NotD - Evolution Kills

Happy Evolution Day (I just made it)!
And to celebrate this day stole my design from was inspired by Questionable Content (actually, this design is an extension of an in-comic shirt, check out the merchandise section to see what I copied). Go and read!

Here’s what I used today:

• China Glaze Nail Strengthener & Growth Formula
• essence btgn base sealer
• China Glaze Liquid Leather
• acrylic paint
• essence btgn top sealer
• Seche Vite

First I applied one coat of each base, three of Liquid Leather and sealed it with Seche Vite.

Liquid Leather is one of my favourite blacks, a brown-based jelly with an amazing sheen. The rather low pigmentation is pretty much standard for jellies, three coats will give you that perfect squishiness, you’ll need at least four to get utter opacity.
I find this polish to be a little finicky, it’s a bit streaky and I haven’t been able to make thin coats work. But even though I loaded the brush with polish it didn’t pool. I usually like China Glaze’s round brushes a lot, but my bottle of Liquid Leather has a wonky one, but it’s still usable with a little more care.

This is Liquid Leather in two coats without top coat:

And this is Liquid Leather in three coats with Seche Vite:

After the base colour was dry I added my design with acrylic paint, covered it with top sealer and sealed it with more Seche Vite. Pardon the bad clean-up on the right hand, please. *is an idiot’

Yeah, if you didn’t know that I’m extremely right-handed you can see it now, the nails I painted with my left hand are a mess. D-: But I’m so happy with how the other hand looks.
In unrelated news: I’m doing some serious cleaning, sorting and such right now, which led to the discovery that (a) I have way too much stuff and (b) one of my walls was damp at some point. I totally need that, right?

Also, Happy Thanksgiving to my US readers, now go eat loads of turkey!

Swatch - China Glaze Blue Sparrow

Blue Sparrow, how I don’t know how to feel about you…

I was sort of disappointed when I applied Blue Sparrow. I remember seeing a gorgeous swatch somewhere, but for me it just looked pretty with odd speckles. I wanted glorious glitter, bright blue, amazing transformation when seen in daylight (though there was no full-on sun the days I wore it, maybe I can still hope). Nope. It’s nice, but almost a dud for me. The lowish opacity didn’t particularly surprise me, ‘cause glitters tend to be like that. Four coats are fine, five if you’re obsessed with opacity.
The application was pretty standard, I had no real trouble. The formula is a bit thin and runny, so take care to prevent pooling/flooding your cuticles.Blue Sparrow was free of streaks in two coats, so if you want a sheer wash that works very nicely. So application-wise I’d have to call this polish unremarkable. As I’ve said so often: China Glaze polishes always have a good round brush.

Here’s Blue Sparrow in two coats without top coat (pardon the funky ring finger nail, that patch wasn’t playing nicely):

And here’s Blue Sparrow in four coats with Seche Vite:

This is an older swatch, so don’t be surprised if my nails look different in the post. Nubbins everywhere (my tears finally grew out far enough and chopping the nails off left me with but one patch).
Also I was whistling randomly today and suddenly had a huh moment when I had somehow ended up whistling Mambo Italiano. Very Odd.

How are y’all? And if you have Blue Sparrow, what are your thoughts?

Nail Quickie - This Looked Better In My Head

Oh dear, sometimes stuff just doesn’t work the way I imagined it. And today’s experiment sucked badly. I didn’t even bother to clean up the edges, ‘cause I knew I’d remove it right away. o.O

There you go. Faaaaaaiiiiil. Good thing y’all don’t expect me to do pretty things all the time.

NotD - A Matte Deep Blue? Who’d Have Thunk?

*taps screen* Anyone out there? Good.
I’m trying to ease back into blogging, I got out of the habit of typing as my coats of polish dry and it’s really hard to get back into it. As I mentioned before I haven’t done a lot of crazy nails recently, today’s not different.
I finally remembered to pick up a bottle of essence’s soft touch top coat, and I happened to also get this amazing blue…

ArtDeco Ceramic Nail Lacquer 123 is a divine deep blue, slightly inky and muted. Just my cup of tea, right? It’s not blackened at all, by the way. And it’s a two-coater, they’re not that rare any more, but it’s always nice to find an effortless one.
Actually, if there hadn’t been a bit of streakiness, this polish would have worked in one coat, but I always prefer two effortless coats to one finicky coat. They take about the same time to apply and you can watch a movie or something as you paint. Other than the first streaky coat: perfection. 123 has just the right viscosity, levels nicely, it just works. The Ceramic line tends to do that.
So: highly recommended. Especially if you like to wear seasonal colours you’ll love this for winter.

This is ArtDeco Ceramic Nail Lacquer 123 in two coats with top coat:

I adore dark polishes with matte top coat, so I just tried out the soft touch top coat over 123. It doesn’t quite like the soft touch finish from the black & white trend edition, but it certainly is pretty. I definitely have to do a proper side-by-side comparison with essence matt top coat. They seem to be different, but I can’t be certain until I see them next to each other on a real nail.

So here’s ArtDeco Ceramic Nail Lacquer 123 in two coats with essence nail art special effect! topper 07 soft touch:

Are you reaching for wintery colours already?

*shuffles around awkwardly*

Despite the content of my last tweet, I have not sunk into a drunken stupor.
I’m feeling the urge to apologise for my absence, but I don’t really want to since it’s not like I’m obligated to post on a specific schedule. However I will explain briefly without making silly excuses. The fact that I’ve been slipping from cold into cold for well over a month is not a good reason, I get that every year. o.O

Though I haven’t made it a recurring topic on this blog I haven’t made it a secret that I suffer from depression and social anxiety. And while I usually don’t react too strongly to seasons, this autumn my issues banded together, gathered a variety of blunt instruments (and in some cases nail-studded clubs), and smacked me quite firmly with them.

I have been utterly uninspired to do anything more interesting than a plain colour and couldn’t be arsed to actually write up something about them. I have some cute Halloween-themed stickers that would have taken just a few minutes to post about, but nope. Not possible.

Today I’m feeling a bit better and hopefully this will start a bit of a trend for me. And I can only hope that this will mean I’ll feel inspired to post again.
And while some of you might think this is odd, I shall disable comments on this post since nice, supportive comments will make me bawl and I’ve done enough of that already.