Here's Pretty Serious Purple Monkey Dishwasher on my nails, with top-coat:
I wasn't sure while I was doing the manicure that I was going to like it, but I do. It's a microglitter and it looks like a texture while it's going on, but if you get it to the point of being opaque and then top-coat it, then it stops looking like a texture at all. (Here's the swatch.)
Before that I wore Morgan Taylor Best Face Forward, which is also purple and which I also liked a lot. PMD, above, has hints of blue in it, but Best Face Forward actually has blue shimmer in it. It's very pretty but I didn't get a good picture, unfortunately.
The first thing here is polish remover, and the only big decision there is acetone vs non-acetone - I come down on the acetone side, but your mileage may vary. It used to be when I was a kid that polish remover only came in Cutex, but these days it seems like everybody pretty much uses one generic or another. I use Sally Beauty's. I do like the bottle type pictured on the left below, where the acetone pumps into a little indented place that you can put your cotton ball or pad into. I first saw this at my grocery store (Orchid is a house brand) but I've seen it from other brands too. I just refill it from my big SB bottle, though. And then I also have the Target jar-of-remover with the scrubby thing inside (this, if they haven't changed it) because it's great for glitter removal, but I refill it with generic acetone also.
I've been taking biotin for a while now and I do think it's beneficial. I did some poking around online about it lately and apparently there are arguments still going on about what it does exactly and how much to take (5000 mcg - or 5mg - which is what the bottle pictured is, is a large dose). But nobody I saw seems to seriously deny that it does something positive to the keratin in your nails & hair. (If you haven't taken it before, I would start with a small dose and see what happens. I actually didn't snap when I ordered this bottle how big a dose it was. I've just been taking it every other day, at most, because of that.)
As far as cuticle stuff goes, I don't have one holy grail and honestly I even switch around between types - I do love my Badger Balm but I also like to use the regular liquid oils sometimes as well. I like roll-ons like the one below, but I also like the ones that come in regular polish-type bottles and go on with a regular polish-type brush. (I have an old one from Chick Polish that smells divine, but they're out of business so that won't do you any good. The one I have bought more recently is Pretty Serious and it's unscented - I think it's called Cute Cuticles Purity.)
Oh, I do know one thing that is scientifically true (so I have read, at least - I'm definitely no expert) about cuticle oils, and that's that the kind of oil matters. You can't just slap kitchen oil or any old cheap cuticle oil on your nails and be sure it's doing anything. The size of the molecule matters, as I understand it; a large molecule can't penetrate the nail bed - which ideally is what you want it to do. I'm pretty sure I remember that jojoba oil was one of the small ones, but there are others. The big molecules (like coconut oil) will soften outer layers but can't get down into the layers beneath. (This piece from Nails Magazine lists some others.)
(Badger Balmis probably the closest thing to a Holy Grail for me out of everything I've talked about the last few days. I don't use it exclusively but it is awesome.)
Yesterday I did base-coats, today it's top-coats. With base-coat you've mostly got ridge-filling vs regular formulas, but top-coats seem to be somewhat more specialized.
(This is my mostly-empty bottle of Glitter Food. I like it but I don't know if I'll ever get around to ordering another one, because I just use Gelous for glitter-filling purposes.) regular/quick-dry top-coats I liked which are still available:
(I put links on a couple of these but basically I think this is stuff you will be able to find easily.)
and some discontinued ones that I liked:
Matte Me Crazy (NYC)
Insta-Dri (Sally Hansen)
Revlon Colorstay (old versions)
Sally Girl matte
With top-coats, I do sometimes assume that flakie or shifty or holo top-coats (like, say, Zoya Leia) can do double-duty as a replacement for a regular top-coat. A lot of them seem to do fine, even if they're not specifically made for that purpose. Some clear polishes work pretty well, too - a lot of people used to use NYC Grand Central Station like this, but I don't think you can get that any more.
