PWI Twofer: Julep Cassie and Sally Hansen Sparkling

Julep... Oh man.  Let's talk about Julep.

For one thing, their polishes were originally mostly/only available in a beauty subscription box, which is a thing that mostly means "overpriced and mediocre" but whatever we can talk about it later.  Which, fine.  Don't care, you can get them elsewhere now.  But even so... they are so expensive per actual nail painting!  I mean I know I said I don't really care about price/oz but I do not like to be insulted.

But I wanted to be objectively fair, so, inspired by my favorite beauty blog and/or my actual background as a researcher,  I did some data analysis, based on: (1) what was within arms' reach, plus (2): what prices I roughly remembered paying and/or Google suggested ish.

Brand	$USD	ml	$/ml
Sinful Colors	2	15	$0.13
Pure Ice	2	15	$0.13
Sally Hansen Xtreme	2.5	15	$0.17
Wet'n'Wild Shine	2.2	12.7	$0.17
Sally Hansen Hard as Nails	2.5	13.3	$0.19
Urban Outfitters	5	15	$0.33
Rimmel London 60 second	3	8	$0.37
Rimmel London lasting finish pro	5	13.3	$0.38
Orly	8	18	$0.44
Sally Hansen Triple Shine	5	10	$0.50
O•P•I	8.5	15	$0.57
Sally Hansen Insta-Dri	6	9.2	$0.65
Revlon	6	8	$0.75
Julep	14	8	$1.75
Sorted by $USD/ml.  Also, "formatting" this table makes  me feel better about the impending move to wordpress.

So yeah: Julep is officially insane.  They have sales all the time, but, but... I mean come on.  Julep I can do basic math!  Surprisingly many adults can do basic math.  Plus your stupid long skinny bottle gets knocked over easily.  But then my friend N came over with her enormous collection of Julep polishes, two of which she insisted looked better on me.  So now I have some Julep nail polish after all.  Ehn.

Julep Cassie:

Indoors.  Blurry but faaiirrlly color-accurate?

I actually liked the color, both indoors and out; I rarely wear pink, but this is a warm-toned and (IMO) atypically sophisticated variant.  The formula was somewhat sheer... this is three thick coats, and it could probably have used another but I ran out of patience.  Of course, the next morning I got interested in...

Sally Hansen Sparkling:

Pink glitter!  With a Cassie accent nail,
just so you can see it in (overcast) daylight.

I think they work together really well, actually.  I was really pleased with the effect. 

PWI: Elevation Polish Kilimanjaro!

Editor's note!  Since it recently came up... PWI means Project Wear-It, my effort to wear all the nail polish.  Original post here.
 
Okay so!

I don't own a lot of indie polish.  The reasons are twofold: first, many – even most – indie polish-makers mostly provide inspired mixes of glitter, which, while fine, is not my jam; second, most indie polishes cost $9-$15, which is to say, ~3-8 times my usual polish cutoff.  They may be worth it!  It's just not (usually) worth 3-8 other bottles for me.  I think actually that I owned one (1) apart from Glitter A-peel, so buying two more tripled my stash. 

I've always been impressed with (other people's pictures of) Elevation Polish.  For one thing, they make unusual cremes, not just glitter; for another, some of their glitter blends actually caught my interest and attention (looking at you, stupid retired Azure Caverns).  What actually caused me to pull the trigger was (yet another not-quite-right) green creme.  But since I was putting in an order anyway, I went ahead and added...

Elevation Polish Kilimanjaro:

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Left: Indoor-jaundice; right: indirect-daylight-kitty-backdrop.*  All
over a blue so pale and frosty it might be gray that I totally forgot
to take pictures of, damnit so I guess that will be a later PWI.  :-P

 
Okay, it's the same colors as Mole-Mentum, but it's... <drum roll> circle glitter!

...yeah.  I don't know either.  For some reason, circle glitter makes me squeal like a squealing grown-ass woman.  Maybe it's because it's unusual (being more expensive than better-space-packed hex glitter)?  I mean, from more than about 4" away you can't tell!  But still, cirrrcleess.

It makes me feel better to notice that many more serious nail bloggers are similarly daft.

This is three coats, which is a shame, picture-wise, because it turns out I liked one coat better.  It's nice?  Not as life-changingly different as I maybe irrationally hoped, but fun to wear, and I got nice comments.  I like looking at it as much as I suspected, anyway.  So... sure!

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* For those of you who are concerned that fur is murder,** the big picture:

He is not murdered!  He is just laaaaaaazyyyyy.

