Summer of Untrieds Week 2

I've been sooo busy at work and with the shop that I haven't had time to keep up with the Summer of Untrieds Challenge posts.  I've been doing them every day and posting them on my Instagram account, but I haven't posted them here.  That being said, I'll be playing a little catch up the next few days!  So, let's get started!

Here are the prompts and the rules:

Rules:

• Use at least 1 untried polish that fits with the prompt for the day.
• If you don't have anything that works with the prompt, then consider it a free day and choose a random untried from your stash.
• There won't be an inlinkz, so keep up with the group by tagging your photos #summerofuntrieds.  I've also been including #julyuntriedchallenge in my posts, so you can add that too if you want.  Also, feel free to add a tag to me if you'd like (either @blueeyedlawyer or #wishesofablueeyedgirl).
• Start crossing off those untrieds in your stash!

July 8: Glitter with Colored Base

I wore NerdLacquer Warrior Ethos with an accent of Alter Ego's Nymph of the Night.  I did this for a #RedCoatTuesday, so go and check out the full post here.

July 9: Lilypad Lacquer

I wore Violet Moon and Almost Famous on alternating nails.  I loved these two together, and they both applied flawlessly.  They both had pink flashes that really brought the look together, which is why I wore them both.  However, sadly, the pink flash in Violet Moon was impossible to pick up with my camera, but it's very apparent in person.  Both polishes only took three coats and dried quickly.  I purchased these directly from Lilypad Lacquer at her store here.

July 10: Purple

This is Peita's Polish Wendy with accents of Lynnderella Is it Warm In Here?  Wendy is a warmed toned purple with a strong pink flash.  It applied very easily in only two coats, and dried quickly with a coat of KBShimmer's Clearly on Top.  It removed without staining, too, which is sometimes an issue for me with purples.  IiWiH is a clear base with a strong purple shimmer loaded with matte glitters in white and neons.  It wasn't that hard to get the glitters out of the bottle, and the consistency was nice with even application.  I purchased both of these straight from the makers: Peita's Polish and Lynnderella.

July 11: Summer

For my summer themed polish, I used a few polishes whose names, and colors, reminded me of summer.  I used Model City Polish Walking on Sunshine, a sunny yellow holo, and OPI Strawberry Margarita, a bright pink creme, as base colors and topped with Lacquistry's Watermelon Baller Shot Caller, a glitter topcoat packed full of shades of pink, green, and black matte glitters.  Strawberry Margarita took three coats for full coverage and dried fairly quickly.  It applied evenly and didn't require much cleanup.  Walking on Sunshine is in four coats as it is a tad sheer.  Application was fairly easy, and the patchy first coat builds up well with further coats.  Watermelon Baller is one coat with a great glitter to base ratio.  The glitters were easy to get out of the bottle and spread well.  You can purchase OPI polishes at salons and beauty supply shops.  You can purchase Model City Polish here and Lacquistry here.

July 12: Glitter Crelly

The glitter crelly I chose to wear, 365 Days of Color's Summer Dream, was from my friend Jen over at Jen's Nail Files who gave it to me in my birthday group!  I chose to pair it with Elevation Polish Lys Glacier.  Summer Dream is a minty green crelly with a lovely rainbow of hex glitters in varying sizes.  I wore three coats without undies, and it applied fairly easily, if not a tad thick.  Lys Glacier is a taupe-ish purple with a pink to gold shifting shimmer.  I wore three coats alone, and it was super easy to apply.  Sadly, 365 Days of Color has decided to stop selling nail polish so she can focus on her insanely popular (and super awesome) hand care line, but you should still check her out at her store here.  Lys Glacier has been discontinued, but you can purchase other EvPs at her store here.

July 13: China Glaze

I chose to wear varying shades of blue for my China Glaze mani, so I chose Strap on Your Moon Boots with accents of Kaleidoscope Him Out.  I know that the Hologlam collection was a huge disappointment for a lot of people who were hoping that the recent China Glaze collection would be an answer to the hugely popular and long discontinued OMG collection.  There were clearly batch issues as several people had bottles with very little holographic pigment.  I, however, received a set with very high holographic pigmentation as you can see in this photograph.  I used three horrible coats of SOYMB to cover up the patches and balding spots.  It is pigmented enough to be opaque in one or two coats, but the application was so horrible that I was forced to use three coats to cover up the unevenness.  You can see in my photos, that it was also extremely difficult to clean up, and there were still stains on my cuticles after I did my cleanup routine.  My bottle of KHO was from a dusty hunt, so it's old and a bit thick.  I used three coats of KHO because it was actually fairly sheer.  Cleanup was relatively easy as well.  Both of these have been discontinued, but you can purchase China Glaze polishes at beauty supply stores.

