Swatch Saturday: American Apparel’s Neon Violet

Posted on July 19, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

It’s Swatch Saturday, and I’m wearing the last of my American Apparel Neons. Of course, this one is the weirdest I’ve worn yet. Neon Violet is a gorgeous color, but changes dramatically in every lighting condition. In the studio and outdoors, it’s a cool magenta, but in others it’s a very dark purple. I’m wearing three coats of it with one coat of Seche Vite.

Since this is such a dark color, the application was easy with this one. The first coat went on opaque, which didn’t happen with the rest of the neons. It’s so dark and opaque that my white under-coat was completely unnecessary. As with the other neons, Neon Violet dries matte.

Outdoors, it’s even brighter than in the studio. It’s weird, isn’t it? The photos after the outdoor shots were taken in my kitchen, and the color shown here is much more representative of what it really looks like. This color is the one I’m more likely to see, because I’m rarely in harsh light like in the studio. This color change is odd, and while I usually notice a change, it’s never this drastic.

Outdoors, overcast

Indoors, incandescent light

Next week is the last of my American Apparel haul, so stay tuned if you feel like it.

Summer of Untrieds Day 10: Purple

Posted on July 10, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

The Summer of Untrieds Challenge requires me to wear purple today, so I went with Ciate’s Pillow Fight, a dusky, dreamy lilac creme. I’m wearing three coats of it with one coat of Seche Vite top coat. All photos were taken in the studio today.

This Ciate experience went a little better than my last; Hopscotch was never fully opaque, even after three coats. Pillow Fight is nice, though. It applied well and dried pretty quickly. My brush had a loose hair in it though, which looks like it came off on my pinky nail. Lame.

I’m not sure how much I like the color, though; I don’t feel like I’m pulling it off well. It’s so soft and really pretty in the bottle, but it doesn’t look like much on me, at least not on its own. I bet it would look awesome in a gradient or with some glitter.

On a side note, it feels like this month is moving so slowly because I’ve been painting my nails and posting every single day. I actually like it a little. The first half of this year went by so quickly and quietly, and that kind of unnerves me.

Manicure Monday: Vesper

Posted on June 30, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

It’s Manicure Monday again, and I’m excited because it’s a wacie.com first: textured polish! I’ve been buying these up like mad, but this is the first time I’ve ever featured one on the blog. This is OPI’s Liquid Sand in Vesper; I’m wearing three coats of it without topcoat.

Vesper is a deep plum polish with black grainy glitter. You can’t see much of the purple, except around the edges of the nails. The first coat presented more purple, but multiple coats makes it harder to see. It dries with a coarse, gritty texture, as is intended. It sparkles a bit more in lower lighting; in the studio, it just kind of looks like spray-on truck bed liner. I couldn’t capture that in the studio. I probably could have in the sunlight, but I was late taking pictures today and it was pretty dusky by the time I got outside.

This isn’t to say I don’t like this polish, because I do. Nothing says summer fun like a plum, right? However, it’s not my favorite Liquid Sand. My favorites are still the ones with more emphasis on the glitter than on the texture. In any case, it’s a cool look, and I’m not sure if textured polishes are passe yet, but I’m happy to finally get around to reviewing one.

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: 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.

Wacie Wednesday: Dusk

Posted on April 23, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

This Wacie Wednesday is a little late because I had to worry about taking a final exam and worrying about making it to the bar in time for happy hour. I love my blog and I love my readers, but I love beer, too. This week, I’m wearing Dusk from Wacie Nail Company. This is three coats with two coats of top coat.

Dusk is a creamy twilight purple. Basically, I was fooling around in my polish workshop, and I challenged myself to make a purple, and this is what I came up with. The polish has a ton of sparkle, but when I applied it, it dried matte and flat on its own, giving an almost metallic appearance. The topcoat really brings out the shimmer, making it exactly as it does in the bottle. It went on pretty easily, but the formula was still thick, even after pouring lots of thinner in it. One big disadvantage to this polish was how difficult it was to clean up. I used some mica powder in it; I’m totally winging the polish mixing this here, so I don’t know if this was a no-no or not. Anyway, the problem I had was the same problem I had with Gold Rush: cleanup took twice as long because the pigment I used was immune to acetone. It’s possible, but totally ridiculous.

