Nuclear Sunrise

I need to find me some more Fresh Paint polishes! I just recently discovered them in late June and I am so impressed. Not only do they have some awesome colours, but the wear is fantastic. I can only comment on the two neon cremes I have purchased, Guava and Honeydew, but if you know neons, you know they chip FAST, and Guava and Honeydew lasted

I wore Honeydew for almost a full week with no chips and only slight tip wear, that is fantastic for a neon. Honeydew is a pastel mint neon creme. Although the first coat was a bit streaky, the second coat evened everything out nicely so I didn't require a third. It dried to a slight shine but as always I added a coat of Seche Vite.

Unfortunately.... I have misplaced my photos for this mani, so sad! I  do have photos of it with a refresh I did. To update this mani I used China Glaze Shore Enough, Bundle Monster Plate 402 and a cosmetic sponge.

I started by stamping Shore Enough on the tips of my nails and blending downward in to Honeydew. On the second coat I added Honeydew to the sponge with Shore enough to blend the colours further.

Once that had dried, I stamped with the centre top full image pattern on Bundle Monster plate BM-204. On the plate the design looks abstract and asymetrical. I'm not sure what drew me to it initially but once stamped in black over the gradient it looked like an abstract sunset. The bold lines representing the rays from the sun, the circle. The green base makes the whole idea even more abstract!

Plate BM 402 is apart of the Create Your Own collection and it stamped perfectly with no issues. One tip I would give should you use this design or any similar (with bold lines), try to scrape in the general direction of the lines to avoid any weird bald spots in the design once on the stamper.

My only regret is not lining up the "rays" perfectly with each nail, other than than I am happy with the final look.

Glitter Matters!

Happy Friday! I have a quick mani refresh today that I absolutely love. I layered an awesome matte glitter over my previous mani of Fresh Paint Guava.

Funky Fingers, Glitter Matters, is a densely paked glitter made up of various sized pink, yellow and white glitters. I find the yellow pieces of glitter have a slight opalescence to them in the sunlight that makes them appear golden against the coral base. It is pretty awesome.

I love the contrast between the bright coral base and the matte glitter pieces. I only needed one coat for the distribution of glitter I was happy with. I used a dabbing motion to help apply the glitter evenly to the nail, and swiped upwards to distribute it evenly.

Guava

I purchased a couple polishes dorm a new to me brand, Fresh Paint, both being bright summer neons! The first out of the two I decided to wear is Guava.

Guava is a bright coral neon which I feel is creme based. It tends to lean more orange or pink depending on the lighting. Outside in direct lighting is is completely eye searing! I love it!

Application was awesome, the formula is a little thick but easy to work with. I only needed two coats to reach full opacity. If I remember correctly it dried to a satiny finish. I used Seche Vite to make it nice and shinny. Surprisingly it wore very well, neons usually chip very quickly on me.

I will have to pick up some more of these polishes when I am in another Five Below! Does anyone know if these are a Five Below exclusive brand?

Summer Haulin'

As per usual, about every month or two I head across the boarder for a brief shopping trip. When I say brief, I mean BRIEF, like hours! But I always manage to hit up the best polish supplier while I am in town :) This month I scored at Sally's and Five Below.

I was hoping to find Orly's Baked collection at Sally's, unfortunately they only had the mini set for purchase. I took a look through their sale section and picked out some Finger Paints which were an additional 50% off, lucky me! I chose Metallic Moondust and Stargazing Lilac.

Metallic Moondust is a dense glitter made up of gold  and silver micro and medium sized glitters and sprinkled with a teal hex glitter. This was more awesome than I was expecting, very dense and super sparkly. One coat is shown in my swatches below.

Stargazing Lilac is basically a lilac version of Metallic Moondust with the prettiest shade of purple hex glitter in place of the teal. One coat is shown in my swatches below.

An unexpected stop on my trip this month was at a newly opened Five Below. I just had to check it out, three polishes for $5? Fan-tastic! I picked up some lovely neon shades from Fresh Paint, Honeydew and Guava.

Honeydew is a light green pastel neon, I don't think it has enough blue in it to be considered a mint. It is totally a honeydew shade in neon form. It dries to a slightly satin finish, my swatches below show two coats.

Guava is this fantastic neon coral. I don;t know if I would compare the shade of this polish to the actual guava fruit. Although i have never tried it before, the photos I have seen are a deeper coral in comparison. This polish wears a lot better than other neons, making it one of my number one picks for summer 2014. I will post more about this polish soon. Two coats are shown in the swatch below.

sunlight

shade

The last polish I picked up at Five Below is a glitter topper. As soon as I saw this one I knew I HAD to have it, now! Funky Fingers Glitter Matters - has an unimaginative name... - but is so unique to anything I have seen or owned. Very indy inspired.

It is a glitter topper composed of tiny pink and yellow matte glitter with a mix or larger pink, yellow and white matte glitter. I can't wait to try this out over different shades of polish to see what works best. It would be awesome for a glitter sandwich as well. My swatch below shoes one coat.

sunlight

shade

That is all for now ...until next month ;)