My nail art experiments don’t always turn out well, and unfortunately, that happened this Christmas! I figured I might as well post the abomination I wore through the holidays, partly because I don’t mind if my failure amuses someone and partly because a couple nails in there are swatches of nail colors I haven’t posted yet. Who knows? Maybe, on the off chance, someone will find it a little useful.
Sorry, it really is pretty ugly. This was taken in indoor fluorescent lighting:
I was too tired and annoyed with it to bother cleaning up my mistakes, too, so doubly sorry about that.
Anyway, I’ll start with the two somewhat decent swatches:
- Middle – Zoya PixieDust Chita, a lovely army-green polish with silver glitter scattered throughout. Great coverage at one coat and great formula. It dries very quickly to a finely textured matte finish and looks slightly yellower-toned and more desaturated in person. Couldn’t be happier with this one and wish I painted all my nails in this! One coat shown above.
- Pinky – Zoya Logan, which strikes me as an overall blue-leaning medium-green foil-y shimmer with some gold shimmer mixed in there to warm it up. It’s super shiny and opaque in two coats, and I had no problems with the formula. Two coats shown above.
Now for the nails that I mangled:
- Index – I started with two coats of Logan and dotted on Julep Margot (metallic gold), which I wasn’t satisfied with. I ended up trying to add some red dots of Milani Ruby Jewels (bright cherry-red glitter), but the result looked horrifying – like I’d somehow gotten blood spattered on my polka-dot pattern. D: In the end, I slathered a thin coat of Essie Hors d’Oeuvres over the whole thing in an attempt to mute the ugliness, and the above photo is what I got. Bleh.
- Ring – I started with two coats of Julep Nicolette (white creme) and attempted a candy-cane stripe with Ruby Jewels. Nicolette was hard to work with, as it was strangely both runny and clumpy, which caused me to flood the cuticles on both hands. D: Ugh. I then waited forever for it to dry, but even when it seemed safely dry to the touch, it apparently wasn’t dry enough to use tape, and the stripes I taped down ended up pulling up polish, leaving a huge gooey mess instead of the clean stripes I’d wanted. I ended up brushing a thin layer of Ruby Jewels over the top to cover up the ruined white areas, hoping I’d still get a subtle stripe pattern. I guess it worked somewhat, but the white showing around the edges was way gross.
Lessons I learned: don’t overdo it with the polka dots and make sure to understand the quirks of a white polish (notoriously hard to work with D:) before attempting to do tape stripes over it!
Hopefully, I’ll have some time to post up something less appalling soon. :] Happy New Year!
Lacquerfiend 
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