Different Dimension Orion Nebula Swatch and Review

Hello everyone and TFIF! (That's my acronym for Thank F It's Friday!) I hope all of you had a good week and have some awesome weekend plans in the works. It's finally getting nice here in Vancouver so hopefully I'll be shooting off some film, and of course, wearing some holographic nail polish because damn, if it's not about time! Today, I'm closing off Different Dimension week. I've had so much fun with these polishes - I can't help but picture spam! Anyway, you can get this polish and more over at their Etsy shop here. Check it out because there's a lot more than these guys!

So are you ready? Because here's Different Dimension Orion Nebula.





Taken from Different Dimension's Etsy page:

Orion Nebula has a black jelly base with different sized fuchsia circular glitters (some holographic) in it.

This is not a polish for the faint of heart as it does need work to get some of the bigger holographic fuchsia glitters out. I recommend turning the bottle upside down for a few minutes before polishing your nails and then doing 3 thin coats.



I really appreciate how upfront and honest Missi was when describing this polish. Often a polish like this will be shown off, and first timers with large glitters will encounter frustration for application. I personally find it labour intensive to apply this type of glitter polish so I took the liberty of doing two coats of OPI Black Onyx as a base colour so I just need to focus on glitter placement rather than coverage.

I think this polish would have been way easier with a full bottle rather than a mini because there's more bottle neck to queue up large glitters, but in either case - it's totally doable. My swatch is two coats of OPI Black Onyx, with approximately two and a half coats of Orion Nebula. I made it super glossy and shiny with a thick coat of Seche Vite.









I am really into how all the glitters were circular and the colour changing holo-ish nature of the larger circle glitters. If you can stand a bit of a fussy application, the end result is mesmerizing.

Again you can get this polish and more over at Different Dimension's Etsy shop. What do you think about large glitter polishes like this? Too frustrating for the application? Worth it?

Full disclosure: This sample was provided for an unbiased review.

Different Dimension Orbital Swatch and Review

Different Dimension week continues on Claw of Cthulhu and I am absolutely so stoked about all these polishes. I hope all of you are tackling the week with ease and have something awesome on the weekend but hey let's save the weekend talk for tomorrow. I'll be doing a rare Friday appearance so let's go full steam forward with Different Dimension Orbital.



From Different Dimensions' Etsy store page:

Orbital named after orbital spaceflights, which are spacecraft that remain on a trajectory where it could remain in space for at least one orbit. This polish has a black jelly base with blue, purple and pink holographic glitters in multiple sizes scattered throughout!



Different Dimension Orbital was one of the first that caught my attention out of my sample minis because of the beautiful and sleek glitter mix. As a big space galaxy aesthetic fangirl (I've got galaxy leggings and skirt that I wear always), this just paired up with my style PERFECTLY!





The formula for Different Dimension Orbital was great and I had no problems with glitters being pulled to the tips. The black jelly is opaque enough to not have to do so many coats, and it's sheer enough to really give the layers their own depth. I love that the glitters look like little stars on my nails. Just. Gorgeous. The holographic glitters give it an extra push for that little extra galaxy swag. (Did I just say swag in a nail polish review? Oh God I did.) My swatch is 3 coats, with Seche Vite top coat for a nice shiny finish:







Although my macro photo above shows the glitters pressed up the side of the bottle, it's definitely not an indicator how the pretty the potential depth you get by layering the glitters. These match my space clothes perfectly.

You can check out this polish and more over at Different Dimension's Etsy shop. Have you guys hopped on the Black Milk galaxy leggings train? I am sure my girl Chantal might love their Lord of the Rings line, hehe.

Full disclosure: This sample was provided for an unbiased review.

Different Dimension Excelsior! Swatch and Review

Hello old friend, haven't blogged here during this hour but there's always a first for everything, so hello to everyone in Australia and the UK! You're the first to know that this week is a special week. I'll be highlighting Different Dimension, an indie polish for all the sci-fi space cowgirls out there! This morning I received a handful of samples - Orion Nebula, Excelsior!, and Orbital.







These are my very first minis EVER! So obviously, I AWWW'd and coo'd over seeing them fit in the palm of my hand.

Up first on deck is Different Dimension Excelsior!



Taken from Different Dimension's Etsy page:

Excelsior is a white(ish) light grey holographic polish with hints of different colors reflected in the light.

Excelsior translates from Latin:

Adjective

excelsior (not comparable)
1.(archaic) Loftier, yet higher; ever upward



Of course, all I could think of was Stan Lee yelling Excelsior! when I was fortunate to attend FanExpo here in Vancouver. (Man that guy has so much pizazz to him, I love it!) So every time I grabbed this bottle, I pretty much thought about Stan Lee. Or Bradley Cooper from Silver Linings Playbook.

Just as Different Dimension described, Excelsior! is a cool icy white with holographic properties. Of course in my light box, it unfortunately doesn't show too much, but I tried my best with a different camera to showcase the holo magic. (Because it does exist!) Vancouver hasn't been the sunniest lately so I'm prompted to pull a MacGyver.









