Tag Archives: Wet ‘n Wild

Swatch Sunday: Wet ‘n Wild’s Everybody Loves Redmond

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Welcome to Swatch Sunday! Here’s the second swatch of the weekend. I’m wearing Wet ‘n Wild’s Everybody Loves Redmond today; here’s three coats with one coat of Seche Vite.

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Everybody Loves Redmond is a red creme. Application was good; at the first coat, the color goes on really nicely, though it has a jelly/crelly-like sheerness. With additional coats, the coverage gets better, but my nail lines are still visible even after three. The polish dries quickly and with a glossy finish; I used top coat for extra shine and protection.

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I like this polish. It’s not fancy, but I’m really impressed with how it looks alone. The VNL is kind of annoying, but the color intensity and shine are both really gorgeous. Of course, this polish is also suitable as the color for a glitter sandwich, or anything you may need a jelly-ish polish for. I’ve enjoyed wearing it! It’s definitely not bad for the price.

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So I did some checking to see if Wet ‘n Wild still sells this Fast-Dry line; they do, but on their website it’s marked down and some shades are unavailable. Wet ‘n Wild polishes are sold in stores nationwide.

My father gave me this polish for Christmas last year, haha.

Manicure Monday: Freehand Grey

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Welcome back to Manicure Monday! As you noticed, I took the holiday weekend off from swatching, so we have some nail art to check out this week. My base color is Wet ‘n Wild’s Gray’s Anatomy, and my freehand painting was done with a striping brush and OPI’s We’ll Always Have Paris. All nails are topped with one coat of Seche Vite top coat.

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I’ll just get this out of the way: I don’t know how I feel about the freehand. I’m a little embarrassed that I still suck at hand-painting, but in a way, it’s sort of charming. I wanted something simple but uniform, but it’s a bit irregular. It doesn’t look as irregular in real life as it does in photos, so I feel a little weird about that. I never do this stuff, so it’s really no wonder it’s not perfect. Maybe it’s okay that it’s not perfect. It looks arty-crafty and like it was done by a real person.

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We’ll Always Have Paris lends a lot to the DIY mani look. These burgundy/wine polishes are always a little translucent, and I guess that’s why there’s a lot of unevenness. I just wanted a dark color, something that was as severe as black, that would complement the color shift in the base polish. I think this one worked pretty well.

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The shift in Gray’s Anatomy is the focus of this polish, as it should be. You can totally see past the wonky freehand painting and really enjoy the colors. The writing on the label wore off a long time ago, but I almost forgot this is a Wet ‘n Wild Polish. I paid two dollars for it at the most. Not bad for two dollars!

I bought these polishes myself.

Manicure Monday: Blurple Jelly Sandwich

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I’ve been looking forward to this manicure for a lot of reasons. Number one, I adore this color. Number two, I’m using a Wacie Nail Company polish in an actual manicure. Number three, Wacie Nail Co. sales info is coming! I’m wearing two coats of Wacie Nail Company’s Dang! under three coats of Wet ‘n Wild’s Black Light Party and one coat of Alter Ego‘s She Shines top coat.

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On its own, Black Light Party isn’t that special on its own. It’s very translucent, and though it’s the perfect candidate for the jelly sandwich, I don’t feel like it gives enough coverage to make wearing it alone worthwhile. I put it on my toes without the glitter, and it just looks like a watery sad mess. The color is beautiful, though, and the pink-gold shimmers throughout really make it. It gives the holo glitters underneath just a tad more shine and fun.

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I was a little uncomfortable using Dang! as the glitter in this mani, but I think it worked out well. Mostly I was unsure whether I should. Even though Wacie Nail Co. has been in the works now for at least a year, I feel a little weird seeing it in a manicure. I also feel a little like a jerk talking about a polish nobody can buy yet. I was also unsure of how well Dang! would work as a full-coverage glitter. I didn’t have to worry about that, though; two coats was enough to cover my nail completely.

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In the sun, the blurple is much more on the purple side, and the glitters show really nicely through it. The heart glitters are a lot more obvious.

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So I promised Wacie Nail Co. info, and here it is: The shop will (finally) open this month! wacie.com’s second anniversary is Wednesday, and I’d hoped to have a couple of special polishes in stock by then, and to have Dang! in stock today, but it’s taken a lot longer to get some supplies in than I expected. I’d also like to bring some swatchers on board so you don’t have to take my word for it. I think that, at the soonest, the end of March is when you’ll finally be able to buy your own Wacie Nail Company polishes.

