Laura's Lacquers

You know, I'd really like to know how to do a reverse gradient, starting at the cuticle. How do you do that without getting it all over your cuticle and all over the place? If you have any tips I'd love to hear them!

I don't feel this girly all the time, but I will admit, I liked this a lot! Iseult by herself is quite demure and shy, but with Servin' Up Sparkle this mani becomes really special!

And don't forget to remind me if you've tagged me for something that I've ignored!

And sadly, a dream it will remain. No chance of snow down here in Houston, sadly. We did have actually for realz snow two years ago, but I doubt it will happen again any time soon.

Anyway, to drown my sorrows of living in a snow-less land, I decided to do a snowy manicure. I started with two coats of Love & Beauty Royal

I scrounged this one out of the polish bins at Forever 21 (who is trying to look all shwanky with their new logo, XXI, like Roman numerals makes them more sophisticated. Psh.) pretty much unscathed, although the other two I grabbed I had to wipe down with acetone. Anyway, it is super pretty, it's got a murky teal base full of duochrome glitter flecks that turn from blue to purple. It's pretty awesome, but since I was pining for snow I decided to stamp over it.

For my next Christmas mani, I decided to do something I've seen on one or two other blogs (sorry, I don't remember which ones they were, otherwise I would give credit where credit is due for such a snazzy idea!). I did a sort of funky French with Christmas lights.

So you might have noticed that I switched the commenting system to Disqus. Blogger's comment system is really annoying and cumbersome and it keeps telling me that my account doesn't have permission to view this page which is dumb, because I just sign out and sign back in on the same account and it works fine. And with Disqus I can respond to comments easier and it's an all-around less annoying system. I've imported all the old comments, so things should be running smoothly! If you have a Disqus account you can use that, but if you could comment under the same name you've been using that would help me identify you. :)

Anywho, today I will be featuring the last Muppet polish that I bought.

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wtf is this

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This is like... 4 coats-ish. It was still kinda patchy but it was generally so blinding that you didn't notice. Gone Gonzo is full of small, light blue hex glitter and larger silver hex glitter. It's very, VERY shiny and reflective. It catches every little infintesimal particle of light and reflects it back in your face times a thousand. You could communicate in morse code with this. Just flash your nails around. Or you could blind potential muggers and murders by wiggling your fingers in their face. Thanks, OPI!

The formula was good, not thick or gloopy and luckily it dried fast so I was able to do the bajillion coats. Oh yeah, removal was a total nightmare. Not fun, guys, not fun. But I think it was worth it. It's always fun to blind innocent bystanders with your nails!

I waffled on this one a lot. I thought to myself "A multicolored glitter? Really, Laura? That's so not unique. You can do better than that." *scoff*

Buuut... it called to me. It whispered my name in the middle of the night. "Llllaaaaaauraaaaaa... I neeeeed youuuuu.... I'm so sparkly and awesommmmmeeeee... Buyyy meeeeee..."

Aaand after that I didn't need much convincing. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures until it was dark and therefore there was no sun, so these are all under the lamp.

I did one coat of OPI Rainbow Connection over 1 coat of OPI Roadhouse Blues, which is quickly on its way to becoming my most frequently used polish.

Rainbow Connection is absolutely full of glitter. It's got pretty much every color in the rainbow: light blue, silver, green, yellow, fuchsia, orange, maybe more. It's made up of three sizes of hex glitter, and is extremely dense.

The formula was easy to control and pretty evenly distributed; it required a little manipulation, but most glitters do.

Although I think that these kinds of glitters are vastly overdone and I feel very "over" them, I really like this. Out of all the bajillion variations of multicolored confetti party-time glitter, this is my favorite. It's got so many colors and it's so jam-packed, and it's ridiculously blingy and fun. I got a zillion compliments, and I was admiring my nails all day.

How do you feel about glitters like this? Are you, too, jaded by them? Or can you not get enough?

What up my home skizzles? I'm sorry that I have been in a funk for... well, quite a while. Last week I was sick and exhausted because of my annoyingly busy week before, so that's why I haven't been funny/entertaining/possibly annoying the heck out of you for the past two weeks. Hopefully my mojo will come back, but sometimes it's hard to think of things to say. There are only so many polish jokes one can make, ya know? Unless we're talking about Polish jokes, but I don't want to offend anyone.

Anyway, today I have my second Muppet polish, OPI Gettin' Miss Piggy With It. I am still undecided as to whether this name makes me want to hit myself in a good or bad way, but let's just take a look, shall we?

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This is 1 coat of Gettin' Miss Piggy With It over two coats of Meep-Meep-Meep which I showed you yesterday. GMPWI (actually that's not too much easier to say, is it?) is full of small and large red hex glitter, and also large silver hex glitter. It is super sparkly and blingy and definitely appropriate for Miss Piggy. 

The formula was good, the glitter is pretty dense and evenly dispersed. Sometimes I had to move around the silver hex glitter so that it would look more even, but other than that I had no problems.

I really like it because I L-O-V-E sparkles, but I tend to avoid wearing glitters because of removal. Yes, the foil method makes it a lot easier, but it takes more time and I have to sit there for ten minutes letting it all soak off while I can't do anything with my hands because I just have to scrabble around like a declawed cat, and also the acetone makes my fingertips REALLY COLD and all pruney when I take the foil off. And if I wrap the foil tight enough then I can feel my pulse in my fingertips. It's a weird sensation.

Anywho, you have now received your daily dose of Laura. I know I've been more boring lately. I'm sorry! It gets hard to write witty and interesting posts every day, which is why I'll probably miss a day or two here and there. 

Is there anything I can do to make it better? I've noticed that I'm getting a lot less comments lately, which must mean I'm doing something wrong, lol. Should I do more nail art? Actually, I can answer that myself. Yes, I should. It's just that I hate stamping because it takes forever and I don't have enough time to do intricate handpainted stuff, which leaves dots and strips and geometric stuff, which gets boring. I should use all the ideas that Naomi gave me. She had a ton, it's great! I promise promise promise I'll work on some nail art to show you guys!

Would you like to see more frankens? Tutorials? Ask and you shall receive, my pretties!

All right, so I'm really frustrated that I wasn't able to get any sunny pictures of this because it's absolutely gorgeous, but hopefully you can get the idea.

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2 coats. I love this! Skyscraper is a deep blue jelly with small silver glitter, and it's gorgeous. The formula was fabulous and so is the polish. I love glitter, and I love blue. What more could a gal want? Sorry for the short post, I'm still a little tired. I'm taking a mental health day, actually, so I best get back to sleeping!

My Ulta is not exactly on top of new collections. They have had the OPI Shrek collection for... well... quite a while. I think they just finally got it cleared out about a month ago. So it's no surprise that they still have some polishes from Orly's Cosmic FX collection. These are much loved among the polish community, and I grabbed the most interesting one, Space Cadet. (I forgot to take the bottle shot.)

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I thiiink this is three coats. I probably could have done 1 or 2 over black and it would have been better, but it's too late now. You can't tell in the pictures, but in the sun, it's freaking awesome. Even better than it looks in photos. It's just... so... amazing. I can't think of something to compare its amazingness too. The closest thing I can think of is maybe brownies. I mean not just plain brownies, but the really good ones with chocolate chips and they're all gooey and delicious. So yeah, it's almost as awesome as the best brownies you've ever had.

The formula was good, no difficulties applying. I really like it. It's kind of a pinkish/reddish/greenish/yellowish duochrome, which sounds bad but is really so good. So good...