NOTD: Pastel texture gradient

This NOTD netted a lot of compliments from my coworkers. I think there's something about gradients, especially sparkly gradients, that just really grabs people's attention- one colleague referred to this mani as 'Cinderella nails'.

I started with a base of Chic Show Biz (410) which is actually a fantastic off-white color, I've been using it as a base for almost every gradient I've done recently. It's nearly a one coater, but it's softer than a stark white so if a little peeks through it's not so obvious. It's also got a subtle shimmer. I strongly recommend buying it as a nail art/gradient base, it's a staple for me.

The other polishes I used were:
Chic sugar finish collection 04 (pink)
Chic Sinful Tops 709 Love & Hate (purple)
Chic Sinful Tops 711 Naughty Blue (pale blue)
Ga-de 55 Blue Sugar
Konad blue stamping polish

Initially I wasn't planning to use the Ga-de blue, but the lighter blue I used turned out to be too sheer to be effective in sponging, so I added a little extra at the end.

31DC2014 Catchup 19-20-21-22

Day 19- Galaxies

It's kind of a pity I ended up posting these on a catchup day, because I think these might be the best galaxy nails I've ever done. Ah well, next time I'll try harder to post on time!

Day 20- Water Marble

You know, the very first nail art I ever did was a water marble. I must have had beginner's luck, because at the time I thought it was really easy! Now I can still manage it, but there are a lot more tears involved.

Day 21- Inspired by a color

I'm fairly predictable when it comes to colors- usually it's either some iteration of teal or purple. But to be a little more specific, this design is inspired by matte purple! (uh... ignore that my previous purple post was also matte shhhhh)

Day 22- Inspired by a song

This was inspired by the song Fireflies by Owl City. I dunno what it is about that song- I am so so so in love with it. It makes the world feel like magic.

Swatched: Chic Sinful Tops

I missed day seven, wah! I guess an entire week was a bit much to expect with no prep. No worries, I'm gonna try to keep things at a 2x-3x times per week rate for the forseeable future. That said, on with the post!

Chic has really been stepping up their game! They just released a collection of twelve polishes called Sinful Tops, and they're quite a mix. The're really three mini-collections of four put together, but Chic has been doing things in twelves lately, so I get wanting to keep up the pattern. I have all twelve, and I will be splitting the collection into three sets, according to type.

Click through the readmore to see detailed reviews for each one!

Swatched: Ga-de new liquid sands

I ducked into a pharmacy today while I was waiting for a bus, and I found a surprise! Two new liquid sands from Ga-de, and I really love them! They're both a bit of a step away from Gade's previous formula on liqiud sand, which has been a single color with a gold or silver shimmer.

They also debuted a new brush with these! The brush on this is a curved fan, kind of similar to the Essie brush. Personally I like it better, since it's shaped almost perfectly to my nail, although I know that not everyone will like it. (ETA: Apparently they also had this brush in their black liquid sand, but I failed to notice. Still fairly new though!)

Have a look!:

Teal Sugar (58)

Teal Sand is the first true cream liquid sand from Ga-De, and it's gorgeous! The color came out a little weird in some of the photos, but the sunlight picture (the middle one) is dead on. As for the texture and application, it's mostly like the rest of Ga-de's liquid sands- easy to work with, opaque in two coats (nearly one!), dries quickly.

Twinkling Sugar (57)

Blurred to show off the sparkle

Twinkling Sand is a super complex shimmer, kind of reminiscent of a collection I swatched aaaages ago, although they didn't have a shade exactly like this, it does kind of have the same combination scheme. It's mainly a teal based polish, with flashes of gold and green and blue and even the occasional pink. This one is a little more sheer, needing at least two coats for opacity. It would definitely need three on longer nails. Still, it's not super thick, even considering that it's a liquid sand, so three coats aren't a big deal. It's sooooo shiny! Did I mention how shiny it is? Because it's SUPER SHINY.

Instagram!

Yes, after much hemming and hawing, I have jumped on the bandwagon. Instagram, I am in you! @fedoraharp over there too, of course.

I've been wary, because you can't put watermarks on instagram, and I'm rather attached to my watermarks. but here I am anyway!

