Sinful Colors Neptune

Ah, Sinful Colors. I love you so much for being insanely affordable with amazing colors. I have a love/hate relationship with your formula because it's so hit or miss, but thank you thank you THANK YOU for making Neptune pretty much flawless.

These pictures are 2 coats of Neptune. Slight tip wear, because it's day 2 of wear, I am always too lazy for top coat, and I play piano. But it was chip-free on day 4 when I took it off, so it's definitely getting my approval.

The last picture is the most color accurate. It wants to photograph really BLUE, and it's not. It's a little more cornflower-y than most of these pictures show. I tried to correct the next-to-last photo, but I think it's a little too purple, though still fairly accurate. The last picture shows that it is darker and a little richer than that electric blue in the first picture.
The first coat was streaky & ugly, but the second evened it all out. And what a GOREOUS shimmer. It's like the big brother of Essie Coat Azure or Smooth Sailing. In fact, I bet the three of them would make a gorgeous ombre!

China Glaze Hunger Games: Foie Gras & Fast Track

Foie Gras was fine. A nice enough taupe. It has a lot of purple undertone, but I saw a whole lot of brown most of the time. Two coats, no top coat.

These aren't my best pictures ever. Forgive me. I only wore it for a couple days, and then I switched it up for Fast Track. I had a job interview on Thursday (which went well, but also made me not really want the job that much...) so I figured I should go with something a little more "normal."
Again, two coats, no top coat.

I ...think? I like this color? I still haven't quite decided. It's nice enough, but in some lights it looks really awful on me. And sometimes the gold shimmer pulls a little green? Maybe that's just me, but it weirds me out.

I promise a non-Hunger Games polish next!

Gray Matter

My second Misa! These pictures are from last month, & my nails look so short to me here! But the polish is still gorgeous. It's "just" gray, but it's so much more than that.

One flawless coat, no top coat, & it dried really quickly.

This closeup is the most amazing shot:

It's speckled! Not shimmery or glittery. Speckled is the only word that fits. So gorgeous. Now that I'm looking at these pictures again, I want to put it back on...

China Glaze: Hunger Games - Smoke & Ashes

Let's be honest: If you're a Hunger Games fan, you will get this polish, even if you think it's not your cup of tea. Who isn't supporting District 12?!

I thought this was just a black with a little bit of shimmer, but whoa. The shimmer is seriously incredible.

All of these pictures are 1 coat, no top coat.

Here you can see the shimmer looking a little bit blue but also a little bit green. It depends on the light!

Formula is absolutely spot on. Yet again, this is one perfect coat. Dear China Glaze, I love you.

Smoke & Ashes really does mostly just look black probably 85% of the time. If you look at it from close up, you can always see the shimmer, even in low light. But then in the sunlight... well, you've seen the picture! Some seriously gorgeous blue shimmer.

A lot of people have said that this is a blackened blue base, not a true black, but I'm going to disagree. Even if it is something like #00001D in hex, with just the slightest amount of blue, my eyes sure can't see it. They just see black with pretty blue shimmer. Yes, when the light catches it, it sure looks blue, but I really think that's just the shimmer.

So to sum up: crazy opaque black with crazy beautiful blue shimmer. Yet another Hunger Games polish that I love so much more than I expected to.

China Glaze: Hunger Games - Agro

I have so many other manis to show you (I'm a couple weeks behind on here vs real life), but I got my China Glaze polishes yesterday, put on Agro, and FELL IN LOVE. So here are some pictures, because I don't want to make you want to see them!

Agro is a mossy green with a great shimmer. It's almost a metallic, vaguely frosty shimmer, but not at all in a brushstrokey way.

First, here are a few pictures in the shade.

These are all just 1 coat. There is a little balding going on at the base of a couple fingers -- see the ring finger -- but that is all entirely my fault. My brush was a little wonky; it was a little fluffier than the China Glaze brush I'm used to, and it had one piece that went out a bit to the side, but it wasn't bad enough to be a hindrance. One coat that looks this good this easily is an A++ in my book.

Super gorgeous, right?! It makes me think of a mossy, shady forest in the sumer. I love it.
But wait. It gets better.

Super shimmery in the sun! And look at it out of focus:

Some of that shimmer looks a little holographic to me! It's all sorts of pretty colors.

All of these pictures are clickable to make huge, but this is the one you absolutely HAVE to see large! The index finger is in focus, so you can see how pretty the polish itself is, but the closer fingers show you some of this seriously amazing shimmer! I haven't seen anyone else mention this, so I was not expecting it, and it is INCREDIBLE.

To sum up: I love Agro! Now to choose which HG polish to use next...

Misa Office Polishtics

My first Misas! I've heard such amazing things about their formula, and I was definitely not disappointed. One perfect, applies-like-butter coat. And even though this is just a "boring" cream, I couldn't stop staring at it. Is it purple? Blue? Gray? I still haven't decided.
Here are way too many pictures so you can make your own call!

This looks pretty blue.

This is a really grayed out blue.

In the sunlight, it's very gray.

Again, blue, but this time with a little purple undertone.

I thought it was a dusty blue, and then several of my students called it purple, which I hadn't seen before. After they pointed it out, I could see why they thought that, but I would never call it "purple."
All I do know is that I want to wear it again, just so I can have the pleasure of applying it, and so I can stare at it in confusion.

Orly Fowl Play

This needed to be mine as soon as I saw the very first post about it last year. The second it was on my nails, I knew that all of those months of lusting had been worth it. What a freaking gorgeous polish!

These are 1 coat of Essie Sole Mate + 1 coat of Fowl Play. And I applied these pretty quickly, so I have some baldy spots where I wouldn't have if I had just been a little more patient & careful.

I hope these pictures capture the amazing depth of this polish. It's a gorgeous purple jelly with blue & red flakes and lots of shimmer. There's so much going on here.

As you can see, in the light you can see all of those wonderful bits. Out of the light, it's just a great purple. You can tell there's something join on there, but you can't see all of the details.

Click to view this sucker large... just ignore my ugly polish job on the pinky! :)

Fowl Play is seriously gorgeous. Red/orange and blue/green flakes, silver shimmer, purple jelly. This is definitely going to be a go-to when I want something dark and vampy but with a lot of interest!

Did you fall in love with Fowl Play right away, too, or was that just me?