Retro Sunday Squared - Vintage Sally Hansen Hard as Nails

Happy Sunday everyone! Long time no see =) Today Dana and I have decided to share some vintage Sally Hansen Hard as Nails polishes with you. Don't forget to check out Dana's post over at Polished Claws Up, she has some fun ones to show you guys today!!

I've had a tough time researching these polishes, as there are so many incarnations of Hard as Nails polish still available these days so I'm not quite sure when exactly these came out. My guess is somewhere in the mid-to-late 90's but don't quote me on that. This line is known for its matching brush handles, which is probably my favorite thing about them!! If the polish is shimmery, the brush handle with be a matching shimmery color. If the polish is glitter, there will be glitter embedded in the brush handle. I think the whole matching brush trend needs to be resurrected, it makes the bottles look so pretty =)

Anyways, the first Hard as Nails polish I have for you today is Slick Frost. Of all the vintage Hard as Nails polishes I own, this is hands down my favorite. In fact, this is probably one of my top 3 favorite oranges in my entire collection. Slick Frost is an amazing, glowy bright orange. It is a bit brushstroke-y, but I really don't mind because it just enhances the glow of the polish. Old polishes like this tend to be a bit watery and sheer, so it took 3 coats to reach opacity here. Sadly, I forgot to take a picture of the bottle but I assure you that the brush handle is a lovely, shimmery orange that matches the Slick Frost polish. SO COOL!

Here is Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Slick Frost, 3 coats with topcoat.

Next up is Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Nuclear. Nuclear may be one of the oddest polishes in my collection. It is from a special edition line of glitters, and again, I have no idea when these came out. The line consists of silver holo glitter in sheer colored bases. Sounds great but in reality, they're actually not all that awesome. Nuclear is probably the ugliest of them all, a silver holo glitter in a sheer, watery yellow base. I chose it because I though that the yellow base would lend a gold-ish tinge to the glitter that would mesh nicely with Slick Frost. It definitely made the glitter appear gold, but I'm not so sure it meshed well with Slick Frost. It added a very unpleasant yellow cast and I'm not digging it. In fact, I'm not sure this polish would mesh well with much of anything! Anyways, it was an interesting experiment. The best thing about this polish is the matching glitter handle =)

Here's 2 coats of Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Nuclear over Slick Frost.

Hope you've enjoyed this edition of Retro Sunday Squared!!! Don't forget to check out Dana's post as well =) See you next time!

Lacquistry Cotton Candy - Swatches and Review

In the past few months, the nail polish world has seen a major influx of indy polish makers. These small companies like Nerd Lacquer, Dollish Polish, Lacquistry, and Nail-venturous (to name a few) are all created by fellow polish lovers who create unique, handcrafted polishes and sell them on sites like Etsy. People are rushing to buy these awesome polishes left and right, and they are selling like hotcakes!! Some of the more popular shops have to close down the same day they open to fill the 1000+ orders they receive within 24 hours of opening. They are selling out for good reason - these polishes are truly amazing, and most of them unlike anything that you would be able to find that is produced by traditional big-box brands such as OPI, Revlon, Butter London and the like.

I am absolutely thrilled at the outpouring of new and exciting polishes coming from indy companies lately. Unfortunately, there may be a lacquer base shortage on the horizon so the future of several of these brands is uncertain. Hopefully, these companies can find a new base supplier and keep on creating these wonderful polishes. While a lot of new collections coming out from major nail polish retailers have been making me yawn lately, I know that there will always be something new and exciting coming out from my favorite indy brands.

Today I have for you an indy polish made by Jenna over at Lacquistry on Etsy. The name is Cotton Candy, and was inspired by Jenna's love of Bubblicious Cotton Candy gum. It is an amazing blue glitter in a hot pink jelly base with fuchsia hex glitter scattered throughout. This is probably one of the most unique polishes that I own, and I absolutely adore it!

As amazing as Lacquistry Cotton Candy is, the application process is a bit more tricky that your average nail polish.  I actually had to remove my first try at painting my nails with this polish because I was just not loving how it was turning out. Because of the different sizes of glitter in the polish, the large hex glitters tend to clump together and you have to sometimes manually place where you want the hex glitters to go. It was actually pretty frustrating, and I'm no stranger to difficult-to-apply polishes. But it's just the nature of these types of glitter polishes and with a bit of patience I was able to get a much better application the second time around.

