Pink Wednesday: Essence Roy's Red + Color Club Starry Temptress Topcoat

Hello lovelies!

I apologize for the lack of posting, but I've been feeling a bit low lately. I had a bad migraine today, so the Pink Wednesday post is late. Apologies. <3

For this I used two coats of Essence Roy's Red and two coats of Color Club's Starry Temptress topcoat on my ring fingers. Simple, but I like it. :)

[inside and under artificial light. my skin looks seriously weird in this one.]

[outside and in the last bit of fading light. This is much more colour accurate but still not quite it.]

[blurry pic to show the sparkles. Didn't turn out as planned, but I still like it lol.]

Roy's Red simply would not photograph colour accurately. Imagine it as a slightly lighter and somewhat brighter version of Catrice Raspberry Fields Forever. Which probably doesn't help you much either, because that one didn't photograph properly either. -__-

Anyway. That's it from me for today. Short and sweet for a change!

Did you wear pink today?

Swatches & Review: Color Club Alter Ego

Hello lacquered lovelies!

Today's post is a little late for several reasons. I had a killer headache last night and couldn't sleep until well into the morning, then I screwed up my new mani and had to redo my nails and then I was cranky and decided to bake. The kitchen looked like a battlefield and I was covered in flour and molten chocolate. Now that everybody is unstickyfied (when I start making up words I know it's time to cut back on the sugar and the caffeine) again I finally have time to blog.

Another one of the Color Clubs I ordered recently; Alter Ego.

Alter Ego is a plum-based foil that flashes silver, copper and gold depending on how the light hits it. The plum base colour is really barely visible in the shade and under artificial light. I love the effect. <3

I used three coats for these pictures and a coat of Seche Vite. (Do excuse the tipwear, but I wore this for a couple of days in the hopes that I'd finally get some sunlight. Which I did, so yay!) The formula was nice, if a bit on the thin and sheer side. This kind of finish is definitely very forgiving of any polishing mistakes, which I totally love.

And, as if I needed any other reason to love this polish, it reminds me of U2's ZOOTV tour in the 90's. It looks like someone threw The Fly's, The Mirrorball Man's and Mr. MacPhisto's suits into a pot, melted them and this is what they ended up with. Would explain why it's called Alter Ego. Heh.

Here, have some awesomeness:

:D

Swatches & Review: Color Club Otherworldly

Hello lacquered lovelies!

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I got another polish from Color Club's Starry Temptress collection: Otherworldly. After wearing Ultra-Astral I was really excited for it and I wasn't the only one. My mom has been loving nail polish lately as well and agreed to let me take a picture of her nails when she wore Otherworldly.

Otherworldly is a medium blue and, like Ultra-Astral, the holographic glitter in this is not sparkly. The polish looks more turquoise in this picture than it actually is.

 Application wasn't too great on this. It was thick and goopy and there was a bit of dragging going on. This needed three coats for opacity and drying time was alright. This acted more like a matte than Ultra-Astral did, meaning it started drying before the nail was covered, making application a bit difficult.

I think it's a gorgeous colour and I'm still totally digging the non-sparkly glitter, but application was a bit of a pain. I'll be adding some polish thinner before I use this again and see if that helps.

I'd like to thank my lovely mom for lending me her nails and being excited that I'll post them on my blog. :D

Edit: My mom just showed me her nails and the polish has chipped and peeled off on almost every nail. This is a little over 24 hours after application, even with topcoat. Not sure what happened there, just letting you guys know!

Pink Wednesday: Color Club Ultra-Astral

Good morning, lovelies! (Well, it's not technically morning, but I'm not usually up this early and I've only slept for 2 1/2-ish hours, so let's just call it morning anyway, shall we?)

Today will be my first Pink Wednesday post. It's no secret that I'm not a big fan of pink in general and nail polish is no exception. However, as I've been discovering new brands and the blogging world in general I've seen and bought some pinks that I actually quite like on me. I hardly (if ever) wear them, though. I'm hoping this will motivate me to wear pink more often and not let the pretty polish gather dust. Besides, Mean Girls = <3

Since I just got nail mail yesterday (and again today! Woot!) and I've never used Color Club before I knew Ultra-Astral was going to be the first polish I'd wear the second I saw it.

Ultra-Astral is a crazy bright neon pink with holographic glitter (that isn't actually...glittery...but I'll get to that in a sec). It is slightly darker in person, but you know how it is with neons; they never photograph colour accurately. It's part of the new Starry Temptress collection. What makes me love this is that it's weird. It's a pink glitter polish, which would normally make me pull a face, but this? This effing rocks.

The glitter in this isn't really glittery. I'm not sure how to explain this, but as you can see in the picture, in the bottle it's all sparkly but on the nail it's almost dull. The base colour kind of dulls the glitter and it only gets through in small areas and when the light hits it right. If you don't hold your hand close to your face you probably won't be able to tell it's glitter at all. It looks like tiny white sprinkles. Me like. <3

Application was smooth and easy on this. I used three coats for the picture and at certain angles I still had some VNL, but not bad enough to actually bother me. As I said, this is my first time using Color Club (uuuugggghhh. I want to write Colour Club every time -__-) and I'm quite pleased. I honestly can't remember anything about the brush, but since my swatching notes say application was nice I'm going to assume I like it. Since this is a neon, it dries matte. I'm not big on mattes either, but I like it here. I'm sure it would look great with topcoat a well, though I haven't tried it yet. I did notice that this applied very differently from other mattes I've used; it wasn't as thick and didn't dry immediately, making it much easier to work with.

One thing I would say about this is that it took an awfully long time to dry. I'm not sure if this is the case with Color Club polishes in general or just Ultra-Astral, but it's something worth considering I think.

Overall, totally loving this polish! Super excited for the other polish I got from this collection.

Happy Wednesday, pretties! <3

And my kitties say hello, too!

And here's a bonus U2 coffee cup!

Okay! I'm done now! For real! Exclamation markssss!!! (Dear god, somebody take the coffee away from me...)