Holy Wow!!!! You guys are AH-mazing!!

Man, you guys came at me full force!  Thank you so much for the following love!  I truly appreciate it!  The overwhelming majority of you guys are most interested in nail art, so I will do my best to deliver.  I'm not a very artistic person, but I do love stamping!  You guys are also interested in jelly sandwiches, so I will make sure to try one at least once a week!  Now that I have a better idea of what you guys are looking for, I can try to make a weekly schedule to fit it all into!  I'm so excited, and I truly appreciate all of your feedback.  I had planned to do a giveaway at 50 followers, but you guys got me there before my current giveaway has even ended!  Therefore, I have decided to push my next giveaway back to 100 followers.  It's a pretty awesome giveaway, so I can't wait to share it with you guys!!

I finally received my Elevation order today, and I'm soooo stoked!  Although, I do see two potential sellers/swapers in the group.  Unfortunately, I'm afraid that Sarychev is going to be way too orange for me.  As I've mentioned before, I'm not really into oranges.  Plus, Nararsuk looks pretty close to Pretty & Polished Rat-a-tat, so I plan to do a comparison post of those two next week.  I just don't think I will be able to justify keeping both of them.  I also got some trades that I was waiting on.  Thanks for the Butter London and Sinful, Tomboy Nails!!  Plus three amazing Lynnderellas from a friend in one of my Facebook groups.

This is made of win.

Well, last Friday I promised a positive post.  You know, one where I'm not tossing the polish into the sell/swap stack.  I think I can finally deliver - at least partially!  I had to wade into my stack of untrieds that I'll most likely keep instead of the stack of untrieds that I'll most likely get rid of, which is where I have been working up to now. Although these two are both keepers, I'm actually a bit disappointed in this mani.  We'll get to that in a minute, though.

For untried mani #11, I used Elevation El Cap for the base color and Rainbow Honey Mare of the Moon for the top.  Elevation Polish can be bought at Lulu's Big Cartel store here or at her Etsy store here.  She restocks the 7th of every month at 10pm est (on BC) and 10:10pm est (on Etsy).  You can also read her blog and get updates here.  If you're interested in ordering from Rainbow Honey or checking out their blog, you can do so here.  Luckily, they keep their polishes in stock fairly regularly, so it should be easy to get your hands on them.

So pretty!!!!

El Cap is a blurple shimmer that looks blue in one light, but purple in a different light.  In the bottle, it looked like it would be a great match for Mare of the Moon.  This is two coats.  Unfortunately, it isn't as pigmented as El Cap, so I did need to use more than one coat.  However, this doesn't detract from the awesomeness of this polish.  It is so complex!  It goes from blue, to purple, to periwinkle just by changing the angle with which you look at it.  It applied smoothly without pooling or staining.  Even though it has a bit of a frosted finish, you couldn't see any brush marks, which is something that tends to pop up on frosts when they dry.  The only real bummer to this polish is the dry time.  It took a pretty long time to dry.

Blurples are the best.

I topped El Cap off with Mare of the Moon.  It's a very complex indigo blue that shimmers purple in some lights.  This polish is chock-full of silver crescent moons and silver hexes of varying sizes.  I store this polish upside down because I know that larger or shaped glitters are usually a pain to get out.  Mare of the Moon wasn't an exception.  It took a lot of rolling and digging just to get even a few glitters out.  As you can see from my pics, I didn't really succeed in this endeavor.  I would've liked for the hexes to be a bit easier to fish out, but they were almost more elusive than the moons.  I'm not sure what I can do the next time I use it to make it easier, but I'll keep trying.  The application on this guy was very thick, and I had to pluck out the moons and slap them on with globules of polish, which didn't help with the thickness on my nails.  Rainbow Honey includes a disclaimer in her packaging that her polishes may be thicker than many prefer, so I knew that it may be too thick going into this mani.  [Side note: I actually prefer a thicker polish over one that's too thin.  At least if it's too thick, it is much easier to fix it to my standards than ones that are too thin.]  After doing my thumb, I went ahead and added a few drops of thinner to see if that would make it more manageable, but it didn't really help.  I'll definitely need to add more thinner next time.  

So pretty!!!

I wish there were more hexes!!!

Because of the thickness of this polish, the dry time was a DISASTER.  This is even with Seche Vite on top!  Plus, it doesn't really play well with Seche (see the shrinkage at the tips).  Next time I wear this guy, I think I'll just have to use a regular top coat, and just wait out the dry time.  It's hard to hate on this mani, though, because it was just so pretty.  At certain angles, all you could see was the indigo from Mare of the Moon, but at other angles you could see El Cap's periwinkle peeking out to say hello.  I kept staring at it all day.

The dry time on this mani was a huge problem for me.  I did it quickly before heading out the door to work on Saturday.  Even with Seche Vite, I got major denting and managed to smudge the tips of 3 fingers.  It was frustrating to say the least.  Plus, the Seche had MAJOR shrinkage even though I had used a bit of Gelous before my top coat.  It's hard to see in the picture below, and it actually got worse the second day.  Needless to say, I removed this mani the next day.  While it was a gorgeous color combo, I just couldn't get over the dry time and the mess I made of my hands.  Luckily, removal was very easy since there were little to no glitters on my nails.  Neither polish stained, either, so that's a huge bonus in my book.

Unlike George Costanza, my nails were not in the pool.

The verdict for these two polishes: they are both keepers.  I will work on thinning out Mare of the Moon before I give up on it.  The colors are just so gorgeous.  Blue is my favorite color, so I can't help but be partial to these two.  Plus, there aren't many polishes with cool shapes in them like those crescent moons.  It's a very unique polish.

What do you think about polish-makers that include a thickness/curling/bleeding disclaimer in their listing or packaging?


*Edited to add a pic of the full mani with Mare of the Moon on top...  I can't believe I forgot to add that.  I guess I was a bit sleepy last night, rofl!*