As I've said in the last couple of entries, I don't really have a holy grail here. For one thing, I feel like some that I really liked have been discontinued. All of these are fine. I think on both base- and top-coats, I veer back and forth between lower-priced and higher quality, partly because I'm not really convinced in my heart of hearts that higher-priced is much better. And I have never really gotten on the fake-gel bandwagon (or the real-gel one either, but that's not so relevant here) so my bottles of Vinylux top-coat and Miracle Gel top-coat are still almost full.
It goes almost without saying that I use base-coat and top-coat religiously, right? You could go without it if you wanted to, but using both really extends your manicure-life in a big way. And also base-coat helps reduce staining, although nothing I've tried seems to eliminate it completely. But there's no question that they're worth bothering with unless you're really in a tearing hurry. I tend to do my nails sitting in the living room at night, near the TV and the computer, and I usually do things layer by layer with a good bit of time in between. I try to let every layer dry completely before I go on to the next, if possible.
Note that I don't think that the "complete care" kind of combination base- and top-coats work as well as the separate ones. They have different functions and I think they benefit from specialized formulas for each. Most reviews I've seen seem to agree with me.
(People spell "base-coat" and "top-coat" several different ways, and you'll probably find all of them on this blog if you look hard enough. One word, two words, or hyphenated? I don't think any of them are right or wrong. I just picked hyphenated, finally, and have tried to stick with it. I still forget sometimes, though.)
Oh, and I have not had good luck with peel-off base-coats, so you won't find any of those here. I get annoyed when my nail polish randomly pops off within the first hour.
I poked around in my spreadsheet and the "base-coat" tag on this blog, and here are all the base-coats I can find that I've used in recent years: Base-coats that are still available (as far as I know) & work well, in my experience:
Bridge the Ridge (American Classics) - ridge-filler
Butter London Nail Foundation - expensive but goes a long way
Cuccio
Instant Artificials (Salon Science) - this is a hardener but it works pretty well as a base-coat, too, unlike most other hardeners
NailsInc Superfood
Orly Bonder
Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure
Sinful Colors
Zoya Get Even (ridge-filler that's a bit too goopy for my taste, although it's useable)
Today's topic for #topictues is favorite nail-care items - I'm including base-coat and top-coat here although I'm not sure that's what the question really meant. I'll talk about other things as well.
I don't really have one "holy grail" item for any of this that I use exclusively. I have favorites but I switch around, mostly, especially on base- and top-coats. I have a varied collection of strengthening potions and stuff like that, but honestly, mostly I don't remember to wear those.
Here's a collection of my "favorite things" as far as nail-care:
Starting from the left: Badger Cuticle Care (aka "Badger Balm" - comes in a tin); Paint Box Polish cuticle oil (this is a citrus scent, I think, and it comes in a roll-on bottle); then Cuccio's regular base-coat (which I had never used before but like fine); then Instant Artificials, which can be used as a base-coat if you wish, or you can put your regular base-coat on top of it. Then we have NailsInc 45-second top-coat, which is one I've liked a lot, and Pretty Serious' matte one. I go back & forth but I usually decide something needs matte top-coat about once a week. (I also stuck a "nail tee" down on the end because that's what I use for clean-up.)
(I was going to add additional pictures but it's already dawn and I think I'll just get this up now and worry about adding more later.)
Added: this seems to be turning into a series for me - expect a whole entry on base-coats tomorrow and other stuff to follow after that. (top-coats here, cuticle products & remover here).
It's summer now, and one of the colors I always like to wear this time of year are these kind of watery blues - this is 1 Step Wonder Gel Peri-wink-le Of An Eye:
Honestly, I don't think this reads as really periwinkle, it just reads as blue - but maybe if I put it next to a more conventional pale blue I'd do better at seeing it. This is a current color, and I have had good luck with these Wonder Gel polishes as long as I don't try to take the "1-step" business too seriously. I have gotten the best results when I just treated it like a normal polish and wore it with my regular base-coat and top-coat. (Which I rotate - I don't stick with just one brand. Actually I may be talking about that tomorrow if I get it written, or if not hopefully sometime soon!)