I figure I'll be using it to post pictures of nails on days that I like my polish, but don't feel it's quite elaborate or unique enough to go on my blog. I'll also post in-progress art and jewelry, and maybe photos of things I've just bought... I'm still not 100% sure exactly what's going to be on there. But it'll be heavy on the nail polish and jewelry, I promise that!

I'm still trying to figure out how to connect it to my Facebook page. I can connect it to my personal Facebook with no problem, but I followed the instructions on how to connect to a page and it just... didn't work. If anyone has done this before, your advice would be appreciated!

Swatched: GA-DE Liquid sands

Whoo, I haven't written a post on here in forever! I am really sorry :( I will put a tl;dr explanation at the end, but first, swatches!

So Israel has finally jumped on the liquid sand bandwagon and I am ecstatic. I mean... well they jumped on that like two months ago, I've just been really delinquent in my swatching duties. Sigh.

Both Chic and GA-DE have released lines of liquid sand, and I will probably swatch a number of them here over time. Although most of them will be redundant since I'm super late to the party. Whatever, I like swatching things!

50- Gold Sugar

With topcoat:

This one is definitely my favorite of the collection, although the next one is a close second. It's so shiny that the topcoat barely makes a difference to the appearance! In person the difference is somewhat more pronounced, but it's soooooooooooo sparkly.

55- Blue Sugar

With topcoat:

Can we talk about how much I love this color? Because I love this color so much. It is basically the perfect TARDIS blue (besides for, y'know, the sparkles. and the texture.) and the difference between with topcoat and without is so dramatic that this is almost two different polishes.

Overall, I highly recommend picking up a few of GA-DE's liquid sands if you have the opportunity.

Now for the tl;dr, under a cut for your convenience.

31DC2013 Day 3- Yellow nails

Finally! A day in which I have both brought my camera home with me and took some fairly decent photos.

So I've been utterly dreading yellow day, since I Do Not Look Good in yellow. But I'm actually really happy with what I ended up doing! I may even do this art again when I can leave it on for more than a day. I tried out some new polish from the Chic Sugar Baby collection- the first Israeli produced liquid sand! It just came out about a week ago, so i'll be swatching a bunch of them soon. The flowers I did using acrylic paint. I tried to make normal looking leaves but since the flower took up most of the nail, I went with more abstract. More pictures to follow, but first, Hannah!

Rubber ducky family! I don't know where she came up with the idea, but it's adorable. Hannah has the same dread of yellow that I do, so she did them on a blue base.

I ended up photographing my nails later in the day, so I have some wonky lighting issues going on here- I did my best to adjust the colors, more pictures below the jump!

Experiments with liquid sand

I have been putting off this post for a week, because I have been overwhelmed lately, and I can't think of a chatty way to encapsulate my recent life. So I'm going to skip the life bits and get to the polish bits.

I bought one, and only one, liquid sand. Not because I don't love the texture (I do!), but because the only brand that has it here is OPI, and OPI costs about $17 a bottle here!

Still, a lot of bloggers have been gushing about it lately, so I was curious to try it out. The thing is, based on the swatches I've seen, liquid sands are still a largely unexploited resource. I see some glitters, but mostly cream based colors, sometimes with a shimmer. This frustrates me greatly- you have a whole new kind of polish to play with, why are you making creams? And why are the shimmers you make almost exclusively one-note? Where are my holos, my multichromes, my blingy glitters?

So I decided to rectify this problem all by myself. The polish I have is "What Wizardry Is This?" which is a pretty crinkly texture, so a single coat of another polish on top still leaves the texture very visible. After a quick stash raid, allow me to present you with the best of my experiments:

Disclaimer: these swatches are very far from perfect. A number of these polishes are streaky or sheer with one coat, so the base shows through. The idea here is only to showcase the potential of liquid sands to work with a variety of finishes.

Creams:

Sunlight

Reeeeeally quick update

Just checking in to let y'all know that texture polish is apparently something I can tolerate on my fingers. I got myself OPI What Wizardry Is This as a paycheck reward, although I was leery of trying out texture polishes because I couldn't cope with rhinestones. Apparently this I can deal with!

And it's pretty, to boot. I don't have my camera with me, but for good swatch photos I'm always going to recommend Swatch And Learn because she is my favorite polish blogger.

See ya!