Skinfood Pedicure Sparkle Cool Mint & purple crackle comparison

Skinfood Pedicure Sparkle - Cool Mint, 2 coats

I accidentally bought a duplicate bottle of Cool Mint, I'm either including it in an upcoming giveaway (hint hint) or franken with it. And no, I didn't trim my nails yet, this is an older mani from about a month ago. I have a backlog of about 30+ manis that I need to sort through, edit and publish. x.O

Skinfood Pedicure Sparkle - Cool Mint & LaRosa Hot Purple (i, r) / China Crackle - Fault Line (m, p), 2 + 1 coats

A small purple crackle comparison: Hot Purple vs. Fault Line. I LOVE the LaRosa crackles, the brush is nice and wide so you only need to dip once, and the formula is dreamy. Fault Line is the most challenging to use of the China Glaze crackles, a fact that isn't helped a bit by the skinny, floppy CG brush. It doesn't look too bad here but this is the best Fault Line mani I've ever done, usually all I get is a strand-like effect with very little actual crackling of the polish.

Orly Galaxy Girl & Sally Hansen Byte

Orly - Galaxy Girl, 2 coats

Galaxy Girl has teal to pink duochrome flecks of foil in a murky brown/purple base. I almost gave this the "ugly" tag, it definitely isn't my favourite polish - I don't dig the murkiness. I desperately need to file down my nails, but it's such a chore ("wah wah"). I really don't like wearing my nails this long anymore, and I'm very self-aware and feel kind of ashamed if other people (mainly kids) notice them.

Orly - Galaxy Girl & Sally Hansen - Byte, 2 + 1 coats

I like this one way more with a coat of Byte over Galaxy Girl, which gives it a purple boost. Time to go dig up my small arsenal of nail files... *sigh*

OPI Windy City Pretty & funky French with nail art stickers

OPI - Windy City Pretty, 2 coats

Here is Windy City Pretty from OPI's 2005 Chicago collection. In the bottle it's a pinkish dusty mauve with beautiful golden shimmer, but on the nail it dries darker and the shimmer pretty much disappears. As with all the older OPIs the formula was fantastic. However, I wanted to spice up this one since I thought it looked too grannyish on me.

OPI - Windy City Pretty & funky french with nail art stickers, 2 coats with sponged tips

I sponged the tips with Nubar Pink Crème and dug up these super pretty nail decals from my vast nail art stash. I dabbed a little bit of fine silver glitter onto the centers of the flowers, and voilà! From drab to fab in minutes!

Nail polish rings!

DS - Original & black crackle / Nfu-Oh - 50 & Sally Hansen Nail Prisms - Burgundy Orchid

Various green glitters & LaRosa - Maroon Red crackle / Dried flowers & China Glaze - White Cap

Holo-blue-purple glitter franken / Blue-purple glitter franken & black crackle

Sinful Colors - Deep Blue Ocean & Sally Hansen - Purple Pizzazz / MAC - Bad Fairy & black crackle

Deborah Lippmann - Happy Birthday & various glitters / Iridescent stars on silver

These are my first attempts at making nail polish jewelry - ten ⌀25mm glass cabochons with matching silver toned ring blanks... uh, except that I do not have any epoxy at my disposal right now so I haven't glued the cabochons to the blanks. :p I absolutely loved making these, and I already ordered ten more cabochons/ring blanks! I want to make a hundred of these! The only one I wasn't that pleased with was the iridescent stars one which I thought was too... cheap and tacky, perhaps? Or one-dimensional compared to the others, dunno. It looks inherently better in the photo above than it did IRL,  sooo I gave the cabochon a nice little acetone bath and tried another combo of colours - hot pink holo and iridescent glitter (no pics yet, sorry)! 8)

 All together now: Cabochons in direct sunlight

One, two three four, can I have a little more: Cabochons indoors, w/ flash

Meteorites haul & quick swatches pt. 2

Meteorites - Venus, Crater, Pulsar & Cosmic Comet

Meteorites - Venus, Crater, Pulsar & Cosmic Comet

Venus - blue, silver & holo

Crater - green & blue

Pulsar - green, purple & violet

Cosmic Comet - red, blue, green, purple, gold & silver