Happy Halloween!

Hey everyone! An early Happy Halloween post, and Blessed Samhain for those of you who celebrate. I've got a busy day ahead of me and sadly, I'm not going to have time to experiment with the nail art I had planned, so instead, I've got a franken I made today combined with some witchy glittery goodness.
So. At the beginning of October, I was on Twitter (big surprise, right?) talking with one of my best girlfriends, Cindy of Nail'd and Polish'd. We were talking about frankening, and funky, fun glitters with jellies that we might could make similar to the idea of the Deborah Lippmann Glitter in the Air, only maybe Halloween themed. Cindy wanted a muted, milky orange jelly as a base, so I went to work on that. The result I posted on Twitter, and I've got it here to show you guys with some glitter toppers.
The recipe for this milky orange jelly is really, really simple. You start with about a half a bottle of clear, and then add approximately equal amounts of Ruby Kisses Tangerine and Wet N Wild Sunny Side Up. That ended up not being quite milky enough, so I added a few drops of random white - I think I used, again, a Wet N Wild. The orange needed to be deepened, so I used a few drops of a blood red jelly - the one I used was Sinful Colors Gogo Girl, but really any bright, blood red jelly would work. I had an empty Orly bottle, so I used that for my mixture, because they're one of the bigger bottles.
I do love making jelly polishes. They're easy and fun for me. My next one, I think, will be an uglyawesome olive green jelly. I've been envisioning it in my head.
This one I've decided to name Orange Crush, after the song by R.E.M. Obviously, I could have come up with a Halloween song to name it after, but I liked it so much, I've kept Orange Crush. Here's the song, via YouTube, in case you're interested.



Anyway, on to photos. I used a random glitter I found in a beauty supply store by a brand I've never heard of for the stars - the brand is LJL and there's no name of the polish, but the number is 27. It's a jelly base, lightly tinted yellow, which adds absolutely NO color on your nail if you use it alone, with glitter and stars. It smells like a Kleancolor, so be warned. I only found one of the elusive Halloween pumpkin glitters this year, but it's the one I wanted most - holographic moons. I added that to my nails as well. The small glitter in that almost looks like pieces of pepper, haha! It's not fine glitter at all, as you can see. The second photo is a better look at the bottle of Orange Crush.

Anyway! I hope you all have a safe, fun and wonderful Halloween tonight. Enjoy your day!

The Halloween Polish Comparison!

Hey everyone!
I've been having one heck of a week. The hubby got sick after I did, so I had to cover him at work - and I've worked an insane amount of hours in the last week or so. No time for swatching, so I couldn't post much! And then, my computer, which is older, couldn't connect to the internet. We think it's the net card. Now I'm using hubby's computer and getting it set up for me to use, which is taking some time. I have all of my files to transfer, as well. I'm getting there, though. So I apologize for the lack of posting, other than my blogger feature and Wednesday's pink post.
I won't get through all of the Halloween polishes I had to show you, but I do have the promised massive comparison post.
So, I've got for you China Glaze Fortune Teller and Ick-A-Bod-Y, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Pumpkin Spice, and thanks to a lovely reader, Wet N Wild Cougar Attack.
On the index finger is Fortune Teller, the middle is Ick-A-Bod-Y, ring is Cougar Attack, and pinkie is Pumpkin Spice. In the first photo, I've used only one layer of all of these except Pumpkin Spice - that's two layers. I wanted to be able to show off the base colors. FT is the deepest black, Ick-A-Bod-Y is a olive green jelly, Cougar Attack is a black jelly, and so is Pumpkin Spice. Of the four of these, Pumpkin Spice is the most sheer. The bases are different shades, as is the opacity and the density of glitter, but the glitter itself is identical in both Ick-A-Bod-Y and Pumpkin Spice. It's my opinion these two are the closest, although none of these is a dupe for any of the others. The glitter in Cougar Attack is more rose copper in shade, and the deep black base and hex glitter in FT stands it apart from the rest. Pumpkin Spice is probably best suited as a layering polish - and if you have this and aren't sure what to layer it over besides black, I've seen swatches of it over orange and brown and both look great.
The second photo is fully swatched and with top coat. All of these were two coats except Pumpkin Spice, which I've shown with four.

Phew. I hope you get a good idea of these now! My apologies for the owie on my pinkie. I had a snag and it's slowly healing up. Also, right before I snapped that first photo, I cracked my middle fingernail. You might be able to see it, even. I don't know WHAT I cracked it on, but my next post will be featuring super shorties. *sigh* Luckily my nails grow pretty quickly, but they were at such a good length.
Shout out to Robyn, whose birthday is today! HAPPY BIRTHDAY HONEY. Love you loads!
And that's it for this very wordy post. Your thoughts on these polishes?? Have a good evening!

