Polish All the Nails

Today is the day that I do things that have already been done by heaps of people but I don't care cos I'm super interesting!  Otherwise known as yay, I finally got the polishes I wanted from the China Glaze Hunger Games collection!  It seemed like I just kept missing out on the good polishes from the collection so colour me happy when I finally found Riveting, Electrify and Smoke and Ashes at my local beauty supply store - on sale no less.  Given that it seems as though the first two are designed to go together, together they shall go! First up, I added two coats of Riveting, the brilliant orange glass fleck foil.  It's so sparkly and aggressively orange, it's great.  Application was nice too, the two coats were plenty.  Once dry, I used my usual glitter gradient trick, painting Electrify two thirds of the way down my nail on one coat, and a third down on the second.  Let me tell you, the combination is super sparkly and really does look like fire...

Look everyone!  Polishes you probably can't get because you live in North America (statistically) whereas they're only available in Australia!  Woo!  Or, to put a more positive spin on things, let me show you some of the spoils of my recent trip to Australia!        As you may know, I just got back from two weeks visiting my family and friends and I would be doing you all a disservice if I didn't show you some of the local polishes.  I have a few to go through but I'm going to start with the clear stand-out: Australis Speck-tacular, a rainbow flakie polish!   It's quite appropriate that is is an Australian polish as it's the closest I've seen a flakie come to opals, one of the main gemstones from Australia.  Much like my only missing polish from the Finger Paints Special Effects collection (can't remember the name), Speck-tacular is packed full of rainbow flakes.  I love the flakies that have all the colours, just makes it so...

 As you may have noticed (or not, if you're reading this as an archive) I've been away for the few weeks, having a wonderful time flitting around Australia.  I had this great elaborate plan of having a series of guest posts but while I have the content, the access to the internet is something of an issue when you're scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef.  To make it up to you, let me show you my duty free present to myself: my first Chanel. Chanel Blue Satin is an absolutely gorgeous midnight blue, with a very subtle shimmer.  I seem to have something of an  affinity for dark blues in the high end polishes , but what can I say?  I like what I like.  Application was a dream, as you'd hope, and what you see here is two coats.  As has been the case for a few other dark colours, the shimmer is a lot more prominent in the bottle than on the nail but the gloss this polish puts off is worth the reduction in shimmer.  This is literally the shinies...

Why hello! You might remember me, I used to write posts for a blog!  Anyway, I'm back to a country with marginally more available internet so time to get back to it!  As promised, I'll be keeping the guest posts coming so here's a lovely mani from the lovely Julie from Bright Little Buttons ! I’m not very creative when it comes to nail polish designs, so I like designs that are easy to do and don’t require a lot of special tools! This is one of those designs.  Both polishes I used were NYC In a New York Minute Quick Dry polish -- Water Street Blue and MoMa.  They were each $1.72 at Wal-Mart.  I made homemade dotting tools with two different types of straight pins with different sized ends stuck into pencil erasers! I started with two coats of Water Street Blue.  Then, I dotted several dots of MoMa on each nail with the larger dotter.  When I was done with that, I put a dot of Water Street Blue inside each of these dots ...

Heyyoooooo! It's been a couple days again, time for another guest post! These are more fun to write on holiday, after a bottle of wine and a good meal, especially if you didn't have to do your nails yourself.  It's quite the problem when you have a nail polish blog with over 200 posts and your mother is doing her nails before you, albeit in a coral frost, much to my disgust.  Anyway, take it away Miss from Gnarly Gnails ! ey there all you friends of Laura and her great blog. My name is Missy and I do the blog 'Gnarly Gnails'. I like to predominantly do nail art and that is what I'll be showing you today as I hijack Laura's blog. For this look I started out with a base of China Glaze Recycle. Then I added J'Adore by Icing and did the Saran Wrap method where I pulled the polish off with a scrunched up plastic baggie to give it a "marble" look. Coated that with a nice thick coat of Seche Vite and when it was dry I added some large ...

