Wacie Wednesday on Thursday: Purity

Posted on June 12, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

Wacie Wednesday is happening on Thursday today because I really struggled with whether I wanted to post it or not. I’ve been developing this color, called Purity, for quite a while now, and I’ve just never been able to get it right. I can’t get the blue jelly squishy enough, and it dulls the larger holographic glitter. I didn’t want to post it this week because it’s still not right, but I like how it looks anyway, so I’m going for it. Also, I’m in this post-vacation funk where nothing is interesting, so I’m kind of doing this just because I need something to do. This is three coats of Purity with one coat of Seche Vite.

Purity is (or is meant to be) a blue jelly with holographic silver glitters. They’re a bit hard to see in the polish; the holographic effect tends not to show up too well in the studio, and the unintended crelly effect of the blue base dulls them. As a result, it just looks like a pretty but unremarkable blue. Not to say there’s anything wrong with that, it’s beautiful color in itself and I love how it looks on me. It’s just not what I was going for. See how it looks in the bottle? That’s what I want, and I’ve been trying like hell to get it. I just can’t make it work.

It’s been cloudy and blah outside for a few days, so unfortunately, I couldn’t get any great photos in the sunlight. Sunlight usually saves my so-so glitter photos; couldn’t make that happen today. I actually took the studio shots last night, a few hours after I’d done the manicure. I took the outdoor shots this morning, but I just ended up getting great shots of sad cuticles. I’m a little embarrassed of these, actually.

Sad cuticles are sad.

Outdoors, cloudy as eff.

I love Purity, and I guess I’ll be taking it back to the workshop yet again for another reformulation.

Manicure Monday: Dark Labyrinth

Posted on June 9, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

For Manicure Monday this week, I’m wearing something new and exciting. This is Dark Labyrinth from Digital Nails, a feast of glitter and science. I’m wearing three coats of it with one coat of Seche Vite. Dark Labyrinth is a black jelly with teal, neon pink, and lime green hexes, followed up with green stars. If you look closely, you’ll also find black circles, stars, and hexes. There’s a method to this madness, which I’ll quote directly from Digital Nails:

“The concept is that the blackness of the jelly base upon layering, will obscure the shapes of the bright colors underneath, representing all that human kind knows about our universe.”

Maybe I’m still kinda high on the last episode of Cosmos last night, but I think this is an interesting and awesome way to interpret the nature of our universe. This was derived from an even greater quote from Galileo Galilei about the importance of the language of mathematics:

“Philosophy [nature] is written in that great book which ever is before our eyes — I mean the universe — but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. The book is written in mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.”

I love this polish. Even setting its concept aside, there is so much beauty in this polish. The neon colors and shapes jump right out at you, and only in certain lighting conditions can you see the darker ones. I was maybe a bit heavy-handed in my application; I’d hoped to see more of the black shapes through the jelly, but I really did obscure them quite well. I got such a great coverage that I forgot it’s a jelly base. It’s only when I see the few tiny black hexes scattered across the larger, brighter shapes I remember they’re there. This is likely true for many objects in space as well.

Outdoors, cloudy

I know I say this a lot, but polishes like this are the reason I came to indies. Here is a polish that’s not only gorgeous, but has something important and intelligent to say.

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.

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.

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.

Swatch Saturday: Blue Eyed Girl Lacquer’s Floppy. Hoppy. BUNNIES!

Posted on April 26, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

I think this is going to be my favorite Swatch Saturday for a long time. I know I have a tendency to exaggerate, but Floppy. Hoppy. BUNNIES! is probably my favorite polish in the known universe, and I’m so glad I finally got to do a full mani with it. I used it as an accent for my birthday manicure last year, and I was so in love with it that I couldn’t wait to wear it on all my nails. This is three coats of Floppy. Hoppy. BUNNIES! with two coats of Seche Vite.

This polish is a glitter jackpot. Pretty much every shape, size, color, and texture of glitter is swimming around in this soft blue crelly: pink, green, blue, purple, iridescent, holographic, metallic, hexes, stars, butterflies, and probably still some more I haven’t noticed yet. There’s so much going on in it. It’s like beautiful chaos on my nails. The crelly itself is very sheer; the first coat was so sheer I could barely detect it, but built up as I kept applying it. This definitely works out for the best, because you can see the glitters from the first coat through the third, giving that lovely glitter sandwich look.

Floppy. Hoppy. BUNNIES! reminds me why I got into indie polish. Every indie offers a fun, bold, and unique look that would be impossible to find anywhere else. I adore this polish in particular; it makes a huge statement, but does so in a charming, cheerful way, sort of like me. Unfortunately, this one had a very limited run, and quite rare since it’s been discontinued. If you’re lucky enough to find this in a blog sale or destash, do not hesitate to grab it.

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