Something Quick and Vampy

Hey everyone!  I've finished bottling for my sale tomorrow, but whenever I'm mixing polish, I absolutely never miss the chance ruin whatever mani I am wearing.  I always get something--a splash, a drop, a few flecks of glitter--on a few of my nails.  I guess I'm just messy like that.  For that reason, I've just been wearing some plain (though never boring!) colors, which I have splattered on for the last few days, but today I only had a few bottles to finish and I managed to not get anything on my mani!  It's really exciting, because now I have something aside from Lacquer Convention swatches to show you =)

Last night, I asked both the BFF and my hubby to choose between an eye-searing hot pink mani and a dark, vampy red one, and neither of them were at all helpful or committal, so I had to choose myself!  Can you believe it?  I eventually went with vampy, so I decided to put on Sinful Colors Rich in Heart, because I seem to have misplaced my OPI Midnight in Moscow and didn't want to go digging.  Well, because I figured I'd be spilling on it, I didn't bother to wrap my tips and SV shrank it to death...

...but what should show up in the mail today but my bottle of OPI's Number One Nemesis!  It's the only thing from the Spiderman Collection that I want.  Well, the only thing I can really justify wanting, because I want the white...and maybe the blue, but after doing swatch sticks last week, I just can't justify buying them. I'm trying to stay on a low-buy until July (when I go to LA!) so I can go shooooooppppping!

In any case, I decided it would be the perfect thing to cover up the awful shrinkage after I totally didn't spill anything on my mani today.  I love this shade, which is supposedly a pretty decent Chanel Graphite dupe.  I don't have the Chanel to compare...yet.  (Lowbuylowbuylowbuy!!!)  It's one of those polishes that I secretly want, but talk myself out of splurging on every time because, well, I do try to control my spending...

But gosh, I did want it ever so badly until I got my grabby little hands on this.  It sates my appetite for now!

I free-handed the tips with the normal brush, because I was too lazy to find some tape tonight, but I think my hand was pretty steady this time!

Thanks for reading!  Until next time!

Lacquer Convention: Don't Over Blue It

Hello everyone! Today I have a preview of Don't Over Blue It, the second new glitter polish that will be available in my Etsy store on Friday!  If you missed the first one, Snap, Crackle, Pop! you can view it here.

Don't Over Blue It is packed with multi-size, shape and shades of blue glitter, from dark navy to light aqua, with an accent of purple hexagons.  It makes a great top coat, but for the sake of experimentation, for some of the pictures below, I dabbed it on and tried to create an opaque coverage look.

This is one coat over Zoya Wednesday, with top coat.

I dabbed about 3-4 coats on each finger here and topped it with one coat of Gelous and one coat of SV.

This is one coat over OPI's Don't Touch My Tutu.

I also slapped on a matte top coat here because I love, love, love the look of matte glitter!

Once again, Don't Over Blue It will be available in my Etsy shop on Friday!  Hope to see you there!

Lacquer Convention: Snap, Crackle, Pop!

Hi everyone!  It took me a little while to finish putting together the preview for Snap, Crackle, Pop! and Don't Over Blue It because I wanted to play with them!  I hadn't gotten a chance to do more than test them, so I spent some time unwinding after bottling all day by coming up with a few cute ways to wear them.  I'm going to save Don't Over Blue It picture editing for tomorrow because I'm feeling rather beat, but here's Snap, Crackle, Pop!

Here's a macro of the bottle.  This polish is a fairly dense glitter that can be applied in a thin coat as a top coat or built up for full coverage.  It's made up of purple hexagons in various shades and sizes, predominantly dark purple, white squares in large and small sizes and fine holographic purple glitter.  Enjoy the spam!

These last photos show three coats over OPI's Don't Touch My Tutu.

This will be on sale in my Lacquer Convention Etsy shop on Friday!

Lacquer Convention Restock Info!

Hi everyone!  I've been on a little hiatus for the last week and a half, but over the weekend I spent time getting ready to restock my Etsy shop and wanted to let you all know what's going on!

Suspension base is in stock as of a few days ago. It's a new supplier, so I have been testing it to see how it maintains suspension and it looks like it's even better than what I was using! This means that today I started bottling for the shop, so here's what I have planned:

Friday afternoon, I'm shooting for about 3pm PST to stock the store. I apologize in advance if it's inconvenient for any of you. This is only the first of several restocks, now that I have supplies again!

I'm stocking about 200 bottles, for reference, with a good chunk of them being Pop Tart, but here are the colors I am bottling this time:

Pop Tart
Observatory
Galinda
Elphaba
Much Ado About Blue
Red Light District
Hooker With A Heart Of
Don't Over Blue It
Snap, Crackle, Pop!