Alrighty everyone, time for a bit of a change of pace.  I'm currently relaxing at my parents place in Australia (I normally live in Toronto) and they keep dragging me up mountains instead of letting me blog! So, let me introduce my first guest blogger (I have quite a few to come), the lovely Athena from  ilacqitalot .  LOVE that name, by the way! Hello lovely ladies!  My name is Athena & I am THRILLED to come to you as a guest blogger on Polish All the Nails!!!  I am obsessed with nail polish/nail art & am just getting started LITERALLY on my own nail blog.  I'm so happy she's given me a shot at this.   Let's take a refreshing dip into a lovely China Glaze shade shall we?  Flying Dragon (Neon) caught my attention as soon as I laid my eyes on it... Love & Lust at first sight :)  Flying Dragon (Neon) looks Fuschia in the bottle but is more of a berry purple on the nail.  At first glance you can see very fine pink speckl...

It's tricky, being a nail blogger and having to deal with flying 22 hours from Toronto to Melbourne.  Not so much the flight - I have resources to deal with that.  It's more about how I'm going to go more than a day without doing my nails.  I hate it when they chip as I end up picking it all off and that's ever a good look.  Instead, I decided to go with my most reliable Sally Hansen Salon Effects, Misbehaved, the fishnet stocking print. Using my normal application technique, I whacked these on.  There's something really durable about this particular pattern.  I've worn these for five actual days before and not wanted to claw it off so victory there.  I also like the pattern, nothing too obvious and in your face, just patterned and non-chipping. The Verdict:  Always a good one this one. So, I might be a bit flakey with posts over the next few days but it's only because I'm literally either in the air or at my parent's hous...

If your eyes are sensitive and prone to melting out your face, AVERT YOUR EYES.  What I have to show you today is so eye-ball punching, it's almost painful.  What's more the point though is that I'M AT THE AIRPORT RIGHT NOW, BLOGGING FROM THE GATE, ABOUT TO GO FIRST TO LA THEN TO AUSTRALLLLIIIIIAAAAAAAAAAAAA.  That's right, I'm so dedicated to you all that I am willing to blog from here.  I'm also very very tired so anything seems like a good idea. Anyway, onto the nails.  A while back I bought a bunch of Urban Outfitter polishes and am only now getting around to using them.  Urban Outfitters Red Planet is the brightest, sparkliest glass fleck pink with the edges going orange I think I've ever seen.  Application was decent, what you see here is three coats.  Once it was dry, I used my paper labell-y things to create the triangles.  It's not too hard to do: cut a triangle out of something, place both halves on your nails with a gap in the...

It's quite the historic time for me lately, everyone.  I've finally grown out the horrible green stains on my nails!  To celebrate, I decided to pull out my favourite red and do something classic, without needing a white base coat. Rimmel Stiletto Red is a true, deep red that I love to pieces.  It has a real jelly finish that makes any and all stains show right through.  Needless to say, I'm happy to be able to wear it again as it's so shiny.  What you see in the pictures below is three coats.  Application is nice, although, as I've mentioned, this is quite a sheer polish.  To finish it off, cos, you know, just a colour is a preposterous suggestion, I added black dots with a medium size dotting tool and Rimmel Black Satin.  The result?  Shiny, classic.   The Verdict:  Yay, lady bugs! ***GUEST POSTS*** Still not too late! If you'd like to be on my blog, check out this .

Ohhhh do I have a doozy for you ladies (and gentlemen, can't make assumptions).  As you may have noticed, I've been working my way through my pile of Lacquistry polishes - first world problem, that's for sure.  I initially tried this one out when I first received it, realised I should have layered it and put it back in the pile.  Consider it now having had justice done, because it's totally awesome! Being such a chunky glitter, adding enough layers to be fully opaque can cause wear issues.  Not a fault of the polish, more of physics.  So instead of adding three-four coats, I started with a coat of my favourite sparkly blue, Orly Sweet Peacock.  Then, two coats of Lacquistry Cassandra's Peacock.  I can't even begin to describe how much glitter is in here.  There's blue, green, silver, all of different sizes and shapes, it's so amazing.  Because there's plenty of fine glitter in there too, it's just so sparkly and glittery.  It's just...

A while ago I was quite super excited to find these magical-looking "KleanColor" polishes on a website for very cheap.  So cheap, I had to order 20 of them, just to see if they were for realisies.  That was quite the package that arrived, let me tell you.  So many colours, glitters, so hard to choose.  When I did finally try my first one, it smelt weird and took ages to dry so I just kinda forgot about them.  Given that I haven't gotten around to reordering my polishes since I spread them out for the world to see, I've resorted to digging through.  And that, my friends, is the very long introduction to KleanColor Chunky Holo Fuchsia. Chunky Holo Fuchsia is so interesting in the bottle. Even when I'm holding in, you can see the reds, yellows, greens and the slightest hint of blue on the edges.  On the nail, however, the red-green is more prominent, something I've seen a lot lately with the Shines of the Times and so on.  That being said, it is su...

