Manicure Monday: Multipass

Posted on November 3, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

It’s the first Manicure Monday of November! I am so happy to be wearing these polishes today. I have on one coat of Digital Nails‘s Multipass over two coats of Essie’s After School Boy Blazer, topped with one coat of Ciate’s Speed Coat Pro top coat. Mul-ti-pass.

Sweater.

Multipass is a glitter topper based on Leeloo from The Fifth Element. It is described by Digital Nails as “a crazy clown car of color”, and was an attempt to “capture Leeloo’s essence in polish form”. The colors and shapes are evocative of her; blue glitters match her eyes, orange match her hair, white slices to match that weird flimsy bandage outfit she wears in that one scene. There are also some dark holo glitters and baby shimmers for added sparkle. If you ask me, this is spot-on. Digital Nails really nailed (intended) this one for sure. It couldn’t be closer to perfect.

Multipass was very easy to apply and dried quickly. I had no problems at all with glitters refusing to spread or thick, goopy base. It did eat up my top coat; I’ll definitely use something a bit thicker and glitter-friendly next time.

A quick word about my base polish: After School Boy Blazer is a deep blue-black creme. Application was easy, the polish dried quickly and with a high gloss. It’s very nice, but it was hard to clean off my cuticles. Maybe I deserve it for not being very careful with it. I chose this as the base because it’s the blue that interfered the least with the colorful glitters.

Direct sunlight.

Final word: I love this look. I am a huge, huge fan of Digital Nails’s glitter toppers, and I really think they hit this one out of the park.

Wacie Wednesday: Millefleur

Posted on October 29, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

Today’s Wacie Wednesday post is super exciting, because my brand new Wacie Nail Co. labels are making their debut on the blog! I am really excited about these, because labels were the last big hurdle to get over before I could finally open my shop. Now that I have them, Wacie Nail Company is super close to opening. We’re only five months behind schedule! To celebrate, we’re going to look at a new Wacie Nail Co. polish called Millefleur. I’m wearing one coat over Sally Hansen’s Hard to Get and Essie’s Mint Candy Apple and Navigate Her.

This bottle of Millefleur was kind of a dud. The name suggests it’s only flower glitter in this bottle, and the swatch suggests that as well. It’s not true, though. Besides the holo red hexes, there are holo red hearts. There are pink glass dots in addition to the pink slices, hexes, and dots; those are also nowhere to be seen on my nail. I don’t know what the deal is with that. The flowers came out easily, but everything else was at the bottom, I guess.

There’s a lot I could have done to improve this polish. Thinning it would be the best for it, I think; the consistency was too thick and dry time was rather long. It would probably help the elusive glitters distribute a bit more evenly. I’ll definitely keep these things in mind when I’m reformulating it. Maybe some color variety would help too; I do admit that I just dumped every pink and red glitter I had into one bottle. It could definitely do with some iridescent glitters, or maybe some Spectraflair. As it is, it’s rather one-dimensional, but that’s an easy fix.

I’m really excited about where Wacie Nail Co. is and where it’s going. Big things are coming up, so watch this space for the big news. For real this time!

Wacie Wednesday: Snowcrush

Posted on October 15, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

Snowcrush is the newest Wacie Nail Company polish! It is a clear glitter topper with white shreds and iridescent hex glitters. I’m wearing one coat over China Glaze’s Pelican Gray, Ciate’s Candy Floss, and Sally Hansen’s Limestone. All nails are topped with one coat of Color Club’s clear coat.

I love the look of all-white glitter toppers. They’re so effortlessly elegant. The white shreds you see happen to be the only white glitter I have, so I dumped a ton of it in a bottle, and used some fine iridescent shreds to fill it out. This is definitely a pretty simple polish, but it’s really pretty. For as little thought as I put into it, it has no business being this pretty right out.

White toppers also have the benefit of looking amazing over any color. As you can see, I wore it with some very bright polishes. Over black, the iridescent glitters would really shine. Over white, it would look like freshly-fallen snow (or at least what I imagine freshly-fallen snow looks like. I live in Florida. I wouldn’t know).

In the sunshine, this is crazy. You can’t see how much sparkle is coming from the iridescent glitters, but trust me, it’s blinding. I love iridescent glitters because they sparkle in any lighting condition.

