Swatch Saturday: American Apparel’s Neon Coral

Posted on June 28, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

Swatch Saturday is right on time this week! We’re on the second bottle of my most recent American Apparel haul. This is called Neon Coral, though I think it’s really more of an orange. It’s the perfect polish to wear today, too; it’s 97 degrees outside and this polish looks the way the weather feels. I’m wearing three coats of Neon Coral with one coat of Seche Vite. As with last week, the pinky and ring finger nails have two coats of white polish under the color.

I am really into these neons! I am so glad I bought all the ones I didn’t have. The formula is a bit thin, but is still easy to work with and covers well. The color payoff is huge, even without the use of white polish. It’s so bright, my fingers look instantly tanner. It’s delicious. These neons absolutely cannot be beat.

I find it interesting that the use of white polish makes such a small, almost undetectable, difference. I’ll continue to do this with the rest of the neon polishes, just to see if it really is unnecessary. It seems like this was always the disadvantage to neon polishes; the colors are beautiful, but they don’t cover and require white polish. If all six of these manage to break that trend, I will be incredibly pleased.

Manicure Monday: Orange and Monochrome Glitter

Posted on February 24, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

Today’s mani combines two of my favorite things: orange and glitter chaos.

I have on this week Courtney Orange from Sinful Colors, an orange with gold shimmer. I like orange polishes in general, but I like this one in particular; the golden aura gives it so much more. I’m wearing two coats of it here. I’m also wearing two coats of Sally Hansen’s Strobe Flash. I know I’m late to the black and white glitter party (again), but this is a look I still like, even if it’s a bit passe.

This is a look I’m not likely to get tired of. I love glitter, and I love how unpredictably this glitter applies and spreads. I just feel kind of bad that I covered up such a beautiful color.

Sinful Colors’s Courtney Orange, Sally Hansen’s Strobe Flash

Anyway, look forward to more of this sort of thing. I made my own take on the black and white glitter polish, as well as others with more color. I’m not letting this trend go away so easily.

Swatch Saturday: American Apparel’s Jupiter

Posted on December 14, 2013 by Stacie Wacie

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Manicure Monday: Neon Orange Dotticure

Posted on December 2, 2013 by Stacie Wacie

Nothing says December like neon orange!

Those bows are freaking cute.

I had a lot of fun doing these. It was a lot of work; first I needed three coats of white polish to make a underwear layer without any bald spots (I still had some), then I needed three coats of the orange to make that color solid. Adding the dots was tough; left hand looks awesome, right hand not so much, my toes are even worse (no, you don’t get to see them). I then put on three coats of Seche Vite for rigidity, a matte coat for a finish, then applied the bows with a healthy dot of super glue. Yeah. I didn’t finish these nails until like eight o’clock last night. I started them at noon. Overall, I like the look I got. And I thought a dotticure would be boring.

Sally Hansen’s Hard to Get, LA Colors’s Spat!, Julep’s Bess

The orange is LA Colors’s Spat!, which is an awesome orange so long as you have the appropriate white coat beneath. The formula is so watery and thin that it would be pretty tough to get the neon effect without it. The blue is Julep’s Bess, which dotted better than I thought it would. I thought it was going to be watery and thin, too, but this one held up quite well. I got the bows from Claire’s, and they made it through the night and this morning’s shower. I wonder how long they’ll hang on before they get snagged on something and come off.

Manicure Monday: Orange and Nude Sparkly Starburst

Posted on September 9, 2013 by Stacie Wacie

I feel like orange is a color that doesn’t get enough play. I only have a few orange pieces of clothing, and I only have a few bottles of orange polish, even though I have hundreds of bottles of polish. I guess it’s unpopular because it’s so bright and attracts a lot of attention, but that’s exactly why I like it.

This week, I made a starburst thing with orange polish over striping tape, nude, and holographic glitter. It was inspired by a stamp plate I have, with stripes fanning out over the nail. However, in all my test runs, I absolutely could not get the stamped design to cover my nail the way I wanted, so I tried it with the striping tape. I like this look, but I wish I’d used more pieces to make more lines, to make the color and glitter beneath slightly more noticeable.

Intentionally blurred to show off the glitter.

I worked with some great colors with week. The nude is Naked, from Urban Decay’s (now very rare) Naked nail set. I hated neutral nail colors before I got this set. Naked is such a subtle but gorgeous shade that I felt a little bad that I was going to cover up most of it. I added the Fairy Dust glitter on impulse; I thought a soft sparkle would make the nude lines stand out more. The orange is an Insta-Dri color called Heat Flash, and it’s fantastic. I got great coverage in one quick drying coat.

Urban Decay’s Naked, China Glaze’s Fairy Dust, Sally Hansen’s Heat Flash

I love this mani, but there are a few things I’ll do differently next time. First, I want to strike a higher contrast between the colors. I really want the starburst pattern to stand out, so I’ll use black over white or light blue over dark blue. Next, I’ll use more tape and add more lines. Maybe I’ll add rhinestones to the vertices to give it something extra. For now though, I’m pleased.

Manicure Monday: Orange and Feathers

Posted on June 17, 2013 by Stacie Wacie

I wasn’t sure about this feathered/fuzzy coat texture trend. I mean, it’s just non-reflective glitter, right? What’s even the point of that? I want my glitter to be so shiny it’s blinding. Go big or go home, right? I placed a Sephora order a few weeks ago and needed one thing to push me into enough points for the 500 point reward (don’t ask, my logic module doesn’t work when I’m shopping). I saw the Nails Inc. Feathers and grabbed a couple bottles, just to try it out. Meanwhile, I had this orange I didn’t really know what to do with. It confuses me. It’s too opaque to be a jelly but too sheer to be a creme. Glitter disappears in it, but I can still see my nail line. When I finally got the Feathers in the mail, I put them together.