It's been a little while since I had my Pam's Girly Bits polishes delivered and yet I still haven't reviewed them!  Into the Night is a particularly sparkly one but I decided (with help from the lovely Tara) to try something different with it.  Thus, I present to you Sparkly Lasers!  Or, Lasers in Sparkly Space! Something! Words!  Toaster chicken shoe! Anyway, I started with a base of American Apparel Neon Orange, let it dry a bit, added a thin coat of Seche Vite and waited.  I've been burnt over and over again with not waiting for a base colour to dry, I WAS NOT GOING TO BE TRICKED AGAIN DAMMIT.  I couldn't find my striping tape so it was cut up bits of labels a go-go.  They worked surprisingly well, look how clean the lines are on my thumb.  Once the labels were in place I added a thick (super thick) coat of Into the Night.  On closer inspection, this wasn't the greatest choice as it isn't that opaque in one coat but whatever, sparkly!...

Today, something of a little twist on the usual to show you.  I have, in fact, already reviewed all these polishes but I couldn't resist giving it a shot, because it's awesome. I present to you, with the absolute minimum of rambling introduction cos I'm sleepy and I haven't had coffee yet, a gradient with Nail Venturous Floam and Orange You Unique! It's tricky to know how much to write about these as I have already talked about both at length ( here and here , if you're intererested).  Floam, as a gradient polish, is tricky.  I initially started off by using a makeup sponge but it was sucking up too much of the polish, bad if Floam is in short supply.  I used the brush instead and found it hard to get a smooth gradient going.  I got better toward the end, if that's worth anything.  After only coat 3/4 way down my nail I added a coat of Orange You Unique to the half way point, for those delightful white pieces.  Topping it off, just a little Floam ...

I get quite reasonable traffic on this blog, to the point where most people I know are sick of me talking about it.  There is one post in particular, however, that has had 2.5 x the traffic of every other post: my electric mermaid scales.  Every couple of days, it'll get repinned on pinterest, get posted on a blog (which makes me really happy) and thus the view count on it is ridiculous.  I, of course, have been desperately trying to recreate it ever since.  I found the blue glitter from that mani yesterday and it took every fibre of my being to not just re-do it completely, cos that's not original.  Instead, I thought I'd try the side accent, a name I just made up then. I've been having issues with the base colour bleeding across the glitter lately so I decided to try something different.  First up, I started with three coats of Claire's Neon Orange.  Then, using the Beauty Secrets Top Coat - it doesn't try too fast - I coated the side of my nail...

Hi. This isn't Laura. This is another friend named Laura. Confusing? Maybe it's because you're dumb. Point is, we did our nails this Saturday instead of going outside and rejoicing in nature's bounty. We stayed in and watched youtube of Ukraine's Got Talent. Clearly, we are two tragic individuals. Anyway, we did each other's nails. I like greens, so I did Laura's in a light/dark green (American Apparel's 'Crescent Heights'/WarPaint Beauty's 'Slime) chevron. For me, Laura's famous sequins had to make an appearance. To achieve the green chevron, we taped the shapes we liked (simple triangles) over top of a dried base coat of the alternate color. Once applied, a swift, thick coat of the top color was applied, the tape removed, and the shape cleaned up or reapplied as necessary.

Sometimes, you're just lucky with timing.  A couple of months ago I came across a couple reviews for Pam's Girly Bits polish and looked her up.  What do you know, she was accepting email orders just a few days later for some absolutely stunning polishes.  Sneaking an order in, I managed to pick up four of them and they really are something.  Let's take a look at one of her top coats, a beautiful duochrome shimmer, Cosmic Ocean. Cosmic Ocean is nearly completely sheer on its own so I decided to layer it over two coats of American Apparel Passport Blue, rather than sticking to the same old black.  Man, I'm so glad I did as the effect is so stunning, it's beautiful.  Cosmic Ocean adds such a depth and subtle sparkle to a polish, I bet it would look amazing over everything.  Take a look at the close ups, you're going to want to see this.