Black Sheep Lacquer Hecate Swatch and Review and Brushstrokey Distressed Nail Art!

Hey everyone! Today I have a swatch and review of a new Black Sheep Lacquer multchrome called Hecate to share, as well as some brushstroke nail art using a few more Black Sheep Lacquer duo/multichromes!

How has the start of your week been going everyone? I've finally caught up responding to your comments and I'll try and stay caught up from now on! I'm feeling a bit better now that I've had some time to process some sad things so hopefully I can respond to your comments in a more timely fashion from now on! That said, let's get on to the nails!

Hecate is a turquoise (to blue to purple) to pink multichrome stuffed with a whole lotta shimmer! At extreme underwater angles it can even look like it shines orange or yellow!

Please excuse the clump of soap and cat hair in the above picture! I really wish I had noticed it at the time because other than that it's a great shot!

This baby had a lovely formula, it was almost a one coater (I used two) and it dried super quickly! The consistency was perfect so the only complaint I could see regarding this polish is that it does dry a little brushstrokey. I sponged a thin layer of Hecate on top of my second coat to eliminate the brushstrokes, only because I've never tried that before! The following picture is it without the sponged layer so you can see how it looks on its own!

I think I like it better straight out of the bottle and it seems to be more multichromey this way! In the future I'll definitely only wear it on its own!

I applied one coat of the top coat I always use (Essie Good to Go) on top like I always do when I'm going to wear a polish!

The next day I went in with a few more Black Sheep Lacquer duo/multichromes and did a brushstrokey nail art look! I was inspired by Chalkboard Nails' distressed nail art tutorial and Will Paint Nails for Food's distressed jewel toned nails!

The Black Sheep Lacquer polishes I used (other than Hecate) were Purple Planet (which I ordered recently and have yet to swatch), Zaftig Zombie, and Forbidden Fruit!

This is already the second time I've used some Black Sheep Lacquer duo/multichromes for nail art so they're definitely versatile! They're gorgeous on their own and gorgeous together!

Thanks so much for reading everyone! What do you think of Hecate and this brushstrokey nail art? I'd love to know! Happy Tuesday! :)

Black Sheep Lacquer Swatches and Review: Get Lucky and Lorelei!

Hey everyone! Today I have swatches and reviews of two gorgeous new glitter toppers from Black Sheep Lacquer, Get Lucky and Lorelei!

You may notice I've changed my background to black, do you guys like it better? I think it looks a lot more professional! I got the idea from the lovely Lindsey of Wondrously Polished and the lovely Sarah of Chalkboard Nails! That aside, onto the swatches and reviews!

First up we have Get Lucky, a clear-based polish with fine green shimmer, small gold holographic hexes, small and medium-sized dark green hexes, medium-sized green holographic hexes and large green circles!

This polish had a perfect consistency and formula! I didn't get any circle glitters on the first go, but that's the idea with this polish (I talked to Erin, the owner, about it and this is what she said). It doesn't have a lot of them in it so it's a fun accent, and so the circle glitters don't overpower the rest of the gorgeous glitters! I fished for the one you see here so you could see the polish with a circle glitter in it!

I tried to match a creme to this polish, and the closest in my collection was Essie Mojito Madness. So what you see here is one coat of Mojito Madness with one coat of Get Lucky on top! That's another thing about Erin's new formula, neither of these glitter toppers needed a coat of top coat to smooth them out. Like, what? That's how smooth and shiny they are on their own!

Do you guys love her new bottles as much as I do? I think they're just the coolest!

Next we have Lorelei, a clear topper stuffed with tiny gold flakies and hexes, small dark aqua (or slightly greenish blue) hexes, medium-sized holographic aqua hexes and large iridescent pale green and rose gold hexes!

Again, this polish had a perfect formula! I didn't have to fish for any glitters and they spread out well on the nail (i.e. the glitters didn't clump together at all)!

The best creme I had to match these glitters was Nyx Girls Hot Blue, and I used one coat for undies here! Be careful, I only wore this for about thirty minutes or less with base coat and Hot Blue stained the edges of my nails! I then put one thicker coat of Lorelei and no top coat on top, because again, these babies dry so smooth and shiny!

