Nail Fail - Ra-n-ma

It’s probably not healthy to love Ranma 1/2 as much as I do, especially since it’s so very exasperating most of the time. Nobody in that manga has any common sense, half the main characters are truly horrible people, and those who aren’t can’t seem to assign blame where it’s due.
Still, the whole thing is beyond amusing and I just love both the manga and the anime. Highly recommended, though I advise you to research whether your chosen translation/dub is cut or censored. The original is full of booooobies (mostly boy-in-girl-shape ones, though, so that’s all right? :-D).

So I tried to paint some of the characters onto my nails using acrylic paint and failed miserably. The only one that came out semi-right is P-chan (Ryoga is such an infuriating dude), i.e. the weird black piglet on my right ring finger. Not even Genma in panda-form looks right and I got the ears totally wrong. How depressing. I might do an “inspired by” mani rather than straight depiction at a later point, maybe that’ll work out better.

I put the comment system poll into the sidebar, since hardly anyone has done with the clickin’. If you haven’t voted yet, please do so.
Also, I haven’t answered comments in a while and will try to catch up soon. I suck at communication, I know.
Hope y’all are having a lovely weekend.

What I’ve Been Doing With My Time

I find it easy to find diversions; I read a lot, I cook every day, and I enjoy fibre arts. Sadly, the last one doesn’t mesh well with nail polish. ^_^

Anyway the following image should clear up what exactly I’ve been up to for part of my time away from my blog. (In between feeling rather poorly. Bleh.)

Secondly, a poll about comments (which will hopefully work, the preview doesn’t). I’m told that many people won’t use Intense Debate or Disqus, so I’m considering switching back to Blogger’s own comment system. Also, ID doesn’t work with the mobile layout, which really bugs me, ‘cause all comments published there are invisible on the normal pages.
The major downside to switching is that I can’t import ID comments, so they’d languish in an unusable export file.

Coming up soon: a horrible, awful nail art fail.

Swatches - essence Circus Circus TE

Late, but there you go. One of essence’s ‘old’ trend editions. Technically it was out in December (in Germany, we get ‘em later at Austrian DM stores), but my local DM had an almost full display a bit over a week ago.

I’m a bit ambivalent about the format. For someone who keeps all their cosmetics in a single bag the double-ended bottles will be practical and useful. My setup, however, is not really all that suited to something that I can’t store upright in a drawer. Also each colour is just 4 ml (.13 fl. oz). The double-endedness makes for a heavy ‘cap’ while painting. A snap mechanism to separate the two colours and mix ‘em up (for travel or whatever) would have been great.
Overall I had no issues with any of these or their plain round brushes. The crèmes are smooth and even and the glitters fairly dense. No bubbling, dragging, anything. So I’ll just talk about colour below.

Since the polishes are meant to be layered - ‘colour³ nail polish’ - that’s how I swatched them. All swatches were applied as follows:

• index finger: 2 coats of the crème/metallic
• middle finger: 2 coats of the crème/metallic with 1 coat of the glitter
• ring finger: 2 coats of the glitter

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01 my sparkling acrobat

The plain black crème is very pigmented, almost a one-coater.
The other side is a clear base with fine and square chunky yellowy golden glitter.

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02 don’t feed the tiger

This is the only set without a crème base colour, instead we have a metallic gold. It’s sparkly, but not quite a foil. This is definitely a two-coater and shows faint brush marks.
On the other side we have fine golden and chunky square black glitter in a clear base.

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03 applause, applause

Though I’m not usually a red polish kinda gal, I do like classic reds and this is one. It’s a simple red crème, slightly on the warm side. If you’re nails are very smooth and you take some care applying this you can get away with one coat.
Once again we have a clear base with fine and chunky square glitter, the red looks a bit mismatched in the bottle, but works nicely when layered.

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04 cotton candy

The slightly mauve-y, yet bright pink crème was what drew me towards these polishes, I don’t have enough pinks these days. This, too hovers between a one-coater and a two-coater.
Now let’s all gasp, for this glitter is a bit different than the others! *gasp* The base is pinkish and it’s just fine, bright pink glitter. Like applause applause, this looks a bit odd in the bottle, but quite pretty on the nail.

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I love layering and see the appeal of these sets (and in case you haven’t seen the upcoming new core line releases yet, there’s a bunch of of colour³ polishes in the near future), but the base colours are a bit too generic. Who doesn’t have them yet? The upcoming ones look a bit more interesting, thankfully. Also, the chunky square glitter is not really my cup of tea. I have this issue with visibly square or rectangular glitter. Bar/string glitter gives me metaphorical hives. Ew.

But as for these particular polishes: they’re good quality and definitely worth a look if you like glitter and basic colours.