Interview Appropriate Nails- CBL Blonde Ambition

What a week! I've been taking job hunting very seriously. Since I arrived a week and two days ago I've submitted 22 applications and registered at a temp agency. I've been starting to get a few emails and calls. So far it's just been to submit more information or take assessments, but it's something. I know I couldn't honestly expect to land a great job my first week, but when you get used to living in the world of nail polish where every sparkly and amazing thing is possible it kind of messes with your sense of reality.

For the first installment of interview appropriate nails I have for you Blonde Ambition from Colors by Llarowe. I like this one because it's very subtle indoors- a nice subdued nude color with just a hint of shimmer. I don't think any interviewers would find this to be distracting or noteworthy.

But then you go outside and BAM! It's like a completely different polish! The holo...ohhhh the holo! My brain can't even word right now.. too distracted.. by shinies... and rainbows.

 I feel like it's my little secret. I can have super fun nails and still look appropriate for interviews. Definitely the best of both worlds.

And here's a macro, because holo! This is two coats by itself. Blonde Ambition has a good formula- maybe just a tiny bit on the thick side, but nothing a few drops of thinner couldn't fix right up. The coverage and holo payoff is phenomenal as you can see. 

I wore this to an interview a few months ago, so I'd say it's my go-to polish for serious jobby type stuff since it's back on my nails this week. Do you have a favorite polish for when your nails have to be serious but you can't quite commit to boring colors?

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?

Pantone Color of the Year 2015: Marsala

Now that Christmas is officially over and done with lets all rush on to the next big thing: New Years! One of my favorite things of the new year is Pantone's choosing of Color of the Year. I've been obsessed with color ever since I was old enough to discover the beautiful world of Rainbow Bright. As a kid my parents always had to wrestle me away from the paint chips at the hardware store.. no, apparently those weren't there for me to take one of each every time we went down that aisle.

This year's color is Marsala- a rich earthy red wine shade. I immediately thought of Haze of Love by Wet n Wild. The color looks very Marsala in the bottle, but on the nail it tends to darken up unless viewing in bright light. Still, an excellent option for the price. If you'd like to read more about this color and how it was chosen check out the Pantone site.

Picture credit: Pantone

I paired my Marsala with gold for a luxurious look. I used OPI's Love.Angel.Music.Baby for the gold nails, topped with loose glitter from Born Pretty placed in triangle shapes on the pinkie and index fingers. On my other accent nails I used 24k Gold from Mentality which is real gold leaf flakes in a clear base. I used a toothpick to fish out and place bigger chunks of gold leaf for more dense coverage.

 So far I've heard really mixed feelings about the color for 2015. I happen to be leaning firmly into the love it camp. How do you feel about this one? 

Lacquer Legion Glam- Featuring Mentality

April's theme for The Lacquer Legion is Glam. I decided to combine this month's challenge with my first real indie polish review because what's more glam than getting to try out brand new polishes? I went for a full on royal-glam look here with purple velvet, matte studs and real 24k gold leaf top coat. 

This is officially my first indie purchase too! I've been eyeing Mentality's store for a while now and finally decided to go for it. Their polishes are very reasonably priced- $6.75 for most regular polishes and a bit more for holos and other specialties plus free shipping within the US. I think what really pushed me over the edge was finding out Mentality is from Modesto. That's about two hours away from where I live and I love the chance to support local businesses.

It was really hard deciding what to buy- so many beautiful polishes. The two that stood out the most to me were Matriarch, a gorgeous velvet looking matte purple (I'm a sucker for anything purple) and the 24k Gold Leaf top coat which was totally worth the splurge at only $15.

Matriarch applied beautifully and dried quickly with an even, smooth finish. I'm always concerned about drying time if I'm not going to be using a top coat. I went to bed soon after painting this and I'm happy to report no sheet marks. These pictures show two coats.

For the 24k Gold nails I painted two coats of LA Colors Black and topped it with two dabbled coats of the gold leaf top coat. I probably could have gone for a third coat on the pointer finger for extra gold leafiness, but I was getting sleepy and skipped it. Overall I'd say the gold leaf is dense enough in the base that it's not too hard to get fairly decent coverage with just two coats. I topped those nails off with a coat of NYC Matte Me Crazy to match the rest of the matte look.

The last thing that really pulls this look together is the matte gold studs. Of course I didn't actually have any so I decided to make my own. I stuck silver studs onto a piece of tape and painted them with OPI, Love.Angel.Music.Baby from the Gwen Stefani collection. Once they were dry I picked them up with tweezers and carefully stuck them onto my 2nd coat of Matriarch while it was still wet. I love that I can make any color studs I want without having to buy anything new. I can't wait to try this out in so many more color combinations.