What do you guys think of these gorgeous glitters? I love them! You can check out videos of the holographic glitters on my Instagram, here! Thanks so much for reading everyone, happy Saturday!

Black Sheep Lacquer Duochrome/Multichrome Gradient Nail Art!

Hey everyone! Today I have a multichrome/duochrome gradient to share!

I have a bunch of homework to do this weekend and I'm feeling a little overwhelmed so I think I'll keep this post pretty short. What are your guys' plans for the weekend? Anyone else a bit stressed with school or work?

For this look I started with one coat of my favourite black polish, Revlon Espresso, for a nice and opaque base. I then went in with Black Sheep Lacquer Zaftig Zombie (green), Black Sheep Lacquer Blink (blue) and Black Sheep Lacquer Blue-Yea (pink/purple). Since these are duochromes/multichromes the colour of these polishes on their own is usually different than the colour they shine over black, which I think is super awesome! I had to take into consideration what each colour looked like over black to decide which ones to use and in which order to use them!

I have swatched each of these individually (both on their own and over black) in a very picture-heavy post you can find here! There is a fourth Black Sheep Lacquer polish featured in that swatch post called Forbidden Fruit that I didn't use here because my nails aren't really long enough!

One of my favourite things about this mani is that Blink contains small pink iridescent glitters and some ended up on my nails!

I even made a gif of me moving my nails from up to down because you can see the different colours more from different angles!

Thanks so much for having a look everyone! What do you guys think of this mani? I'd love to hear in the comments! Happy Saturday!

Multicoloured Mosaic Nail Art Inspired by a Bouncy Ball!

Hey everyone! Today I have some fun multicoloured mosaic nail art to share!

Today was a fairly uneventful day for me, I did have an organic chemistry lab where we carried out an elimination reaction though which was fun! I'd love to hear what you guys did today in the comments, probably something more exciting than me huh? I'm getting more used to being at school again now that we've been back for a week and a half, and as I expected I'm enjoying school as usual! How are you guys feeling about school or work or both?

Last Friday night my family and boyfriend and I were checking out at Walmart when my sister and I noticed they had bouncy ball machines. We each ended up buying a small one and a large one and I loved my large one so much that I decided to recreate it's pattern on my nails! I thought about mattifying my nails to match the ball but matte nails don't last as long, and I feel weird about slathering them in lotions, balms, oils, etc as it partly removes the matte effect.

I started out with one coat of Revlon Espresso, a true one-coat black creme! Then from red to pink in rainbow order, I used: American Apparel Poppy, Color Club Almost Famous, China Glaze For Audrey, Julep Claire, Color Club Pucci-licious, and American Apparel Coney Island.

I used a small detail brush for the blobs and applied a coat of top coat on top! I find no matter how long I wait before top coating I always smudge my design a bit. For these nails I waited around an hour and a half to top coat after I'd finished and there still are a few smudges!

I apologize for all of the pictures here guys, I just really love this mani! I also found it a lot easier to paint than my first mosaic mani (link to the post here). I'm not sure which of them I like better seeing as they're quite different, I'd love to know what you guys think in the comments!

Here's my right hand!

Thanks so much for reading everyone! I hope you're all doing well and I'd love to hear about anything you'd like to tell me in the comments! Happy Wednesday!

One Year Blogiversary: Then and Now!

Hey everyone! Today I have a "then and now" post for my one year blogiversary to share!

I saw this awesome idea on Lindsey of Wondrously Polished's lovely blog (link to her post here)! It was hard to find anything very interesting that I did in the first few months of blogging because unlike Lindsey, I wasn't very good when I started my blog, and because of that I didn't try any advanced nail art. My picture quality is the biggest difference I see in these pictures, what do you guys think is my biggest improvement?

For this first mani I remember thinking all of the colours were too bright and intense for a watercolour look, and even when I redid them the other day I thought I should have made the colours even less intense. The funny thing was, rather than thinning the polishes out, I decided to sponge them on the first time I did these. It was like I was trying to do a design that involves a certain technique but I decided to use another technique and still call it the original design… I'm strange sometimes :P.