Dusk may be my favorite part of the day. I love watching the sky turn dark with night; it reminds me of the long walks home from the bus stop when I was a student, or more recently, when I was walking to the convenience store, counting change on my way there to make sure I had enough quarters for cat food. It’s a beautiful time of transition: the crickets start to chirp, the songbird quiet down for the night, and the smells of dinner waft from houses to the sidewalk. I wasn’t seeking to capture that when I made this, but I love that it happened.

Sunlight

Okay, so no Wacie Nail Co. launch this week. I think I’m aiming for June now. I’m going on vacation in mid-May and I would feel like a jerk launching a store and then going on vacation for two weeks. So hopefully, June will be the launch, and then I have the whole summer to dedicate to pouring polish. Yay.

Manicure Monday: Dainty Glitter Crackle

Posted on January 13, 2014 by Stacie Wacie

I’m always afraid of manicures like this. They never turn out the way I want them. Those light, girlish pinks are never opaque enough, and in my experience, crackle polishes won’t crackle if you look at them sideways. Thankfully, this one turned out quite well.

I have no clue what that string is hanging off my nail. I swear it wasn’t there when I took the photos.

The light pink I used this week is Wet ‘n Wild’s Sugar Coat. After three coats, I still had a visible nail line, but it was very shiny and pretty regardless. The crackle, China Glaze’s Luminous Lavender, is more subtle than I expected. It wasn’t the glitterbomb the bottle makes it look like. It dries matte is somewhat gritty, so it takes a good top coat to bring out the shine in the glitter. Overall, I like this look. These soft, dainty manicures always make me feel different, like less really is more. I feel like I’ve gone on that tirade before in another post. I’m not a less is more sort of person, but manicures like these make me feel like it’s true, like it’s not so bad being feminine and sweet, like I could be that person in the future. Whether I actually want to be that person remains to be seen. Also, you can even really tell I nicked the polish off my middle finger nail while I was chopping vegetables for dinner last night.

I tried something different this week: using a brush instead of the pointed cotton swabs to clean up my cuticles. After buying four packs of them and blowing through them in two weeks, I decided that investing in a good brush was really a more efficient and less wasteful solution. I settled on an angled eyebrow brush from Nyx. It was thin, flat, and would give me just the right amount of space between my polish and my cuticle. The brush didn’t make it past the first cleanup phase. I like to clean up after every step, and so I was cleaning up the three coats of pink before I put on the crackle when it started shedding. Fibers were coming out in the acetone, on my polish, all over the place. I ended up making an emergency trip to Walgreens to find the pointed cotton swabs, only they were out. I bought an eyeliner brush that’s a little thicker than the one I had, but it got the job done, for now. I’ll probably have to go to the art supplies store to grab a paintbrush that can handle the acetone.

Wet ‘n Wild’s Sugar Coat, China Glaze’s Luminous Lavender

Manicure Monday: Glitter Half-Moon Over Amethyst

Posted on October 21, 2013 by Stacie Wacie

Today’s nail experiment surprises me with its elegance.

It took me forever to figure out what to do this week. I had two randomly chosen polishes; one is a very powerful, commanding purple with a blue flash, and the other is a dainty glitter topper with a slight blue tint. In tests, I couldn’t get them to work together. Putting the glitter on top of the purple always cancelled out the shifting colors, and my nails are so short that making thick necktie stripes would not have worked. I was totally out of ideas, and it didn’t occur to me until just before I started that I should use the glitter as the undies for a half moon mani. Best idea ever.

Sinful Colors’s Hottie, Sally Hansen’s Purple Potion

To me, this is like the nail equivalent of an evening gown. The purple conjures images of both royalty and jewels. The glitter is the sexy underwear beneath. It lays a foundation that is inconspicuous, but adds a nice touch of sparkle that supports the purple without overpowering it. I’m really surprised I could get such an elegant mani that’s also so simple and quick to do.

