Pipe Dream Polish "Pink Elephants and Lemonade" Swatch

Hello all! I've got an indie polish swatch for you today to start off the new year! :) I put several indie polishes (and a ton of other mainstream polishes too) on my Christmas list this year, and I got several of them, so I'll have swatches of all of them sometime in the next few weeks! But for today, I'm sharing one of the polishes I was most excited to wear - Pipe Dream Polish Pink Elephants and Lemonade.

According to the description at Pipe Dream Polish's store, Pink Elephants and Lemonade is "made up of medium and small hot pink and deep yellow matte glitters in a dusty turquoise crelly base." That is definitely an accurate description, because the base isn't really jelly - it's actually pretty opaque. But not so opaque that you can't see the glitters from the first coat if you do more than one coat. So I'll show you my swatches first and then I'll talk about the formula and my thoughts afterwards:

(two coats, indoors)

(two coats, indoors)

(two coats, flash)

Alrighty! So, I'm absolutely in love with this polish for tons of reasons. First things first: The colors! It isn't a secret by now that I love turquoise, and there's just something about turquoise and yellow and pink glitters... It spoke to me on a personal level. It's a unique blend, in my opinion. And let's not forget the name - Pink Elephants and Lemonade. It just reminds me of that song from Dumbo. "Pink Elephants on Parade," anyone? Anyway, the pink and yellow glitters are matte and they're surprisingly subtle. It just gives such a nice polka-dotty look to the polish. I would give this a 10/10 on color, because it's just so darn cute.

The formula... is awesome! No fishing required for those beautiful glitters! And the base is opaque enough that you don't need underwear or more than two coats. I think you could even get away with one coat, if you like that sheer jelly-look. You would have to paint it veeerrry carefully for one coat, though. It is a little streaky to begin with, but two coats evens it out perfectly. Some other awesome things about this formula are that it is super fast-drying and it's chip-resistant! Now, I don't actually know if it's either of those things, but from my experience with it, it dried so freaking fast. It was like Seche Vite fast. This isn't always a good thing, because a few times when I went back over a spot I had already painted it tended to drag a little bit - but like I said, a second coat evens it all out and leaves a gorgeous finish. It's also chip-resistant for me. I say that instead of "long-lasting" because I only just painted it on two nights ago, so I can't actually know that yet. But polish doesn't last long on my nails at all, and this hasn't chipped yet! I don't even have tip wear, which is just insane to me. I'm so impressed. So it's definitely an awesome formula. It was a little bit thick at first; I did add a little thinner to help move things along, but not much - just enough to make it buttery.

So overall, I love this polish. LOVE IT. It was a great price ($8 on their Etsy store, although it is on sale currently on their bigcartel store for $7), even though I didn't buy mine (I got it for Christmas from my wonderful mom :D). I'm not being compensated at all for this review/swatchfest, I just wanted to share it with you all. This indie polish holds a special place in my heart already, and I have a feeling I'm going to wear it a lot in the spring when it gets really rainy here in Georgia. It kind of reminds me of April rain showers, actually. It's dusty and muted, but the pink and yellow glitters look like flowers. So I hope you all enjoyed this looong review, and let me know what you think! I do have eight more indies to show you, so if there's anything specific that you would like me to talk about when I'm reviewing, let me know. I also have the three custom polishes I made for my friends and my sister - but I have to swatch those and fix up the pictures before I talk about them. Did you notice I changed my water-mark? That's something I want to work on this year - better quality pictures! 

Anyway, thanks for reading, have an amazing day, and happy painting! :)

Sephora Formula X Law of Attraction Swatch

Hi everyone! So before I get back into the Halloween designs, I need to share my birthday nails with you! So, technically yesterday (Oct. 21) was my 21st birthday, but I'm just getting this put up today. I tried to come up with a design for a really long time for my birthday, and in the end, it just didn't happen. I stumbled across Sephora Formula X Law of Attraction at Sephora, and it was love at first sight. And I bought it, and then I decided that that was my birthday polish. So here it is:

Bottle shot - this is the back of the bottle so you can see those beautiful indigo holographic glitters in there. Ugh, this is a perfect polish.

I painted one coat of Law of Attraction over two coats of OPI Don't Touch My Tutu. It needed some underwear, but I didn't want anything as stark as a white polish, so I went with a super sheer white, just to cover up the stain on my nails. Appearance-wise, this is the most beautiful polish I own. My picture doesn't do it justice. It's gold in every light, but once you get it outside, those indigo glitters flash a million rainbows and explode off your nails in a glorious shine. It is absolutely stunning. Formula-wise, it left something to be desired. I'd expect for a $14 polish, it should have an amazing formula, but it didn't. It's not hard to get the glitters where you want them to go, and it's certainly packed enough with glitter that I didn't have to fish or place too many. But it's just so ridiculously goopy. I had to thin it out before I even used it, because I knew it just wouldn't glide after testing it on a nail wheel. But once I thinned it, it turned into butter. Golden, rainbow indigo glitter-ridden butter. I think this polish would also be perfect for winter layered over white, but I'm not there yet. So, as far as the polish goes, 10/10, would buy again. The formula wasn't a problem for me once I thinned it out, so I don't mind. But the beauty makes up for it, because oh man. These were the sparkliest nails I've ever had. 

Anyway, I hope you like them! They weren't the most original birthday nails, but they were certainly the most glamourous. Thanks for reading, have a great day, and happy painting! :)

Sonnetarium Samurai Princess Nails

Hello! I don't know about you, but I am ready to be caught up with these posts!

Anyway, I have another super special amazing swatch for you! It's Sonnetarium's Samurai Princess. The prettiest of all the pretty glitters. I don't have a picture of the bottle itself, so I'll just jump right in to what I wore it over.

