SWATCH SATURDAY: Dandy Nails - Chilled Down

Nothing to Disclose

Hello lovelies! Two posts in one day, totally off the hook over here!

Just a simple swatch this time, because I was in the mood for it. Accent nail is inspired by a photo Vanity Projects posted of a Lexi Martone mani that I LOOOOOVE.

Base is three coats of Chilled Down (could have gotten away with two, but taking photos in a lightbox is very demanding in terms of visible nail line). I love this polish. I love polishes that look speckled, and this one reminds me of a bird's egg. A really awesome bird's egg.

Accent nail was done with Shirin, then acrylic paint in blue and white, plus some 1.5mm rhinestones from Born Pretty.

Polishes used:

Dandy Nails - Chilled Down

Mentality Nail Polish - Shirin (I have been ADDICTED to this polish, lately!)

butter LONDON - Nail Foundation (base coat)

Glisten & Glow - HK Girl (top coat)

acrylic paint

liner brush

1.5mm rhinestones from Born Pretty Store

Any seasonally-appropriate designs you'd like to see me do? I don't much celebrate Christmas so it can be hard for me to come up with nail art for the season. If you have any ideas, send them my way!!

xo,

J.

SWATCHED: Mentality Candy Jelly Holos

Nothing to Disclose -- kind of (read on)

Hello lovelies! 

Today's post comes as a result of a slight hiccough in order packing. You see, I had ordered a bunch of Mentality polishes, and awaited for them to arrive with bated breath. And then they did! And they weren't my order! It turns out that my box was mixed up with another customer's. Hillary, in an example of exemplary customer service, has shipped me my correct order, and told me to keep these lovely polishes as well (gosh, so nice!!). I figured the least I could do would be to swatch them.

So that I don't repeat myself endlessly, I'll put this all here: all of these are three coats, no topcoat. The formula on all of them was very easy to control and apply (none of these photos involved clean up!! A MIRACLE), but you'll not want to go over your strokes too much or you'll create bald spots. Because these are expressly jelly holos, they are a touch on the sheerer side; Mentality makes stamping holos as well, so if you're in for extreme opacity, you might want to look into those. All of these holos have cosmetic grade holo powder in them, not Spectraflair, so you won't be seeing rainbows in my light box. (Somehow, Mentality themselves have captured the rainbows in their swatches-- they're obviously better at corralling rainbows than I am!) Now, let's dive in!

Bon Bon is a jammy pink with slight berry undertones. I'm not a pink girl but this one is deep enough that I like it. 

Marmalade is an interesting one. In the above photo, it looks decidedly orange, but in real life I found it looked orange with a wee bit of pink to it. It made it much more approachable and wearable than straight orange (I love orange polish, but I know not everybody does).

Taffy is an acid yellow-green. I found this one almost a bit frosty, and it isn't as saturated as it looks in the above photo-- more washed out. I absolutely adore colours like these but they don't play nice with my skin tone. 

Sourball is a grass green with the slightest bit of blue to it, which pulls it away from the 'kelly green' territory and more into 'evergreen'. The weird lumps you see are my fault, I think, for applying the polish too soon after shaking it. Blame the messenger for that one.

Pastille is my faaaaavourite. It's got a wonderful tonal shimmer to it, which I hope you can see above. I love this shade of aqua, it's playful and deep without being straight teal.

Gumdrop is a Wonder Woman blue. This one looks a bit sheerer here than it was in real life.

And finally, Hard Candy is a straight purple. It's much less blue than it appears above; not that it's a violet, but it's much less of a grape. It treads that fine line in the land of purple that my camera absolutely hates. It's also not as dark and saturated as it appears-- it reminds me, if this helps, a bit of a cousin or half-sister to A England's Lady of the Lake.

Polishes used:

Mentality - Bon Bon, Marmalade, Taffy, Sourball, Pastille, Gumdrop, Hard Candy

no base or top coat

And so there you have it! Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about the nail art I owe you-- I hope to have that up tonight or tomorrow at the latest. Hopefully it'll have been worth the wait! This little exercise gave my newfound appreciation for what swatchers do. It's a laborious process, swatching polish, and it dries the living heck out of your hands. Bow down to the master swatchers, for they live in the land of parched skin and impeccable nail polish application!

xo,

J.

SWATCH: Durm und Strang

Nothing to Disclose

Hello lovelies!

Sometimes you just need to swatch something.

Today's swatch is Durm und Strang, which I like as much for its name as for its look.

I just have two wishes for this polish: that there were more lime green hexes, and that the base was more jelly to allow depth. I like that it's a two-coat polish (one thin, one thicker to get at those elusive bits of green), but I wouldn't mind a third coat if it meant more jelly awesome.