July 14: Neon

It's hard to get much more neon than Illamasqua's Collide.  I decided to pair Collide with a special franken from a friend that I received in a indie maker/hobbyist group swap.  Collide is a bright neon pink polish that can be worn alone (on my thumb) or over white (on my index and pinkie).  Application was fairly easy, but it works much better in two coats over white versus four coats alone.  Even with the four coats, it was still relatively easy to see my nail line.  The little franken is a lovely neon pink with black glitters.  I wore this in two coats over Cult Nails Tempest.  You can purchase Illamasqua polishes at Sephora.

So, that was week two.  Which was your favorite?  Did you participate?  There's still one more week left to play, and I'd love to see your manis!

Summer of Untrieds: Week 1

Welcome to my first weekly installment of the Summer of Untrieds Challenge!  If you follow me on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, you'll know that I've created a daily challenge for the month of July to get through as many untried polishes on my list as I possibly can.  Because changing my polish every day is pretty ambitious, even for me, I'm going to stick to one weekly post showcasing the week's manis instead of trying to post them every day.  This will allow me to keep certain other weekly features going while I do this challenge (i.e. the return of Comparison Thursday!).  The last challenge I did went pretty well for a while, but I just got so busy and stopped wearing polish for a few weeks.  I know!  Quelle horreur!  I'm determined to keep up with this one, and maybe after the month of July is over, I'll get back to the Crumpet's Golden Oldie Thursdays.  Until then, though, I hope you take the untrieds train with me!  Here are the prompts and the rules:

Rules:

• Use at least 1 untried polish that fits with the prompt for the day.
• If you don't have anything that works with the prompt, then consider it a free day and choose a random untried from your stash.
• There won't be an inlinkz, so keep up with the group by tagging your photos #summerofuntrieds.  I've also been including #julyuntriedchallenge in my posts, so you can add that too if you want.  Also, feel free to add a tag to me if you'd like (either @blueeyedlawyer or #wishesofablueeyedgirl).
• Start crossing off those untrieds in your stash!

Eventually, I may make a collage of all of the manis for each day's prompts and make an album on my Facebook page or Pinterest.  So, I'll let you guys know if I do that so you can tag yourselves!  Ok, let's get down to the nitty-gritty!  As always, click on the photos to view them in greater detail.

July 1: OPI

I purchased these myself.

For the first day, I wore OPI's Hey Baby and Push and Shove.  I know I'm a bit late on the Gwen polishes, but I haven't really been in the mood for mainstreams lately.  That being said, I have no idea why I waited to wear these.  Holy lord, they are sooooo pretty.  Hey Baby is really a one coater, and application was beyond easy.  I highly recommend it for everyone!  Push and Shove has a great ending effect, but it's a pretty annoying polish to apply.  It reminds me of the Nfu Oh and Layla holos that really needed an aqua base to go on smoothly without balding.  You can definitely see all of the imperfection in my nails, too, so I decided to do a little bit of testing to check out wear and the final application.  On my ring finger of my left hand and pinkie of my right hand, I have 3 layers of Push and Shove over 1 layer of my strengthener, Quimica Alemana Esmalte Endurecedor para Unas (what a mouthful!), and 1 layer of Lay Down that Base. On the thumb, index, and middle fingers of my right I have 2 layers of Lay down that Base topped with 3 of Push and Shove. All have topcoat. The P&S over the strengthener is holding up WAY better than the one over only LDTB and has 0 chips so far while the nails with just LDTB are chipping like mad.  [They say that it's a one-day use polish, which I can totally see if you're wearing it with only LDTB and without a topcoat!] You also can't see as many nail imperfections on the nails over the strengthener!  If you decide to go with a normal base coat underneath LDTB, you should really wait until it and LDTB are completely dry before applying P&S, otherwise it'll drag like mad.  Also, use caution when applying P&S and try not to go over portions that have already been painted until it has dried.  This means you'll need to get a little less polish on the brush and try not to overlap while you're painting.  I was planning to stamp over these, but I'm liking the fresh look they have on their own.  I do wonder, though, how they will stamp!  I'll have to give that a try and report back!

