Swatch Saturday: American Apparel’s Galaxy

The swatch for this week is American Apparel’s glitter topper Galaxy. All photos were taken indoors with natural lighting. Galaxy is shown here applied by sponge over two coats of black polish, and with three coats of top coat.

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Galaxy contains basically every color of glitter in a clear base. Brushing the glitter on had not been successful; I’d get two or three pieces of glitter with a whole lot of cuticle-flooding clear polish, so I took the sponge route, and got more coverage than I expected (or wanted). You should be able to see the colors and glitters here. I think a few of them curled a little, but I’m not too put off by that.

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The photography had been a challenge. I thought that since this one didn’t glow in the dark, I wouldn’t have nearly as much trouble getting good pictures. There was a thunderstorm, so I didn’t get as much light as I wanted, and whatever light I did get seemed to just bounce off the glitter and ruin the photo. It took me a long time to get these right.

Overall, I like this polish. Maybe now that it’s been used some, it will brush on a little easier than before. I like the glitter, so I see myself using this frequently in the future.

Swatch Saturday: American Apparel’s Moon

I almost don’t even want to post these today. I have the saddest nails right now, and I’m a little ashamed of them. I had a nasty break over the week and had to cut my nails short. In what is surely to be the saddest swatch of all time, I give you American Apparel’s Moon, the last of the glow in the dark polishes I bought there for my birthday. All photos, except for one, were taken with natural light indoors, and with three coats of Moon and three coats of Seche Vite.

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Compared to the other two I’ve swatched, this one is the least wearable on its own. Even with three coats, it’s very sheer, and looks like I’m just not wearing polish at all. There’s a slightly greenish appearance in natural light; in fluorescent light, that color isn’t there. In some photos, the bottle seems to glow; that color is representative of what the glow looks like in the dark. As you’ll see below, I tried to take a glow photo and only half-succeeded. I honestly have no idea how I got those great (by comparison) glow photos for my Neptune review. I haven’t gotten any that good since, and I don’t know what I’m doing differently.

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I am so sorry about the appearance of my nails. I didn’t realize how uneven and jagged the edges were until I photographed them with the macro setting. That is just terrible and I’ve been pounding the biotin in the hopes they’ll at least be fingertip-length by the end of the year. It’s weird feeling my actual fingertips on the keyboard keys. My hands look like baby hands; my fingers look like fat sausages. I can’t wait until I have nails again.

Swatch Saturday: American Apparel’s Jupiter

Today’s Swatch Saturday officially ends my streak of blue nails. This orange sherbet shade called Jupiter will take us through the weekend. This is a second polish I got from my American Apparel haul in October. Here I’m wearing three coats of it, topped by three coats of Seche Vite. All photos are taken indoors with natural lighting.

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After three coats, it’s still somewhat sheer. The color also varies on the lighting source; in natural light, it looks more yellow-orange, whereas in fluorescent light, it looks like a sheer nude. The glow in the dark effect is comparable to last week’s swatch of Neptune, only more yellow than green. I tried getting photos, but I just couldn’t make it work this week, for whatever reason.

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I’m a little disappointed by the opacity. It’s buildable, so I could probably achieve complete opacity in another coat or two, but I didn’t feel like it.

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I’ve actually worn this one before: I went to a Halloween party and wore Neptune and Jupiter over Maybelline’s Dotty and Blue Marks the Spot. These polishes are great toppers, and maybe I’m defeating their purpose by trying to get them opaque. Also, these polishes react to UV light as well; here’s that Halloween party manicure, glowing in the black light of a Tron arcade machine.

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Well, that’s it for this week. See you next time!

Swatch Saturday: American Apparel’s Neptune

Okay, so I’m starting a new thing for the blog this week. This started somewhat out of necessity; my Manicure Monday mani would start to show signs of wear: chips, cracks, peeling, and some would have to be totally redone. At the same time, I would have a new polish or two or five I’d want to try, so I’d scrap the mani altogether at the end of the week and try out something new. I’ve come to the point now where I have nearly five hundred polishes, and if I polish my nails once a week, it would take me almost ten years to use every polish (a number that increases every week or so). This new feature, Swatch Saturday, is a way for me to use some of these polishes that I wouldn’t get to use in my normal manicure routine for quite some time, and to represent them more accurately, away from the confines of nail art. I’m going to start at the top of the polish list and work my way down.

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This inaugural Swatch Saturday kicks off with a glow in the dark polish from American Apparel called Neptune. I bought it when I was Atlanta visitng my boyfriend for my birthday. For whatever reason, my city doesn’t have any American Apparel stores, but I’ve seen their polishes all over the nail polish internet, so when I went in, I didn’t even look at the clothes. I went right for the polish, bought six bottles, and walked out.

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All photos were taken indoors with sunlight.

All non-glowy photos were taken indoors with sunlight.

Neptune is shown here with three coats, covered by three coats of Seche Vite. As you can see, even with three coats, my nail line is still visible, and another coat would probably have given me more opacity. Apart from that, the color is really nice for a glow in the dark polish.

Monster teeth.

Monster teeth.

I kind of ashamed of these.

I am kind of ashamed of these.

You get the idea.

I read the manual for this.

I had a hard time getting these glow in the dark action shots, but I had to try. I shut myself in the darkest room in my house — my bedroom closet — with my camera. Well, first I had to read the manual to find out how to change the shutter speed. Then I locked myself in the closet. Then I got a bunch of horrid pictures. Yeah. I even got the tripod out for this, and they’re still bad. It doesn’t matter, though. You can still see the glow. I got it close enough.

To be honest, I just really missed having glow in the dark nails. I wore this once over a blue glitter polish for a Halloween party (with orange accents, we’ll discuss this next week), and when I went to bed that night, my boyfriend just laughed. “Your nails are foolish,” he said. I don’t care what he thinks. It’s fun waggling my fingers around in the dark. Also, I think I like them best when it’s only sort of dark, when I can still see the blue, but they’re just slightly glowing, like I have uranium on my nails. I love the novelty of it. Thankfully, I have like two more of these to do.