Swatch Saturday: Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer’s Birthday Wishes

Posted on June 7, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

Swatch Saturday is back! This weekend I’m wearing Birthday Wishes from Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer, a royal blue with pink shimmer. As usual, I’m wearing three coats with top coat. Photos were taken in both indoors and outdoors. I’ve wanted to try this one for a long while now, so let’s take a look.

I love how this turned out. In the bottle, especially in my office where the lighting is lower, the blue polish with the pink shimmer makes it look purple. I don’t get that effect on my nails in the studio, but I definitely do in other lighting conditions. In the studio, the shimmer isn’t as potent, but outside it’s vibrant and strong. It’s a really cool effect; my nails look different everywhere I go.

The formula was a little worrisome at first; the first coat was barely-there thin, and I wasn’t totally sure I was going to get even coverage. It looks fantastic in three coats, though. It’s even and opaque. I love wearing this.

On a side note, I bought a ton of polish while I was on vacation. I had to visit drugstores a lot during the trip, and grabbed one or two whenever I stopped in, especially if I saw some things I’d never seen anywhere else. I got a few new brands, shopped at stores for the sake of shopping there, and did some indie shopping while I was bored in train stations. I think I ended up with about 60 bottles by the time I got home. As a result, I may be taking a quick break from my BEGL swatch streak, just to fill in the gaps in the Polish List. I’ve got a couple more BEGLs in the pipeline, but I’ve also got these American Apparel neons I can’t wait to try. See you next week!

Wacie Wednesday: Slither

Posted on June 4, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

This week’s Wacie Wednesday post is all about Slither, a polish I made many moons ago, but am just getting around to trying out. It’s a slightly black base filled with tons and tons of gold-shifting green flakies. I’m wearing three coats of it here with a coat of Seche Vite top coat. Most photos were taken in my studio, the last two in the set were taken outdoors in full sun.

I’ll get this out of the way first: cleaning up my cuticles sucked. Because this polish is practically all flakies, it’s hard to move out of all the nooks and crannies. I spent the better part of an hour exclusively on my cuticles, and you can still see the tiny flakies all over the place. This is most evident in the outdoor shots. You can see them everywhere.

Now we can get to the good stuff. Look at the color shift! The green here is already gorgeous on its own, and then the light hits it, and everything turns gold and stunning. I love it.

You may see a piece or two of lime green glitter sticking out on a couple of nails. I don’t know where those came from, nor do I know how they got into this bottle. They are not part of this polish. I didn’t even notice them until I was taking the outdoor shots. Those will not be part of the final product when that time comes.

Manicure Monday on Tuesday: Post-Vacation Pink Moons

Posted on June 3, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

I’m back from vacation, and the wacie.com hiatus is over! I had a blast while I was on vacation, but I felt a bit guilty about ignoring the blog. I actually took my laptop and some polish along with me, thinking I would have time to update while travelling. I seriously overestimated the amount of free time I would have. I also didn’t take a whole lot of nail pictures while I was gone, even though I painted my nails; painting my nails while tipsy in a hotel room at 1 AM does not make for good manicures. Anyway, I’m still trying to get my groove back, so this week’s post is not only late, it’s probably also deviating some from the usual format a little. I was gone so long, I actually forgot how I normally take pictures.

I decided to do something easy this week, just to celebrate being back in my natural habitat. I neglected my usual hand and cuticle care, and also suffered a lot of breaks while I was gone, so I spent a lot of time just soaking and taking care of my nails, and after all that, I just didn’t feel like doing something intricate or time-consuming. Also, I’d had a plan for these two polishes before I went on vacation; I have no idea now what it was. This week, I’m wearing a mystery color from Maybelline, and Sephora by OPI’s Dear Diary….

I expected Dear Diary… to be much more sheer than it came out on my nails. The first coat was sheer and pretty streaky, but the second evened it out. There are still some places that are thin and bald, this is most evident on my thumb, if you’re able to see it at all. On every other nail, it’s mostly opaque.

Sunlight

I have no idea how to identify this Maybelline polish. It’s a shame, because even though it’s an oldie, it’s a gorgeous color. It’s a rosy mauve with a pretty shimmer. It doesn’t seem to wear well; I put it on yesterday; this isn’t even 24 hours later. I’ll chalk this up to my nails being so short I can’t wrap the tips.

This bottle comes from a time way back when I had a problem peeling the stickers from things, so that’s how it came to be a nameless mystery color. I’d really love to know its name. If you can identify it, please help me out!

Manicure Monday on Tuesday: Pre-Vacation Celebration in Blue

Posted on May 13, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

Manicure Monday is a little late this week, what with the craziness of work, upcoming boyfriend’s birthday, and packing for vacation. I’m also going to have to re-learn how to stick with the same manicure for seven days. Anyway, I’m wearing Wet ‘n Wild’s I Saw A Comet over Sephora by OPI’s Mermaid to Order; I’ve got on two coats of each with two coats of Seche Vite.