The accent nail is a watermarble of Green with Envy and Pelican Gray over a coat of Silver Sweep. It's subtle but I like it.

Polishes used:

Scofflaw Nail Varnish Manufactory - Sturm und Drang

Sally Hansen - Silver Sweep, Green with Envy

China Glaze - Pelican Gray

Nail Pattern Boldness - Glitter A-Peel (base coat)

Rica - Glossy Glam (top coat; I've learned it's best to really wait until your base polish is starting to dry before putting Glossy Glam on it, or else you will be dealing with a lot of shrinkage)

watermarbling paraphernalia: cup of room-temperature filtered water, toothpick, masking tape, cotton buds...

I'll be working on nail art this week, but probably in anticipation of Digit-al Dozen week next month. I'll try to get something in for you lovelies to look at!

xo,

J.

I'm alive! But barely!

Nothing to Disclose

 Hello lovelies!

I'm still in Montreal. I was supposed to leave yesterday, but then I got The Summer Cold To End All Summer Colds and proceeded to spend three days in bed horking mucus via various facial orifices. A good time was had by all... the little virus buddies... taking over my body.

So I postponed my flight. I miss nail art. I return on Wednesday evening and will likely spend the next week ensconced at home, doing a nail art look every day or two. I gotta catch up!!

In the meantime, here (from my Instagram feed) are some things I've been up to lately:

I wore three coats of Ciaté's Ferris Wheel (augh, THREE COATS) with two coats of Lac Attack's Death Day Party over top! I love me some flakies. These charcoal flakies shifted purple and gold, very lovely.

I did a framed dotticure with... a bunch of things. Some random greyish polish that my mom had (Rimmel, I think), piCture pOlish's Sunset, Ruby Wing's Eternal, and white.

And I did my friend Laurent's nails! He's such a good sport. I will definitely revisit mermaid (/merman) nails in future. I could spend hours and hours on this look, but I feel like maybe his arms would have fallen off at that point. I'm told that cashiers gave him lots of compliments on these. I used the same base of Ferris Wheel and Death Day Party as above, then used a random Bourjois navy polish and acetone for the scales, some of which I dotted full of my custom Tryst Lacquer, Aqueous, and some of which I dotted full of a NOPI shimmery white whose name I've forgotten (but it's a lot like OPI's Happy Anniversary).

I will return to you lovelies later this week! I've got quite the queue of ABC Challenge prompts to catch up on, plus a couple other assorted ideas. :) Do stick around!

xo,

J.

Main Squeeze

Nothing to Disclose

Another of my multitudinous Tryst Lacquers today -- Main Squeeze!

Main Squeeze is described as a blood orange jelly with white satin hexes and squares (in two sizes), plus orange iridescent mini glitters. In these photos, that description is pretty bang on, but in real life, the colour leans more coral than it appears here. I actually love it in photos and in person, but it tickles my coral-love bone more than my orange-love bone in reality. (That sounded awful, didn't it?) I should note that it's almost impossible to get the satin hexes out, and I'm not sure why (they aren't huge or anything). I think they just really like the sides of the bottle. Your only hope is to shake the bottle vigorously every nail or two, and I was too lazy for that. I think the polish looks lovely even without them.

Simple look tonight; started with My Vampire is Buff as the lightest, followed by Kalahari Kiss, followed by Sun Kissed, followed by blending Sun Kissed and Kalahari Kiss a bit with some Action. Doing circles with tiny brushes is a huge pain in the arse.

I am now going to continue my pic spam. These were more photogenic than some of the nails I've done recently, so I kind of went overboard.

And finally, a simple swatch of my other hand, with Main Squeeze on its own. This is more colour-accurate than the above (I think there was some attracting going on with the orange, er, oranges-- this isolates the polish better). Wouldn't it be cool if all my swatch photos turned out this good? Something was working well tonight...

Polishes used:

Tryst Lacquers - Main Squeeze

Cult Nails - Scandalous (1 coat as undies just for some added opacity, didn't change the colour)

OPI - My Vampire is Buff

China Glaze - Kalahari Kiss

Sally Hansen - Sun Kissed

Essie - Action

Nail Pattern Boldness - Glitter A-Peel (base coat), Glitter Food

NYC - In a New York Minute (top coat)

Hey, here's a fun fact for you: my left hand poses so much better than my right hand, which is tragic. Why? Because, in Grade 7, a kid named Ryan was teasing my friend Allie and keeping some book or other away from her and I went to punch him in the stomach for it, except I missed and hit his hip bone and broke something in my hand. It only occurred to me that I broke something many years later, when a nail tech was massaging my hand and asked if I ever broke it. I guess Grade 7 Jolène assumed that being unable to close her right hand for a whole month was standard post-punch process?

xo,

J.