A Bard Day's Night

This polish is from Polished Gamers Box (polishedgamersbox.com*) from - well, I'm not sure what month. It came in September so I guess it was August, because they tell you there's about a 4-week delay from when you order. Polished Gamers Box is not a "box" per se, not as I think of polish boxes anyway! I think they started out as a set you could get each month and that's why the name. But now it's more like Polish Pickup - it goes up for a limited time each month and there's a theme and at least some of the polishes change from month to month to go with the theme, but you buy the polishes individually. I think the window for PGB is the 15th to the 20th but I can't swear to that.

So whichever month this was, the theme was The Witcher, and this is A Bard Day's Night. It's described as "a deepened plum with shifting shimmer and color shifting flakes with flashes of violet, pink, red, gold, and green" - and it doesn't say so but I would describe it as having a jelly base. It's pretty sheer on the first coat, and I ended up wearing three coats, but honestly, it was wearable with two. It was amazing how much it deepened on the second coat. Just so, so pretty.

This was my first Swamp Gloss polish (swampgloss.com). I knew they existed but they don't seem to do PPU, which is where I do a lot of indie-shopping. Still, I'm going to try to remember to check out this brand and PGB again later on!

(I've got it on my nails now but I can't seem to find that picture. I'll try to add it later.)
 

*My links are being weird so I'm just typing them out, for the record!

Leonardo's Model Color

I don't buy OPI much any more because it seems like they don't make as many interesting polishes as they used to. However, I was intrigued by a couple of polishes in the new fall collection, Muse of Milan, and I looked at the prices on Polish Pick and finally bought one, Leonardo's Model Color:

Furthermore, I sprang for the extra dollar-and-change to get the Infinite Shine version, which I have never tried before. I like it a lot and it has worn quite well, although I've never gotten the incredible wear from OPI that a lot of people claim to - I suspect that's just me.
 

 

 

Lights Lacquer Smokey Quartz

I talked the other day about the first of the two Lights Lacquer polishes I bought, Zenon (apparently named for a 90s Disney movie!), and today I'm talking about the second, Smokey Quartz.

(I said I was going to post this last week, and I duly wrote it and then somehow failed to set it correctly to make it post! Sorry about that!)

This is from the Polished Gems collection, which I think came out around the holidays last year.

The website describes it as "a dark taupe base with rose copper shimmer." I put a top-coat on the tip of the nail on the swatch, and you can really tell the difference, here (unlike the one yesterday), but you still can't see much of the shimmer on the nail, at least in this picture. It's really obvious in the bottle, though, and I'm hoping that it's more apparent on the nail than my swatch shows. I really think this is going to be a great fall polish.


Here's a swatch video where somebody shows the whole collection - she launches right in with Smokey Quartz first thing, if you don't have time to watch the whole thing:

There's some other nice colors in here, though!

Happy things (planners & life)

This bit of my planner is months old, but I liked it and I thought I'd post it anyway:

I guess I should explain. I had a small tumor removed, and I was going to have five radiation treatments, but then they (meaning a committee, or that was the impression I got, at least) decided at the last minute that it was overkill and they cancelled it! I'm very glad this was unneeded, as you might guess. But the funky letters & bright pastels were cheering to me when I was still anticipating having to do it.

Actually this said "radiation week" - the "week" part was on the facing page.

This is in the Lifeplanner, but the letter stickers came out of a Happy Planner "megapack" book - the pastel one. (That book may or may not be discontinued, but I found copies various places when I searched. I think it was a really good deal at $20, not so much at its list price of $50.)


The 2021 Happy Planners came out this past week, and it made me kind of glad I bought what I bought already - I had bought some marked-down 18-month planners that go through the end of 2021. Not that there's anything wrong with the new ones, but I still like the ones I already have - which is the "All the Seasons" vertical book, and two horizontal ones to journal in ("Bookish" to talk about books in, and "LOLquotes" for everything else). Oh, and a skinny classic that I think is called Ink Splash, too. I do really like some of the flower and plant themes in the new planners, especially, but there's nothing that particularly makes me sorry I didn't wait.

Happy Planner always names their planners & notebooks something other than what it says on the cover:

This is "All the Seasons" even though it says "A well planned day" on the front. I am very literalist sometimes, and my instinct is to call it what it says - but I'm sure they have their reasons. Anyway, "a well planned day" is totally not my actual style (in planning or in life, really), but I like the purple cover and the rainbow and the rainbow disks, so oh well, we'll think of the well-planned day thing as a goal, right? And it has adorable seasonal-themed dividers that I really love.

Added: a flip-through of the above planner!

 

Lights Lacquer Zenon

I started to call Lights Lacquer a new-to-me brand - which it is - but it doesn't really feel new to me, because I was a big KL Polish fan. I think I have maybe around 40 polishes from KL Polish, which was also the creation of YouTuber Kathleen Lights - and Lights Lacquer is basically exactly the same, except with new colors. Lights Lacquer got underway last fall, I think? So coming up on a year ago. I had been watching as colors were released, and there were things I liked, but they're not cheap, and I was able to resist - until now! I still kept myself in control and only bought two polishes. I did a lot of looking at swatches and reviews before I decided, too.

When I say "exactly the same" I mean the bottles are about the same, the brush is the same, the formula is by all accounts basically the same, and it's still Kathleen who's developing the colors. It's just got a new name on it. Behind the scenes I'm sure things are different, but it's a very similar product. Since I really liked KL Polish, "exactly the same" is a good thing.

(As I understand it from what she said on her YouTube channel at the time, the reason for the change was that Kathleen had some partners that helped her fund KL Polish, and gradually they started overruling her on issues about the running of the business. She disagreed with them so strongly that she pulled out of that agreement and started over again, with Lights Lacquer, which she has sole control over.)


So here is one of the polishes I bought: Zenon. (Since this is already getting pretty long, I'll put the other polish up separately tomorrow.)

Zenon is from a new collection, Supernova:

(I didn't get this box because I didn't buy all three of them, but I thought it was super-adorable so I wanted to show you the picture.)

I did get a little flat promo piece, I assume because I did buy one of the polishes from the collection:

 Anyway, I really like this polish, as far as what I can tell from the swatches. The description on the website is a "fuchsia pearl with an ultra fine blue-violet holographic."

Both these swatches are Zenon, but the top swatch has matte top-coat. I just wanted to try it that way, too. The bottom one has top-coat on the tip only, but you really can't tell - or I really can't tell, anyway - where the top-coat ends.

And I just put it on my nails, so here's that too:

You can't see here how sparkly it is. Super pretty. (It seems to look considerably darker or lighter depending on the lighting. Compare the two pictures above!)