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.

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...

Project Wear-It: OPI Push and Shove

The blogosphere seems to have developed something of a love-hate relationship with OPI's limited edition Gwen Stefani polish Push and Shove.  As an affirmed geek, it should be no surprise that I want mirror nails badly.  (I want to look like I'm from the future!  Is that so wrong?)

It is, as many others have said, super fussy.  Especially, I tend to do a lot of light strokes, and this drags so badly.  But I persevered, trying a few combinations, and the smoothest, shiniest look I got was pretty exciting!

A couple of pictures, both in indirect (and overcast) daylight. This was after dinner and 
sleep, and they're a little dinged up, but definitely still wearable. (No, I do not take great 
photos or do cleanup particularly well, it's true. Life goes on.)

The combination that worked for me was:

1. DIY peel-off base coat
2. Regular base coat*
3. Lay down the Base base coat (included with the polish)
4. One thick, unfussed-with layer of the shiny (two thick strokes for thumbs)
5. Patience

I couldn't get Seche Vite to work as an underlayer, although many people have had good luck.  I bet using it for Step 2 would work, though. I did find that top coat dulled it; only a tiny bit, but still.

* I used Sinful Colors Base Coat. Then I put it in a pile to get rid of, because it reeks. Bleah!