** Also I don't hate your moral stance but please get a dictionary

PWI twofer: Essie Penny Talk and OPI Gaining Mole-mentum

I know a lot of you reading already know this, but I have something of an obsession with copper.  It's not my fault!  It's genetic!  Passed from my grandmother through my mother to me.  

I like lots of copper.

I like amazingly new, weirdly super-pink copper.  I like more often-encountered, beautiful oxidized copper.  I even think verdigris is pretty cool, personally.  Not surprisingly, this has joined forces with my nail polish obsession.  I will buy pretty much any damn thing that is copper, or coppery, or copper-ish, or SAYS copper.  Sadly, in nail polish as in life, there's a shockingly lame level of access to copper things!  (give me more copper earrings or give me death)

ANY way.  I started seeing things on the nail-o-blaggityblog-o-sphere about a copper polish,  Essie Penny Talk, which is outside my usual price range but cooopperr.  So I ordered it, got the bottle, and it was clearly gold.  I mean look:

Essie Penny Talk:

I even whined to Mr. Fix-It, and
he was all "Uh...hm. Gold is nice?"
So I put it on my nails.

So I put on my new gold nail polish.  Which did go on gold ...until it wasn't.  Like the weirdness of Push'n'Shove, over about a minute or two, it slooowly changed (cured?), until I was looking at this:

Totes copper.  Specifically, the very pink color of brand
new, totally untarnished copper.  *happy sigh*

What the hell, y'all,  Chemistry is magical.

So I really like Penny Talk!  But I didn't top coat it, and like most foils, it chips if you move your hand through oxygen molecules, and after a day the edges were all ragged and sucky.  So I added

OPI Gaining Mole-mentum:

Up close you can see that it's made of little shard glitters in gold, silver and copper.

From a little further away you can see that
it's just sort of... confused sparkle?

I dunno.  When I did Rouge Rush, also with shard glitter, I liked the depth and the almost-flaky-level glow?  So I thought I would give this a try.  But I'm not so sure.  Also, layering it over copper made the copper glitter vanish, which I did not care for.  So I'll try it over something else before I do anything drastic.

PWI: RED. (By which I mean OPI Red, plus threefer Jane Megawatt and Pure Ice Bare It All, but whatever. RED)

Soooo, two things about red nail polish!

1. One is always looking for the perfect, flattering, amazing red polish. (And lipstick!)
2. People* are Concerned that red polish may make one look Fast, and, perhaps, Loose.**

That said, one of my oldest polish acquisitions is...

O•P•I Red.

Red.  This shot makes it look pinkish maybe?  But it's so primary,
unapologetically red. Maybe a hair blue leaning?  It's not 3-free
or 5-free or vegan or whatever, and I know there's a newer version
that is, but this is my canonical and beloved Fast Lady red.

There's a new post-reformulation red.  I feel like I ought to try it, I guess.  Because I am not completely happy with my existing, classic, vampy, and hot red.^†

Anyway!  There are only about 4, 5 "nail art" things I'd be interested in?  The simple ones!  So I am interested in the "glitter gradient."  Basically, you take a glitter polish with medium-to-bad coverage, and paint it in receding layers, so a gradient comes out.  Which is my thing!

The glitter is two things: JANE Megawatt – which is the solid glitter on my index finger – and Pure Ice Bare It All.  They are identical.  Weirdly so – they are both gold glitter with random copper glits.  The PI BiA has thicker coverage, so that's a difference, the only one.  I'ma get rid of one, probably the Pure Ice, because it's less usable for gradients.

My index finger is the Pure Ice.  Less gradient-y but otherwise identical.

But anyway: RED.

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* To a certain Type of Person, don't you know.  (The kind that sits on hiring committees.)
** ...why? Red? It's a color? I don't... even...
^† Yeah, no, I really am.

Half Moons! plus, PWI twofer: Urban Outfitters Bandeau & Sinful Colors Frenzy

"Half moons" (those white arcs at the base of your fingertips) are often re-represented on nails in a variety of silly colors.  Traditionally this is done by masking off the base of your nails with these:

Which is, you know, pretty amusing.

I've tried this look before, but since I exclusively use peel-off base coat,* I always end up just peeling off the entire nail's polish.  ANY way, the other day I was reading some blog about nails (don't remember whose, sorry!) and the blogger said something like, "Then I put hole reinforcements on my nails, being sure to stick them to the back of my hand first of course..."

Of course.

So obvious in retrospect.  I mean if I had really sat down and formulated the question as "How do I make these less sticky,"  I would have answered it immediately.  Formulating the right question when you see a problem is, sometimes, the only hard thing.  Or even realizing you should treat it as a solvable problem.  Engineering is hard!

