Cover Girl – Cosmic Blue

I LOVE this color!!! It’s such a delicate blue. Shimmery, of course. Once again, all my old Nailslicks have become extremely thin, which is odd because I remember them being irritatingly thick 15ish (wow) years ago when I used to wear them regularly.

Orly – Glam Rock

This is the perfect matte, seriously.

I have really been looking forward to the Orly Metallic Matte collection, it seems like a great concept. And Glam Rock is kind of awesome, just as I hoped. I love shimmery mattes! I think it applied better than any other matte I’ve ever tried – normally they dry so fast and clump up and I end up with polish an inch thick to get it even! Not so with Glam Rock, though, and I called it even coverage after 2 coats.

Normally I can admire mattes for only a few minutes before I start itching to add glossy topcoat – but I really actually like this better in matte form. It retained a ton of its shimmer even when matte.

Here it is glossy:

Out-gray-geous Konad

This is of course a base of Barielle Out-Gray-Geous, konaded with plate konaded with plate 64 and Barielle U-Concrete-Me.

This is not good. I was trying for something subtle with the two different gray finishes, but I don’t like the plate, I think. It just looks…sloppy.

Milani – Green Glow

This is a neat color, but soooooo sheer. It’s also a completely different color in the bottle than on the nail. I think I like it, though.

Zoya – Loredana

I’m such a sucker for grey polish, so I love Loredana! In matte form, without topcoat, it looks exactly like graphite from a pencil. With topcoat…it looks like really sparkly graphite!

Orly – Pixie Dust

Pixie Dust is a polish I’ve been wanting for a super long time. And, OH YEAH! It did not disappoint! It’s beautifully shimmery, and I’ve got a weakness for greys. Oh, did I mention the shimmer?

I don’t understand why the stupid  Sally’s stores near me wouldn’t carry this polish. Of course, after I bought it I found it at Ulta. Sigh.

Color Club – Electronica

Beautiful color! The shimmer in this seems to be pink and purple. I love it when the shimmer in a polish is a different color than the base! The wear didn’t seem to be very good though – all this crazy tipwear is after only one day of wearing it.

Sinful Colors – Glass Pink

I’m really not into sheers lately, but I quite like Glass Pink a lot. It’s nice and subtle, but it’s also seriously shimmery. No hope of opacity, of course.

I wanted to fancy this up a bit though so I added french tips in Sally Hansen VIP Pink, and it was a fail. VIP Pink is too sheer so I had yucky buildup on the ends of my nails from so many coats of polish.

The polishes work well together though, because they contain sort of the same kind of shimmer.

Lubu Manicure

This morning I was sitting at the breakfast table thinking about the manicures I’ve been wanting to do that I haven’t had time to do lately (a Lubu manicure, for one). Then I started admiring how long my nails had gotten, and I decided to file them down some, because really it’s just tempting breakages when they’re that long, plus I just like the look of them better when they’re a tad bit shorter. Anyway, so there I was halfway through when I realized, YOU DON’T SHORTEN YOUR NAILS UNTIL AFTER THE LUBU MANICURE, DUMMY.

Sigh.

So here it is! This was actually kind of interesting. I did the red under-tips first, using a tiny little flattened square nail art brush, and it went on fairly painlessly and pretty neatly. I think I got to three coats before deciding I’d achieved the opacity that I had in mind. As I always am, I was startled by how beautiful Ruby Pumps is – it really is probably one of my favorite polishes ever. Man, that shimmer!!!!

Then, the Lubu Heels. I sit under a lamp to do my nails, so I was directly under a light source, and the red glitter was sparkling like crazy. And I considered rethinking my opinion that this polish sucks – until I walked across the room out of direct light and my nails just looked black again. 😦 I think that for me, Lubu Heels is nice in theory but not so great in actuality. Vampy black polish with secret red shimmer/glitter!!! That sounds awesome!!! But, the glitter just isn’t noticeable enough for me. If I want a black polish, I will wear black polish!

When I was all done, I needed a little something extra. It just wasn’t awesome enough yet. So, I painted the edges of my nail tips with Ruby Pumps, and I think that kicked it up a notch, at least from 5 inches away!!

I think that I really did need longer nails for this. with there not being too much nail to paint the underside of, I went down as far as I could, which, as I found out when I tried to remove it, was a total mistake. I’m left with little lines of red polish deep under my nails that I just can’t seem to get out.

Cover Girl – Go Go Green

Go Go Green is a Nailslicks polish that I got loooooong ago – look, there’s no writing left on the label! It has separated or something  though – it was very difficult to work with. Very verrrry thin. Odd – I can fix thickened old polishes, but what’s up with thinned ones? I’ve noticed the same thing with a couple of other Nailslicks I have, though. Three coats and I still never achieved anything near the opacity I wanted.