Final word: this polish is a win. I love white glitters (they’re pretty over everything), shred glitters (they create the illusion of variety, even though it all came from the same bag), and iridescent glitters (shiny!). I’m really looking forward to making a batch of it this share with everyone.

Manicure Monday: Pale Gold and Glitter

Posted on October 13, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

As much as I hated to take off my cupcake nails, it’s Manicure Monday again. I’m moving on from my birthday mani to wear this sparkly gold one. This is Julep’s Amelia at three coats. The glitter is Essie’s On a Silver Platter, worn here at one coat. All nails are topped with Color Club’s clear coat.

Amelia is a sheer, frosty, pale gold polish. Three coats was definitely necessary for this one, because my nail line was still visible after two. In some lighting conditions, it’s still visible after three. As you can see, this one has a lot of frost, and as a result, a lot of visible brush strokes. Also, some weird bubbling occurred, but I’m not sure that’s a problem with the polish itself. Despite the formula, application was pretty easy. Julep polishes always tend to be a little thinner than I like them, and I end up with flooded cuticles and patchy coverage. This one is nice in that regard, I had no flooding and no issues with getting even coverage. If only the same were true with the brush strokes.

On a Silver Platter stole the show here, didn’t it? My gosh, this glitter is fantastic. The Essie website describes it as a “pearlescent gold with holographic violet glitter”. It’s just striking. I don’t usually like dark glitters in light bases, but I love this one a lot. Both the golden shine and the rainbow add something unique to the look. Application was easy; the glitters came out easily and spread well. And look at it in the sun! Gorgeous.

I can give or take Amelia, it’s not really anything special to me. This glitter, though, is something I need in my life forever.

Manicure Monday: Repurposed Top Coat with Resolute Glitter

Posted on October 6, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

It’s Manicure Monday! I had some fun with this week’s manicure. The holo polish I used this week wasn’t intended to be used as one, and I put a discontinued glitter topper over it. Here is Ulta’s Holographic “top coat” at three coats with Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer‘s Resolutions and Color Club’s clear coat.

This holographic top coat from Ulta originally came in a Nail FX set with three other top coats: there was a matte top coat, a UV-sensitive, a smoky top coat (which is a thin black jelly topper) and this holographic top coat. I bought this kit specifically for this holographic top coat, and I expected it would be something like a Spectraflair top coat. It’s definitely not suited to be a top coat. It is impossible to apply a thin and even coat over any polish. Thin coats are streaky and draggy, and even coverage requires at least two coats, and by then you’ve covered up whatever polish you were trying to improve. I gave up and decided to use three coats for full coverage. It looks pretty great this way. You’d never know it was meant to be a topper unless you specifically bought it for that purpose.

On the plus side, Holographic Top Coat does dry quickly. Application really took three coats, though. I was aiming for two, but even after two coats, I still had streaks and bald spots. Luckily, the third coat evened everything out. It would be a shame if it was still patchy, then it would be useless as both a top coat and a polish.

Resolutions is a glitter topper with mainly black hex and star glitters, but also contains blue shimmer and varieties of blue, pink, green and yellow glitter shapes. It’s a really fun look, especially with the silver polish; the look is cool, steely, and a little chaotic. Unfortunately, this guy is discontinued.

Final word: I’m surprised at how well I was able to take a crappy top coat and make a gorgeous manicure with it.

Swatch Sunday: Broadway Nails’s Pretty Duckling

Posted on October 5, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

So I’m doing something new on the blog this week. As of this post, I have 878 bottles of nail polish, about 500 of which I’ve never even used. I started doing Swatch Saturday as an outlet for my untrieds, and then I just ended up with a hundred Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquers. So this new feature, Swatch Sunday, will take a look at the other polishes in the queue.

My polish for this first official Swatch Sunday is Broadway Nails’s Pretty Duckling. I’m wearing three coats with one coat of Color Club’s clear coat.

Pretty Duckling is a yellow-tinted jelly polish with fine iridescent glitters. For the longest time, I couldn’t decide whether to use it alone or as a topper. I really wanted to try this over black, but I decided that the base had enough color to stand on its own. It’s still pretty translucent; the nail line is still pretty visible, but the color is still very bright.

