China Glaze Wrinkle the Sheets swatch, from the Crinkled Chromes collection

My poor fingers!

China Glaze Wrinkle the Sheets with Zoya Raven accent and Sally Hansen I Heart Nail Art black striper

Haterz gonna hate, but the crinkled chromes are pretty badass. This one right here looks like crinkled foil, not like dirt or air bubbles got in your polish. The trick is loading your nail up with glitter. You want a lot of glitter, especially the bars, for maximum crinkle-potential. I used one coat, but multiple strokes over the individual spots. The color of Wrinkle the Sheets is also an awesome shade of light green, and that combined with the texture reminds me of the ~click here for more pale~/"pastel" side of Tumblr.

My right hand was already chippy after one day of work. Some of the bar glitter popped out as well. My left hand was fine... until I tried to unbutton a very difficult cardigan in a Gap outlet store changing room. One of those buttons flat out CHIPPED a nail of Raven. Bastards!

Next time I'm going to try out Wrinkle the Sheets with two coats and top coat. I hope is stays wrinkly and doesn't just look like lumpy sludge.

Urban Decay Storm and Wet N Wild Social Circles swatch

This is kind of a shit picture. I think the sun overpowered it.

 Urban Decay Storm topped with Wet N Wild Social Circles
Storm is a dark grey cream of a type I've been looking for since summer. It was a little sticky going on, so 2 coats were needed despite the great pigmentation.

Social Circles is a rose, smaller lilac, and tiner gold glitter top coat. Surprisingly easy application for that stubby little brush. The rose glitter is very similar, though not identical (I think), to Essie A Cut Above, and I'm not sure if the other glitter is as noticeable, so you may not need both.

Matches my railing! Even the rust.

I think these were taken yesterday. The weather had started off gorgeous, and then it turned into complete freezing shit, which of course continued into today. Today was also the second day of my minimum wage job. It was terrible. Yay! :)

KBShimmer Rollin' With The Chromies swatch

Shade

Sun coming out...

Sunny!

KBShimmer Rollin' With The Chromies
A blue-purple duochrome holo. In indoor lighting, it tends to be a dull blue that I'm not too fond of, though at least a hint of the holo is always there. When the purple comes out, it's gorgeous. The most flattering light so far seems to be the shaded sun, where the duochrome really comes out and it looks so princess-y. In full sunlight, the holo blasts in your face.

I don't know if the tipwear is from the polish or if it's from working at my new job (where I earn far fewer $20s than the ones seen in this blog's header). There may be a lot of tipwear in the future.

And aww, my poor winter-wrecked fingers, lol.

Thoughts

Rocking Zoya Kennedy again (for the first time since that 2-year-old photo), so no picture to update with. I'm looking at a million swatches of the China Glaze Crinkled Chromes, which are being much maligned this season. I have to say, I'm into it. The aluminum foil look is pretty badass.

http://www.nailpolishanonymous.com/2014/01/china-glaze-crinkled-chrome-swatches.html
Look at that! It looks so cool. But you need to get a ton of glitter onto the nail. When it's just a little bit, it just looks like you have air bubbles in your polish.

Zoya Seraphina swatch

Zoya Seraphina
A very light grey packed with silver fleck shimmer, so it looks like a foil or a metallic from a distance. The texture is very creamy. I used three coats to make sure the BLUE STAINS on my nails (thanks, China Glaze So Blue Without You) were fully covered.

I took this photo about two hours before having two teeth filled. Yay! :)

More old swatch photos

 Christmas 2011, China Glaze Jolly Holly and Party Hearty
This is my go-to Christmas manicure. Still doing it every year. This time I skittled it up and only did it on certain nails, so I could fit in more varieties of Christmas tackiness all in one manicure.

 China Glaze Phat Santa with Party Hearty
Phat Santa is a really nice, slightly dark red creme. I should really wear it more often.

NYE 2011-12 China Glaze  First Mate with China Glaze's silver crackle
 First Mate is a perfect navy creme. Perfect!!! This manicure is exactly what I had wanted for NYE that year. The color of the navy in the photo looks a bit too light.

 Zoya Pinta with Essie Shine of the Times
I think Pinta is one of those notoriously hard-to-photograph "blurples". It's a dark creme indigo, and it's a pretty great color for the winter. Notice that it looks purple on the thumb and navy blue on the finger in the background.

Zoya Yasmeen with Essie SotT
Yasmeen  is a highly hyped warm purple shimmer, and it didn't do much for me at the time.