Different Dimension Excelsior! formula was very decent and smooth. There were no problems at all with pulling, patchiness, nothing. CTHULHU IS PLEASED. My swatch is two and a half coats, with no top coat.

And because I promised, here's an alternate photo that highlights the holo magical-ness! It's even more bold and pretty in the sun! I'm definitely going to wear this again once Vancouver decides to cheer up a little.



You can check out this polish and other Different Dimension polishes over at the Etsy shop here. Have you tried any polishes from Different Dimension? So far, colour me impressed!!! Also - does "Excelsior!" remind you of Stan Lee? Or is that just some weird "special" thing my brain is doing?

Full disclosure: This sample was provided for an unbiased review.

Hard Candy Sweet Tooth Swatch and Review

Hey guys I hope you guys had an awesome weekend (long weekend if you are up north). Back on track with Cheap Polish Tuesday with Hard Candy - a brand that I could only find in Wal-Mart up here in Canada. It caused a lot of excitement on Instagram when they were first introduced because Hard Candy offers quite a vast selection of popular and trendy shades such as metallics and glitter bombs. I personally have been trying to find Black Tie Optional but no dice unfortunately. I believe I found this polish for under $4.

While I didn't find Black Tie Optional, I opted to get Sweet Tooth, which is one of the more unpopular, less coveted polishes in the line but I wanted to give it a shot. Hard Candy Sweet Tooth is a pale pale baby blue jelly with ordinary sized blue, pink and silver glitter. Application was OK, the jelly went on even and the glitters were not fussy. I used two coats for my application, with no top coat:





While the polish formula is OK, I just don't find this type of polish very appealing. Same sized glitter just seems cheap to me - there aren't any variations to make it stylized or interesting. I feel like asides being a cheaply priced polish, it's just a cheap looking polish with not a lot of class.

I love the prices of the Hard Candy polishes but it's about the same price as a bottle of OPI when you do the math with how much polish you actually get. While I'm not hating on Hard Candy - obviously I am still hunting down Black Tie Optional! - I just don't find the line very appealing.

Also I apologize for that mis-shaped index finger. I had to cut the callous off and now the nail looks kind of weird. Oh well.

As a note - I am dealing with some personal matters and won't be able to catch up with all your lovely blog posts for a couple of days while I am away. I promise I'll check everything out soon and leave my verbose comments of love when I'm back. In the meantime, what do you think about the Hard Candy polishes? Have you tried any? Won't step into a Wal-Mart (haha)?

Daily Lacquer Fluffy Cotton Candy Swatch and Review

It's "Friday" over at Claw of Cthulhu, which means it's the last post of the week! It's also a long weekend so I may be back on Tuesday rather than Monday but not that little ol' me matters too much, right? Tonight I am checking out Star Trek Into Darkness so hopefully it'll be awesome and I'll get to drool over Zachary Quinto again, ha! Anyhow, let's get back to business.



Today I've got another one from Daily Lacquer called Fluffy Cotton Candy from the Circus collection released earlier this year. I missed out on the whole "Floam" fad so obviously I wanted to get in on this when I saw it. Daily Lacquer Fluffy Cotton Candy is a clear suspension base PACKED with hot vibrant solid pink and blue microglitters. You can build it up on its own (albeit it takes a few coats), or layer it on a base colour. The formula is good for what it is - it's definitely hard to create a polish with such glitter density however Daily Lacquer nails it and goes on smoothly and I had nearly full coverage after 3 coats. Here's how Daily Lacquer builds up:

One coat (already fairly packed!):



Two coats (we're getting there!):



And lastly, here's three coats of Daily Lacquer Fluffy Cotton Candy with a high gloss Seche Vite finish:







Super fun stuff.



Removal was also OK for a glitter. It's a little messy, so I would still suggest to use the foil method. I find with glitters like this, it's easy for removal but sometimes tricky to get all the little glitters completely off of your fingers.

And for funsies, here's Daily Lacquer Fluffy Cotton Candy over a base colour. (I'll apologize in advance, these are nubs and current length. I've been having problems keeping the length since I broke my index and pinky nail far into the nail bed.) Here's two coats of Fluffy Cotton Candy over Essie In The Cab-Ana:









I like that a base colour really provides the extra coverage so you can't see where the nail's free edge starts, but I still love Daily Lacquer Fluffy Cotton Candy on its own. The saturation of the microglitters is really bang on for me.

Check out Mag's store over at Daily Lacquer! I la-la-la-LOVE those bows on the bottles! So adorable.

Did any of you get on the Floam boat? Is there anyone else who cares about Star Trek Into Darkness, or is it just me?! LOL. I hope all of you enjoy the weekend and I'll be back next week.

