Update: Ninja Polish Dragons

I'm going to make a series of pictures called My Hands in Windows. I made it to my living room ones this time. Once I hit all those in my house, I'll go on tour like Harto!

As for the polish, it was stellar. Although I bet a big chunk of that can be attributed to the Essie base. That's why I like it, see. Still, absolutely no issues at all.

Probably could have let it ride for another week, too. Bored though. Great polishes, you should definitely go get yourself some.

Jess


PS If you have never watched My Drunk Kitchen, go do so and start with the older ones. Hannah Hart is freaking hilarious.

Ninja Polish Dragon Collection

The Dragon collection was released just a few days ago and I managed to get an order in for all five via the facebook release announcement. I usually have bad luck for such things but for once I got to win. Trying to decide which of these to wear this week was very difficult. They're all so sparkly and pretty! I kept changing my mind. And then I realized...there's five of them.

I didn't have to choose!

Maybelline Color Show Holographics: Blue Blaze, Mystic Green, and Lavender Lustre

An Open Letter to Maybelline New York:


To whom it may concern:

I realize that you are a major, huge cosmetics company. You've been in business for almost 100 years (congratulations on your centennial next year, by the way), and I'm just some customer in the good ole Midwest, but even so, I believe I may know a few things that at least one person in your company could stand to learn. Let's start with some definitions!

Wet N Wild Sprinkled With Love

Also known as POLLILOPS!

Dana found these at Walgreens several weeks ago and it just took them so long to show up in my neck of the woods that she went ahead and grabbed them for me so I didn't miss out. They're very cute, all named after baking somehow. The reason they're pollilops is because they're actually displayed that way--as lollipops. The bottle shape matches and everything.

Don't you just love how my cat used it as a chew toy?

One of my nieces or nephew, I disremember which, misheard lollipops as pollilops and it stuck. Forever.

Revlon Chroma Chameleon - A Few Updates

I tell ya, kids, life sometimes gets in the way of some of the fun stuff I want to do for the blog here. We've had a little instability in our extended family and some of the family dynamic has changed for a while. Add to it that I'm really working to get Dreamy Lacquer Co off the ground, and I don't have quite as much free time as I had two weeks ago!

Ever since I posted the Revlon Chroma Chameleons I had picked up, I've been thinking about how they'd look when applied over black polish. Then I picked up the Rose Quartz and Cobalt to add to the collection...and now I've completely misplaced the Cobalt, Tanzanite, and Topaz. I don't remember what box I put them in and didn't have the oomph to find them this morning. The others, though, were sitting on my bedside table, so I spent a couple of hours doing swatches for us :)

Revlon Chroma Chameleon: Topaz, Aquamarine, Amethyst & Tanzanite

So I was out of polish remover. I took a quick jaunt to Walgreen's to pick up a bottle, with no thought in my head other than "don't forget to grab some milk, too" when I glanced over at the new polish display. I was checking up on the Wet N Wild Toppings collection, mostly. I picked them up last week, but I like seeing if the things I've chosen for myself prove to be popular. They had been replaced by a Sinful Colors glitter topcoat collection and these pretty little beauties, the Revlon Chroma Chameleon polishes. They're minis, 8.6 ml per bottle, and the going rate at Walgreen's is kind of high...but I have very little willpower. Enough that I didn't buy the entire collection--just my favorite half!

Update but more about Hard Candy Matte-ly In Love

Because I don't think an update is really necessary on this. Dana has already covered that for us and the only difference between the two was we used different brand blacks as the base color. I should also mention that when I decided to try this again I did not have high hopes that it would work so I totally didn't use any kind of base coat whatsoever. I was fully expecting to have to remove it and choose something else.

With that said...

I can haz water marble?