It's getting to be the end of June, so I guess it's kind of late to be showing the May Boxycharm box, but anyway, here it is. This one has some really nice items in it, although I will tell you now that I went ahead and unsubscribed. I might try it again later, though. It's $20 and the items are full-size and most of them retail for $20 or more, so if you get even one item you like you're getting your money's worth, really. And this is good stuff, so I think most people will find multiple winners per box!
I've been using these brushes, they're my favorite thing.
There's also this:
It's a sculpting palette but it also could be used as eyeshadow.
Pretty Vulgar The Ink gel eyeliner in Black List - 6g
Aesthetica - 3-piece eye trio + P12 face brush
Beauty Creations liquid lip gloss in Kiss Me
I'll put Kathleen Lights' video about this at the bottom because I watched it and it influenced my opinion on all this, as far as what I'm keeping and what I'm giving away. In particular, I decided not to keep the CoverFX primer, because she said it's more of a pore-minimizing primer and that's not what I like, really. I'll give it away to somebody younger :)
So far I've kept the Pretty Vulgar eyeliner just because the container is totally adorable. I'm tempted to buy it in another color, though (I'm assuming it comes in other colors!) and give the black one away, since I don't really love black eyeliner on me. I know they sell Pretty Vulgar at Sephora so I may at least look and see. Answer, because I just checked: it also comes in brown and gray. (btw, I have heard some negative stuff about PV nail polish - I think it was that it applied badly, although I don't remember where I saw that - and it's expensive so I'm just trying not to look at it. I notice the nail polish is not on Sephora's website right now, so I guess that's why.)
Here's the eyeliner from an angle where you can see the full adorableness - and also the label on the lip gloss.
I feel like this color is a bit dark for me, but I may still change my mind. Also "matte lip gloss" is a total contradiction in terms, right? - matte means not shiny, gloss means shiny - so which is it? But I checked and it's totally matte. Which I guess is why I put it aside.
And here's Kathleen talking about - and demonstrating some of the contents of - this box:
I really love dark reds, although honestly I have to say I don't wear them all that often. This is OCC Black Metal Dahlia:
This is a dark red metallic - it looks slightly plum-leaning here, although I don't remember noticing that before. I actually wore this recently, but I don't seem to have a picture.
I've shown this one before, but I have a new(ish) picture, so I may as well show it anyway - here is SquareHue Vogue, from the 1990s collection:
This was in my top 4 and later top 5 SquareHue polishes, and also in my yearly favorites in 2016. It's a pearlescent dark red, and obviously I really love it. I was obsessed a few years ago with the idea of a "blackened red" and I think that's exactly what both of these are.
This is Pretty Serious My Immortal, with matte topcoat (I don't care if the Zoe Report thinks matte is out, I still love it) (and sorry if the picture is a bit dark, it was about to rain when I took this):
Note that this is Pretty Serious' matte top-coat, I haven't busted out the new Lucky 13 one I got because I'm trying to use this up first. Although I still need to compare. But anyway, damn, I love this. It's one of those manicures that just seems to pick up the light really beautifully. I don't think I wrapped my tips too well and I've got some little chips now, so I'm thinking I may patch it up and go back to normal top-coat just to see if I like it as well.
(I just looked and there's 21 bottles of this left on the US website, as of last night. Didn't check international.)
Cor Blimey is the satin-finish polish - I wrote the names wrong when I wrote them on the wheel. (Pitter Patter is the dark shiny purple above Cor Blimey.) This was a mini - or fashion-size, as they used to call these - that I got from a one day "mystery set" on BL's website back in 2015. This polish was a really nice surprise - something a little different.
Cor Blimey is the smaller one here, and Pitter Patter is the full-size one. You can see that they look really similar in the bottle.
(Scroll down on the link above to see the set that Cor Blimey came in - it's the set at the bottom. I haven't been buying Butter London polishes lately because I think they're too high-priced, but I have several polishes from them that I love, including this one, and I also use the pink cosmetic bag that came with this set all the time. So that was $10 pretty well-spent, it turns out.)