I bought these polishes myself.

Manicure Monday: On the 101

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Sorry for two late posts in a row; today relatives were in town. I didn’t finish this manicure until like seven o’clock today, and I just now have a chance to actually write about it. Today’s polish is one I love a lot, On the 101 from Wet ‘n Wild. I have on three coats with one coat of Ciate’s Speed Coat Pro.

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On the 101 is a black jelly with various sizes of metallic red glitter. Application wasn’t too bad; Wet ‘n Wild have their really wide brush, and I usually have huge problems with it; I get a ton of polish in the cuticle, where I need it the least. I didn’t really have that problem today, though. This went on pretty cleanly. The glitters are a little hard to get, so if you want to wear this alone as a glitter jelly, three coats is definitely necessary. Even with black undies, you still may want two coats just to ensure maximum glitter pretty. It also dries somewhat matte, so if you want high shine, you’ll need a top coat.

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So this is one of my favorites. I can’t remember if it was late 2012 or early 2013, but I was living alone, and I was kind of using nail polish as a bribe to get myself to walk the half-mile to Dollar General to get cat food, ramen, cheap wine, and other broke girl necessities. Previously, the only nail polishes they had were many varieties of LA Colors. I’d already bought a ton of those, and wasn’t interested. In fact, on the day I found this, it seems like I wasn’t even interested in buying polish, I was just passing through the aisle and noticed the new Wet ‘n Wild display. This particular bottle was unlike anything I had at the time, and even though I’d seen indies like this, I’d never seen anything like it in a store. I had to have it. I don’t think I could have even spared the two dollars it cost me, but I had to have it. I bought it so long ago, but today’s the first time I ever used it.

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It was late when I took these, so I wasn’t able to get sunlight shots of it. I bet this is huge in the sunshine though. It shines really nicely indoors.

Finally, let me apologize about the charm. Since I was using only one polish, I wanted to add something extra, but I don’t have any red acrylic bows, like I’d usually use. I had this cute silver bow, so I put it on with a tiny dab of super glue. I don’t know if I used too much, or if it’s a remnant from the last time I wore it, but there’s this dried white unsightly mess all around it. It definitely looks worse in the photos than it does in real life, I really had no idea it was there until I saw the photos. I’m really embarrassed.

Manicure Monday: Glitter Explosion over Orange

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Manicure Monday is so fun this week! I’ve got two fun polishes, Wet ‘n Wild’s Orange Smoothie and Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer‘s St. Nick’s Sweet Treats. I love these together so much. I have on three coats of Orange Smoothie, one brushed coat of Sweet Treats on my accent nails, and one coat of Seche Vite.

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Orange Smoothie is a sheer orange with golden shimmer. I like it, for the most part: the consistency was about average, and it dried pretty quickly with a nice shine. The brush was stupidly wide and made a mess, so application wasn’t terribly easy. It is still pretty sheer; I can see my very thin nail line through three coats of it. However, it looks so nice when the light hits it that I don’t even care.

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St. Nick’s Sweet Treats is a veritable glitter explosion. It completely makes this manicure. This is the glitter topper to end all glitter toppers. The glitters are mostly white, red, and gold, with smaller glitters in different colors and silver micro-flakies. I am not exaggerating when I say there is a little of everything in this bottle. It applies beautifully; what you see here is one brushed coat. There was no dabbing here, no blobbing, no sponging, no nonsense. The lacquer-to-glitter ratio is perfect. I had no trouble with this at all.

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Unfortunately, it stormed all day, and so I don’t have any gorgeous sunlight photos to post. I know this would be a stunner outside for sure.

Manicure Monday on Tuesday: Pre-Vacation Celebration in Blue

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Outdoors, sunlight

Outdoors, sunlight

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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.

Manicure Monday: Red Glitter on Green

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

Manicure Monday: Dainty Glitter Crackle

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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.

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.

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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

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

Manicure Monday: Bronze Glitter Gradient

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It’s like I dipped my nails in shiny chocolate. It’s not chocolate, though. It’s glitter!