Mermaid to Order is a gorgeous shimmery turquoise. Actually, I hesitate to call it a turquoise, because it leans either blue or green, depending on the viewing angle and lighting conditions. It goes on easily and smoothly, but with very visible brush strokes. Even adding the glitter to it wasn’t enough to hide the brush strokes. I chose this polish as an under coat because it’s the same color as the jelly base in I Saw A Comet. I wish I’d chosen a creme polish for this, though, so that the glitter can stand on its own without added effects from the base color.

I Saw A Comet is a faint teal jelly with fine iridescent glitters. As gorgeous as it is in the bottle (I admit I bought it because I was totally hypnotized by the glitter), I expected a little more of that look to transfer to the nail. Last week I encountered the extra-wide W&W brush, which gave me a horrible glitter payoff and just made a clear polish mess on my fingers. This week, I tried it again, and my results weren’t too much better. The brush is actually wider than a few of my nails, which left a lot of glitter stuck in my cuticle; you can see there are still a few bits of it I just couldn’t get off. For the minimal glitter look I got, the cleanup effort wasn’t really worth it.

Outdoors, sunlight

I’m going to try to keep up with Manicure Monday while I’m travelling, whenever I can find the time to actually paint my nails. We’ll see how it goes.

Swatch Saturday: Blue Eyed Girl Lacquer’s Out. For. A. Walk… BITCH.

Posted on May 10, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

I’m really excited about this week’s Swatch Saturday. It’s red, it’s holo, and it’s absolutely beautiful. It’s Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer’s Out. For. A. Walk… BITCH. I’m wearing three coats of it under two coats of Seche Vite.

BEGL described this as a blood red linear holo, but I don’t think it looks very red on me. It’s more like a raspberry, or a burgundy. In any case, I have nothing to say about this polish but gushing and incoherent mumbling. Just look at the pictures and mumble with me.

In the studio, the holo rainbow is quite strong compared to some other holos I’ve reviewed recently. Usually I don’t get a visible spectrum in the studio like I do here. Even indoors, the holo effect is stunning. I can’t believe there was ever a time I didn’t like holos. I was so wrong. I am so sorry. This next set of photos was taken outdoors in sunshine. This is the good stuff. Look at all this holo goodness! Also, the redness is much more apparent in the outdoor photos. It looks less like a berry or burgundy out here.

I have nothing else to say about this polish, other than I am dead. Also, unfortunately, it’s been discontinued. Hopefully you’ll get lucky and find it somewhere. If not, BEGL is restocking a lot of the gorgeous holos from the Once More With Feeling collection, the Buffy-inspired collection this one is from, on May 17. Get on that.

One more thing: this is the last Swatch Saturday for a couple of weeks; I’m taking somewhat of a hiatus while I go on vacation. I’ll try to keep up with Manicure Monday while I’m travelling, but apart from that, I won’t be doing any more swatches until June. See you then!

Wacie Wednesday: Psychovamp

Posted on May 7, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

I hate to admit it, but my Wacie Nail Co. experiment this week is another case of too much glitter. I just hate the sound of those words together. This is Psychovamp, a purple jelly with various sizes of red holo glitters. I’m wearing three coats (no undies) and two coats of Seche Vite.

To start with, I love the look I got. It’s a bit like the jelly sandwich I did a couple weeks ago; the deep jelly and holo glitters make it look very similar. What I don’t like, though, is that it looks completely unlike my intention. The red glitters kind of take over the purple polish, so much so that you can barely tell it’s purple. This could probably be remedied with adding less glitter; regardless of how the glitter affects the color, it needs to go anyway. You can see the stray bits of fine glitter I just couldn’t get out of my cuticle. I hate that.

The photos in the sun are a little more true to what the polish looks like away from the studio. The purple is a little more visible in the studio than anywhere else. In the sunlight, though, you can really see all the glitter and the depth from the jelly, so it’s got that going for it, which is nice.

Also: no offense intended for psychos and vampires. Just saying.

Manicure Monday: Red Glitter on Green

Posted on May 5, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

It’s another crazy Manicure Monday glitter feast! Today I’m wearing Wet ‘n Wild’s Club Cabaret over Essie’s Navigate Her. It looked different in my head for sure, but I’m still into it.

First I put down two coats of Navigate Her. This is a shade I’ve worn a lot lately for various swatches and things; it’s so soft that it looks good as undies for any glitter. I chose it for this mani because I wanted a green to complement the red in Club Cabaret, and this was the only green that didn’t challenge the darker colors for dominance. It also seems to look different at different angles; in the photo where I leaned my nails back, you can see it looks a bit more yellow there than in the others, and I’m not sure why.