This was a #topictues a good while back: first indie you purchased, and do you still have it
Answer: I ordered three minis from Chirality - all holos - just about five years ago. This one is The Symbiote:
Actually I see that all three of them are still on Etsy:
The Symbiote (gray) Convergence (plum) Kale (green)
Here's Kale:
I remember it being a bit brighter than it looks here. It's grayed out, yeah, but not really to this degree.
I still have two of them, but not the third, and I'll show you why - this was my "farewell" swatch of Convergence before I destashed it:
I think I must not have closed it properly at some point. You can see that the color is pretty, still; but of course originally the texture of this was smooth, just like the others.
This was from the Serious Business collection, in which all the names were polish jargon - others were HTF, Epic Haul and No Buy. (Here's the whole collection.) This is a mixed glitter in a dark base - I would have said the base was black but people online seem to think it's dark blue or dark teal. And then it's got a mix of glitter colors but mostly in cool tones - green, blue, purple. There are lots of small hexes, some little tiny bits, and even a few scattered large pieces as well, which makes it even harder to tell what all is in there. There might even be a sprinkling of holo in there.
I think this is really pretty but it's got an awfully thick formula. I don't think I've actually worn it. I just swatched it. Also I bought Black Diamond at the same time, which turned out to be really similar except without the dark base. (This post has a comparison if you scroll down.) I should also probably point out that I don't usually make much effort to get the glitter spread around just so on these wheel swatches, and I think on this one that's particularly noticeable. I could have covered up that bald space in the middle if I'd been more careful with it.
(I just poked around on the website and I think this is one of the ones that's recently been discontinued.)
I was looking at that link I posted down at the bottom of this entry, where I did Aurora Borealis over a green base. I liked it over the green so I decided to experiment with other greens. This is two coats of A/B over OCC Chimera.
It like it. It's maybe not quite as awesome as the one I linked (which was over Frogtown) but it's nice. Chimera is one of those polishes that I like but I always forget about when it comes to picking out polish.
(Added:) I put this on early Friday morning, and now it's Tuesday and I've washed my hair since then and everything else that I usually do that messes my polish up, and I've still got this on and it's only got the tiniest bit of tipwear. I'm sure I'll do something new in the next couple of days, but I call this a big win, wear-wise.
I was uncertain about it when I swatched it, but in the end I quite liked it on my nails. I kept thinking it looked a little too orange, and it is a bit orange-leaning (rather than the neutral-to-blue-leaning reds I usually favor) but it's pretty. It was a bit dicey to get on, although I think I had a slightly defective brush, because it kept wanting to spread WAY out and I've never had that problem with Lucky 13's brushes before. It definitely takes two coats or maybe three plus a heavy dose of shiny top-coat, unless you want it to look like a texture. But despite all that, I did really like it in the end!
I don't think I've showed the swatch picture of Zoya Finley, which I got back in the Earth Day promo:
A pretty dark-ish purple. It's from the same collection that Merida is from, the Urban Grunge collection, which I think was fall '16.
And that got me thinking about Zoya's scattered holos - I don't buy them automatically, but I have several of them now. I'm really partial to a couple of them, and others I can take or leave, it's odd. Often I'm not sure if I like them a lot til I wear them. (I'll report back on Finley when I remember to wear it.)
Dream (probably my favorite):
On the nail this reads more indigo than I expected. I like it so much because it's not just a straight royal blue.
Aurora:
This was the one that got me trying out more of the other ones. (I bought Blaze early on and wasn't too crazy about it. I believe that Aurora, Blaze, and Storm were the original three, but Blaze was less holo-packed, which is probably why I liked it less. I didn't get around to buying Aurora until later. And I bought what was said to be a dead dupe of Storm pretty early on - L.A. Girl Black Illusion, from the 3D Effects collection - so I never bothered to go back and get Storm.)