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As you can see, I used two polishes this week. Wet ‘n Wild’s 2% Milk is a very pale, very sheer pink. The first coat was so sheer that it was nearly invisible. The second coat was less so, but was still very transparent and natural-looking. I’ve never gotten the point of these sheer pinks that don’t cover anything. I guess they’re useful for French manicures, but I never got the point of those either.  Orly’s So Go-Diva is a bronze glitter suspended in a clear base, and I had some trouble with this one. Before I started working with it, there was this layer of clear polish hovering over the glitter, and so when I pulled the brush out, I’d have maybe five pieces of glitter on an otherwise bare nail. I got this look by applying it with an eyeshadow sponge; the sponge soaked up the extra lacquer and still let me place the glitter where I wanted it.

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I could have done a better job with the gradient, probably. Since 2% Milk was so sheer, I felt I needed a thick layer of glitter to cover the nail line, and so that’s why it goes down so far. I tried to exercise some control, I honestly did. This is actually the second attempt at this manicure today; my gradient work was awesome, but I tried a jelly sandwich thing with the pink, but I ended up hating it and took it off. I’m not especially happy with this gradient, but I like it enough to keep it on. However, it has crossed my mind to just sponge the glitter onto the whole nail and keep the sheer pink out of it.

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This is a good festive manicure, I think. I never do themed or holiday nails, but I love when they happen by accident.

Wet 'n Wild's 2% Milk, Orly's So Go-Diva

Wet ‘n Wild’s 2% Milk, Orly’s So Go-Diva

You’ll see that layer of clear is gone from the Orly bottle. Out of curiosity, I tested it to see if the glitter spreads any better, and it does. I think I’m just going to pour out that extra bit of lacquer from every bottle from now on.

Manicure Monday: Red Jelly Sandwich

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Did I ever tell you guys about how much I love red nails? I love red nails. I love glitter. I love the way this turned out.

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My last attempt at a glitter sandwich was in March, and if you’re longtime reader, you’ll remember this nail fail that resembles Italian food. When I did that manicure, this was the one I wanted. Pretty much as soon as I discovered Wet ‘n Wild’s Everybody Loves Redmond was slightly translucent on the first coat, I knew I was going to have to do this. Of course, the coverage seems to build, so had I used a bit more, the glitter would have been totally covered. You can see this on the middle finger, somewhat; I’d uncovered some of the glitter during cleanup, and did a second coat on just that nail. As a result, the glitter is harder to see.

In direct sunlight, but still indoors.

In direct sunlight, but still indoors.

Unfortunately, these labels don’t stand up to my haphazard storage method of having everything sitting around in a box. I have a couple bottles of these Wet ‘n Wild Fast Dry polishes, and all of the labels are completely rubbed off. Anyway, I like this color a lot. Indoors, it’s an orangey red, but outside in the sunlight, it’s very red, very bright. I’ll go ahead and admit I had pretty low expectations for this color, but I’m very impressed.

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The glitter is Julep’s Paris. I got it in a mystery box sometime over the summer, but it’s exactly the kind of thing I would have chosen and purchased on my own. Even though there’s a ton of glitter in the bottle, it’s meant to be used as a top coat, to give a manicure the right amount of sparkle without being over the top. Of course, I don’t like things that aren’t over the top, so I went crazy with this glitter, adding three thick coats before putting down the last layer of red.  As a result, the bottle is two-thirds empty now.

Wet 'n Wild's Everybody Loves Redmond, Julep's Paris

Wet ‘n Wild’s Everybody Loves Redmond, Julep’s Paris

Also, let me tell you some about the topcoat I used this week. I’ve been buying a lot of indie products lately. Indie polish is the latest scourge on my wallet. It’s so gloriously inventive and completely unlike anything I could ever find in a store that the extra money and shipping fees are totally worth it. After the topcoat issues I had the past couple weeks, I decided to try Digital Nails’ topcoat, since I was buying their awesome new color-changing polish anyway. I’m pleased to report that it’s awesome. It dries in about the same time as Seche Vite.  I’m really impressed with it. Not that Digital Nails makes bad stuff, but I didn’t expect it to work so well. I’m wearing three coats here, and it gives me great shine and makes my nails rigid, which is something I look for in a topcoat. My nails are extremely soft and thin, and I rely on a hard topcoat to not only protect my color, but my whole nail. I would totally recommend it.

Oh Lord Jesus it's a fire.

Oh Lord Jesus it’s a fire.

The only problem is, it was clear when I started. I don’t know if this is an issue with the topcoat itself or the fact that I used it on cheap red nail polish, but now it’s an odd pink. It doesn’t look like the tint affects it in any way, which is good, but I don’t want this to happen every time I use it and having some weird brown topcoat after a few weeks. I guess we’ll see.