This is blurred to show you the glitter and the blue shimmer.

It was rainy when I took the first couple of photos, and as soon as I sat down to write, the sun came out, so I took a one more.

Manicure Monday: Matte Gold Sparkles

Posted on August 19, 2013 by Stacie Wacie

Here is another great manicure ruined by cheap top coat.

It started so well. I used two coats of this very dark, very opaque OPI shade called We’ll Always Have Paris. It looked purplish in the fluorescent supermarket lights, and when I got home with it, it was like a deep brown. It still looks purple in direct sunlight, but it’s brown enough that it worked for my purpose this week. I’m still not entirely sure what color it even is, and I’ll admit it I just bought it for it’s name, because I’m kind of obsessed with France. I love these dark, vampy colors, though. They remind me of middle school, when I wasn’t allowed to wear black nail polish (or black lipstick, or dye my hair black), but I could get away with just about any other dark color. As a result, I wore lots of of dark purples and silvers and browns to get the same effect. I still love how it makes my nails look.

The notch on the ring finger is from picking at dried polish around the cuticle. Entirely my fault.

The gold sparkles are As Gold as It Gets by Essie. This is one of the first Essies I ever bought myself, way back around Christmas when I’d gotten some money, and I had to walk the whole mile to Walgreens to get a bottle of acetone because the nearer store was out. While I was there, I checked out the nail polish. I’d come all that way, right? I didn’t yet own any Essie polishes, I had money rolling around in my pocket, I splurged and bought as many as I could carry. I spent literally every cent I had on Essie polishes and acetone. Anyway, I love the Essie LuxEffects line, and I like this one in particular. It gives any color an iridescent warmth and a unique finish, one that’s different from gold leaf or glitter. Adding the matte top coat to it guarantees you can see every piece of gold.

OPI’s We’ll Always Have Paris, Essie’s As Gold as It Gets, Revlon’s matte top coat

Somehow, I don’t know how this happened, the top coat completely smudged my tips. Somehow, it ate through three layers of polish, even though I’d given it ample time to dry so as to avoid this. I am so mad at myself for using up all my Seche Vite. I think I’m going to just buy one of those mega large bottles and be done with it.

Manicure Monday: Purple and Neutral Curves with Rhinestones

Posted on July 29, 2013 by Stacie Wacie

I went a little overboard last week. I finally got the nail art accessories I bought on Amazon; they shipped from China and took ages to get here. I’m thinking about buying more, though. I got like ten rolls of striping tape, tons of rhinestones and pearls, and fimo sticks for about seven dollars, including shipping. This could be either the best thing or the worst thing to happen to my weekly manicure.

The middle finger’s stone is supposed to be a bow, but whenever I see it, I think about mitosis. I might spend too much time doing science.

When I started with this one, I’d tested it on my white mannequin hand. The white base color had given me a greater contrast between the light colors. It looks fine when light is directly on it, but in a room that’s not so well lit, it’s hard to tell them apart. That’s where the rhinestones came in. That, and I couldn’t not use them.

Urban Decay’s Sidecar and Smog, Sinful Colors’ Bali Mist

I used Urban Decay’s Naked lacquer set a few months ago, and I still feel a little guilty about having bought it. I’m a huge fan of Urban Decay and their Naked palettes, so adding the lacquer set to my collection was a no-brainer. Of course, when I got it, I was disappointed to find that they were all mini bottles, and that I’d spent almost thirty dollars on mini bottles. I mean, I’m glad I have them, I love all the colors, and a quick search on Sephora.com reveals they’re out of stock, but I’m still a little mad at myself for spending that much. That said, Sidecar is my new favorite neutral. I started with two coats of it before I added all the other nonsense, and part of me wishes I’d just left it on. It’s so understated, but still so shimmery and soft.

Also, that quick search on Sephora.com revealed that Urban Decay has a couple of nail colors that aren’t part of the Naked brand. I think I need them.

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