Model City Polish Dipping Chocolate and Autumn Jubilee

Today is the autumnal equinox and I have some polishes from Model City Polish that are getting me in the mood for fall. The glitter, Autumn Jubilee, is a limited edition polish but is currently still available in Nina's etsy shop along with her non-LE Halloween trio of scented glitters which are definitely worth checking out. But first, let's look at Dipping Chocolate on its own. This is a beautiful brown holographic polish.

Thumbhancement to show the soft glow that the holo particles give.

Check out the shine! This is with no topcoat.

 Autumn Jubilee is a clear base with red, gold, orange, green and brown glitter - a forest's worth of fall foliage contained in a single bottle.

Sadly, my glitter application skills leave a bit to be desired so I have some thin patches on my first two fingers - yet again, I ask that you blame the blogger and not the polish.

The glitters shine very brightly, particularly in low light when the Dipping Chocolate base becomes more subdued. 

Dipping Chocolate is currently sold out but the Model City Polish etsy shop is being restocked on Saturday (September 28th) and it will be available then along with a new line of beautiful holos that she has been previewing on her Facebook page.

Anna Sui Nail Color in 602 Coral Orange

Oh Anna Sui Nail Color in 602 Coral Orange, why must you make it so hard for me to love you? You have so much to recommend you: a beautiful peachy color with loads of golden shimmer and teeny tiny glitters, a rose scent, and an absolutely adorable ball gown bottle design. But alas, I just don't know if it's going to work out between us. First, we have to deal with the feeling I have of being deceived by your flower-bedecked box. It is a big box, bigger then those of most of my other polishes, yet when we look closely, we see that you actually only hold 8mL rather than the 15mL of most full size polishes. And since you sport a $15 price tag, that makes you a pricier polish than my Chanel. Tell me, Anna Sui Nail Color in 602 Coral Orange, are you worth it? 

Well, let's try to move past that. I suppose I shoulder some of the blame for not looking more closely at your box after all. Let's look at your color. You are a delicate orange color and your golden shimmer is easily visible in low light and explodes into luminous glory in sunlight. Unfortunately, you are quite sheer, my dear. Even at 3 coats, there is significant VNL going on. And to be frank, your drying time leaves a bit to be desired as well, and you dinged on me after several hours. 

And Anna Sui Nail Color in 602 Coral Orange - can we talk about your scent? It's not that it's a *bad* scent, not exactly. But neither is it rose. At best, it could be described as "sweet and vaguely rose-like". It is also rather strong. My cats disapproved. I'd be careful, Anna Sui Nail Color in 602 Coral Orange. I wouldn't put it past those little monsters to "accidentally" push you off the counter as they walk by. Stay away from edges, is all I'm saying.

I think we can make this relationship work if we try hard enough. Undies would take care of the VNL issue and also help minimize the rate at which you get used up. I can't deny your beauty, both with respect to color and that ball gown bottle of yours (although just between you and me, I can't quite get the image of dish soap out of my mind when I look at your top). But there are so many other polishes out there that aren't quite as high maintainence as you, and I don't know that we wouldn't both be better off with someone else. I'm sorry, Anna Sui Nail Color in 602 Coral Orange. It's not me, it's you.

Swatch Spam

I apologize for the lack of activity here. I had a respiratory bug that knocked me for a loop and between a week of barely being able to move and a week of trying to catch up on all of the work that had piled up, blogging lost out. I am still digging myself out but I hope to have some new polish to share with your soon. Until then, here are some miscellaneous swatches I have done in the not too distant past.

This photo is of the manicure that I did for my birthday last week. It is Enchanted Polish's Ballerina Sprinkles with an accent nail of Pretty & Polished's Wherever You Go, I Virgo. I was looking high and low for a bottle of the latter polish to be able to wear for my birthday and finally lucked into one.

Next up is another Enchanted Polish, this time Stay Classy, San Diego. I used Enchanted's Flamingo Freckles as an accent but I think it is a little too understated even for me.

Finally I have a manicure for which I went back to an ancient but beloved polish. This is the one that started my polish obsession many, many moons ago. It bears the unwieldy name of Sally Hansen Magical Nail Makeup in Fairy Dust Pink but oh, is it lovely! 

I realize the picture is rather dark but I just love how the holo glows here. 

an End It Movement manicure featuring emerald & ash Road Trip polish

I follow the Indigo Bananas Facebook page and recently Andrea posted about a giveaway being hosted by the blog Confessions of a Sarcastic Mom for which she had donated a beautiful polish. The giveaway is to help raise awareness about the End It Movement which seeks to end slavery worldwide, including the human trafficking and slavery that is happening right here, right now, in the US. As soon as I read about the giveaway, I knew that I wanted to participate. The colors of the polishes in the giveaway are red and black (the colors of the End It campaign) and emerald & ash nail lacquer recently came out with a polish collection that included two colors I thought would be perfect. The Road Trip collection is a set of unique textured polishes that incorporate silica particles similar to those used in actual road signs to make them glow. The texture is smoother than most other textured polishes but still has a lot of visual interest, and the polishes have the added bonus of glowing under black light. Bike Lane is an asphalt black color and California Stop is stop sign red.

Unfortunately for me, when I went to grab the polishes to do my manicure, I had difficulty finding Bike Lane. After a fruitless search lasting several minutes, I realized why. I had not actually *purchased* Bike Lane. Derp! I had picked up the white color, Five Over, instead. Since I am not the kind of gal to let cold hard reality interfere with my plans, I decided to work around that little problem by using Five Over as a base for the texture and topped it with a mixture of Five Over and Wet'n'Wild Black Creme to give the black background color I wanted for the mani. I then used a nail art brush to add the red X using California Stop. This yielded (snerk) a dark grey base rather than the literal pitch black that Bike Lane would have been. I also lost some of the texture and shine I would have had from using just the e&a color but I think enough was retained that it was an acceptable compromise. 

So there you have it. Please go read Confessions of a Sarcastic Mom's blog post to learn more and to enter her giveaway. It is far too easy to turn a blind eye to the fact that human beings are suffering and being treated as commodities in this supposedly enlightened day and age.

The emerald & ash Road Trip collection can be purchased on their website.