July 2: Glitter Topper

I purchased these myself.

For this manicure, I used OPI Can't Find My Czechbook topped with the ultimate glitter topper - Lynnderella's The Glittering Crowd.  Application of the OPI was pretty easy with only minimal pooling.  It only required two coats and dried fairly quickly.  Unfortunately, this blue isn't exactly super unique, and I'm planning to do a comparison of about 3 other blues in the same range soon.  TGC was fairly easy to apply as well.  It didn't require digging to get the glitters out of the bottle, and it spread evenly without pooling.  The base to glitter ratio was perfect, which can sometimes be a crapshoot with Lynnderellas.  Don't get me wrong, I clearly love me some Lynns, but she tends to pack her bottles so full of glitter that they require the dab method to spread evenly.  This wasn't the case for TGC!

July 3: Creme

I purchased or swapped for these.

I love wearing a creme as much as the next gal, but I get sooooo bored with them super easily.  Plus, since this is a challenge to slash through my untrieds, I wanted to make sure I used more than just one.  As such, I decided to try out some Nail Vinyls from @teismom on IG to go with my cremes.  I've used her stars and chevrons before, but I had some lightening bolts laying around that needed some attention, so I pulled those out for this mani to use with my cremes: Illamasqua Jo'mina (purple), Cult Nails Nakizzle's Shizzle (baby blue), and Illamasqua Cameo (periwinkle).  I didn't exactly think this one through, though, and didn't do them in the correct order.  Oops!  Next time, I'll be more prepared and do them in the right order so that I won't have to do what I did this go around, which was to freehand one of the lines of the baby blue.  Jo'mina was a two coater, but it definitely got all over the skin around my nails, which was sad.  Cleanup was fairly easy, though, without any staining of my skin.  I only needed one coat each of Cameo and NS, but I can't accurately describe their application since I didn't exactly use them for a full mani.  All in all, I still really like this mani despite the imperfections!

July 4: Red, White, and Blue

I purchased or swapped for these.

I wanted to do too many things for my red, white, and blue mani, so I did a bit of a skittle manicure to try and incorporate a lot of the good stuff into the one day I allotted myself for the challenge.  I used Barry M Cobalt Blue on my thumb topped with two coats of Lynnderella Flurries of Starlight.  Cobalt was practically a one coater, but I used two coats for fuller coverage.  I should've used only one coat of Flurries, but I got a little over eager...  As a base for my index, middle, and ring fingers, I used three coats of Emerald and Ash's Mie Scattering, which is my all time favorite white right now with it's crelly texture and subtle shimmer.  On my index finger, I used one coat of Kawaii Lacquer's Aren't the Stars and Stripes a Little... Old Fashioned?, which was super easy to apply with glitters that came out of the bottle easily and spread well on the nail.  On my middle finger, I did a waterfall manicure using Barry M Cobalt, KBShimmer's A Whole Lava Lovin, and Maybeline Silver Gleam.  On my ring finger, I did a water marble using Cult Nails Tempest (white) and Kiss (red) and Barry M Cobalt.  All three were fantastic for water marbling!  I had a bit of trouble with the marble on my swatch hand, but my right hand looked pretty good.  Lastly, on my pinkie I used two coats of Whole Lava Lovin topped with one coat of Lynnderella Sapphire Starfire.  Both were super easy to apply without much manipulation.

July 5: Lynnderella

I purchased or swapped for these myself.

For my Lynnderella day, I chose to use two Lynns: LE Sleepy Holo and core the Stars in Her Eyes, which I wore in one coat over two coats of Chanel April.  I received SIHE in a decant from a friend, and I love those little baby stars!!  For Sleepy Holo, I used two coats of this amazingly full coverage glitter jelly alone.  Even at one coat, it was almost opaque!  Dry time on this mani was fairly quick, and I used one coat of Peita's Polish Glitter Glaze with a coat of Seche Vite to tame those glitters.