There will be mini and full size bottles of each color available. Don't Over Blue It and Snap, Crackle, Pop! are new colors and I will post swatches on my blog and Facebook later tonight after I do some cleaning! This list may be adjusted in the next couple days and I will keep you updated.

In addition, I'll have a single listing where you can order any of my previous glitter top coats, if you so desire. (Full sized bottles only at this time, I had fewer minis on hand than I thought originally, eek!)

The last point of business is a bit of bad news. I'm adjusting the prices by a $0.50 increase to better cover Etsy fees. That means full size bottles will be $7.00 and minis will be $2.85. I would like to keep things as reasonable as possible, but my introductory price didn't accurately reflect the fees associated with selling on this platform. I thank you for your understanding in this.

This is my biggest restock so far and I know people have been waiting a while for it. I appreciate all the inquiries and compliments and hope to see you all check out my shop on Friday!

Nude Polka Dots!

Hi there!  I hope you're not tired of polka dots, because that's kind of becoming this week's theme.  Today, I decided to revisit Cruisin' Nude because I've had this manicure stuck in my head like a song on repeat.

I know, it's kind of a comparison stretch, but I've wanted to make it happen ever since my BFF suggested it to me.

She described it as wrapping paper, which I definitely agree it looks like.  It's a great way for me to do a nude tone without getting bored!

I used American Apparel's Bronze Dash for the dots.  It looked perfect to me when I was looking at the bottle, but I think it looks a little dark in macro shots.  In person, I liked it a lot, but if I ever do a nude-wrapping paper-esque mani again, I think I might reach for a lighter metallic, like a rose gold.

Here's a picture with my camera's flash so you can finally see the reddish shimmer in Cruisin' Nude.  It's my favorite part and is so hard to catch on camera.  Granted, it is very subtle, but it's what sparked my fascination with Crusin' Nude when I normally shun nude polishes.

This is the end of the polka dots though!  Over the next few days I'm going to start painting my helmer.  It's a project I started when my hubby was working overtime, then let slide when he went back to normal hours for a week.  Now that he's back to long hours and sleeping during the day, I'm going to get it finished and do the nail art series with it that I had planned!  Here's a little teaser: Hello Kitty + Fairy Tales.  Can you dig it?

Thanks for reading!

Franken: Feeling Purpley

Hello everyone!  I know that I promised some Julep swatches, and they're coming, but when I went to swatch them, two of the bottles had a wonky brush that I didn't want to deal with right away, so I grabbed this franken instead!  It was one that I promised Mich at The Polish Well that I would show you guys, a milky, lavender-pinky base filled with rainbow glitter.  I haven't given it a name yet, but here it is!

I honestly was trying to create a loose dupe with this polish of Tony Moly's Shooting Star that was featured on The Polish Well.  It was really simple to do because at the time I made this, I was mixing test bottles of Pop Tart.  I took one of my reject blends and tinted it a light, pinkish-purple.

A couple posts ago I swore I would never wear lavender...well, I may have exaggerated a little.  I will venture into very pink lavender for the sake of rainbow glitter, but nothing less!  I made the base lighter and pinker with this in mind.

By now, I'm pretty sure it's obvious that I love frankening.  I actually started because I was too cheap to buy some of the high end polishes that I'd seen online but still wanted, so I learned to franken by home-duping.  Now I have a shopping problem and I usually have to make a nail polish budget/game plan each month because my habits have me caving on the expensive pretties more often.  Thus, I franken.  It gives me the excitement of getting something new without actually buying something!  Which is good, because breaking my budget is not!

 And because both Mich and I are crazy for mattifying everything, here's this polish with a matte top coat.  I use NYC's New York Color version because it's cheap, but it still gets the job done.

I love matte glitter, but matte RAINBOW glitter?  Shut the front door!

Thanks for reading!

Hi there!  Today I've got another cute and quick manicure that just uses the dotting tool!  I picked up a new tiny brush yesterday, but I'm kind of addicted to dots now.  I've got a couple more to show you after this one.

I was in the mood for some green, but I couldn't decide what shade...so I did a little bit of an ombre.  From index to pinky, the shades are Zoya Shawn, Pure Ice Free Spirit, Revlon Garden, and Zoya Pippa.  Then I did some large white polka dots with smaller green (and yellow) dots in the middle.  It kind of reminds me of cartoon dinosaurs, though the yellow on top of white reminds me of fried eggs...

Just something simple and fun today.  I'm going to swatch my Julep Maven box in a couple hours for you, so check back!  Thanks for reading!