The blue glitter in a sheer hot pink base gives such a cool effect to this polish, and the hex glitters really add something special. The pictures tend to exaggerate the pink jelly base, whereas in real life it's not quite as noticeable. My pictures seem to make the blue appear more purple than it really is, perhaps because of the pink base. In real life, it is the perfect, bright medium blue color with no purple tone to it. My sad photographing skills just could not capture how blingy and glowy it really was. It definitely reminds me of the pink and blue swirled Bubbilicious Cotton Candy gum!

All in all, Lacquistry Cotton Candy is an amazingly awesome and unique polish that requires a bit of patience to apply. But once you get past the tricky application process, this polish will smack you in the face with awesome. The first two pictures are natural light and the rest are artificial light indoors. Don't forget to click on the pictures to enlarge. Hope you enjoy!

Thanks for stopping by!

Christmas Glitter Vomit featuring China Glaze Party Hearty

Hi there everyone!! Christmas is just around the corner, so I figured that I would do a festive mani for you guys today! Sorry I've been in and out lately, for some reason I've been ultra critical of my pictures lately (I feel like they get worse as I go along) so I just haven't been posting much.

Anyways, for the base of this manicure, I used Essie Mint Candy Apple from the Essie 2009 Winter collection. This polish is actually the one that really got me started into collection nail polish again so although MCA is kind of a streaky mess, it holds a special place in my heart because it was one of my first polishes! MCA is a gorgeous light mint green cream, and since it is a bit sheer and streaky, I did three coats here.

Then, I layered on 2 coats of China Glaze Party Hearty from the 2010 Tis the Season collection. Ahh! I love this polish so much! It has small round green glitter, medium sized red hex glitter and micro gold glitter. This is probably the best Christmas polish ever. I wanted to add a little bit more sparkly goodness so I added a coat of Essie Golden Nuggets over Party Hearty. Golden Nuggets is the perfect gold microglitter top coat. I love how dense the glitter is in this, but not too dense to still let Party Hearty shine through!

Here is my Christmas Glitter Vomit manicure. Hope you enjoy!!

Thanks for stopping by! I hope all of those out there who celebrate the holidays are enjoying themselves and have completed all their shopping! I, of course, have a lot more shopping to do. Ugh! I always wait until the last minute, you think I would have learned my lesson by now.

Anyways, see you all again soon!

Essie Starry Starry Nights

Good afternoon my lovelies! Today, I am SO EXCITED to write this blog post! I have for you on this first day of December, Essie Starry Starry Nights. If you are new to the polish world, you may not know why I am so damn excited about this. Starry Starry Nights is a long discontinued polish that is lusted over by many, but owned by few. Some people luck out and find bottles of this polish at old nail salons, and some people just bite the bullet and pay upwards of $300 on eBay. I was very lucky to get my hands on this polish through a very generous swapper on MUA, as I thought I would never see this polish in my entire life. It is said to be based on Chanel's Ciel de Nuit polish, but over time has come to be just as coveted as the Chanel, if not more so. And for good reason - it is an absolutely stunning nail polish.

Starry Starry Nights is a beautiful midnight blue jelly polish with fine silver sparkles throughout.  The sheer, jelly quality allows the glitter to shine through and appear almost as the stars in the night sky would. It is beautiful. The application wasn't without flaws - the first two coats were as streaky as could be but the third coat evened everything out perfectly. It is an old, non 3-free polish which means it's a bit runny and smells quite strongly. Despite the glitter, it dried to a smooth finish and only required one coat of Seche Vite to provide a shiny surface.

There are several viable dupes out there, though some are just as hard to find as the Essie polish itself. Many people have frankened dupes using Wet n Wild Nocturnal, a deep blue jelly polish, with fine silver glitter. These dupes are all fantastic, so if you want to try your hand at the franken, you will more than likely have excellent results! I made a franken of it and was quite satisfied until I got the real thing. There's nothing quite like the real thing sometimes =) So girls, don't give up hope! You never know what you will find or who you will meet that will fulfill your greatest polish lemmings!

Anyways, here are waaaaaaaaaay too many pictures of Essie Starry Starry Nights. Here is 3 coats of SSN with one coat of Seche Vite. Don't forget to click to enlarge, you'll want to see the detail on this bad boy!

Outdoor, natural light

Indoor, artificial light

Thanks for stopping by! See you tomorrow =)

China Glaze Emerald Sparkle

Good afternoon everyone! Just dropping by with a super quick post today. I had to cut my nails really short due to a break, and I'm not too thrilled with them right now. Especially since the nail bed on my pinky fingers are longer than the rest and can never be as short as the others. It looks ridiculous!

