LA Girl 3D Purple Effect vs Studio M Purple Medallion

Not going to lie. I'm totally biased. Studio M is my ultimate favorite polish. I just love it. It's just as sparkly in low lighting as it is in good lighting. At first, I was a bit underwhelmed by the LA Girl. I guess because I'm used to my Studio M still being sparkly in low lighting; but LA Girl is pretty amazeballs in the sunlight! Totally worth the $4 I paid for it.

They look similar in the bottles--albeit Purple Medallion's holo flakies are just a hair bigger. LA Girl is definitely more refined and evenly spaced. I did three coats of both polishes. There is also a few shades difference with the purple base.

Dang. Forgot to get bottle pictures. I may come back and edit this post with pictures of the bottles. That's what I get for having life get in the way of polishing!

BY THE WAY--MY PHOTOS ARE WITH TOP COAT. I use Out the Door. Sadly, it DOES dull the effect a bit. (but just a hair!)

Switching back and forth, starting with LA Girl Purple Effect on my thumb, then Studio M
Purple Medallion, etc etc.

Little to no direct sunlight.

Direct sunlight, with a bit of a blur which shows the holo better. Also... 

yep, there we go. The persistent hair in every single post I make...

So there we go. Not quite dupes. They looked a lot similar in the bottle besides one being bigger than the other. Oh well!

Sation - Diamond Diggin' Diva swatch

Found this baby in TJ Maxx for $2.99. Very pleased with it, actually. Came out a little thick, had to redo one of my middle fingers because it didn't look right. (Accidentally got too much, easy to do with this polish.)

I had never seen Sation in person until I found some in TJ Maxx. I swatched it over Studio M - Thunderbolt. Will be keeping my eyes peeled for more Sation.

My nail polish resolution this year is to only buy polish in person. I always overspend online, heh. I will inevitably fail, but I'd like to keep it going anyway. Happy 2013 everyone, keep polishin'!

I added this one to show just how holographic it is. Holo is hard to capture without it being blurry.

I swear my nails are magnets for random pieces of hair... >_<

Finger Paint's Santa's Magic on black with gold striping tape

I had originally ordered Santa's Magic from the new holiday collection from Finger Paint's online, so I didn't have much of a realistic idea of how it was going to turn out. Holy moly, it's good stuff though!

First, it's uber holographic. Heavy holo glitter that really looks like snow. Secondly, it IS in a clear base, but it seems like the clear base kind of goes away and the actual glitter ends up adhering to the nail MUCH better than your average glitter. I was surprised I was able to do two coats of Santa's Magic under my gold striping tape line with very little goop/clear base making it unusually thick. (Which usually happens with a lot of glitters, specifically China Glaze's Whirled Away *cough*)

It's just as pretty on the nails as it is in the bottle. Don't you hate when you get a gorgeous polish and it looks like crap compared to what it does in the bottle? Huge pet peeve of mine really. If you're looking for a really gorgeous good quality glitter for the holidays, this would be it. Go get it at your local Sally's!

My guess is that this will probably be similar to the Finger Paints flakies last year and be discontinued sometime in January or at least after the holidays. I got two bottles. >_>

I really need to start getting pics of the bottle! Dang.

Dude. I have no idea why my cuticles are yellow! GAH. I tried Blue Cross cuticle remover that was the only thing I did different! GR. Sorry bout that.

Subtle metallic gradient with silver holo tips

I actually wasn't going to do anything to the tips but I had some tiny smudges that were bugging me. I ended up liking it a lot though, it did feel like it was missing something before I added the funky french holo tips. The blue and silver seem to fade in very nicely with each other, too, which is something I haven't gotten with the few gradient designs I've done. (The blue was also metallic but not as obvious since I sponged it i guess.)

Am I the only one whos cuticles and hands are suffering with this hot weather? I don't remember this happening last year, and I haven't changed my moisturizing routine at all. Weird.

The colors I used was a blue metallic Pure Ice color (can't think of the names gah i really should take pictures of them.) and a Revlon silver. I'm absolutely fricken thrilled I found a use for Pure Ice's metallics because their formula seems to be a bit off. It's pretty streaky as a base.