Essie Turquoise and Caicos Swatch and Review

Hi guys, I hope you're having a lovely week so far. I am a bit moody today because now I know what all my fellow Canadian nail bloggers complain about - the shipping costs to Canada! I won't name any names here but I was so choked this morning when a certain site advertised $8 shipping to all orders in the US yet when I wanted to check out, it charged my not only $28 for shipping, but an ADDITIONAL $11 for "international handling"! Absurd! I am so heartbroken and now I am left trying to get my US friends to ship it to me! Ahhhh!!!

So onwards with some actual polish, today I have an oldie but a goodie. This is my very first Essie polish! Essie Turquoise and Caicos which is a timeless vintage seafoam green pastel turquoise, with dusty subdued desaturated tone. I won't lie but this formula was a mess. It took three coats to build to full opacity, but even then, application was patchy. Because this was my first impression of Essie, I was not impressed. I absolutely love this shade and funny enough, as much as I own these kinds of shades - I don't own anything quite like this. Very similar, but not with that desaturated dusty tone that I adore. Here's 3 coats of Essie Turquoise and Caicos:





One thing I noticed about Essie Turquoise and Caicos - I felt like it was close to a Tiffany blue, but the name. THE NAME. Turquoise and Caicos. Tiffany and Co. Is this possibly a play on getting something close to Tiffany blue? Here's a hint - welp, it's pretty close in real life, but in my white light controlled light box, you can see that there is a difference. Alas, the hunt for a true Tiffany blue continues.



And last week I showed you guys what a glitter topper looks like on top of Essie Turquoise and Caicos. Here is China Glaze Glitz N Bitz over top. Hides the nasty patches! I kind of dig it like this:







I know a lot of people who own this polish - what do you think about it? Hit? Miss? Is the shoddy formula worth this unique hue of pastel turquoises that we all love so much?

OPI Did It On 'Em Swatch and Review

Normally it's Cheap Polish Tuesday but I've been blogging and photographing up a storm over the last couple of weeks so I am going to burn off some backlog here now that I have a little bit. It's ELECTION DAY! here in British Columbia so I hope any of my fellow Canadian west coasters have gone to the polls. If you don't vote, at least spoil your ballot. Having a low voter turn out is really embarrassing so please, humour me and do it.

Anyway today I have OPI Did It On 'Em which I believe is from Nicki Minaj's collection from 2011. (I only remember the year because I wore Metallic 4 Life on New Years Eve.) Anyhoo, Did It On 'Em is a bold "Shrek-ish" green/yellow creme. I personally find the colour nauseating from the bottle but when I swatched it on my hand, it didn't look that bad. The formula was great - a standard self-levelling two coat creme from OPI. I just love OPI's cremes, they are always a hit with me. Here's two coats of OPI Did It On 'Em, with no top coat:







And you might have remembered it topped with China Glaze Glitz N Pieces from last week:







Overall I think it's such a great base colour for glitter toppers like this. When something is so bold and in your face, it's nice to slap it in the face and tell it to calm down with some fun spunk like this. Man, that probably came out wrong.

What do you think of these Shrek colours? Are they awkward in the bottles and nice on your hands? Or awkward in the bottles and also awkward on your hands?

Unicorns and Cloud Nail Art with Nailz Craze NC02

Normally I do a little something called Shitty Nail Art Monday but today, I won't call it that. It's a mixture between because I actually like my nails for once, and because I am loving my plates from Natalie from Nailz Craze. They're great. So really, today is just going to be Nail Art Monday and I know all of you have been waiting to hear that!

So I've had this gradient in mind for a while now, after being inspired from a music video by Ke$ha (haha I wish I was joking but I'm not!) and then to overlay that pastel gradient with solid black geometric designs. Welp, instead of hand painting designs, I wanted to use my Nailz Craze stamp plates that I received over a month ago and haven't touched!



To create the gradient, I used Zoya Snow White as a base colour and used a make-up sponge for the gradient. I (or rather my boyfriend's sister) painted polish directly onto the sponge and then sponged on the colours onto my nails. I used OPI Pink Friday and Essie Where's My Chauffeur as both cremes are fairly solid. It came out fairly light with one coat of sponging but I had decided to leave it as it without a second coat because I am lazy and I figured the stamping is going to cover it anyway.





My stamping skills are not the best. (Thought I'd get that out of the way.) For this nail art, I used Nailz Craze NC02 plate featuring funky clouds, unicorn, pegasus, stars, and light beams. You really can't go wrong with that.

I am used to using Konad and faux-nad plates which require a very thick polish and accurate scraping off the excess but with the Nailz Craze plate, I found them a little more fragile and I had to lightly take off the excess, barely touching the plate with little force. Very different from what I've been used to! I used Konad black stamping polish for my stamps.



And lo and behold - a rare right hand sighting!





I definitely recommend the Nailz Craze plates if you like really unique fresh designs. The fragility of the excess scraping may take a bit to get used to but it's doable and it's worth it. One thing that I do notice is that the prints are fairly large. This excites me to no end because usually stamp plates have teeny tiny designs but this also means that smaller-nailed folks may not be able to enjoy the full experience of having an entire unicorn on their nail. You can check out Natalie's Nailz Craze shop on Etsy here.