Pretty Duckling was easy to apply, but due to the glitter size and quantity, the consistency is very thick. It’s almost like applying a textured polish, but this one actually dries with a smooth finish. It’s similar to those Sinful Colors glitters, like Hottie and Nail Junkie. It’s a very similar mix of glitter in a similar colored base. If you like those, you’ll like this.

This is especially vibrant in the sunshine. Also, it’s finally sunny again! I can’t remember the last time I could take an outdoor photo.

I like it alone, but it would also look great over a yellow creme, or any creme, really. I’m looking forward to trying it again soon.

Swatch Saturday: Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer’s St. Nick’s Sweet Treats

Posted on October 4, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

I take back everything I have ever said on this blog. In fact, I may as well just close it down. My swatch this week from Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer is the most perfect polish I have ever used, and I really doubt it gets better than this. This is St. Nick’s Sweet Treats, and I’m wearing one coat over China Glaze’s Pelican Gray, Essie’s Marathin, and Zoya’s Bevin, as well as one coat of Color Club’s clear coat. Seriously, this is the polish I want to wear for the rest of my life.

St. Nick’s Sweet Treats is a holiday-themed glitter topper that contains large amounts of red and gold glitters, and smaller quantities of purple, blue, and green metallic and holo glitters. Overall, the amount of glitter in this bottle is huge. There is so much glitter, so much shine, so much to look at it’s crazy. The best part: It doesn’t even matter what colors I use as undies. It’s barely visible beneath all that glitter. I could wear literally any color and it would look fantastic under all this confetti.

Application was surprisingly easy. You might think that all this glitter would clump and gather on itself, and that never happens. The glitters spread well and with even coverage. There’s also a pretty even representation of each type, even with the small colored glitters.

This is a crap photo, but I posted it anyway just to show you how shiny these glitters get. I used the built-in camera flash for this. The colors in the glitter really come alive here.

So, final word: Perfect. Application is perfect, appearance is perfect, everything about it is gorgeous and I love it. This is absolutely my favorite BEGL, and my polish of the year all years.

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.

Swatch Saturday: Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer’s Self-Satisfied

Posted on August 30, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

Swatch Saturday this week is glitter chaos! I’m wearing Self-Satisfied from Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer, a smorgasbord of neon glitters. I’m wearing one dabbed coat over Eaton Terrace from Nails Inc., and Saltwater Taffy and Skylight from Cover Girl, topped with one coat of Color Club’s clear coat.

BEGL describes Self-Satisfied as a glitter topper “predominantly yellow and green neon glitters with pink, blue, orange, and purple neon glitters, baby blue holo moons, fuchsia dots, and silver holo butterflies”. I’m not sure it’s possible to count every size, color, and type of glitter in this bottle. Attempting to do so would probably result in some kind of head-clutching space madness.

Since I dabbed this polish on, I’m not sure how long it took to dry, but it seemed dry enough after a 15 minute drying period. The glitters spread evenly enough, but I will admit that I placed a few here and there, just to cover some bare spots. Application is pretty typical for a glitter topper like this, but the look you get is so unique and so worth it.

This isn’t the first time I’ve worn Self-Satisfied; I brought it on vacation with me a couple months ago. I took a picture of my nails with the Washington Monument. I’m wearing it over Julep’s Cody.

Self-Satisfied, and well as its insane pink counterpart, Watch the Walls, are on sale at the BEGL store for $6 each. I adore both of these polishes, and I definitely say they are worth grabbing.

I’m going to hijack the end of this post to say goodbye to an old friend. Last August, I bought a four ounce bottle of Seche Vite. Everyone thought I was crazy to buy so much at once, but I was living alone at the time, I couldn’t get to Sally Beauty whenever I wanted, and I got tired of having to buy a new bottle every few weeks. It was so worth the $15 I paid for it. Last Wednesday, I used the very last of that giant bottle. That giant bottle of Seche Vite has gotten me through nearly every manicure in the past year. Good night, sweet prince.

This is the day I got it. My polish is OPI’s Get Your Number.

My interim top coat is Color Club’s clear coat. I’m not sure if this is a full-fledged top coat, but it dries quickly and leaves a nice shine, and that’s enough for me. This is my first time using it, so I don’t know how well it’s going to wear, but we’ll find out. Either way, it’s fun using something new.

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