Orly - Cupcakes and Unicorns over Etude - #21

Direct sunlight.

 I can't take a dark cream and not layer something shimmery, glittery, and/or sparkly over it! That's just not my style.

Orly Cupcakes and Unicorns is a clear based layering polish with tiny duochrome flakes that range between gold, pink, magenta, and orange. Mixed in are some red bar glitters as well.

Indirect sunlight.

It's hard to quantify how many layers this is. While I applied to each nail only once, I had to pat the glitters on in thick layers to get all of the bar glitter to come off of my brush. Anyone who messes with big glitters knows what I'm talking about. Taking the application style into consideration, this was nothing out of the ordinary. I did not put a top coat over this, and it dried surprisingly smooth with some nice shine to it. I'm used to glitters like this needing a top coat.

Sally Hansen - Aisle Be There & Essie - Ballet Slippers

Oh, there's that blingy bit that I know I crave! After a day in the nude (heheheheheheee *gigglesnort*) I decided I wanted to add something sparkly and blingy to the mix! Unfortunately it decided to rain today... so I'm stuck with indoor pictures. Eh. You take what you can get, right?

I tried so hard to capture this on the nail, but it's not showing up as well as it is in the bottle in this picture. So let me help you. This is actually a flakie. Very tiny flakies, but they are flakies as opposed to simply being glitter. The flakies change from pink to purple/orange depending on the angle and lighting.
This is actually one of my favorite polishes because it's a present from my little brother. He was 11 or 12 at the time and I had already moved off to college, but he said he bought it because he thought of me and he wanted to get me an early Christmas present. Will's always been sweet like that. He also has never thought about money when it comes to presents. It continues to shock me to this day. Some of my most expensive polishes are from him, and he's never once thought twice about it. This past Christmas M had made a comment on switching from Diablo 3 on the console (I can't remember which one) to PC, and Will remembered that and without thinking twice, coughed up the $60+ for M to be completely set up with the game. He might be 15 now, but his allowance isn't any more than $6.50/week (1/2 your age, minus at least $1/week to be put into savings). That's my little brother for ya.

Finger Paints - Flashy over China Glaze - Crimson

Ohhh my goodness, this is a beauty! I know most people are sick of this multichrome flakie (a la Essie Shine of the Times, Sallie Hansen Hidden Treasure, Color Club Snow-Flakes, etc.) but I don't think I will ever ever get sick of this, especially when layered over a dark base.

These pictures are more blurry than my typical already blurry pictures, but I find that it captured the multi colored awesomeness better.
One thing that's always been an issue with flakies is their application. Applying them like regular polish doesn't work - you have to pat it on and then smooth it out. For some people it's a pain... I'm just excited to get my multicolor madness on my nails!
Do you own any flakies? Are they as multi-colored as this beauty?

Cult Nails Various Swatches

The sun finally decided to peek its shiny little head across Georgia today! Seriously, clear skies and everything. It's wonderful. I've also found that I only get a few hours of sunlight a day in my apartment. The rest of the day it's indirect sunlight... which sucks for taking swatches. Oh well... I guess I'll have to fill the rest of my day with more productive activities. *sigh*
Before we get to the pictures, I'd like to apologize about my cuticles. I'm still trying to fix them after two and a half years of working in a restaurant. It will take time, and I don't have the patience to wait until they're 'perfect' to take pictures. Avert your eyes!
If you guys would like, though, I can post about my nail care routine! Let me know if that's something you'd enjoy.
Anyways, here are some swatches from my most recent Cult Nails haul!

First off we have Disciplined. This is a sheer polish if you use one coat, but it builds very easily. This is 3 coats, which was all I wanted, but I could easily have gone for a fourth for full coverage.
Disciplined is a very light grey/blue base with duochrome glitter in it. The main glitter shifts between blue and purple, but there's a slight amount of glitter that gleams red/orange. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't capture that secondary duochrome in picture form. Eh, oh well.
Formula on this one was decent. It takes a while to fully dry, so unless you're using a quick dry top coat or are very very very careful about your nails in between coats and during dry time, you're going to end up with some dents and scrapes and bald spots from trying to push back down the polish that you swore you could make look like new... oops.

