Long Time No See...

School is my excuse as always... I have been painting my nails, but the sun hasn't always been in my favor for pictures, so I have some photos built up to post, but not too many. Here is what I wore a week ago:

Not the best water marble....

These amazing glitters were released by Lacquerlicious a few weeks ago, which are unfortunately sold out right now. They are nearly neon fully opaque glitters.There are only three colors, so I did a water marble on the finger that didn't have glitter on it. All three were three coats, you could get away with two depending on how long your nails are and how thick you apply them. The colors are:

Beat the Heat
Lemon Limeade
At The Lake

The colors I  used for the water marble:
OPI- Fly (Nicki Minaj Collection Spring 2012)
Wet n Wild- Candy-Licious
Essie- The More The Merrier (Naughty Nautical Summer 2013)

Nail Art using Floss Gloss!

I am so happy to be show casing these nails! I have been eying this brand for a while, and got these a few weeks ago. I knew I wanted to use them both together, and I hope I made my fellow baydestrain nail polish makers proud!

 

Sunlight

 Shade

NEON GOODNESS!

They even look amazing in the shade!

I don't normally wear neon colors. I have very few, and these are definitely my fav! I think I don't wear them because I have found the formulas to be kind of crappy, but these are pretty awesome!

The green is Floss Gloss- Con Limon, the perfect neon Jennifer Green shade. I have never seen a neon green like this! The orange/coraly shade is Floss Gloss- Bikini Coral. 

The glitter on my ring finger is OPI- Lights Of Emerald City (Oz the Great and Powerful Collection 2013). This glitter is so cool looking, but a beezy to work with. You can get a good amount of glitter on the brush 50% of the time, but it is so hard to get it on your nail evenly! Definitely not my favorite glitter...

Now for a  nice review of Floss Gloss as a whole. First off, I LOVE the bottle. They are fairly small, but the handle is nice and big so it is easy to hold and apply the polish. The gold looks fabulous, too. The formula on Con Limon was awesome. It went on evenly in 2 thin coats, and turned out just as bright as it is in the bottle, without using a white base first! Bikini Coral was nice too, but a tad bit on the thick side. It dried very matte, too, and Con Limon dried to more of a satin finish with more shine. I guess my only negative would be that they are $8.00 for only .18 fluid ounce... But the craftsmanship on the bottle makes up for that! Especially the cute nail label they have!

You can buy Floss Gloss HERE, but I think they have deals fairly often. You can also find the ladies behind the brand on the Nailgasm Documentary that pretty much everyone in the nail polish community knows about!

Simple Swatch + Review: Lush Lacquer

I have mentioned before back in December that Lush Lacquer is hands down my favorite Indie Polish brand. They never fail to impress me, and they really outdid themselves this time! I swatched and reviewed my two picks from their Christmas collection HERE and HERE. I reached a milestone in my blogging career and the ladies behind the brand used my photos on their etsy page :) They are discontinued now though, oh well! On to the swatch:

 

 Sunlight

Shade

Lush Lacquer- Clowning Around layered on top of Illimasqua- Nomad

Lush Lacquer is sticking with the nail polish trends in the indie world, and made some neon polishes! They released these shortly after their Valentines and Spring Collection (which I plan on doing swatches of). They made 4 standard creme/jelly polishes with neon glitter mixed together, and this beauty, which I don't think I have seen before. It is JUST the neon glitter in a semi clear base, I feel like it is tinted slightly pink. I don't feel like I need to stalk down all the restocks of Jindie and Wicked Polish because with this polish in my stash, I can make never ending combos! My wallet is happy.

Not only are they releasing more amazing polishes, but they got a new bottle, and brush:

Like my ghetto rigged light box? It is simply printer paper against the window! But I really wanted to do a full review and compare the bottles. I really liked the old bottle. I love their logo and the stickers, it makes it feel hand made. But I am not complaining about their new bottles! I really like the new longer, textured bottle cap. It makes it much easier to grab and open. And their logo is still adorable. 

Onto the brush comparison:

 

As you can see, it is much wider! Words from Lush Lacquer themselves on these brushes, "These brushes are the same size but they are flat instead of round and they grab the glitter VERY well." They pretty much nailed that description. When I swatched all the new ones I got on my nail wheels, I already saw a huge difference. I never really had a problem grabbing glitter with the old brushes, but this new brush makes it 1000 times easier to actually apply it since it is so wide. What will these ladies do next?!

 

Yummy macro shot. Here you can see that the base isn't totally clear, but it isn't really an issue!

On to the application of this particular shade. I started off with two coats of Nomad, which is probably my favorite turquoise polish. The formula is amazing, and almost a one coater, but there were some bald spots. My boyfriend even recognized that I have worn it a lot! After those dried, I applied the first coat of Clowning Around. I grabbed a lot of glitter for all nails, but I didn't like how I couldn't get the same colors. Like my index finger, it has no big purple glitters! I ended up applying two coats just because it looked way more awesome! I am going to get a lot of wear out of this polish, I can already tell.

You can purchase Lush Lacquer on Etsy for $9 USD. And for my international friends, you can find them on Llarowe, but the neons aren't on there yet. I thought they were on Harlow & Co, but it looks like they aren't anymore? You can also find them on Mei Mei's Signatures HERE, but they don't have the neons yet, either.

What do you think? I plan on swatching and reviewing all my 20+ Lush Lacquer babies soon, but still haven't committed to that yet. I plan on doing it in different categories, like Halloween, Mattes, Valentines, etc. Hope you enjoyed this!

First Official Water Marble Wednesday

I mentioned in my last Water Marble, that I was considering starting a series called "Water Marble Wednesdays". I decided to just go ahead and start it up! I won't guarantee that there will be one every week, especially after doing this one:

 

NEON! I decided to do neon because Christine May from Nails At 2am is holding a neon themed contest on her instagram. Nail contests are fun, so i thought, why not?

This was such a pain in the butt! I don't know if it is because they are neons or what. The first two fingers gave me no trouble, but then my ring and pinky finger were being evil. I redid them twice because they turned out so awful! I like the final outcome, but the two sets of fingers look like they are from different manicures. I think I should have changed the water because the black on my ring and pinky is all shimmery, but the other two fingers aren't. I actually like how it looks with the shimmer in the black, but it just doesn't go with the other two fingers :(

The colors I used were all China Glaze except the black, you know me! The pink is CG- Flirty Tankini, yellow: CG- Sun-Kissed, green: CG-I'm With The Lifeguard, all three of these were from their Summer Neons collection from 2012. The orange is CG- Breakin' which is from their Kicks Collection in 2009. Lastly, the black is Wet n Wild- Black Creme. 

Let me know what you think! I want to know if you have done a water marble with neons, and if they gave you trouble. I know I won't be using them for a while now!