But!  It means you get to see my first ever successful (ish) half moons.

Here's Urban Outfitters Bandeau:

Indoor.  I doooon't need a new camera (I don't) but
would a lamp be such a bad idea?  ...I'm doomed

Which is a fairly nice purple creme; 2 coats.  In low light it reads as black, in bright light it looks about like this, satiny dark purple.  In sunlight, however, it is glowingly purple, as shown below.  The odd, slightly satiny finish is accurate.

With Sinful Colors Frenzy, a nice purple-and-plum glitter.

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Purple!  Indirect sunlight/direct sunlight.  Glitter's hard to take a good picture of.
I feel like I would need a star filter or something.  For the camera. That I don't need.

I don't think this color choice was that successful.  I'm not sure why, but it feels off from a bit of distance.  Dunno!  Maybe I'm just not used to it.  Also, waiting for three layers of Frenzy to dry was kind of awful; next time I want something fast for that part.  The stickers did pull some of the Bandeau up, I'm guessing because it wasn't fully dry.

But!  Still!  Lookit!  Half-moons!  Purple ones!

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* Subject of upcoming post

PWI twofer: Wet'n'Wild Sophisticated Lady and Sally Hansen Ice Queen

I bought this at the same time as Wet'n'Wild Champagne Toast, from the same display and, apparently, in the same mood.  Behold!

Wet'n'Wild Sophisticated Lady:

pink nail polish is pink

I don't really get the name.  It's pink.  What's sophisticated about pink?  I mean it's too pale to be bubblegum pink, but?  ...whatever.  It's pretty, it's subtle, it's fine.  I feel like if I mixed this and Champagne Toast  I'd have a more opaque Nomad's Dream.  Nice to have around.

Then, because I make the same mistakes over and over, I layered on the partially-contrasting Sally Hansen Ice Queen:

Bugz!  Little teal bugs on my hand!  Ugh.

Big pink glitter, big teal glitter, teeny iridescent multicolored sparkles.

This does a good job of showing why I don't really like multicolored glitter.  Up close, it looks fine, but from any distance the teal glitter just looks like I got scunge on my hands and should wash them.  Also, getting the big hex glitters out was a giant pain; getting this many glits took three-ish coats and a mountain of dabbing.

So I'll either get rid of this or use it for the teeny sparkles.  Meh.

PWI twofer! OPI: Vant to Bite my Neck? and SOPI: Beam Me Up Hottie!

I did not choose to put these polishes together because they are both complete sentences with punctuation.  I would have, but I only just noticed.  Dumb sentences, sure, but better than [grabs a bottle at random] "Smush".

This first one I kinda already knew would disappoint.  It's from the same collection as Eurso Euro (have I blithered on enough about that one yet?), and when I got EE in all its indigo perfection, I hoped the purple would be equally glorious.  (Spoiler: it isn't)

OPI Vant to Bite my Neck?:

These are both pretty color-accurate, because your human meat eyeball with its high dynamic range can
see a lot more color depth at once.  So the way-overexposed shot on the right that shows the purpliness is,
in human eyeball terms, just another part of this polish's "depth of color".  Stupid excellent meat eyeball.

So, in other words,

Eggplant.  Very dark purplish-black.  (Unless it's white.  Did you know it's called an"eggplant"
because of the smooth round egginess of the white ones?  I didn't.)  Aubergine.  Lovely color.
Source: the wikipedia article on "the color aubergine"

Look, aubergine is a lovely color that is mostly black.  Seriously, when your canvases are 1cm², this is just... black.  In direct sunlight (well "sunlight") it's... black.  (Black with an excellent, long-lasting creme formula, because OPI.)

With hints of eggplant.

So, since I don't actually really like this polish, I decided to try to spruce it up by doing something I know I dislike, which is adding a highly-contrasting glitter topper.

SOPI: Beam Me Up, Hottie!:

Left: what it actually looked like, which is, mysteriously polka-dotted nails.  Right: They're very holographic
polka dots!  And I learned that a blurry picture actually captures the holo colors better.  I learned this from
real bloggers with better cameras.  Which I do not need one of.  Because I don't need another hobby.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.  ...no, no it didn't.  It seemed like something I could reach without dislodging this cat.  So that's like a good idea, kind of.

