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:

X

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.

PWI: OPI Nomad's Dream (interview nails selection!)

Since I made such a fuss, I'll cop that I wondered all along if this would happen: I ended up using one of my possibly 5 oldest polishes for interviewing. This is pretty close to perfectly balanced between pink and gold, making it a good match for my super-noncommittal skin tone.*

OPI Nomad's Dream:

I don't have a conversational aside for this picture, possibly
because I am in New Jersey, slowly being drained of life

A little shiny, but on my short nails, basically unnoticeable, as desired.  It's also pretty sheer; this is three coats.  Two is even more unnoticeable.

Nomad's Dream was a special edition MANY years ago, but has been re-released in the last few years.  Since OPIs have been reformulated in the last ten years or so, it may be quite different – it looks different in the bottle.  I don't care enough to pick up a new bottle and find out, and the internet's fascination with nail polish post-dates the original.  Humankind may never know.


* Most makeup babbling starts with: "determine whether your skin's undertones are pink (cool), or yellow (warm)". This does not work for me, independent of being arbitrary and a bit odd.  OTOH, I pin down one end of the fair—dark spectrum pretty thoroughly.

PWI: Wet n Wild Champagne Toast 2

Real quick, here's Wet-n-Wild Champagne Toast:

Indirect actual sunlight [!]

Much more reasonable photo in daylight.

It's gold, but it really reads more nude on me. A little pale, a little shiny, but definitely very interview-able.

Okay! Work!

The Stash, plus, PWI: Wet-n-Wild Champagne Toast 1

Polish All the Nails just posted these amazing shots of her entire collection lined up. O.O If my casual x × y count is even close, this is roughly a thousand bottles, which makes me question my handwavey "about a thousand" bottles in my collection, like, a lot. I doubt I could cover a 7-foot table... or could I? People are notoriously terrible at estimating volume, coverage, etc... but I still think I only have a fraction of these.

Well, PWI should make it a lot clearer. (Yay, "science"!)

I was going to do a PWI on Wet-n-Wild Champagne Toast, as another possible interview polish, but I can't help feeling like we have to wait for daylight swatches. I think it's a product of my nighttime lighting and/or camera, but this very pretty polish makes me look like a boiled lobster.

Wet-n-Wild Champagne Toast at night:

Left: more cooking, right: marginally less cooking. To my eye this looks like a
lovely, suitable pale gold, but to the camera... not so good. Daylight shots tomorrow!

I can say... this is a lovely, but streaky, pale gold. It's pretty sheer; this is 3-4 (fairly fast) coats. I don't mind streaks, to be honest. In my opinion, without a macro lens or a nail obsession, nobody notices or cares.

But I'm looking forward to a daylight post. Current feeling is that this is pretty, but subtle-verging-on-unnoticeable... which is to say, an excellent interview polish.

More tomorrow!

Project Wear-It: Sally Hansen Golden-I

I'm meeting with a visiting VIP today, meaning my nail polish has to be work-appropriate – which in my field just means "subtle" (I have a whole rant on that, but it can wait). I'd go without polish, except...

I recently switched back to PVA peel-off base coat. In the meantime, I had forgotten that water-based coats won't block stains. (Lab Muffin gives an excellent explanation, as always.) I was reminded after a day of chartreuse polish turned my fingernails three-pack-a-day yellow overnight! doh.

So, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Golden-I, which is unprepossessing on me:

It's a tiny bit cooler and shinier than this shows. Indirect outdoor light.

It's a foil; application is okay, definitely not a one-coater. The color is a pale, pretty gold, somewhere more in the champagne family. This is two coats; it would really have needed three for full opacity, but very short nails have their charms!

Perfectly nice color. Too much for a job interview (sigh) but reasonable for one casual half-hour meeting. Maybe tonight I'll put glitter on it...