 

Lush Lacquer Swatch: Camo Queen

Finally got around to posting a swatch of Camo Queen by Lush Lacquer. I really love this color, but I definetley WILL be wearing a base color under it next time. I took it off the next day since one of my pet peeves is seeing my nail beds under polish. (Not a huge fan of sheers for this reason.) However I still wanted to swatch the polish so you could just see it alone. Very very pretty, would be a really nice application for glitter gradients. Took a lot of effort getting off though, even while using the foil method to remove glitters.

I also smudged ones of nails. You might be able to see it in some of the pics.

I'm also not the best at clean up, probably some stray glitters. -shrug-

I'm working on better nail polish application. I'm too lazy with clean up.

Nfu Holo #66 + Aqua base..

I trimmed my nails short for the hell of it. I can't believe how long they got! And it didn't bother me, surprisingly. You really do get used to it as they get longer. I used to be anti long nails for so long.

I've had this polish on for a day or so now. Within 4 hours of application, i got some fairly large chipped chunks off the tips. The biggest reason I cut my nails short was specifically to try my holo I purchased about a month ago.

After some research, I found out how finicky holos can be. So I went with getting the aqua base coat as well. Mind you, this stuff stinks. Like floral vomit. Maybe that's just me, but I don't care for it. The smell lingers, too.

The site I ordered from listed tips for holos.

• Aqua base coat
• 1 layer of holo
• -Let fully dry-
• ~repeat steps if needed/holo too thin and or streaky~

I washed my hands, and also used rubbing alcohol beforehand and let that fully dry. To get rid of oils and what not.

I ended up with three coats. Pretty happy with coverage. I'm still not the best at shaping my nails nor decent polish application, it's driving me crazy that the tips near my cuticles look so jagged. In my desperate attempt to clean up, I screwed my pointer finger up big time. Had to re-do it, got frustrated, said screw it I'm not cleaning it up right now. Sooo ignore my pointer finger mess, ha.

Anyway, on to the pictures most people come here for.

Dark plum holographic half moon stripes

That's a mouthful, huh? I suppose this half moon mani is rather hard to see when it comes to the half moon part, but it's still pretty and I like it a lot. My nails do look a bit wonky as my Sally Hansen Insta Dry top coat is very very VERY low and it's a little gooey and such at this point. I may have 3 more uses out of it, max, if that. I even put in some polish thinner before I used it this time.

I had actually done a swatch of the China Glaze dark plum color, but my Nikon camera is super awkward with uploading and I couldn't find them. I shall upload them at a later date.

If you haven't noticed, I'm really liking the holographic striping polishes.

The following polishes are what I used:

1. Sephora by OPI base coat
2. China Glaze - VII
3. Art Club - Lilac Hologram
4. Sally Hansen Insta Dry top coat

Holographic striping over neon jelly purple

These are the polishes I decided to use this time around. Here we have (from left to right):

• Art Club - Glitter hologram
• Art Club - Lilac hologram
• Studio M - Thunderbolt

I made a previous post about Studio M's Thunderbolt. From my research, it IS a jelly. It goes on very different compared to a cream polish. This is the strangest nail polish I've used yet!

This polish is very very difficult to capture properly on camera. In poor lighting, it looks to be a dark-ish to medium shade of purple, and in sunlight/better lighting it's a bright neon purple. The bottle is damn cute, too.

I decided to keep it simple, mostly trying out all of my new polishes in one go. (I still have one hologram striping one I didn't use though.) My base coat (ORLY's Bonder) has been acting really weird ever since I got it. It tends to make my cuticles really strange even when I try not to overflood them. This is not the first time where it's made the top ends of my nails look like they're some what peeling. I can't say I like ORLY's Bonder base coat, but it's all I have right now. I use other base coats and my nails don't do this crap, but yeah. Sorry about the tops of my nails looking odd.

Up close. See what I'm talking about? My base coat makes the top
look so weird. Not the first time Orly's bonder base coat has
did this to me. Time for a new one, eh?