This is just a bottle full of silver holographic glitter hexes in a clear base.  Seems like my kind of looking-futuristic thing, but the formula is such a total goddamned PITA.  This is several layers, with much dabbing.*

So... all things being equal, total fail!  I'll probably keep Beam My Up Hottie! for use over silver, where its holographic awesomeness can blend and glitter distribution is less obvious.  I kind of feel like McAubergine here is bound for a new home.

* (Basically what it sounds like – sort of "patting" the nail with the brush, pushing individual glitters (glits?**) around.)
** I am pretty sure an individual glitter is a glit

PWI twofer: Sinful Colors Aqua and Shattered Rocket Fuel

Occasionally  I look at the little bin of things that are post-Project Wear-It, then at the burgeoning bin of things that are still waiting, and I make a little sad noise.  Then I remember that it's just nail polish for crying out loud, if it makes me sad it's a stupid hobby.

Then I make a little sad noise.

I made lunch (and dinner) from scratch today!  Chicken stew.  But I was playing around, as I do when I have no-one else present to poison, and it's... well.  I should have made more instacurry.  I would describe it as barely edible.  So I am sad about that (and a little hungry)... which means I should show you nail polish!  Yes.  Yes it does.

Sinful Colors Aqua:

Pretty color!  It's not quite this... electric in person.  However, since
it was a horrid gray rainy day even by Seattle standards, I'll take my
bright colors where I find them.  Even in misleading photographs.

This is so similar in the bottle to SC Gorgeous, when I find it I'll show you.  This is a very pretty blue-leaning aqua, and Gorgeous is a sliiiigghhtly green-leaning aqua.

But I had an ulterior motive, which was to provide a base for a polish that must be 15 years old minimum, about which the Internet knows nothing.  (damn kids)

Behold!  Shattered Rocket Fuel:

Green and blue bar glitter everywhere!  I, I swear.  Honest?  This isn't even
lighting, it's just teal, honestly the camera adds drama here, I  don't
understand photography apparently, why does the camera add drama.

Yes, it... also looks pretty teal, doesn't it.  Hrm.

See this is actually a mix of beautiful blue and green bar glitter.*  In the bottle it looks like some kind of jewel.  But in person it looks.. well, aqua.  Especially from more than 6 inches away.  It's pretty, especially in indoor light, but compared to the bottle it is disappointing.

What the bottle looks like; what the polish looks like with a little distance. Here
the bottle looks less exciting than in person, and my nails look more exciting
and glowy.  It's the same damn polish, camera.  What do you want from me.

Ah, well.  Pretty is still a good thing.  I vaguely recall doing roommate E's nails with this over purple and liking the results, maybe after PWI I'll try that.

(PS: Also: It may seem as though our living room floor is covered in random objects.  In fact, they are cat toys.  I don't know what to tell you.)

* Bar glitter means "long thin glitter".  It tends to hang off the sides of your nails or stick straight up or otherwise be a pain.

PWI: Maybelline Emerald Elegance

I am amazingly wiped out.  Walking to school yesterday, and back two hours later, necessitated a nap.  Putting on nail polish seems like a chore.  (Buying it, not so much, it seems.)  I think I was all wired up on anticipation and adrenaline for my Job Interview, and now that it's over, my strings have been cut, and I am tired.

I wasn't that impressed with the Maybelline Color Show Brocades collection.  (Too many words!)  But I eventually picked one up, which led me to looking at swatches, which led to the inevitable purchase of...

Maybelline Emerald Elegance.

Big green glitter, smaller green glitter and teeny-tiny gold
and green glitter, and it was easier to find that out on the
internet than by looking at the actual polish, by the way

Rather truer color at half-dark, 5 minutes after previous picture.
Thanks Seattle! When I need "darkness" you are there for me

Two coats. Thick and gloopy as all hell, but not actually hard to work with. The addition of teeny gold glitter makes it lean towards a yellowish green.

I feel like "brocades" is surprisingly apt (especially given the history of cosmetic companies on this). These are glitter polishes, but not sparkly; they end up giving the sense of complexity and something-happening without being glittery or obvious about the mix of colors.

From six inches, anyway. Beyond that, they look "green". This is the tragedy of fancy nail polish. Le Sigh.

PWI twofer: Sally Hansen Celeb City and Sinful Colors Queen of Beauty

Sometimes it's worth posting base color + topper separately; often it's not. This is that second kind.

Base coat (which is nice on its own, I mean, I wore it), is Sally Hansen Celeb City:

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Left is daylight, right is indoor, cuticles are covered in silver. Not easy to
photograph! It's no Push'n'Shove,* but it's a perfectly nice metallic.

Pretty color, nice and even in two coats. It's shiny but maayyybe the glitters are too coarse to call it a foil? Nah, foil. (I think I'm going to do a post on all these made-up domain specific words.)