July 6: Orange

I purchased or swapped for these myself.

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll either know or have noticed that I don't really wear much orange.  Oranges typically don't look great on me.  Plus, I have an aversion to it because of my having gone to the University of Georgia (and a strangely large amount of our rivals use orange!).  For this prompt, I really only had one orange that I hadn't used before, and this gave me a great excuse to wear it!  I used Essie's Bright Tights that I found dusty hunting a while ago, and I topped it with one coat of Alta Costura Vernis BrightSide.  Stupidly, I decided to try this neon without a white base coat...  As such, I couldn't get a fully opaque look at even four coats!  However, I was lucky in that the glitter topper helped to cover up some of the VNL.  Application for Bright Tights was also a bit difficult.  It dries a bit matte, so you have to work quickly to get it on the nail and keep it from dragging.  Plus, my bottle is wicked old, so it was a touch clumpy.  BrightSide applied well, but I wish there was a better glitter to base payoff since it was hard to get the larger bits of glitter out of the bottle.  I really liked that the pink and yellow glitters reminded me a bit of pink lemonade!  Both of these polishes have been discontinued, sadly, so you won't be able to find them anywhere other than blog sales (or maybe dusty hunting for the Essie).

July 7: Textured

I purchased these myself.

The last mani for tonight is a gradient I did using only textures.  I started with a base of white using Cult Tempest.  Then, I used (going from thumb to pinkie): OPI You're So Flippy Floppy, OPI Jinx, OPI I'm Brazil Nuts Over You, OPI Samba-dy Loves Purple, Sally Hansen Royal Icing, and OPI What's a Little Rain Forest?.  Sadly, Samba and Royal Icing weren't as easy to apply using the gradient method as the rest.  They just weren't pigmented enough and required an extra coat for each.  I can't really speak to proper application on any of these polishes, though, since I did the gradient instead of a normal mani.  The first photo shows the mani without a topcoat.  Next, I put on a coat of Peita's Polish Glitter Glaze, which really made the colors look richer than without the topcoat.  Lastly, I attempted a little palm tree nail art, which I copied from this awesome tutorial, using Kiss Nail Art's black striper.  (I did this on three nails but only watched the video to do it on my middle finger...  The picture got increasingly worse until the final attempt on my not-pictured pinkie looked like a weird bug...  Next time, I'll rewatch the video as I do each nail until I'm positive that I know how to do it without it looking like a second grader's abstract art.)  I topped it off with a coat of Alter Ego She Shines! topcoat.  I almost wish I could have been able to wear this for a longer period of time, but this challenge slows down for no (wo)man!

So, what did you think of this past week's manis?  Come back next Monday for next week's installment of the Summer of Untrieds Challenge!  Tomorrow we'll be taking a look at another #RedCoatTuesday!

Oldie but Goodie: Old Swatch Roundup

I've got a million swatch photos on my computer ready to be blogged about, but I took most of them in either 2012 or last year.  As such, I don't have a great grasp of how they applied or really anything else about them.  That being said, I'm planning to do a couple posts with these old photos so that I don't feel bad that they're just sitting around unused.  Be aware that these are old photos taken in my old lighting setup and with not so awesome moisturizing since I only just recently discovered which lotions and cuticle treatments work best with my extra-dry skin.  Ok, let's get started!

All polishes were purchased by me.

Dollish Polish Mermaid Scales over Nicole by OPI Poised in Turquoise

Hare Monster

Dollish Polish Toad-ally Awesome over Indigo Bananas Klein Trink Wasser, OPI OPI Red, China Glaze Liquid Leather, OPI DS Sapphire, and sandwiched between OPI Don't Touch my Tutu.

Dollish Polish Hip Hop Hippity Hop

China Glaze Rated Holographic

Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer All I'll Ever Need and Darling Diva Wedding Day Jitters

Lynnderella Salad Days over Zoya Mimi topped with NYC Matte Me Crazy matte topcoat.

Illamasqua Phallic topped with Lynnderella Angel Food and Amy's Nail Boutique Ecopolo

OPI Wing It

Dollish Polish The Kupa King over Girly Bits Banana Hammock

I've got tons more, too, so I think I'll do this once a month.  Hope you have a great Monday!

All polishes were purchased by me.