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.)

Gaga Greige - Essie Master Plan

No greige collection would be complete without Essie Master Plan. I've worn it before I just didn't take pictures of it at the time - it's one of my favorites. It's a really surprising polish - I remember when I first looked at it, I thought, no, this is just your average light tan. But when you put it next to light Caucasian skin, something magic happens! It does look tan in some lights, including apparently the one in which I took these photos, but the contrast of the grey, purple, and tan next to the pink in my skin is dramatic and interesting while being the same general shade. In other lights, the purple really comes out, which is the hallmark of a real "greige" IMO. 

Essie Tart Deco and a bit of nail art for fall

There's no doubt Essie Tart Deco is a staple. Coral is one of those colors I have many of, and this is definitely one of the best, if not my favorite. It's bright but also dark as corals go, a really rich and vibrant hue. Plus it's Essie, which actually dries properly without a topcoat and won't imprint on your clothes or sheets the same night. I didn't take comparison photos (yet) but it seems most similar to the rich shade I liked of Covergirl Coy Coral, but with a better formula.

Orly Seagurl and a rose

This was actually one of those polishes I was considering whether to get rid of, so I wore it - and fell in love with it again. Orly Seagurl is kind of a must-have, because it's both a really great version of dark silver, which should really be in everyone's color palette, and it's a really nice metallic shimmer with a fascinating tan/burnished/bronzey tone hiding in the silver. For like the first day I wore it, I felt like it was just a cool silver shimmer, but the warmth in the tones came out the longer I wore it, and I really started to enjoy it as a unique color.

The Lilacism phenomenon - that weird thing with Essie's lavenders

Guess what? The polish I'm wearing and the bottle in this photo are BOTH Essie Lilacism.

Essie Where's My Chauffeur?

This is one of my favorite polishes of all time. Essie Where's My Chauffeur? is a gorgeous deep turquoise. If I had to pick only one of Essie's turquoise/teal shades, it would be this one. It's also one of those great Essie formulas that really does only need 2 coats, and no top coat to dry without getting sheet prints that night (it seems to be properly dry, so it won't dent or imprint, in a few hours as opposed to the next day). I love this perfectly intense blue-green - it looks green in some lights, blue in others, and is fun to look at next to a variety of other colors. 

Revlon Chamma-leeyun ... I mean Chameleon

I'm happy to see Revlon Chameleon join the company's core line now - the market needs a really cool gold duochrome, and this is it! I was using this one for frankening, then decided to wear it by itself, and fell in love with the unusual greeny-gold shifting tones. It definitely changes with the light you're in, and for that reason never gets boring! It's a natural pair for gold jewelry, obviously; I got these, like most of my jewelry, from Born Pretty.

Pink n Glamrock

I've been meaning to wear Nina Glamrock for literally years - it's one of the first polishes I ever bought, and it's a gorgeous slate grey/silver made of tons of glitter. I finally decided to use it as an accent to break up an "obnoxious" pink mani! The pink is Revlon Bubbly, which is kind of the perfect bubblegum shade, bright without being neon, and nicely balanced between warm and cool. Unfortunately it's an old shade now, and mine had a horrible formula - it was globby and elasticky and didn't cover very well. Presumably Revlon has improved their formula since, but as far as I know this shade is no longer around. In any case, it made a fun sweet-and-edgy manicure, with Glamrock and a silver skull charm. I topped it off - or bottomed it off, really - with a couple bracelets, including my sky blue PVC changeable-letter bracelet. I modified it from Born Pretty and bought some silver slider letters to spell out whatever I'm into at the moment!

Coffee and TV

Coffee is my drug of choice. I'm up to about 6 cups a day. Naturally, I gravitate toward nail polishes with coffee names. I was really excited to run across this cute nail sticker on a sheet of kawaii type foods and things from Born Pretty Store (unfortunately don't think it's still available) to adorn my coffee mani!

Oh Baby! ... it's dangerously pretty!

This is an unusual combination for me ... so is a bow and a spike I guess! I wanted to do something that looked venomous - seductively cute but also prickly. So I put Pure Ice Oh Baby, which is a mostly shimmery blue topper, over Covergirl Outlast Crushed Berries, which is pretty much the perfect rich berry red/pink. For some reason I enjoy wearing a bow on my pinky, so I complemented the sky blue of Oh Baby and added a little edge with a silver spike stud (both from Born Pretty).

Sprout for Spring

I got into a very springtime mood, and was inspired by my new Sally Hansen Luxe Lace Crochet, a lovely cloud-like mixture of many sizes of white and sky blue, which just screams the idyllicism of spring. I put it over a gentle warm grey, Covergirl Outlast Non-stop Stone, a really great neutral that is somewhere between tan and grey, but not actually the full intensity of a greige. (Hold it up to any other grey and you will see the tan come out!) Finally, I added some nail stud shapes to form the two petals of a little green sprout, which I painted with Pure Ice Wild Thing (appropriately!).

OPI Next Stop ... the Bikini Zone and exotic jewelry

I picked up OPI Next Stop ... the Bikini Zone at a secondhand store, intending to find out what it was worth and resell it (I'm a nail polish "flipper" in my spare time!) but I kinda fell in love with the unique duochrome!

My love affair with greige

My favorite nail shade of all time is GREIGE. There is some dissention by now about what color actually constitutes greige, but to me it is a blend of tan, purple, and grey; you could call it a purple-tinged beige or a warm, rosy grey. It seems to have started "trending" in fall of 2010. No doubt some of this was due to  Lady Gaga, who went through a greige phase around that time, appearing in Vanity Fair decked in the color and also wore it on her nails to the VMAs that year.

   

Three sided greige ~ Nuance Evening Haze

My favorite nail color of all time is GREIGE. There is some dissention by now about what color actually constitutes greige, but to me it is a blend of tan, purple, and grey; you could call it a purple-tinged beige or a warm, rosy grey. I collect greige nail polishes now and am always trying new brands by buying greiges.

This is Nuance Evening Haze; Nuance by Salma Hayek turned up at my local CVS and I couldn't wait to try it, not in small part because there was a greige AND this purple-greige! They retail for around $7 USD. The bottle design is great; I love the flower print on the cap (it goes all the way around).

Snail gold

My grandma's necklace

the beginning of a beautiful friendship

bow accent nail + Fruits

Rimmel Sage all the Rage + accent nail

I thought I really didn't like greens, then I went through my nail polish and realized just how many shades of green I possess! One of the shades that I tend to gravitate toward is the moss/sage/khaki greens. Rimmel 60 Seconds Sage all the Rage was my first of these. I feel in love with the pale mossy green, kind of like the classic green khaki but with a lighter, powdery tone.