Later, topped with Sinful Colors Queen of Beauty:

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Do I need to say which is which? No, I do not. Because the
indoor photos are always the ones where I'm in last-stage jaundice.

My camera haaaates this. It took a while to get two even borderline decent photos, I mean, for heaven's sake. Go look at KittyPNB's swatches if you care, she has an actual camera. :-P

But basically, it looks like little disco balls. Just straight-up silver glitter. This is 4 [!] coats. I doubt it would be opaque without Celeb City undies, but it was pretty at every stage.

As a side note... who comes up with these names? Some of them are nicely descriptive (Champagne Toast), some are just eh (like, Celeb City, once I see the polish I can make some connection),  some of them are straight-up meaningless (Cassie, Hot Wired), and some of them are just weird and misleading (Pull Over is an orange-ish yellow). It's like paint samples, which are also named by people tripping so hard they can taste colors.

# of clicks it took me to find this: 2.

So now we know what color surreality, quintessent..i...ality? .. and elegance are.

PWI: Sally Hansen Rouge Rush

This is another topper-over-previous thing. It's very convenient! Also, Mr. Fix-It gave me the plague a head cold, which doesn't change what I have to do to get a job, so forgive me if postings are kind of short and uninspired. Really uninspired.


Over UO Spiked Punch, here's Sally Hansen Rouge Rush:

Indirect daylight, not-daylight. In person it looks better at night.

These were disappointing to photograph. In person, especially at night, they have a sort of glimmering depth that I usually associate only with flakies. I mean, I'm really too casual a blogger to get a lightbox and a macro lens and suchlike nonsense, but I can see why people do.

The polish has several different shapes of glitter in very, very minor variations of color; I'm a little surprised by how much I like it. AFAICT, it's: pale pink glitter shreds; pale red glitter shreds; and smallish fuschia hex glitter.

It's... a lot more harmonious than it sounds?

PWI: Island Colors Old Lahina and Surfing Safari

Island Colors is a new-to-me brand, because Hawaii. Cheap, too! I love cheap. (Don't look at me that way, I'm a student.) Unfortunately, most of the colors are something I already obviously have. They do have some shaped glitters that I found interesting; and let's be honest, I'm not going to leave a completely new kind of nail polish alone.

I almost always put glitters over basically the same base color, and generally don't like multicolor glitters. So I picked up the deep red Island Colors Old Lahina, and the lighter red Surfing Safari:

(Does "surfing safari" say "red stars" to you? Because it sure doesn't to me.)

I started with Island Colors Old Lahina:

3 coats, indoor lighting. Mysterious blue thumb.

Which was actually a nice, smooth creme. 1 coat was pinkish, but the 2nd and 3rd settled down to a nice, deep, not-quite-berry red.

I then added Island Colors Surfing Safari:

Look! Stars! ...yeah, I don't see them either, although I swear
they're in there. The red is brighter because this is daylight.

Obviously, this is when things went downhill. I like my glitters subtle, not invisible. Also, the stars were a pain; I had to fish them out one by one and blop them on the nail in a puddle of clear carrier. Sometimes, this process scraped the red off part of a star. I feel like working with loose glitter would have been easier, and that's saying something.

But the main problem is the too-perfect match to the background color. So, when this PWI is over, I may try it on something else. In the meantime, I bought two more colors, because... well, because that's the sort of thing I do, I guess. :-)

PWI: Sephora by OPI Indi-go With the Flow

Yesterday sucked a lot. Today sucks. Tomorrow will suck. Eventually it will suck less.

Sephora (makeup store) sold "Sephora by OPI", store-branded nail polish. Different bottles and different colors, but OPI quality. (They make really good nail polish. There's at least one other "by OPI" brand out there). Past tense because the whole line has been discontinued, replaced by something in-house that costs $15 a bottle -- not gonna happen... I'll buy 2 or 3 OPIs or Essies instead.  But, I did pick up a few bottles of SOPI on mega-clearance.

This is Sephora by OPI Indi-go With the Flow:

Meh picture, meh nails, meh polish.

It's glitter, a sort of steel-blue glitter with larger and smaller glitters in a clear base. I put it over some random fairly-close blue, since I didn't know how many coats it would take for full opacity.

It's strange. I could totally like this? I like all the words in the description. But instead I don't. It's sort of meh without being work-appropriate, full of glitter without being sparkly. Not Hall of Shame appropriate, just... totally unexciting. I'm not throwing it in the swap pile for now, but... so much meh!