Earworm material: Do You Sea What I Sea?

Previously posted on Instagram: OPI Do You Sea What I Sea?

 It was very shiny so I decided to try it with matte top-coat (I used this NeverMind mini):

It's really pretty either way but I think I liked it matte the best.

Death Serum + a NeVerMind bonus

This is the last one of the NeVerMind polishes I ordered, Death Serum:

It's a black jelly, which is something I didn't already have.

So I ordered Azazael and Death Serum, and I got those plus a mini matte top-coat, with a note:

If there was a delay I wasn't particularly aware of it, but I'm not going to turn down matte top-coat, which I go through a ton of!

(this is my three-full size NVMs, Azazael, Death Serum, and Le Fay, which was the Polish Pickup polish)

NOTD: Cigars On Ice (matte)

OK, here is Cigars On Ice on my nails with matte top-coat. Obviously without the matte top-coat it would be much more sparkly, but with it it just glows, and that's why I'm addicted to my matte top-coat!

I need to see somebody else's description of this polish. I think it's copper and gold, or some combination like that, but I'm not sure. I wish Polish Pickup would make an archive of past months!

(I used Lucky 13's matte top-coat. Before that I was using Pretty Serious' and I'm glad I found another good one before PS went bye-bye.) (I can't ever remember which company uses which pun - one matte top-coat is "Matte All The Things" and the other is "We're All Matte Here," I believe, but which is which? I think that Lucky 13 uses the latter but I can't swear to it and if I go look I probably won't even get back to this tonight. It's that kind of night.)

I didn't know anything about the name of this polish except that it had something to do with Beyonce (the theme for November was something like "badass women"). I'll put the song that it comes from below. (That line is not very far into the song.) While I was looking that up I also found some people saying that that's a sexual reference. Which, I guess, y'know, anything can be a sexual reference, in general, and I think the cigar as a phallic symbol goes back to Freud and presumably further, right? (I learned that from Saturday Night Live, not from reading Freud, believe me.) But from context, I honestly can't tell if that's what it means or not.

Anyway, here's Queen Bey so you can judge for yourself!

NOTD: Goldeneye, matte

This is OPI Goldeneye (this time with Pretty Serious Matte All The Things), and it's actually on top of the previous Princess Penny manicure.

It's much more brassy-gold than Princess Penny, and it seems opaque at this angle, although I think you can see the copper shining through at others. I like both of these. With the matte top-coat, at least, this one is much more showy than Princess Penny.

NOTD: Princess Penny, matte

This is KL Polish Princess Penny, with Lucky 13's matte top coat:

I really love this. You can see how ridgy my nails are in this picture, but in person I didn't feel like that showed up much. The above picture is under fluorescent lights, and then here's indirect sunlight:

This is pretty without the matte topcoat, too, but I love it more this way. It's an unusually pale copper color, and it almost reads like a nude. (I'mna wear this one more day like it is, and then I'm likely to try something layered over it. I haven't decided what.)

Nail care: top-coats

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:

• Butter London Hardwear
• HK Girl (apparently now just known as Glisten & Glow)
• Kensington Caviar (NailsInc)
• Seche Vite

some specialty top-coats:

• Gelous (American Classics)
• Glitter Food (Nail Pattern Boldness)
• Matte All The Things (Pretty Serious)
• Miracle Gel (Sally Hansen)
• Vinylux (CND)
• We're All Matte Here (Lucky 13)

(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.



tomorrow: cuticle care, remover, & more

Lucky 13: We're All Matte Here

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:

I tried We're All Matte Here over Black Creme just to to see how matte it is:

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.)

And my favorite polish of 2017 is...

One thing: I don't usually have treatment products in the running for this (and I still didn't), but I would like to mention a top-coat, because I have worn this and worn it in the six months or so that I've had it, and that's Pretty Serious Matte All The Things. It's just the right amount of matte, somehow, and I really love it. We'll call it an Honorable Mention, officially. (It's sold out on PS at the moment - I just checked - but here is its page, for reference purposes!)

I was tempted to count down like a beauty pageant, but I'll resist. My favorite polish of 2017 is:

ILNP High Tide

(This is what it looks like matte!)

I will tell you what the runners-up were:

• Prince Cornelious (KL Polish)
• Turn On the Northern Lights! (OPI)

I also had a late wave of fondness for So Jelly, which I had already eliminated because it's not a current polish. But I got over it.

I took pictures that I'll show you tomorrow (that's here), but when I got down to three, I went and pulled the bottles out and re-swatched, and it was just no contest. This polish just glows.