@gmail.com

Rainbow Honey Mare Of The Moon

It’s not lost on me that this is my 13th post, as this was one unlucky manicure.

It features Rainbow Honey’s Mare Of The Moon, which is a beautiful purplish-blue color shifter that has shimmer plus silver crescent moon glitter. I have been lusting after a blue polish with moon glitter ever since I first saw Windestine’s Spica featured on a blog two months ago (it’s on my lemmings list).

So when I saw Mare Of The Moon, part of Rainbow Honey’s Equestria collection, I had to have it. Let me just say off the top that I love the color of this polish. It really is a beauty. And despite what’s to follow, I really enjoyed wearing this polish. Can’t take my eyes off of it.

Rainbow Honey Mare of the Moon

But here’s where we get into the “unlucky” part of this manicure. I had a terrible time with the application. Part of my problem was definitely that this was a mini (7ml) bottle, and I found the short brush challenging to work with and the large top a bit awkward to hold. With my painting hand being so close to my “being painted” hand, it was difficult for me to maneuver the brush the way I wanted, and to see what was going on. Maybe this is just the danger of the mini bottle. I admit, I haven’t purchased that many. Will definitely pause next time I’m tempted to buy one. That said, I applied undies on this which was also a mini bottle, and I didn’t have nearly the trouble applying that one. More on the undies later.

Rainbow Honey Mare of the Moon

The rest of my application problems I think had to do with the polish itself. It can be quite thin and watery, almost like water color if you don’t load the brush enough. I didn’t mind that as much as I did the drying time. It seemed to dry very quickly; before I had even finished painting a nail, that nail had already begun to set. Plus it has what I would call just shy of a matte finish. That was a disaster given that I had to fish out and try to place the moon glitter, which for me was the main attraction of this polish.

Rainbow Honey Mare of the Moon

As I’d try to move the glitter or even transfer it from the brush to my nail, i was disrupting the parts of the polish that had already begun setting. It made for a very uneven, bumpy and frankly not very attractive end result, though adding topcoat helped smooth things out.

Rainbow Honey Mare of the Moon

The final nail in the coffin here is that I cannot find my cleanup brush, which I desperately needed on this one. I did what I could with an orange stick dipped in acetone.

Rainbow Honey Mare of the Moon

natural light

For undies I used one coat of Mattese Elite’s Up My Platinum, available from Ricky’s NYC. I probably didn’t need it, but I didn’t want to risk it. Up My Platinum is a frosty silver that went on pretty smoothly. Formula was quite nice. Here it is on its own with a top coat.

Matesse Elite Up My Platinum

I followed that with two coats of Mare Of The Moon and a coat of Poshe.

I will definitely try this one out again when I have all my ducks in a row and am feeling at the top of my game. Now that I’m more familiar with the formula, I think I could do a better job of wrangling it.

Rainbow Honey Mare of the Moon with Matesse Elite Up My Platinum

Mare of the Moon is available from RainbowHoney.com. Currently the minis are in stock but the full size is not. Rainbow Honey’s polishes are 3-free, as are Mattese Elite’s.

Zoya Lotus With Pahlish Your Silver Lining

I recently nabbed a new indie, Pahlish’s Your Silver Lining, and have been dying to try it out. I bought it earlier this month at the end of a crap day not only because I liked it very much but also because I took some higher meaning from the name since I was at that very moment trying to find some silver lining in the midst of a bad situation. It felt like kismet.

Your Silver Lining is a shimmery, sheer, milky white polish with small holographic hex, square and bar glitter.

I paired it with another new-to-me shade, Lotus, from Zoya’s True Spring 2012 collection. Zoya describes it as a “dusty blue-toned amethyst purple with colorful shimmer that reflects pink, red and gold.” I’d say that’s a dead-on description.

The application on Zoya Lotus started out nice, but I swear that it got goopier as I went along, so it was a little challenging for me. This was a brand new bottle, first use. Still, I love this color; it has a lot of depth to it and isn’t a bright in-your-face purple.
Here’s Zoya Lotus by itself, two coats plus a top coat:

Zoya Lotus swatchZoya Lotus swatchZoya Lotus swatch
Your Silver Lining is a great shade for layering, but it did take a few tries to figure out how much I needed on the brush for optimal application. I had to fish around and dab to find and place the glitter where I wanted. As a result I ended up with much thicker coats than I intended on some nails, but I got better at it. You can see that my ring finger looks milkier than my middle finger.

The (male) trainer at my gym described this manicure as “whimsical but elegant.” I thought that was pretty funny, but I think it is an apt description.