And then there's Merida:
For some reason, I never loved Merida as much as I expected to. It looks great in the bottle but it just didn't grab me on my nails, I don't know why. As I mentioned above, it's also from Urban Grunge - so it came out just under two years ago. I bought this and Dream along with a couple more polishes when this was still a pretty new polish, in the Black Friday sale in 2016.
It's not anything really unusual but it's a really pretty middle-of-the-road purple creme. (This is some years old and I don't think Ulta makes this line at all any more.)
This is a sort-of-similar shade of purple with some shimmer, NYC Prince Street:
I think I paid about 75 cents for this when you could still get NYC at CVS. (Can you get NYC at some dollar store somewhere or is it true that they don't sell it at all in the US any more? Seems like I read that latter thing somewhere but I don't remember where. I don't see NYC in any store I routinely shop at these days, anyway.)
This was the only Lucky 13 polish I owned until recently, Aurora Borealis:
This is a multicolor flakie topper, in too many colors to name, including green and maybe purple or pink? I'm not sure. But anyway, it's extremely beautiful over a dark base. I've tried it on its own and it looked pretty good but I think I like it best with a dark base.
I believe this was released in an extremely limited edition so it's not something you're likely to be able to find. (Here's the whole collection.)
Added: I was mistaken when I said this was the only Lucky 13 polish I previously had - I also have Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey. I forgot that one was Lucky 13 as well.
Also I found some more links for this: another A/B mani (over black) and another (over dark blue)
but actually I think this mani over green is my favorite
This is tiny red micro holo glitters. The description on the website says it has a jelly base, but I couldn't really see much color to the base at all, to tell you the truth. Unless you put an undercoat under this, it's going to take 3 coats. It's not really shiny on its own, but I put top-coat on the tip so you can see at the top of the nail what it looks like top-coated. I also am sure it's not going to be easy to remove. (But hey, it's glow-in-the-dark!)
And then Always Be A Dragon I've talked about a bit before so I won't repeat too much.
I really like this a lot. I've got a running list of everything new I've worn so far this year and I've got this penciled in as my favorite of the first half so far. (L13 link here)
(I have a link for the first one but apparently Lucky 13's website is down for a few days and I didn't get the specific link for this polish before that happened. They're supposed to be back on Wednesday with some new releases - the 13th, get it?) They're back with at least one new polish, which looks cool - I ordered it so I'll report back! (and they have free shipping through the 17th, too)
I just realized I haven't shown my recent Lucky 13 purchases at all, except for the one NOTD of the green one. I bought 3 things - two polishes and a matte top-coat. (I've been going on about how much I love Pretty Serious' matte top-coat, and I was going to re-order that but it was out of stock at the time. So I decided to try this one instead.)
L-R, this is the matte top-coat, We're All Matte Here, Stone of Reality, Always Be A Dragon
The bottoms of the bottles have helpful labels too:
You can see at the bottom of the nail how shiny the black polish was to begin with. I didn't swatch anything else to compare the degree of matte-ness of this, but well, it looks pretty matte.
(I'll show the swatches for the other two tomorrow.)
This is in indirect sunlight. It's kind of like a lighter version of Alcatraz Rocks, although it's not really as light as it looks here. It's not quite as textured as that, either - but it's pretty close. I put one coat of Gelous on it here, and that was enough to get it relatively smooth, although not completely. This is two coats of Cybernetic.
I didn't realize how close to neon this was - it's not quite there, but it's awfully bright. This is two coats plus top-coat, in direct sunlight. - Even given my usual dislike of neons, this one looks fine on me and I think it's really pretty.
(Note: Cybernetic is gone from PS's US website now. Might be available on the non-US one, I didn't check. I bought Hands Up at Walgreen's pretty recently so hopefully it's still findable.)
I was really intending to talk about some nail polish or other today, but I just found out that True Match is finally making my foundation color and I am so excited I have to talk about that instead. I've discussed it before, here, I know - I have been wearing True Match practically since it first came out, and it didn't take me long to figure out that C2 was too light for me and C3 was too dark. So I have been buying two bottles at a time and mixing them together for, like, ten years (ok, maybe not quite, but it's five years, at the very least, going from that link above) and guess what, as part of the color expansion they are actually making C2.5!!