So back before Halloween, I mentioned something about me trying to do a water marble. I wanted to do a neat little multi-color glow-in-the-dark one with those Blue Cross pumpkin polishes. It was a spectacular failure. As it was my very first attempt at one ever, I had no idea why. There could have been any number of reasons. And just in case it was the polishes that caused the flop (those pumpkin polishes are cheap, okay) I tried a few Essies and still couldn't really get it working. I had one nail that was sorta done but it was terrible. Dana tried to help as much as she could but as she said herself, it's hard to troubleshoot from five states away. I gave up on it and decided to try another day.

Update: Sally Hansen Lustre Shine Moonstone

Average all the way around for me. Just get it out there right now. I don't know what it is about me and Sally. I had this problem with the Lustre Shine Lava when I wore it, too. No pics or review on that one, either, it was pre-blog. Perhaps Dana will hook us up, I certainly won't wear it again any time soon.

Four days later. I had a chip the very first day. I'm also one of those ones who tries to make a manicure last a whole week, so I tend to spackle and putty chips and cracks. Which probably makes it look worse most of the time but I just. Don't. WANNA do it more than once a week. Such a pain. Perhaps I need to let that thinking go. But I digress. A very average polish. I've had worse, I have a whole lot better. If you like it, and have better times with this brand than I do, go for it. If not, wait for a lovely sale.

Jess

Sally Hansen Lustre Shine Moonstone

Not exactly my usual type of color, admittedly. I tend to stick to darker shades and a lot of black. I was goth before it was called goth, okay.

Moonstone is your typical mother of pearl, seashell, whitepinkbluegreen color change polish. If you have something similar, you aren't missing out on much. I also can't catch all the colors because well...okay, I didn't try very hard either. Considering it's like so many other polishes I didn't deem it worth the effort of trying to find angles in sun. Pssh. It's a smooth application and of course very sheer.

one coat

two coats

Dry time is average but I rushed a bit and got a few bubbles on that thumbnail. I think I was trying to build up layers faster because seeing the nail line irritates me for some reason. I dunno. It didn't matter anyhow because even after three coats I can still see it, and that's where I stopped.

It's very pretty for something I don't normally wear. I have really poor luck with Sally Hansens though so I fully expect this to start peeling and chipping almost immediately. I don't know why Ms. Hansen and I can't get along for more than twenty-four hours. I hope I'm wrong. We'll see in the update.


Jess

Ludurana Water Marble

I was so excited to get my Ludurana Aurora Boreal nail polish! I bought it with the express purpose of trying out this manicure. I love the look of water marbles. If you know how to do them, skip the video. If you're new to water marble, this is a good tutorial:

There are a kabillion tutorials on YouTube. Some of these people are so creative and talented. The designs they're able to make astound me! I was going for an oil-slick look, completely inspired by a picture I saw on Pinterest. Jess, miracle worker that she is, found the source of the photo: Esmaltas Da Kelly. Fair warning, the site is in Portuguese, but the photos are so lovely, I think it's worth a look anyway. There's always Google Translate!

Losing My Marbles

Yesterday, I picked up the Sally Hansen Lustre Shine colors. Today, I got adventurous with them and tried a water marble. Today's experiment was only my second attempt at water marbling. Things did not work out according to my ultimate design, but I'm learning!

I don't think it was entirely my fault that my end result mani is not very attractive though. The Lava did not want to stick! I started with a base of OPI's matte white polish so the marble would have a clear bright background (I do most of my manicures over a white base, mainly because it allows the true color of my polish to show in fewer coats without having to overcome the natural color of my nails).

Anyway, here's what happened. I used Lava, Copperhead, and Scarab. You can see the Lava forgot to come to the party, but it did seem to spend plenty of time dropping off tiny little pink glitters!

Scarab, Copperhead, Lava

Right Hand

Right Thumb

Left Hand

Left Thumb

I'm enjoying this for the moment, but I'm expecting the Ludurana Aurora Boreal collection (the duochrome part) in the mail any minute now, and this will disappear as soon as the Ludurana arrives. I'm so excited to get those colors, I don't even...

-Dana