Manicure Monday: Oh, Fionna

Posted on September 29, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

The polish I have on this Monday is so much fun! Say hello to Oh, Fionna from Digital Nails. I’ve been looking forward to wearing this forever! I’ve got on three coats with one coat of Color Club’s clear coat. The bow charms are from Claire’s. Sounds like it’s gonna be large.

Oh, Fionna is a nude crelly with gold shimmer, yellow and white hexes, and blue dots. The consistency was a bit thin for me; cuticles were flooded pretty easily. The glitters in this bottle tended to settle and cling to the walls of the bottle, and as such, were a littled difficult to get out without inverting the bottle and shaking vigorously. Those are my only complaints. Both of them are easily remedied. The polish does dry quickly, and takes on a nearly-matte finish. Application is not as terrible as I make it sound, I promise.

I really love this look. I tend to think neutrals are boring, but this one really puts a spin on the color. The glitters aren’t big, but they stand out from the base, even with multiple coats. It’s subtle, but it’s sparkly and shimmery.

It had been a while since I got the charms and rhinestones out, so I decided to use a couple of bows in matching colors. I’ve already broken one of them off. They’re so much fun to wear, though. They make me feel super dainty. Since the polish is borderline dainty, it makes sense.

I think Oh, Fionna is discontinued, which is super-sad. I’m already sad I have to take this off.

Swatch Saturday: Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer’s Death by Restock

Posted on September 27, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

It’s the last of the 2013 Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer Halloween polishes! I always feel a little inadequate when I’m reviewing BEGLs, because I am literally a year too late on these; the 2014 collection is being reviewed by real nail bloggers and the polishes are absolutely gorgeous. This one is too, though! Death by Restock is the final polish from the Nail Polish Frights collection. I’m wearing three coats alone with one coat of Color Club’s clear coat.

BEGL describes Death by Restock as a “red jelly base with red, burgundy, and black glitters and black and candy red holo skulls”. The skull glitters are rare, as I only got one and it’s on my right hand. The other glitters are plentiful, though, and spread evenly across the nail. The first coat was very sheer, and looked like watermelon, thanks to the black glitters. The next coats build up to a deep bloody red, and the black glitters look much less obvious and harsh. It’s a look that takes a classic color and adds even more drama and depth.

I don’t think I even need to comment on the consistency and application, because it’s always perfect with BEGL: the consistency is just right, it dries quickly, the glitter applies well, and it’s easy to clean up and wear. It dries a little on the satin side, so top coat is necessary to get that sexy jelly shine. It doesn’t get much better than this.

I think this could be my favorite from the whole four-piece collection. I mean, they are all super-gorgeous in their own way, but I think this one appeals to me the most. I love red polish, jellies, and glitter, so this is basically the wacie.com dream polish.

Let’s take a minute to talk about the idea of death by restock: BEGL has released two major collections back-to-back: Far From the Sun came out this summer, and the Ladies of Doctor Who came out this past weekend. Also, a special polish is out to commemorate the second birthday of Wishes of a Blue-Eyed Girl. On Tuesday, I ordered everything, which set me back more than I care to admit. My boyfriend is probably going to break up with me when he finds out. It’s worth it.

Wacie Wednesday: Frostberry

Posted on September 24, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

I’ve only got a few more Wacie Nail Company prototypes left! I’ve decided also that, after I swatch these, I’m going to hold off on showing any more WNC polishes on the blog for a while, at least until I have a shop open and a collection out and something to show for it. Also, there are other polishes I want to swatch; I’ll be swatching BEGLs every Saturday until I die at this rate, so I think a midweek swatch would be better than swatching a bunch of one-offs I made for myself, at least until they grow out of the one-off stage and become full-fledged polishes.

My fifth-to-last Wacie Nail Co. polish is called Frostberry, a shimmery rose jelly. It’s shown here at three coats with one coat of Color Club’s clear coat.

