Laura's Lacquers

I am not one to get scared easily. Okay maybe that's a lie. But it made a nice segue into today's nails. Let's start over.

I get scared very easily, and one thing that scares me is water marbling. The last time I tried water marbling was about as attractive as your MOM and so I haven't tried it since. But since it was part of the challenge, I had no choice. I would plow bravely on!

And I made a semi-tutorial! Let's take a look.

1. Gather your supplies. You'll need:

- water (distilled or bottled works best, don't ask me why)

- nail polish (3-5 colors is best). I used: Ulta Blue Streak, American Apparel Peacock, and Zoya Charla

- a cup (you'll definitely want this to be disposable)

- toothpicks

- petroleum jelly or tape. You're supposed to put one of these around your nails in order to make cleanup easier. I decided to try petroleum jelly since it seemed less wasteful than tape.

2. Here is your cup. It's filled with water. This is important.

3. Plunk drops of your nail polish in circles until it looks satisfactory. It will look cool. Don't admire it for too long, or it will form a kind of "skin" on the surface of the water and you won't be able to swirl it around because it will all just stick to the toothpick and clump up and be disgusting.

4. Swirl it around. I know this is hard to see since the cup is greenish and Charla is sheerish

5. Dip your finger into a part of the swirly polish that looks cool. 

(P.S. The petroleum jelly didn't help. I recommend tape)

And this is the only shot I got outside.

Oh by the way, I used OPI Mermaid's Tears as underwear for this. You should always wear underwear when water marbling. .....*cough* Anywho.

This turned out pretty cool. I had to redo a ton of my nails because they turned out LAME but now it looks awesome. Because I am awesome. I conquered my water-marble-o-phobia.

I fear NOTHING!

Voila

Then I used American Apparel Peacock for the stripes. Yes, it does kind of take forever. But the result is this:

*angels sing*

Although the tape produces rather harsh lines, and it doesn't look so hawt when you first finish.

*angels abruptly stop singing*

sun

sun

sun

shade

I used LA Colors Treasure Chest. How much better is that!? It was a totally beesh to take off but it was sure as heck sparkly!

Peacock was much easier to capture on camera than African Violet. This one is pretty color accurate, except it's a shade or two darker in real life.

Inside, lamplight. I don't have an indoor window pic because they all blurred. Phooey.

This was another one coater. Love! Although one coaters are kind of a double-edged sword because you have to be super careful to cover everything in one coat, especially a dark color like this, otherwise it'll be pretty noticeable!

This was a dark, blue-leaning teal. Although in most lights I would actually say it's dark blue with a bit of teal, it appeared almost evergreen at one point. Can't remember what lighting that was, but it only happened once.

So, this is only my second American Apparel polish, but it's safe to say I really like these! They're super opaque (I tested a lot more of them in the store, so I think this is a pretty safe assumption to make), dry quickly, and wear well. I took pictures of African Violet and Peacock after a full day of wear, so this was good! And I have no idea why, but I really like the look of the bottles. I'd definitely like to get more of these. Hopefully I can work up the guts to wander into American Apparel again...

Also, I was going to compare this to Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Fairy Teal, but I forgot to before I took it off. However, just looking at them in the bottles makes it evident that there are no dupes here.

I was HOPING it would be a nice, clean color for when I was in a mellow mood.

Um, welcome to Sheer City, first stop: Precious Pearl! Ugh. All you could see was the pink shimmer.

So I put a coat of OPI Alpine Snow over it, then another coat of Precious Pearl. However, it wasn't really what I wanted, so I slapped a coat of Silver Shatter over it.

I wasn't really feeling it, and I then proceeded to destroy it while putting pants on. Great. So I removed the whole thing like a madwoman.

Then I went to Buffalo Exchange with some friends. I brought a buttload of clothes to exchange. Mostly they had old, retro-y stuff. But not retro in that "Man, where'd you get those groovy digs?" way, more in a "The power's out in my house, and I had to get dressed in the dark, so I couldn't see what I was putting on" kind of way. But I did find some cute things, so I went up and they looked through all my clothes and then said "Yeah, we don't want your stuff."

WHAT?

"We're looking for really trendy, current things."

Are you SERIOUS? Have you LOOKED at the clothes on your rack? Trendy is the last word I would use to describe your store.

Their stuff wasn't even that reasonably priced! They had some shirts for $17.50! So I refused to buy anything since they didn't take any of my clothes, angrily thwacked everything back on the racks, and huffed out of the store.

Then we went to American Apparel. I've never seen one before, so I'd never been in there. And... it's weird, guys. They sell gold tracksuits. I'm not sure I really understand it. The only reason I went in there is because I saw nail polish. I hastily tested out as much as I could.

Malibu Green, L'Esprit (I think), Coney Island, Peacock.

Passport Blue (over Butter), Rose Bowl (over Summer Peach), Rouge, Mount Royal

I ended up getting Peacock and African Violet, but now I'm kind of missing Coney Island.

And then our car got towed.

So, not my best day.