Here is the link to the post this first picture is from if you're interested! I used to write a lot less in my posts and write even more awkwardly than I do now haha! These are from January 2013 and while wearing these and before writing up the post, I picked up my first bottle of pure acetone for cleanup!

Here is my recent reattempt at this look! I used all of the same polishes as in the other post (American Apparel California Trooper, Essie Cute as a Button, Essie Bikini so Teeny, Revlon Mint Gelato, and Revlon Lemon Meringue) as well as a sheer white polish on top (Essie Waltz) to achieve a more pastel and watercolour-like look!

What do you guys think about the new version of these? To me they look like a blurred floral or houndstooth pattern!

The other mani I decided to redo for this post was a black to neon gradient look. Here is the original post from February 2013! There is a cute story behind these nails because my boyfriend at the time (and current one, we're still dating) told me in detail exactly how I should do these nails and which colour to do on each nail! I just painted a black base and asked him what I should do and this is exactly what he said, down to the ring finger orange accent nail :).

I remember noticing that if you just sponged on a neon colour once or twice it looked like a dark version of the colour, so it really isn't difficult to make a smooth gradient with sheerer polishes like neons. I'm not sure why I didn't think that was as important as it was at the time haha, live and learn!

I almost used the exact same polishes as I did last time for this, but I switched out the Orly black for a more opaque (one-coater!) black; Revlon Espresso. The rest of the polishes are the same, American Apparel Neon Yellow, American Apparel Neon Green, and China Glaze Sun Worshipper! I also switched top coats to a 3-free one because that's really important to me, and as I've said many times I use Essie Good to Go!

I totally screwed up the colour scheme here as you can probably tell, I got distracted watching a crazy movie! What do you guys think of this version of this mani?

Thank you so much for reading guys! I hope I can keep improving and doing posts like this every year! I also hope you've all had a lovely first week back at school and work! =)

Yume Lacquer Swatches and Review: Submerged Siren, Sunken Treasure, Queen Of The Ring and Photographic Evidence!

Hey everyone! Today I have a quick swatch and review of four Yume Lacquer polishes* to share!

Today was my first day back at school and as I expected, it was totally fine. I think I was just being a baby and enjoying my break so I really didn't want to go back haha! I already like all of my teachers and one of them is really funny! Anyways, let's make this quick and to the point because I just did pilates (sort of, there were bits I couldn't do) and I'm crashing. I swear she makes the Monday workouts the hardest of the week as if Mondays don't suck enough already! :P

First up is Submerged Siren, a shimmery and slightly duochromatic blue polish inspired by Sailor Neptune!

The formula was a breeze to work with as I've come to expect with Yume Lacquer polishes! I felt like there were a few clumps of unmixed pigment in mine (see my middle finger and thumb nail) but a coat of top coat would smooth that right out!

The fact that you can still see those bumps shows that these pictures are without top coat, and they're also just two coats of the polish!

Next we have Sunken Treasure, a charcoal grey polish with shimmer and different-sized glitters, inspired by Final Fantasy 5!

The formula on this one was slightly thick than the others but still entirely manageable! It's also pretty bumpy due to all of the glitters so I'd suggest a thick coat of top coat or two!

Like almost all Yume Lacquer polishes this baby was easily a two-coater, and I also slapped a coat of top coat on top to combat the bumpiness caused by all that glitter!

Next up we have Queen Of The Ring, a dark green crelly polish with long black bar glitter, inspired by Persona 2!

This polish was a little hard to apply, only because I was trying to avoid having a bar glitter stick out onto my cuticle or not lay completely on the nail!

What you see here is two coats plus two coats of top coat for maximum squishiness!

Lastly we have Photographic Evidence, a grey crelly base with tiny gold glitters throughout! I think my bottle wasn't fully mixed because as you can see, there were a lot of pigment clumps throughout the bottle.

The formula on this one was lovely as well, easy to control due to a slight thickness!

This is the only three-coater I received from Yume Lacquer and that's amazing for indie polishes! I didn't apply top coat over this polish so this is just three coats and no top coat!

Thanks so much for reading everyone, I hope you're all having a lovely time coming back to reality haha! Let me know which one of these is your favourite in the comments!

*These polishes were sent for swatches and an honest review.