Frostberry was a bit of a happy accident. I wanted a shimmery red jelly, but the mica I used was too white and it turned the polish pink. It’s still translucent; at three coats, there’s good color and coverage, but the nail line is still visible. I thought about adding some glitter to a couple nails like I did last week, just to show the jelly effect, but I thought the shimmer would overpower it. I’m kinda cool with it being translucent. The look is sheer, shimmery, and glassy. It’s unlike anything else in my collection.

Unfortunately, because it’s cold and overcast outside, I won’t get to see what this looks like outdoors. I bet it’s beautiful, though. Jellies outdoors are always crazy pretty.

Yeah, I like this a lot. This is the coolest thing I’ve made in a while.

Manicure Monday: Lilac and Bold Glitter

Posted on September 22, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

This week’s edition of Manicure Monday is a little boring, I’m afraid. The glitter accent nails are a bit overdone, but they’re an easy look for when I ignored homework all last week so I could watch The Roosevelts on PBS. The polishes I’m wearing this week are Sinful Colors’s Purple Diamond and Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer‘s Matunda ya Kwanzaa. I have on three coats of Purple Diamond and two coats of Matunda ya Kwanzaa with one coat of Color Club’s clear coat.

Purple Diamond is a lilac with lots of shimmer. The first coat is very sheer, but builds to semi-opacity in one to two coats. It dries pretty quickly and with a really nice shine. With as sheer as this one is, it would work well as a shimmery topper over a darker polish. I’ll totally try that next time. I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: two dollar polish has no business being this pretty or high quality. One thing with it, though, is that it reminds me of a blend I made myself called Dusk. It’s the same color and the same shimmer. I’m a little weirded out by how similar they are.

Matunda ya Kwanzaa is described by BEGL as “lightly purple tinted polish with a bright rainbow of glitters in all sorts of shapes and sizes”. That’s as accurate as one can get while being concise. There’s so much glitter in here; every color of the rainbow is represented, as well as some fun shapes; small hexes, dots, and dots are the most prevalent, but I know there are some stars and things as well. The glitter spread evenly, but I didn’t get as much as I wanted in one coat, which is why I used two.

Outdoors, this is pretty bright. The shimmer is much more intense than it appears, and the iridescent glitters pop. It’s gorgeous.

I chose this glitter to go with this polish because I wanted one to balance out the other. Purple Diamond is a bit on the dainty side, and Matunda ya Kwanzaa is bold and colorful. I think the glitter overpowers the rest of the manicure, but that’s okay. Better luck next time.

Swatch Saturday: Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer’s Cart Jacked by Witches

Posted on September 20, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

It’s another discontinued Halloween polish for Swatch Saturday this week! This is the third of four polishes in the Nail Polish Frights collection from Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer. This is Cart Jacked by Witches, and I’m wearing three coats with one coat of Color Club’s clear coat.

Cart Jacked by Witches is a purple jelly with various shapes of purple, green, and black glitters. Supposedly there are black holo pumpkin glitters in here, but I didn’t find any. This polish is loaded down with glitter, and so the consistency is quite thick. It could do with some thinner. Despite the thickness, however, it dried quickly. I love BEGL glitter toppers for this reason; there’s never an issue with drying times, no matter how much I glob on.

I like this polish a lot. It doesn’t look much like a Halloween polish, and is versatile enough for year-round wear. Of course, during this time of the year, the purple and green combo is reminiscent of Halloween, but in March, it would just be a polish with a creative color scheme. It may also double as your Mardi Gras polish. If we ignore its holiday theme, it’s a really unique and attractive polish. I like it a lot.

For those who have never shopped online from small businesses, to be cart-jacked is to have an item in your shopping cart be purchased by someone else. It can happen during restocks, when a seller has a limited supply of something. Imagine this: you’ve waited all week for this seller to restock a polish you’ve been dying for. You set four alarms on your phone so you don’t miss it. You sit down and prepare yourself, calming your mind so that your fingers can be quick. The shop opens, you have the polish in your cart, you’re already fantasizing about wearing it, and suddenly, as you check out, there’s a notice that says your item is sold out. You, my dear, have been cart-jacked.

