Things That Are Stuck In My Head: The Narwhal Song

There's a commercial on TV right now for a certain phone company that features a song about narwhals. Upon seeing this commercial the song became lodged so deeply in my brain that even my cat got tired of hearing me sing it. For days. Seriously.. so many days. My theory seemed to work out pretty well last time. If something is stuck in my head I can paint it to get it out, so here are my narwhal nails. If you haven't heard this song yet I've included the video for you. You know you can't resist watching it.

So, what did you think? Will you now also be singing this over and over in your mind until you go crazy?

My narwhals are swimming in an ocean of I Love Nail Polish's Cygnus Loop. I absolutely love their multichromes. This is the third one I've tried and they all have such beautiful dimension and shift. This one goes from a rich blue/purple to a bright violet/pink with some hints of gold at the edges. The formula can drag a little so you'll want to do 2-3 thin coats for good coverage and use as few brush strokes as possible. The extra care needed is completely worth it. This polish has a great wear time an unbelievable color.

I made narwhal decals because I didn't quite trust myself to paint these perfectly onto my nail. I have a little silicone mat that's perfect for making decals. They peel off so easily once they're dry. I started by painting a white outline in the basic shape and filling it in. I went back with black acrylic paint to add the details and then filled in the colors last. I always seem to get bubbles when I apply my decals though. It's driving me crazy. Does anyone have any tips to avoid this? I wanted to do a close-up of the thumb but ended up leaving it out because there were so many bubbles it didn't even look good.

How do you deal when annoying songs get stuck in your head?

Birefringence With A Twist

It's taken me a while to jump on the indie bandwagon, but I can see why people are totally addicted! I've been dragging my feet because of the higher cost per bottle and shipping associated with buying indies, but damn, there are some extra special shinies I've been missing out on. This is Birefringence from ILNP. I had no idea what birefriengence even meant before I got this polish. Turns out it's "the optical property of a material having a refractive index that depends on the polarization and propagation direction of light" according to wikipedia. That's a pretty fancy way to explain why multichromes appear to be two different colors at once. I love how painting my nails occasionally makes me smarter.

Birefringence is a beautiful indigo to violet multichrome. The pictures below are taken at different angles to show the color shift.

Are you curious yet what the twist is? I painted the under side of my nails neon yellow for a fun surprise. The yellow polish is by Kelly and doesn't have a name. I love the contrast between the purple on top and the bright yellow underneath. This might just be one of my top 10 favorite manicures of all time.

 How do you feel about this trend of painting the under side of the nail? It's a total pain to do, but I love the way it looks.

ILNP- Mutagen Swatches

I've had these swatches of I Love Nail Polish's Mutagen in my archives for a while and haven't posted them for a few reasons. As much as this polish is beautiful, it's equally hard to photograph. It's been swatched many times by ladies much more talented than me and I'm not bringing anything new or earth shattering to the table. I also took so many photos it was hard to choose which ones to post. In the end I narrowed it down to these. They might not be the best pictures ever taken but they're not half bad and they're mine. I love this polish and I had a ton of fun playing around trying to capture all the shifts. 

I've taken photos in a bunch of different lighting so you can see how the polish looks in different settings. I've got on three coats with no base color, although I've read a black base can make multichromes pop more. The pictures above were taken in a light box with diffused lighting. You can see the colors shift from green to a bluish purple at the edges.

The next pictures were taken outside. The one above is direct sunlight. It has crazy green metallic shine like a green beetle. Below is indirect sunlight. At some angles you get a soft peachy reflection. This is the shift that was most easily observable to me in person. In low light I often saw a pink glow almost hovering over the surface of the green polish.

I've also read that photographing a multichrome underwater helps bring out all the colors of the shift at once. My aquarium has a great light and lots of fish.. and water. The fish are always very happy to see me since it means they'll get fed soon. They were excited to participate in my photo session. This seemed like a good idea, but it was really hard to keep the angle of the light from reflecting too much off the surface of the water and get a good clear picture of the nails at the same time. The first picture has great shift but blurry fishies. The second picture has awesome fish, but the polish looks plain. I love the swirly colors of the fish tails. I Just wish I could have gotten these two things combined into one picture. 

After the aquarium experiment I moved on to a bowl of water inside my light box. I was able to capture some great pictures of the shift, but the pictures are soft and blurry due to the reflections on the surface of the water. I would love to know how other people get such crisp, bright underwater pictures. Waterproof camera? You can see below that Mutagen shifts from a vibrant green to blue and fuchsia back to a golden yellow-green.

Mutagen is one of my first multichrome polishes. I bought a few more from ILNP at the same time and so far I've been thoroughly impressed. They really do live up to the hype. I sat around at my desk all day wiggling my fingers back and forth to catch all the different colors.

What do you think of this one? Worth the hype or overrated?