China Glaze Emerald Sparkle is an amazing polish! I could not do this bad boy justice with my photography skills. It is a lovely forest green with green glitter throughout. So sparkly, so festive and a hands-down favorite polish of many people in the nail polish community. So check it out! Don't forget to enlarge to see the awesome detail this polish has =)

Also, just wanted to let you know that I added a link to the spreadsheet of my polish collection at the top of the page, so check it out if you would like! It took me all evening yesterday and all morning today to finish =) I will be adding my swap list very soon as well, so check back soon for that!

See you all tomorrow!

Lynnderella Cauldron Drippings over Revlon Royal Cloak

Hi everyone! So sorry I've been delinquent on blog posting the last two days. I am back with two posts for you today! First up is Revlon Royal Cloak smothered in Lynnderella Cauldron Drippings.

I was stumped for a while on how I wanted to wear Lynderella's Cauldron Drippings. It is quite a unique glitter polish, with a base of orange hex, square and bar glitter with green, purple and gold glitters of different shapes. I tried it on its own, and it was pretty but I prefer layering the Lynnderella glitters so I am not using a ton of them at once. I kept seeing swatches of it over orange polishes, but since the majority of the glitter in it was orange it would get lost among the background. So when I tried it over Revlon Royal Cloak, I knew I had a winner! It stood out amongst the purple and the orange glitters were able to shine! Plus, it feels very Halloweenish to me.

Revlon Royal Cloak is from Revlon's limited edition Masquerade Collection fro Halloween. It is definitely my favorite polish in the collection. Royal Cloak is a dusty blue-leaning purple with flakies! I am a huge sucker for flakies, so I had to try Royal Cloak. The application was very good, and I just love how thin Revlon's brushes are because it allows me to do precise, thin coats of color. Two coats was good for complete coverage on this one!

Over Royal Cloak, I did one coat of Cauldron Drippings. Application was pretty standard for Lynnderella polishes - I had to be a little more careful than usual to get the glitter to disperse evenly, but other than that it was perfect.

So here she is! Lynnderella Cauldron Drippings over Revlon Royal Cloak:

These are all photos of my right hand, which is not my default swatching hand so please bear with me as my left hand photographing and polishing skills are not 100%. Plus, my right hand looks weirdly red and yellow today. Odd.

Anyways, here is two coats of Royal Cloak alone:

Thanks for stopping by! Stay tuned for part two of today's post!!

-Jacqui

Correction Tape Manicure TAKE TWO!

Before I removed this manicure, I wanted to snap a few pics outdoors to show you the true colors of the glitter in Correction Tape. Today it FINALLY stopped raining, and the sun has actually come out as well. It's an October miracle!

Anyways, here's a few pics for you. Please excuse the skin dehydration =)

Macro Shot

Wet n Wild On The Prowl: Correction Tape over Funky Fingers Cheshire

Hello my lovely readers! Just wanted to drop in today real quickly and show you my NOTD. I decided to try out Correction Tape from the elusive Wet n Wild On The Prowl collection. This collection is almost impossible to find! A friend of mine (Krista over at Starlet's Nails) was able to find the collection where she lives and was kind enough to send me Correction Tape! On the Prowl is Wet n Wild's core Halloween collection. I know Correction Tape doesn't look very Halloween-ish, but I decided to throw it in my October mix since it is part of a seasonal collection.

I did one coat of Wet n Wild Correction Tape over 3 coats Funky Fingers Cheshire. Cheshire is a neon blue-based purple, and application was pretty streaky. By the third coat, the polish was becoming super thick and will probably need thinner before its next use. However, I don't have a neon purple quite like this in my collection, so I will keep it around just for the color. However, I'm still on the hunt for my perfect neon purple.

Correction Tape wasn't exactly easy to apply either, but it wasn't terribly difficult. It just requires a bit of skill and patience to get the glitter to go where you want it to. The glitter in this is phenomenal! It has gold, pink, blue and black square and hex glitters. I don't know about you, but I am a huge fan of black glitter so I was super excited to see that this polish had some in there. One coat worked perfectly for this manicure, and I feel that this polish works best for layering.

This looks way more awesome in real life, I had a hard time capturing the different colors of the glitter. Perhaps that is why I have so many pictures for today. Hope you guys at least are able to catch the essence of amazeballs that is Correction Tape. Don't forget to click on them to make them bigger!

Thanks for stopping by the Scholarly Nail today! Hope your Monday hasn't been too terrible so far. See you all tomorrow =)

-Jacqui