Only one more Halloween BEGL left! After that, we move into Christmas. Like in retail stores, Christmas on this blog is coming much too early.

Wacie Wednesday: Pinprick

Posted on September 17, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

I’ve been looking forward to swatching this for a while. I got creative some night in the Wacie Nail Co. lab, and by creative, I mean I wanted to make a ton of new polishes, but had very few materials to work with. This is one of the beauties that came from that session. Pinprick, as I’ve come to call it, is a blood red jelly. I’m wearing three coats of it alone on my thumb, index, and pinky fingers; on my middle and ring fingers, I have a glitter sandwich with Pinprick and OPI’s In True Stefani Fashion. All nails are topped with one coat of Color Club’s clear coat.

Pinprick is a jelly, but it’s nearly opaque in three coats. I’m really surprised by the coverage I got, I expected a more visible nail line, and I didn’t expect it to come out so dark. It’s practically black in the bottle, but is very bright over the glitter. If I hadn’t done the jelly sandwich nails, you wouldn’t be able to tell it’s a jelly at all. Pinprick does dry with a matte finish, so top coat is definitely necessary to get this gorgeous shine.

Let’s talk about the glitter sandwich nails for a minute. This is the real reason I made this polish. I always say there’s nothing like a red nail to feel glamorous and sexy, but the glitter here makes it even better. The glitters in In True Stefani Fashion are pretty fine, and took a lot of effort cleaning up. I think I spent my whole day trying to get it all off. It was so worth it. I feel like a million sexy bucks right now. Glitter sandwiches are the best.

In the sunshine? Oh man. You can really see the jellyness in direct sunlight, and it looks awesome. There’s still no visible nail line, but the color is still really squishy.

I’ve got a few more reds in the pipeline like this. They’ve got a lot to live up to, though. I don’t think it can get any better than this.

Manicure Monday: Morning Light/Evening Gradient

Posted on September 15, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

I love putting glitter over gradients! My Manicure Monday project this week was to take Morning Light from Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer and use it in a fun new way that really shows how versatile it is. I made a gradient with Essie’s Fiji and No More Film, then put on two coats of Morning Light and one coat of Color Club’s clear coat.

I swatched Morning Light way back in January, and I really loved the way it looked over dark polish, but I didn’t want to just wear it over black again, that would be too easy. I went through all of my polishes and after a few misses, chose purple and pink cremes. I wanted a light pink for glitter visibility, but I wanted a darker one to bring out the shimmer. I thought I did pretty well.

I must admit that I’m not too happy with the gradient. I ran out of eyeshadow sponges the other week, so I used one of the hexagonal sponges that came in a China Glaze ombre set. I didn’t really like this method. I didn’t have as much control over the blending and the building of color. I also got polish all over the sides of my fingers and it took forever to clean it up. I will probably not use this method again.

I’m pleased with this look, though. The green shimmer in Morning Light totally transforms No More Film from a deep plum to something lighter and duskier. Also, I noticed something this week that I didn’t when I swatched it: the green shimmer shifts to red! At certain angles, the green disappears and a warm red shimmer takes its place. So cool!

Swatch Saturday: Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer’s Sell Souls for ISOs (OBO)

Posted on September 13, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

I got some Halloween costume catalogs in the mail this week, so it’s officially not too early to post this manicure. We’re still looking at long overdue swatches from Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer‘s Halloween 2013 collection. This polish is called Sell Souls for ISOs (OBO); I’m wearing one generous coat of it over China Glaze’s Pelican Gray and Essie’s Fashion Playground.

Sell Souls for ISOs (OBO) is a clear glitter topper with orange shimmer, orange and black glitters, white skull-and-crossbones, and holo orange pumpkins. The skull and pumpkin shaped glitters were new at the time, and that was enough to sell me on this polish (or any polish, really). The description doesn’t really do it justice; you can look at the bottle and see a myriad of different shapes, sizes, and finishes of glitter. It’s a well-rounded mix. The skulls and pumpkin glitters are scarce, I fished for a pumpkin glitter for like fifteen minutes and the only one I got was the one on my thumb. They’re rare on purpose, so that they can easily be avoided, in case you happen not to like them, or happen to be wearing the polish in September.

