So Many NOTD, So Little Polish

With all the travel I've been doing in recent months, once again I've turned to fake nails and nail polish strips to adorn my digits between swatching sessions. I certainly have and will travel with liquid polish, but sometimes it's nice to just toss a few boxes of nails and strips in my luggage and not worry about breakage or spills.

I've worn Sally Hansen Salon Effects in The Bold Rush before; the gold to plummy purple gradient is pretty, but not as pretty as the box, which has a strong scattered holo effect not evident on the strips themselves.





A set of NailBliss Magic Press fake nails in the Runaway Star design came next; I'd worn these before as well. The box has three finishes of nails: pale pink creme, white iridescent, and gold/iridescent glitter.



When I first put these on, I used only the pale pink and the glitter ones.



Four days later, I'd popped off and lost one of the pink nails and decided to go ahead and mix in the iridescent white.



I went super subtle with the next set of fakes, some Nailene So Natural ones I'd gotten ages ago when one of the drugstores had them on clearance.



By this point, my natural nails had grown out enough that I couldn't cover them with the fakes without leaving a bit more of a gap at the base than would be ideal. (Yes, I could have filed my nails but I hate to give up length if I don't have to, and these nails were so neutral I thought the gap wouldn't be too noticeable.) These had just a touch of shimmer to them that made them not entirely boring.



These lasted a long time, with only a couple needing re-attachment during the eight days I wore them. Here they are on that eighth day:



Lately instead of using nail glue or double-sided sticky tabs to replace fakes that I pop off (and I usually do pop one or two off within a couple days, as I have yet to break my habit of using my nails as tools, particularly the index and thumbs), I've been just putting on a thick coat of treatment polish and using that to put the fake nail back on. It's not as strong as nail glue, certainly, but it's kinder to my nails and easier to remove when it's time to change my manicure.

Piggy Polish Fall 2010

I am rebelling against the too early arrival of Christmas merchandise by swatching some of the fall collections I've so far not shared here. Today I have Piggy Polish. I wasn't able to 100% confirm that this is their Fall 2010 collection, as their website is still featuring summer colors, but since the display showed up at my Ulta this past autumn it it has fallen leaves on it, I think I'm on pretty safe ground calling it Fall 2010.



Thanks to a sale and a coupon, I was able to pick up all five colors from the display.



Left to right: Green and Bear It, Lime Alright, Baby I Love Your Waves, Copper Harbor, Grey-T.

Green and Bear It is a very glowy lime green glass fleck shimmer. This one is bright! Even without topcoat, it shined in indirect indoor light and really popped in direct light. I used three coats.





Lime Alright is another bright green but this one's a creme. It's also really a neon, which means it dried matte. I used three coats but could probably have done two if I'd been more careful with application.



I tried adding a layer of top coat to this one, and that made it even brighter (and smoothed out some of the lumps and bumps from my uneven application).



I tried Baby I Love Your Waves next, again using three coats. It's a blue shimmer that dries matte, so I guess it could be called a suede. Regardless of terminology, it's pretty, both without and with top coat.





Copper Harbor is most autumnal color in the collection; it's a reddish orange glass fleck shimmer. I only needed two coats of this one.





Grey-T (not to be confused with Maybelline Gray-T Glamour) is a deep cool-toned grey creme that covered in two coats and was very shiny even without top coat.





My two favorites from this collection are Baby I Love Your Waves and Grey-T. My least favorite is Lime Alright, because I struggled with the formula and don't think I'll feel like having neon green nails very often.

Milani Intense Metals

As soon as the first pictures of the Milani Liquid Metal collections showed up on the MUA nail board, I started keeping an eye out for them on my drugstore rounds. The Cool Shades (2.0, Dot Com, I'm Online, Just Browsing, My Network, and PC Girl) eventually showed up at CVS (and I bought them all; I should swatch them sometime), but then weeks passed with no Intense Colors to be found. Swapping to the rescue! Jackie of Candy Coated Tips was able to find two of colors I wanted—Melt Down (cool red) and Molten Rock (blue)—and sent them to me in exchange for some other pretties I had extras of. That just left Hot Metal (purple) to track down, because, in a surprising turn of events, I decided I could skip the other three in the collection: Melt in the Sun (yellow orange), Metal Gear (orange), and Melt With U (warm red). I figured I could find a swap for Hot Metal at some point, but it turned out I didn't need to; before I'd even had a chance to add the polishes Jackie'd sent to my spreadsheet, I came across a display with one purple left--the first and so far only Intense Colors display I've seen around here. Funny how that works sometimes.


Left to right: Melt Down, Hot Metal, Molten Rock.

Melt Down is a beautiful ruby red which applied so nicely I only needed two coats (all swatches today are without top coat but I did use a base coat). The finish looks to me like a combination of a metallic and a micro glitter.






Hot Metal is a plummy pinkish purple; the finish on this one is different than the other two—no metallic flavor but rather a combination of micro glitter and glass flecked. I used three coats of this and needed every one.





Molten Rock is rich turquoise blue; the finish was similar to Melt Down but leaned more toward metallic than micro glitter. I used three coats but probably could have stopped at two.





Tune in next entry for some comparisons featuring these three.

Layering Fun

Before I finally took off Splash of Grenadine, I layered one coat of Sally Hansen HD Byte on top. Even with the wide gap and chip touch ups and tip wear thanks to having the base mani on all week, I really like the look. Byte added such a nice touch of sparkle without being too over the top blingy; if I'd known it would look like that, I'd have done it earlier and worn it to work, too.





If I didn't have so many untrieds, I'd be very tempted to wear this combination again very soon.