China Glaze Poolside and random babbling

So yesterday I actually swatched the three colors from the Poolside collection that I picked up at Sally's, despite clouds, rain, and general weather ickiness.

I found that ALL of these colors required a coat of white polish underneath in order to make the colors pop (glow is more like it) and to eliminate visible nail line.

I started with Sun Worshipper, and actually used three coats with no white polish underneath at first. The nail line was bothering the hell out of me, though, so I removed it without taking pictures. Here it is with a basecoat, a coat of Sally Hansen White On, and two coats of Sun Worshipper. This color is actually on my toes right now. :)




And this is Pool Party. Same routine with the white as Sun Worshipper. Both of these colors are very, very, very bright. Pool Party is, I think, my favorite of three neon pinks I have in my collection. It doesn't go all orange like the other two do!




The last one I got was Towel Boy Toy. It's not really neon, but it is very bright. I also applied it over a coat of white. It's a nice, bright aqua blue with some shimmer. I had a really hard time accurately capturing the color. The second picture I think most accurately captures the color.





In other news, I made a hand scrub last night! I was pissed off because all the hand scrubs I've found are way too expensive for what amounts to oil and sugar/salt/some scrubby substance. So I melted some coconut oil, mixed in some water and a bunch of sugar, and dumped in some scent from one of my million BPAL imp's ears I have lying about. It works! It leaves my hands feeling soft and smooth and, honestly, they feel as soft as they have when I've used an actual expensive "hand scrub." So there!

The red was also fading super fast from my hair, and I wanted to go back darker, but still have SOME red, so on the advice of a friend, I dyed it "Dark Mahogany Brown" using L'Oreal Color Gems. This is the result. I really like it!


Also, I think I'm going to stick to taupes and light browns this week. I'm feeling rather reserved, and these polishes don't get nearly enough play from me. Holy crap, I'll actually be wearing work-appropriate polish to work! Here's the lineup:



And in other OTHER news.... I think I'm going to close my destashing post and just send all that stuff to Zoya to take advantage of the polish exchange. Ohhh yeeeeah.

Boring Sunday at work

So, I probably shouldn't admit this, but I swatch nail polish for my blog during slow weekends at work.

Today has been EXCEEDINGLY slow. I think I've answered 5-6 calls in the last 9 hours (I still have three hours left in my day). I didn't get my first call til after 10am. I got here at 7.

So, as a result, I swatched all the stuff Jessica sent me! I'm going to post all of those and two randoms I'd already taken pictures of but failed to ever post.

This is my last weekend to work, ever. Well, maybe not EVER, but it's definitely the last weekend I'll be expected to work a 12-hour shift on both Saturday and Sunday. I should celebrate tonight.

So, here we go.

First up is Sinful Colors in Tokyo Pearl. It's a pearly white. Application was pretty good for a Sinful polish, especially in white -- they are usually so sheer, but this was good in 2 coats.
This is indoors.


And this is outdoors (well, not really outdoors, but by a window in natural light).


This is L'Oreal Wear Extraordinaire in Sheer Breathless. Okay, so when I saw this I thought, "Ehhhh... it's sheer. It's peachy-colored. Meh." But this is really pretty! And not too sheer! I had no visible nail line after three coats, and that's good enough for me. I really like the shimmer in this.


Jess also sent me this, which I didn't swatch because, well, it's a nail art brush. It will get used at some point... I thought the bottle was super cute. :)




This is Milani Garnet Gems, which I'd actually been wanting to buy! It's funny that Jess sent it to me, because I've never once mentioned to anyone that I was looking for this. The spot for it was always sold out in every store I went to, so I was pleasantly surprised to get it yesterday. I do wonder how close it is to China Glaze Lubu Heels, though. I was tempted to find my bottle of that this morning and do a comparison, but being up before dawn at ass o'clock in the morning didn't really make me feel too compelled to hunt for Lubu Heels. Maybe tomorrow. :)


THEN... she sent me four Goldie polishes. I kept seeing these Goldie trios at TJ Maxx last year but never did pick any of them up. I sort of wish I had now -- the formula was pretty good on all of these, and the glitter one looks like the lovechild of Dorothy Who? and Sinful's Nail Junkie. I wanted to try the glitter over the royal blue, but I was too lazy.. Maybe tomorrow. :)
Anyway, she sent me a nude color, a shimmery rose color, a royal blue with some shimmer, and a blue glitter. Man, I really need to do a blue glitter comparison, I seem to have a lot of those.
Nude shimmer:


Rose shimmer (this is really pretty):


Glittah! This is actually silver iridescent in a blue jelly base.


And this is the royal blue. I banged my middle finger into something when someone startled me so, well, there ya go. This is also pretty.


This!!! This is a polish Jess picked up in Taiwan. The brand is Kate and perfunctory googling turns up... absolutely nothing. But it's flakies! I layered it over black, and while it looks cool over black, I think it might look even better over a lighter color. Jess said that she thought it might be close to Nfu-Oh 40, and I think she might be right... not that I have Nfu-Oh 40 to compare it to. :) The Nfu-Oh may have more duochrome effect than this. I dunno. This is two coats of flaky goodness over Sally Hansen Lacquer Shine in Lustrous.




And that's it for the polishes from Jessica's box-o-stuff!

I also have two random polishes that I just never posted, so here you go:
This is Pure Ice in Rio. It's a purplish magenta with blue shimmer and it wasn't really opaque in three coats. Next time, I will use this tip for doing away with the dreaded visible nail line.


And this is OPI Shim-merry Chic. I picked this up impulsively at Kroger because it had flakies in it. Somehow that little fact escaped me when I'd seen swatches of this before. I was afraid it was going to be too bronze (not my color, not at all), but it was a really nice deep antique gold. Much like Merry Midnight, it coulda been flakier, but is still a nice polish. I took a few pics of this and still didn't feel like I adequately captured this color. It's a shimmery antique gold with glitter and flakies... there's a lot going on. :)