Application was easy, but because I swirled the polish around so much fishing for glitter, I ended up with a lot of bubbles. The drying time was pretty good for a polish like this; I really blobbed it on and it was dry in five minutes. The consistency was a bit thick, and got thicker as I used it, but that’s to be expected from a polish like this, and is easily remedied.

Outdoors, this polish is amazing. The metallic orange glitters really shine (hee) in direct natural light.

Now for a little lesson on lacquerista vernacular (because sometimes my mom reads this): “ISO” stands for “in search of”, and is used on message boards and such to express a strong desire to own a certain polish. These are often small batch polishes that aren’t widely available or have been discontinued by the maker. A desperate lacquerista might resort to some pretty drastic measures to own it, hence the name of this polish. We all have a polish we’d sell our souls to own. Mine is Lobster Roll from Enchanted Polish. You don’t know the horrible things I’d do for it.

Wacie Wednesday: Decadence

Posted on September 10, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

It’s Wacie Wednesday, and this week I’m wearing a sister polish to Opulence, the gold and silver glitterbomb I wore a week or two ago. This is Decadence, a full coverage glitter with fine red, silver, and turquoise holo glitters. I’m wearing three coats of Decadence with one coat of Color Club’s clear coat.

I call this a sister polish to Opulence because it was made with the same intent, to learn how different glitters work and compliment each other. I also love the trend of full coverage microglitter polishes among indie makers, and I wanted to try to replicate that look in my own way. I also have some pretty limited glitter selections, and that’s why I’ve used such an odd color combination. I basically mixed every glitter of this size and shape into a bottle. I’d do it again.

Decadence goes on a bit thick, naturally, because there’s so much glitter in it. It does dry quickly, though, and with a fine gritty texture. It’s still textured with one coat of top coat, but it’s a bit smoother than without it. I also probably could have gotten away with two coats, because these glitters cover pretty well.

Outdoors, this is stunning. Sunlight is, for a lot of manicures, the ultimate complement to this polish. Everything is so glittery and shiny and blinding. It’s gorgeous.

Not looking forward to taking it off, though.

Manicure Monday on Tuesday: Fun With Thermals

Posted on September 9, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

I’m always excited to share a first on the blog. For Manicure Monday this week, I’m wearing Tomboyish from Pretty & Polished, one of my first-ever indies, my first-ever thermal polish, and the first-ever thermal on the blog. I’m wearing three coats of Tomboyish with one coat of Digital Nails‘s Spectraflair top coat and Color Club’s clear coat.

The label got soft and peeled a bit from dipping the bottle into water to change its color.

Tomboyish is a deep teal-to-dusty blue thermal polish with a light sprinkle of holographic sparkle. The consistency is thick due to extra pigments, but it’s still very easy to use and apply. The first coat was very sheer, but coverage builds with additional coats. It dries quickly, and with a matte finish. In this regard, it’s very much like an ordinary polish.

Thermal polishes change color with heat, and that’s what makes this polish special. The teal color deepens when it’s exposed to cold temperatures, and it fades to blue when exposed to warm temperatures. Body heat is enough to effect the change, and it happens instantaneously; if I dipped my fingertips in cold water, the teal color would deepen, but would fade back to blue as they warm up again. If your nails are longer than your fingertips, you’ll often have a nice gradient effect; the part of your nail grown past your finger will be different than that’s closer to your cuticle. It’s an awesome, effortless look.

I wanted just a little bit more sparkle with Tomboyish, so I put on a Spectraflair top coat made by Digital Nails. The holo isn’t as strong as it would be if it was a holo polish, but being able to turn any polish I own into a holo is pretty cool.

I’ve had this polish for a long time, so I think the effect isn’t as potent as it used to be. The first time I used it, the light color was much lighter, and now it hovers somewhere in between. It’s still pretty cool, and it still changes, but not like it used to.

I love thermals, and I’ve got more in the pipeline. I can’t wait to wear them.

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