Club Cabaret is a lightly tinted base with black, silver, and red hexes of various sizes. I’m not sure if it’s tinted on purpose, or if the red glitters bled a little, but it seems kind of suspicious. I didn’t get much of a payoff; these W&W bottles have these really wide brushes, and while they pick up a lot of glitter, I don’t get much of it on my nails. Instead I just get clear polish flooding my cuticles. To achieve this look, I brushed the glitter onto the end of a makeup wedge and rolled it on, the way one might roll on a stamped design. I could have gotten this look trying to brush or dab it on, but it would have taken a long time to do, and there’s no guarantee it would have been applied this evenly or cleanly. Cleanup was a pain, but it was worth it.

Seeing as I planned this manicure months ago, it’s accidentally festive for Cinco de Mayo. I love it when that happens.

Swatch Saturday: Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer’s Watch the Walls

Posted on May 3, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

For Swatch Saturday this week, I’m wearing a neon glitter explosion from Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer called Watch the Walls. I’ve got one thick coat of it over Essie’s Fiji, Navigate Her, and Mint Candy Apple. It’s like there’s a party on my nails, we invited the president for funsies, and he actually showed up. I absolutely adore BEGL glitter toppers because they’re so fun. They really are like dance parties.

I think my cuticle oil melted the logo off the bottle. 🙁

The blue-to-pink shift in the shimmer is the most evident here. Look at it!

Watch the Walls is a clear glitter topper with loads of different glitters; there are so many I can’t list them all. There are stars and butterflies, dots and squares, hexes big and small. There’s even a blue-to-pink-shifting shimmer that adds the right amount of sparkle to an already visually stunning polish. While this polish wasn’t made for me, I almost feel like it was, because it has everything I love: bright colors, big shapes, tons of things going on at once. It’s perfect for me. I felt a little weird putting it on over pastels, though, but I think it works. It definitely looks great over Mint Candy Apple.

For once, I’m reviewing a BEGL that, as of my writing this, is still in stock in the BEGL store. Not only is it in stock, but it’s on sale! Grab it before it’s gone.

Wacie Wednesday: Virgo Supercluster

Posted on April 30, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

I forget if I wrote about this last week, but I’ve finally swatched all the Wacie Nail Co. polishes I intended for the “spring” launch. Some I really liked, some I’m rethinking, but we’ll see how it turns out when we launch for reals in June. The polish I’m wearing for Wacie Wednesday this week is something I made while I was experimenting and hasn’t made it into a collection yet. It’s called Virgo Supercluster, and I’m wearing three coats of it with two coats of Seche Vite.

Virgo Supercluster is a black jelly with various sizes of silver holo hex glitters. It dries quickly, probably because there’s more glitter in this bottle than lacquer. Since this is a jelly, you have the choice of layering it over a black polish to get a huge glitter payoff, or foregoing undies for the dimensional layers of glitter. It also dries with texture, so you can wear it like a matte textured polish, or you can wear it with top coat. It’s versatile for a black jelly. The big downside, however, is that cleanup is a nightmare. Even after the most careful of applications, I still spent a half hour trying to clean up my cuticles, and I did a crap job of it because I was trying to hurry so I could play video games. I love the way all this glitter looks, but I’m starting to think, for the first time in my life, I need to cool it on the glitter.

Outdoor, mostly cloudy

I like this look overall, but it could probably benefit from being reformulated. I love the way it evokes space and suspension of galaxies in the universe, but I cannot forget how long it took to clean up.

Manicure Monday: Gold and Glitter Magic

Posted on April 28, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

Manicure Monday this week was amazingly fun. I’ve got two polishes that, at first, don’t look like they would pair together well at all. Somehow, though, it works. I’ve got on three coats of Disney Villain Varnish Queen of Hearts, with Digital Nails’s When Life Gives You Lemons as an accent. Photos were taken in the studio and outdoors.

When I think of the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, I don’t think of gold. Just saying. Regardless of what villain this polish was meant to evoke, it’s a beautiful rich, warm gold with tiny microglitters. It takes three coats of achieve full opacity, but the application is smooth and easy. I kind of feel bad that I don’t use it very often. This is the first time I’ve used it as the main color in a manicure, and I didn’t realize what a beauty it is. It’s totally gorgeous.

When Life Gives You Lemons is a Digital Nails glitter. I feel like that’s all I need to say. It’s a clear base with an impressive show of purple and gold glitters, yellow holo dots and stars, tiny bar glitter (which I actually didn’t notice until I was reviewing my photos), shreds, iridescents…. The sheer amount of glitter in this bottle should be overwhelming, but isn’t. It spreads smoothly and evenly, even the large shapes. It’s also incredible in the sunlight.

While I’m not sure where you can still find the Villains Varnish collection, Digital Nails still has a few bottles of When Life Gives You Lemons in their etsy store. (It feels really good to review something that’s still available, for once.) The price is a bit higher than usual, but it was created as a charity item, with the profits from each bottle going to Alex’s Lemonade Stand, and will fund cancer research. To date, this and its sister polish, I’m a Survivor, are the most expensive polishes I’ve ever bought, but I know I bought more than nail polish; I bought a little bit of hope.

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