Next up we have Time Traveler. I really like this color. A very, very deep blue. From the pictures on the website I'd hoped that this would be a jelly, but it's unfortunately not. I still love it, besides one teensy little issue with my particular brush that I need to fix.

See that stray hair? That's the culprit to  the crappy application above. I was going to clean it up initially, but thought I would keep it in so I could point this out. Now this isn't the norm for Cult Nails, and it's as simple as getting some scissors and slicing that baby down, but do you see above why it's so important for brushes to be even? That's why I have issues with other brands like Sinful Colors and Wet N Wild. They may come up with awesome colors, but I'm not one for cleanup after their crappy application. I want to rely exclusively on my application skills, but all the skills in the world can't compensate for a wonky brush.
But I digress. Pictured is two coats and I really don't think you need any more, if you apply an even second coat. This dried really fast and I had no issues with it while applying.

On to Devious Nature. Okay... now this one I'm very surprised about. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not a fan of pink. At least I wasn't for the longest time. In recent years I've gotten better about my feelings on pink colors, but it's still not often that I'll reach for that color. With this.... ohhh my goodness. Though, to be fair, this isn't quite pink. More berry pink with just a hint of purple.

This picture shows the color more accurately, on the nail. Application was a dream. There was no pooling, and the color itself was very opaque. Pictured is two coats. It almost seems to self level, as demonstrated in the first picture, and it's so shiny on its own! I was pleasantly surprised by this one.

Wanna Be is one of Cult Nails more recent polishes, from their I'm Not Gone, Girl I'm Here! collection. First off I have to say I did not remember anything I'd read about this polish when I saw the bottle pic on the website. I assumed I would get a typical frosty brown with added shimmer. Let me say, that is not the case.

The pinky nail here accurately depicts the base color. A subdued pink/red. The shimmer is a gold/brown shimmer that looks... I don't know how to put it... multidimensional? Is that too cheesy? Well, dammit, that's the word that comes to mind.
Pictured above is two coats and I had no issues with application.
Next up I have some polishes leftover from the 2012 Deceptive Top Coat collection. I decided to do some swatches on a nail wheel as I was running out of sunlight to take pictures with. As this is a topcoat, I figured a darker base color would be acceptable. What a perfect opportunity to show off another one of the colors from my recent haul?

While painting the nails with Blackout, I noticed a couple things. 1) You can 'see' the pigment, as demonstrated above. It's not a solid color... more like you can see little specks that take several layers to completely cover the nail. 2) There's some pink/red in this. You can see it on the right nail pictured above. Interesting, but not necessarily a deal breaker for me. I got this intending to use it as a layering polish anyway, and 3-4 coats will hide all of this completely.

At the very top of the picture, we have the golden sheen of Alter Ego.
In the middle, we have Deception
On bottom, we have Two Timer.

These are some gorgeous layering colors. I really need a creative push - I can't think of anything besides black/grey to layer this over. I remember wanting to buy the entire collection when it first came out, but at that time I had just barely gotten my first job and I had no money to spend. Or money at all. Ah, simpler times.
I had no issues with any of these, and they are all one coat over 3 coats of Blackout.
If you still haven't gotten your hands on any Cult Nails or want to grab some final colors before they close up, never fear! They still haven't opened up for Liquidation, Round 2. On Instagram they stated that they're getting all the polishes pre-ready for shipping to improve the customer service experience this time around. The fact that it's taking so long makes me hopeful that they have some long-lost polishes that they're going to pull out of the vault to add to the store. One can hope, right?
Do you have any Cult Nails? What do you think of them? Will you be shopping with them one final time before they close up shop?