I was aware that every company who makes foundation is now madly expanding their ranges in order to follow Rihanna's lead (go, Rihanna, go!). True Match had been making these halfway-between shades in some other colors already, but since they already had more colors than most (they had 30 shades from the start), when I saw "new colors!" I didn't automatically think that would include mine. But, hey, awesome! I can buy foundation one bottle at a time, now! (And I am incredibly lazy about stuff like this, normally, so it tells you how much I like this foundation that I kept on doing it.)
Note: picture ganked from Walmart, because that was the first place I saw this, and here's the link back to that page. Nothing here is affiliate links.
Come to think of it, I could have bought Rihanna's foundation for what I paid for those Clinique BIY drops, and I only thought about that because I had this picture of the box:
I took that not because I was intending to talk about the drops again (I've played with them a little, and I'm sure I'll get around to discussing that eventually) but because I was looking at the flower pattern on the box. Another thing I know I've discussedpreviously is that I've been using Clinique products for 40 years or possibly a little more (man, does it pain me to say that) and I'm pretty sure they've been using that same flower pattern - or at least an extremely similar one - forever, too. I was hit by a surprising wave of nostalgia when I looked at that box, and that was why I took a picture of it before I tossed it.
First of all, in case anybody missed it and is interested, Kathleen Lights' Havana Heat collection dropped. Not your typical summer collection (which is refreshing as hell, really) - very bright, but not neon. I can't see myself buying a bunch of these because there's too many warm colors - I might want the pink and the blue. (Not that the green is particularly warm, but it seems too similar to things I already have.) (Scroll down to the bottom for videos on this!)
Here is the only polish I've got from KL's spring (Ethereal Gardens) collection, Charmed:
This reads as purple but I think it actually is pink with blue shimmer. It's super-pretty.
And then I have Mindy, from the Winter Glamourland collection:
A deep berry creme.
I tried Charmed on top of Mindy, and it seems to have definite possibilities:
Today's #topictues is "the last polish you purchased" but that's something I have already showed you guys (Generally Hazzardous) so I'm going to go back and talk about some other topics from the backlist of topics I skipped in past months. (Back on the topic of what I've bought: I hadn't considered this, but I haven't bought any polish in a month or so. I've been doing that, lately. I buy a bunch of stuff all at once, and then I go, "oh, this is ridiculous" and I contain myself for a while. I've gone as long as three months at a time without buying anything. So I guess I can expect another binge in August or so. Just in time for the Nordstrom sale!)
Here's a few more where I don't have very long answers:
first polish you would buy if you lost your entire collection (this was a topic from early May) - I can't think of anything specific. I would probably go somewhere nearby - Walgreen's or H-E-B or someplace - and just pick from what they had in stock. I certainly don't think I would want to wait for mail order.
what brand you would choose if you could only have one (no indies) (from March) - definitely Zoya - reasonable prices if you wait for sales & promos, a big back-list and a lot of fun finishes
most-used polishes (other than base & top-coat) (this one is from April) - I think it would have to be China Glaze Travel In Colour. I love shifty top-coats. I've worn a number of different ones in recent years: Bubblegum Punk, for a while, and for the last year or so it's been Zoya Leia. But I think Travel In Colour is probably the all-time champion. (I'm going on the assumption that "other than top-coat" in this topic is referring to something like Seche Vite and not a top-coat with color in it.) I can't think of one single polish that I've worn as much as I've worn the different color top-coats. Another candidate would be Zoya Chloe and other similar flakies. I love to layer, have you noticed?
This is a Vanessa Hudgens polish, as I understand it, which kind of cracks me up because I mostly know her only as somebody who was a legendarily bad dresser some years ago. (To be fair, I hear that these days she has a stylist and things are much improved on that score. Whenever I see pictures of her these days she looks really cute.) I think the idea here is that this is a festival-season collection, right? The hot-pink color and the polish name both make sense in that context. I need to remember to wear this soon!