Here’s Zoya Lotus  with one coat of Pahlish Your Silver Lining on top plus top coat:

Pahlish Your Silver Lining over Zoya LotusPahlish Your Silver Lining over Zoya Lotus

Pahlish is scheduled to launch today at Llarowe at 3pmET and again at 9pmET, so you might be able to grab Your Silver Lining there. Pahlish also has a shop on Etsy.

What nail polishes have you purchased recently more because of the name than the color?

Restock Radar: Pretty & Polished Moved To Wednesday

Due to power outages, Pretty & Polished’s restock has been rescheduled for Wednesday, July 25 at 8pmET.

The restock list includes, among others:

Bayou Blitz

Cancer Moon

Tuesday Taurus

Rat-a-tat

Amo Questa Canzone

Galax-E

Freedom Calling

Seeing Spots

He Is King

Restock Radar — Week of July 23

Here’s a look at some of the restocks scheduled for this week:

Tuesday, July 24 [UPDATE: MOVED TO WEDNESDAY 8pmET]
7pmET
PRETTY & POLISHED (on Etsy)
Notables: Cancer Moon (dark gray with green and gray hex glitter)

Wednesday, July 25
3pmET & 9pmET
PAHLISH (on Llarowe)
Notables: Train Underwater (turquoise hex plus pink and blue micro glitter in a blue sheer base) and Your Silver Lining (iridescent hex, bar and micro glitter in a white milky base)

time not specified
NAIL SAUCE (on Etsy)
Notables: Se7en collection

Thursday, July 26
time not specified
TAKKO LACQUER (on Etsy)
Notables: Kaleidoscope Eyes (blue-green and purple duochrome)

Friday, July 27
1pmET
NAIL POTIONS (on Etsy)
Notables: Therapy (hot pink with small gold, black and green glitter)

3pmET & 9pmET
HARE POLISH (on Llarowe)
Notables: Supernova Springs (green hex and micro glitter in a dark base)

Saturday, July 28
5pmET
HAPPY HANDS (on Etsy)
Notables: The Swamp Glitter (bright blue, orange and green hex glitter in an orange jelly base)

Sunday, July 29
6pmET
SMITTEN POLISH (on Etsy)
Notables: Will be restocking any shades left after filling pre-order

If you know of any planned restocks coming in the future, please let me know at polishgroupie@gmail.com

NOTD: Mermaid-ish Manicure

Summer’s in full swing here, and the heat’s been rolling in. Thank goodness we have a pool! Just looking at that inviting blue water is enough to cool you down, which is what led to this water-inspired mani. This color combo of turquoise/green/blue brought mermaids to mind, especially with the sparkly aspect of the glitter.

This is two coats of Zoya Wednesday topped with a coat of Poshe. Zoya says Wednesday is best described as a “faded dirty medium turquoise with green undertone and an opaque cream finish.” Well ok then.

On the accent nails I added one coat of Color Club Fly With Me, a lime-green shimmer, and then I dabbed Revlon Radiant on the tips to about halfway down the nail. Radiant is a mix of micro and medium hex blue and turquoise glitter plus silver medium hex glitter in a clear base. Topped everything off with another coat of Poshe.

You can see from the pictures that I didn’t do the best job with the application of Fly With Me on the accent nails, but I don’t think it was as bad as depicted here. I think there was a fair amount of shrinkage near the cuticles overnight (did this at night, photographed the next morning). There’s just no way I was that off.

That aside, this was a really fun manicure to wear. I really love this color combo for summer.

What colors are you having fun wearing this summer?

Restock Radar: Week of July 16

Here’s a look at some of the restocks scheduled for this week:

Wednesday, July 18
3pmET & 10pmET:
CANDEO COLORS (on Llarowe.com)
Notables: Melonball (red, pink and green glitter in a clear base),  **a Llarowe exclusive** and new color Oceania (white, teal and lavender glitter in a teal base)

9pmET:
CHAOS AND CROCODILES (on Etsy)
Notables: Chasing Bubbles (several shades of blue hex glitter in a clear base) and Stargazing (silver, blue, turquoise, etc. glitter w/ purple shimmer in a black creme base)

Thursday, July 19
Somewhere between 5amET and 11amET
DOLLISH POLISH (on Big Cartel)
Notables: Brand new Super Mario Bros. collection in mini- and full-size bottles

Friday, July 20
8pmET
AMY’S NAIL BOUTIQUE (on Etsy)
Notables: Brand new In Bloom collection

Sunday, July 22
5pmET
LACATTACK (on LacAttack.com)
Notables: Vegas Skies (neon orange, purple and green glitter in a clear base) and Butterfly Kisses (pink hex and butterfly holographic glitter in a pink-ish base)

If you know of any planned restocks coming in the future, please pass info along to polishgroupie@gmail.com

Tag Cloud