This one looked better in my head, I think. I envisioned something like a glitter gradient, but the small fibers didn’t play well with that idea, and just formed colonies on the tips. I like it enough to keep it on, but I’ve gotten some interesting comments. One person described them as “strangely horrifying”, while another said they looked like bone shards stuck to bloody claws. Now I can’t unsee it.

Sinful Colors’s Big Daddy, Nails Inc. Feathers in York

For funsies, here’s a test manicure I did with different colors.

Essie’s Boxer Shorts and Nails Inc. Feathers in Cornwall

Manicure Monday: Brown and Orange Tips on Yellow

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Stacie Wacie

I don’t like these.

I had this yellow, and I didn’t really know what to do with it. I didn’t want to do another gradient right away, and I didn’t feel like trying dots or anything. My original plan was to use the French manicure guides, but I didn’t have enough after last week’s manicure, so I used tape.

Rhinestones! The ring finger is a heart shape, the thumb is a diamond.

I was kind of in a rush with this. I had people over this weekend, and they had car trouble and had to stay over an extra day, so I hurried to get them done. I made kind of a mess, and I made the mistake of using polishes that weren’t very opaque. I put thick coats of polish on, and it kind of migrated away from the tips and left me with some weird discolorations and stringy bits the tape lifted. The tape also pulled up some of the orange pieces, hence the rhinestones. Finally, I didn’t wait long enough to apply the top coat, so some smudging occurred. Basically, these nails are like the sad yellow markers from our childhoods that met the black marker a few too many times. They definitely looked better in my head, and could have turned out better if I had been able to take my time with them.

Bubbles and smudges and all kinds of sadness.

I love the color combination, though. It just came together very easily, and it wasn’t until yesterday when I saw this pillow in my living room that had been crocheted or knitted by someone’s grandmother using the same colors. I wonder if I was subconsciously influenced by it.

Bonder, Quick Canary, Orange Smoothie, Under Your Spell, Out the Door

This is the first time I ever used Wet ‘n Wild polishes, and they have this really wide brush that wasn’t suitable for detail work like this. I bet they get really nice coverage in different situations, but I don’t think I’ll use them again for this purpose. I put on a lot of top coat to smooth down the rhinestones, and it almost feels like Seche Vite again. I miss it.

Manicure Monday: White, Brown, and Orange Dot Gradient

Posted on April 1, 2013 by Stacie Wacie

After last week’s accidental Italian food manicure, I knew one thing was true. I probably couldn’t do much worse than pizza nails, and if I did, I would really have to screw up for that to happen. I was in a tricky spot, though. After seeing many of the nail artists on Reddit doing designs with dots, I wanted to try one. I wanted this magnificent waterfall of polka dots cascading down my little nails. After searching for tutorials, I found a tutorial from Chalkboard Nails and followed it as well as I could. It’s not quite there, but it’s not bad for my first attempt.

It kind of looks like animal spots, now that I think of it.

These are some of the saddest looking bottles of polish I have. The Claire’s polish doesn’t have a name, but it’s chunky and thick and even though there’s some light glitter in the bottle that doesn’t apply well to the nail, making it bumpy and coarse instead. The old Maybelline polish was an outlet store find about eight years ago; I can’t believe I even still have it. Wait, yes, I can, because I use everything until I lose it. The orange/yellow LA Colors is part of my paint your nails so you don’t go crazy shopping binge. It’s kind of watery, kind of uneven, but it looks nice against the white. I was worried it wouldn’t show up well at all.

I always feel weird using Orly and Seche Vite with these old and cheap polishes. It’s having Dom Perignon with my Big Mac. Earlier manicures with that white polish were never successful; it would always slough off in flakes like dandruff by the second or third day. Of course, that was before I discovered that there was a purpose for top coat after all.

Manicure Monday: Orange Jelly Sandwich

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Stacie Wacie

I have nothing to say about these nails, except that they look like pizza and I can’t get past it.

The orange polish is called Y’All Come Back Ya Hear, and it’s from OPI’s Texas collection from 2011. I got it and a few others from the collection for free some time I had a rewards coupon from Ulta. I was pretty unhappy with them because I didn’t expect them to be translucent, which is my own fault for not testing them first. It wasn’t until recently that I learned of the jelly sandwich and gained a new appreciation for these sheer colors. I did my first jelly sandwich with Too Hot Pink to Hold ‘Em from the same collection, and I loved it. I had the same high hopes for this manicure, but things kind of fell apart when I couldn’t find the right glitter.

My test nails started with a coarse holographic glitter that looked okay, but was missing something. I tried almost every glitter I had, and none of them gave me that Eureka! moment I get when I know I’ve found the right one. At least, not until I saw It’s a Trap-eze sitting on the top of my polish box. I picked it up and tried it on my mannequin hand. This was the one.

In tests, it looked great. In practice, on my actual nails, it looks like pizza. It looks like vodka sauce. There was more white color in the glitter polish than I thought there would be, which is why the orange looks creamy and tomato-ish. The orange cancels out most of the colors from the glitter, which is why only the greens seem to stand out. I just don’t know about these. I mean, I’ll live with them for the week, they’re not that awful, but I wanted something like the pink ones that got a lot of attention from everybody.

This is the first full manicure I’ve done with the Seche Vite top coat. I used it instead of the Top 2 Bottom I usually use because the glitter went on kind of thick and I’d wrecked one during my frog hunting adventure yesterday. I knew the Seche would dry faster and prevent any other accidents, so I used it instead. I never want to use another top coat.

So yeah, this week was a nail fail, but it’s okay. It was a good experiment.

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