 China Glaze Ingird
 Taupe with subtle shimmer. I believe it's a dupe of a Dior, so to me it feels very ~expensive~.

Finger Paints Military Green
Awesome sage green creme. Love! The pigments separate very easily in the bottle, and FP have a cap that's very difficult to open, so that's my one complaint.

Essie Mint Candy Apple
A bright mint with a lot of blue tone. Surprisingly easy to apply. When I wore this that winter, I felt it looked very summery aqua and seasonally inappropriate for the winter, even though it was originally released for the holidays.

 Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Celeb City
Silver foil, three coats. Classic.

 China Glaze Jitterbug with China Glaze Some Like it Haute
 Jitterbug is a charcoal foil, a bit blue-toned, and Some Like it Haute is a slightly glitter version with chunky holo glitter. Jitterbug is alright. Some Like it Haute was a pain the first time I wore it, requiring loads of top coat and then chipping off in chunks, but layered over Jitterbug, those problems are taken care of.

Zoya Kennedy
 A slightly purple pink fleshy nude creme. This looks good on me.

Miss Sporty Raindrop
A tourist purchase from England! A teal creme, that takes maybe three coats, so it gets darker than it looks in the bottle (and probably darker than in the photo). Essie Go Overboard is lighter and more pigmented.

Zoya coupon revealed

You know what? I just realized that I now have a place to share all my boring nail polish opinions with the world. Zoya just placed their newest promo coupon in the accounts of those who purchased the three "free" color deal (free with $12 shipping... yeah, sure), and it's for a free bottle of Monet, the new spring glitter, with any "spring 2014 color" purchase. Don't know if that includes the Pixies. Sadly it doesn't include free shipping, but I would definitely consider it. The pastel shimmers look sooo pretty, and I'd probably get the purple (I adore lilacs) and the minty green. Monet is something that looks very pretty itself, especially with the accompanying colors, but the $10 price isn't justifiable, so this deal is perfect.

Some old swatch photos

Since I found my camera, I'm digging through the 2-year-old photos on the memory card, and naturally there are many polish swatches.

Essie Van D'Go
A peach-pink creme. I applied it very thick iirc, and I had mixed feelings. I'd like to give it another shot.

China Glaze Dance Baby and China Glaze Crushed Candy
I love this combo! Dance Baby is a light, bright, blue-toned pink, and Crushed Candy is a robin's egg blue crackle, like For Audrey. Together they make a very late '80s, early '90s, "Saved By the Bell"-esque look, and the crackle really works in that favor.

Outside of a Panera Bread in Williamsburg, VA!

Zoya Dannii
A purple shimmer. This was so highly rated at the time, but I wasn't really feeling it, and I LOVE purple. I think it mainly only looked great in direct sunlight. It's another one I'd like to give another try.

China Glaze Riveting
Orange jelly glitter. Awesome. I prefer this in autumn over the summer.

China Glaze Smoke & Ashes
Black with teal shimmer. I was disappointed with this at the time of this photo because the shimmer wasn't as apparent as I expected. But recently I used it as a base for China Glaze Electrify, and even before I added the glitter, I loved it. Opaque in one coat, very easy to apply, it's just a great dark color. It's no longer on my "possibly sell" pile.

Zoya Caitlin
Purple-grey-blue creme, much lighter than Zoya Kelly. This was definitely my favorite out of that Zoya spring collection. It also looks awesome topped with Essie Kisses and Bises, another polish that was new that spring.

OPI Alcatraz... Rocks swatch and my inaugural post!

After many years of furtive searching, I have finally found my camera, and it's time to start a nail blog! Here's OPI Alcatraz... Rocks, which has apparently built up quite a bit of tip wear after 3 days.

I've always worn a base coat with the new textures of the past year, then read recently about the Zoya PixieDusts that it's best not to wear a base coat because it'll slow the dry-time, and that they wear like iron anyway. So I tried this OPI on without it, then read the little label instructing you to use base coat. Well! It was too late by then. I don't know if the tip wear comes from the lack of base coat, or if that's just the nature of the polish. Ironically OPI rarely gets tip wear on me, while Zoyas frequently do, but it's been vice versa with the texture polishes.

Anyway, the color is like a washed out indigo resembling denim, with pink and gold sparkle. Sometimes I think it's really cool, and sometimes it just looks okay. Immediately after watching "Gravity", I thought it resembled the night sky. Based on how it looks when wet, it'd probably be gorgeous with topcoat.