#31DC2015 Day 16- Geometric

I made it past the halfway mark, yay! And I'm not tired of nail art or burnt out yet. Hopefully this is a good sign. Since the last two days I did something fairly time consuming, I went with a comparitively simple nail art today, just a stamp. But I didn't want it to be THAT simple, so I stamped over multichrome flakies :D

As an aside, round nails are really growing on me. I had square nails as my default for a long time, but I had to file them down out of practicality. I kept losing tips, and my nail integrity was crap. For a while I kept them sort of semi-squoval-ish, just as close to a "natural" shape as possible, but during this challange I narrowed them down a little bit more, and I'm liking how it gives an illusion of lengh while still being very manageable. I think I'll keep these for a while (they also don't get in the way of harp playing as much- bonus!)

Polishes used:

Color Club- Total Mystery (dark blue base)

Indigo Bananas- Violet Stars (multichrome flakie)

Color Club- French Tip (white stamping)

Stamping Plate: MoYou Holy Shapes #01

An InLinkz Link-up

#31DC2015 Day 13- Animal Print

Animal print has been and always will be a challenge for me, because I hate everything associated with leopard print or zebra/tiger stripes. So I can't go with anything related to that. Still, I think in the last two years I came up with pretty creative ways to get around that, and I'm pretty satisfied with how I did it this time too- fish! This is a jelly sandwich stamping mani, so I started with a shimmery green base, stamped over it with an ocean-y sort of print, then went over it with a dark blue jelly and put fish on top. I topped the whole thing off with some more jelly and then some iridescent flakies.

Polishes used:
Orly- Meet Me Under The Mistletoe (green shimmer base)
Color Club- French tip (white stamping)
Glitter Bunny- Jelliefish (blue jelly sandwich)
Indigo Bananas- Bonanza! (flakie topper)

An InLinkz Link-up

Swatched: Aliquid Lacquer

I've known Allison from Aliquid for a while- particularly after she nominated me for a Leibster last year! Imagine how excited I was to hear that she was also planning an indie brand. Of course I had to get my hands on some, as soon as I possibly could.

I actually swatched these a few weeks ago already, but I hadn't gotten around to editing them because the sheer number of photos I took was daunting. Usually for an NOTD I'll have as many as five pictures, here I have over three times that. That aside, I think these are some of the crispest swatches I've ever done, so hooray for that!

Regarding application and formula: All of these applied about the same, opaque in 2-3 coats, applying evenly and smoothly with an easy to manipulate formula. I experienced no pooling or streaking or even brushstrokes on any of them.

Click the readmore to see detailed reviews of each one!

2013 Roundup

Good morning 2014! Nice to meet you, I hope we have fun together!

I figured right around now would be a good time to look back and see if there was anything interesting over the last year or so.

So, let's start with my 10 favorite new polishes in 2013 (in no particular order):

WOW 427- This dries to a satin-y kind of finish, but it looks even more stunning fully matte. I love how unique it is, it's like a blue jeans color. It is also impossible to photograph. I had to play with dozens of combinations of settings and lighting to get it to look right. For some reason my camera kept reading it as a much brighter blue.

Ga-De Gold Sugar- And really, texture polishes in general this year. I'm not a gold person usually, but this one really blew me away.

???- 104- I'll be honest, I don't know what this brand is called. The bottle just says "Mirror effect" on it, and the other finishes from this brand all just have the name of the finish too. But I have a few of them, and they all look pretty awesome.

Autodidact- Not to toot my own horn here (well, technically yes), but I've been playing around with frankens, and I'm really quite happy with how some of them turned out! I would love to try out mixing polish from scrap, maybe this year I'll pull together the funds to actually buy supplies!

GlitterBunny- You Can Do It, Brucey!- Speaking of Indie polish, GlitterBunny! I have never bought indies before, and now I have a bunch from  GB and Indigo Bananas. I use this one constantly, it's an awesome glitter topper.

Born Pretty Store Holos- 12- This year also marks the year I could finally start ordering stuff online. And look at this sucker! Both the color and the holo quality are amazing.

Ciate- Beach Hut- This one scrapes in just under the wire, I bought it on December 29. I know Ciate has shown a really crappy attitude towards bloggers (with the "caviar nails" fiasco and all that), but I couldn't resist this glowy glittery orange.

Orly- Star Spangled- My picture doesn't even come close to doing justice to this incredible polish. It's a beautiful red jelly packed with microglitter, and it has incredible depth and finish. Basically, it's amazingness in a bottle. 

Inglot- 202 and 203- This one is a tie, because I couldn't choose between these two incredible duochrome flakie toppers. I mean, just look at them! (this time I do think the picture did them justice. I'm usually terrible at catching color shift but this one was nice and cooperative)

L'oreal Paris- Mysterious Icon- Last but not least, a brown-gold-taupe-indefinable-SOMETHING that seems to not quite fit into any category. It even has purple undertones, to make things more confusing. I love that I can't quite quantify this.

Since most people get bored once the photos end, the rest goes under a cut!

NOTD: Inglot flakies

Technically I know this should fall into the "swatch" category, but these are just so pretty that I could wear them forever. I wore a combination of Inglot 202 (reddish orange to olive green shift) and 203 (bright green to deep indigo shift) layered over black, and I have honestly never seen a shift so dramatic. My nails literally never looked the same twice.

As you have probably gleaned from my copious gushing, this is going to be a picture heavy post. I don't have much more to say about these, but I have a lot more to show. For reference: My left hand is 203 on most nails and 202 on my ring finger, while my right hand is the reverse.

Without further ado, on to photos!

Courtesy cut, lots and lots (and lots) more photos after the jump!