(indoors)

Samurai Princess is so freaking awesome. You can wear it over any color and it just gives it a fantastic effect. I tried to get a close-up of one nail, but it wasn't successful. This was my first time wearing it since I bought it, so it was really hard to decide what colors to use it over. I knew I wanted a gradient, but I don't have very many colors that just look absolutely great together. I ended up using L'Oréal Now You Sea Me (the teal) and Sally Hansen Pacific Blue (the bright blue) - they don't really go together either, haha! But I liked it well enough! Here is what they looked like without the coat of Samurai Princess:

(indoors)

I did have to use a couple of coats to get it that opaque and graduated. I don't really know what color scheme I was going for, I just knew I wanted some blues and greens. But afterwards, I did find myself wishing I had just painted them Pacific Blue, because it and Samurai Princess really complemented each other and Now You Sea Me was just kind of out of place.

As for the formula of Samurai Princess and where you can get it: The formula is fantastic. As I mentioned earlier, I'm wearing one coat in these swatches and it has a crazy amount of coverage without being thick. It's so lovely. It looks like paint splatters! It's really unique and looks good over any color (save maybe black and white) - I would suggest wearing it over neon colors. It only makes them look even more amazing. If you like Samurai Princess and want to buy it, you can get it from Sonnetarium's website. The 9mL bottle costs $6, the 15mL bottle is $8.50. I bought Samurai Princess with my own money and am in no way being compensated for this review. My opinions are honest - this glitter polish is amazing and I would recommend it to everyone! So if you love it as much as I do, go and support Sonnetarium! :)

As always, thanks for reading, have a nice day, and happy painting! :)

Sonnetarium Snowfall Nails

Hello there! Today I have a super special awesome swatch for you! Trust me, it's super special. It's an indie glitter polish by Sonnetarium called Snowfall!

(9mL bottle)

Snowfall is a beautiful glitter polish with 4 different sizes of white hex glitter and also iridescent transparent glitters that usually shine orange and blue - it looks just like a snow globe! So pretty. And since it's white glitter, it looks good over everything and is nice and delicate. It looks so good, I had a really hard time deciding what color to swatch it over. It came down to China Glaze Spontaneous and China Glaze Secret Peri-Wink-le. In the end, Spontaneous won because I actually had not worn that one before, so why not wear it with this beautiful glitter?

(indoors)

(natural lighting - you can see how much I loved this manicure because I retouched the tips where the polish was wearing down! This photo was taken several days after I painted them.)

I loved this manicure. LOVED IT. Spontaneous was the perfect base color for Snowfall, and the iridescent glitters just gave it a small pop of color. The formula of Snowfall is fantastic - in my pictures, I'm wearing one coat of snowfall. And not even a thick coat! It is really jam-packed with glitter. And as far as having to place the glitter on my nails, I didn't really have to do that too much. Occasionally with the bigger glitters, but not so much that it got annoying. It's almost a perfect polish. The only qualm I have with it is actually the bottle; The bottle is small (which is fine, because a little of this polish goes a long way), but the brush is even smaller. It's too short for the bottle, which makes it extremely difficult to get a good amount of glitter on the brush in the first place. I'm afraid it'll be impossible once the bottle starts to run low (it is important to note that this is not the case with the 15mL bottle, I also have that size in another polish from them and it is perfectly fine). But overall, Snowfall is worth the money ($6 on their website for the 9mL, $8.50 for the 15mL) and is so pretty. I loved it. I can't tell you how many times I went back and retouched this manicure so I could keep wearing it. 

So, if you love Snowfall, definitely get it. I've seen other variations of this kind of glitter, but Michelle (the creator of Sonnetarium polishes) does such a fantastic job and she cares about her customers first and foremost. So please, if you like it, go support her and buy it! Pretty much all of the glitter polishes she creates are absolutely gorgeous. The website is www.sonnetarium.net. 

Thanks for reading, have a good day, and happy painting! :)

Pure Ice Twisted Swatch

Hello again! Yep, you guessed it. Still trying to catch up on my blog posts! I didn't realize how often I paint my nails until I got behind on these posts, and now I have to go back and remember what order I painted them in, yadda yadda yadda. My most recent problem is some missing photos, because I know I took pictures of one of my manicures, but now they're gone! I'll have to do some searching for those. Anyway, hopefully I will be caught up on my posts by tonight, because I really want to share what I just painted on my nails with you, and I can't do that until I'm caught up, haha. So here's a swatch that I did a few weeks ago - Pure Ice Twisted.

(indoors, under a lamp)

(indoors)

Isn't it beautiful? My camera doesn't actually pick it up, but Twisted is more blue in reality (it's a duochrome blue and green glass fleck polish - it even has a small hint of purple in the bottle, but you can't see it on the nails). And it shines normally like in the first picture most of the time. It's awesome. Before I put it on, I didn't want a crazy shiny polish - it was one of those days when I wanted something really toned down. But then I realized I don't have very many toned down polishes! So I slapped on some matte top coat:

(indoors, under a lamp)

(natural lighting - sorry about the tip wear/ugly cutitcles, I took this photo a day or two after I painted them)

They looked fantastic with the matte top coat (I use Essie Matte About You)! I got a lot of compliments on them. And this is one of those polishes that has glass-like flecks in it, and when you put the matte top coat on you can see them in their full glory. I could stare at these nails for hours. And of course they felt fantastic - so smooth and soft with the matte top coat. I loved them! Still not toned down like I wanted, but it all worked out in the end! I picked up Twisted at Wal-mart, it's one of Pure Ice's new polishes they released recently. It's inexpensive and beautiful - my kind of polish! 

Thanks for reading, have a good day, and happy painting! :)