Sinful Colors "Punk Yourself" Hypnotic Transforming Topcoats - Tips and tricks

 

This line of transforming topcoats are a lot of fun, but kind of tricky to apply! Here's some help from your friendly neighborhood polish addict who just spent a weekend experimenting (not with acid ... but with polish!) 

Moonlight v-gap manicure

This year's Academy Award winner for Best Picture, besides being an outstanding film, really captivated me with its gorgeous promotional design. The colors in the Moonlight cover are just luminous, and I couldn't wait to put them on my nails. Plus the visual split of the main character's three different times of life into one image was a shape just begging to be nail art - so this was my motivation to actually attempt nail art for the first time in a while!

Blast from the Past: InDecisive Lacquer Neon Speckled

This is an old manicure of mine, way back in November of 2013! But I can't remember if I've ever posted it anyplace, and I really enjoyed looking at it again going through my manicure photos! This is InDecisive Lacquer's amazing Neon Speckled collection, in Blue and Pink, which I put over complementary colors. Unfortunately I can't remember what the pink is (I may not even have it anymore!) but the blue is Nina Blue La La.

I was privileged to communicate with Aleksandra, the brain behind InDecisive Lacquer and she is the nicest person :) I was a huge fan of Speckled Black and White, so when she was developing colored neon versions, I got a few of the very first bottles. I immediately wanted to do a matchy pos-neg sort of deal to show off the speckles! It actually turned out so bright and contrasted that the colors kind of wigged out my camera - they sort of bleed in a weird way in the photos! (This was my old camera, by the way, with worse resolution as well.)

Edible nail polish ... #thatexists

Isn't this what polish addicts have always been dreaming of? ... Edible nail polish. And KFC flavored at that! There's original recipe (brown) and hot and spicy (red), made of all natural ingredients, so that you can paint your nails with it, it dries, and you can continue to lick it all day! ... I swear am not making this up, nor is this some sort of prank. It's a real thing.

Essie Udon Know Me - comparisons and koi fish

This is my favorite shade from Essie's new Fall 2016 Japan collection: Essie Udon Know Me! This is kind of my perfect shade, because I eat  udon noodles all the time, plus I'm a sucker for a dusty color, and also for a good blue-green. Now that I've worn it, I have to say this is the perfect shade - a nicely balanced pale turquoise, which looks a lot like a dusty blue in a lot of lights, but has an obvious hint of green when you look at it next to true blues.

Shelf art

Just one bit of wall in my place. It evolved into an art space/knick knack shelf and I really like it.

Represented, among other things: a kitschy plastic unicorn my friend J got me from Wisconsin Dells; black and white mini plush labbits; a windup penguin I've had since I was a baby; covers of cool old mystery paperbacks; printout from an Art News magazine of a Ray Johnson show (possibly my favorite artist of all time); glow in the dark dinosaurs because those are two of the greatest things in the world (glowing things and dinosaurs!). Oh and the thing in front of the rainbow unikitty is my fake crow (it has real feathers but is not an actual dead crow) called Craw.

My greige rainbow

I've been collecting greiges since 2011 or 2012; the very beginning is chronicled here, and I talk about what "greige" is here. I just think the combination of purple, tan, and grey is magical: it goes with everything, looks great on anybody, and is a great middle ground between neutral and vampy.