My Nail Graffiti franken: Pumpkin Patch

You guys remember my previous post about the frankens I won from My Nail Graffiti? Well, this is probably my favorite of the four, although they're all awesome. Pumpkin Patch is an orange creme with green hex glitter and smaller pieces of dark bar glitter? They're very small rectangular glitter - I've never seen bar glitter that short, but that's what it looks like! REALLY cool, kind of reminds me of the stem of a pumpkin. You'll see what I'm talking about in the macro! Also, it's pretty neat that the glitter in this doesn't get lost in the creme finish. The name is perfect, and I think the shade of orange is the perfect pumpkin orange. I used two coats here.

See that short little bar glitter? Huh, so interesting! I love it. I'm not a fan of the long bar glitter, but this is cute, and goes along with the theme, I think. Again, the bottle label is completely adorable! If you guys are interested in nabbing yourselves a bottle, you can get them on this page of My Nail Graffiti.

China Glaze It's Alive

Okay, this is probably everyone's favorite from this year's Halloween offerings - it certainly is mine! I LOVE this polish. I mean, China Glaze could come up with a funky green polish every year for Halloween and I'd probably never get sick of it!
You've probably all seen a ton of photos of this sexy glitter, but here are mine and my thoughts.
So, this is a ridiculously easy to apply glitter polish. It's not thick at all, it slides right on your nails. I used three coats to build it up to this opacity, which I quite like - I could have probably left it with two thicker coats, but I like the depth this gave me. This isn't as yellow-green (olive) based as Zombie Zest is. I have a photo here to show you the difference in the base color, my previous mani with Zombie Zest, with an accent nail of It's Alive. Also have included my macro, which shows the two different sized glitter. This is more grass green than Zombie Zest, if that makes sense.
Alright, time for the photos. I have a shot in the shade, as well as one in direct sunlight for you!

Here is the Zombie Zest mani with the It's Alive accent! See the big difference in the base shade?

See how jam packed with glitter that jelly is? Yum!!

Wet N Wild Fantasy Makers Creepy Pumpkin

I'm sure many of you have already seen this pretty, squishy orange jelly. Creepy Pumpkin is one of the "tombstone" polishes from Fantasy Makers this year. It's very sheer - I used three thick coats here. It's sooo pretty and sparkly though! Admittedly, I'm a sucker for orange, and I love juicy orange jellies. This one's shot through with small gold glitter, to add icing on the cake.

Aren't those bottles too freaking cute? I LOVE them. I wanted to show a side shot of the bottle so you could see the pretty polish, so there ya go.

China Glaze Zombie Zest

Confession: I wore this polish for six days straight while I was sick. The swatch I'm showing you tonight is right before I removed it! So, you can see it wore like iron - no chips or anything out of place, at all.
Zombie Zest is from last year's Halloween collection. It's an olive green jelly jam packed with the signature China Glaze glass fleck shimmer. It has a slight blue duochrome, that I cannot seem to capture in photos but I see it at weird angles when I'm wearing it. You can see it pretty well in the bottle shot I've included. I used three coats here for this level of opacity.
I have to go ahead and say this. I know everyone loves It's Alive from this year's offering - and I have it to show off as well this week - I too love it, I think it's great - but to me, Zombie Zest just does it. I can't explain why I love it so much more but I will tell you that it's one of my all time favorite polishes.
Anyway, I'll stop waxing poetic about it and just show y'all a ridiculous amount of photos.

Yeah. I LURVE YOU, ZOMBIE ZEST!

My Nail Graffiti franken: Magic Dust

Taking a momentary break from my marathon of China Glaze Halloween nail polishes, I have a special franken to show you guys tonight! I recently won one of the prizes from a giveaway at My Nail Graffiti. It was a collection of four Halloween frankens! My Nail Graffiti is a blog run by Amber, and her husband made the frankens! If you're interested in purchasing these, you can have a look at this page. They're all awesome, and I will be showing off the other three in the coming week as well!
Okay, so first up is Magic Dust. This is a really pretty glitter polish that could probably be built up to opacity on its own, but I decided to layer it over Essie Marshmallow. I absolutely adore the combination! Essie Marshmallow is a perfect jelly white polish, nice and squishy, so it's nice for a layering combination. Magic Dust has holo glitter and red sparkly glitter in it. I bet this would look great layered over black, too. I used two coats of Essie Marshmallow and one coat of Magic Dust. My nails looked like sparkly candy. YUM.

You can click to enlarge these, if you want a look in better detail at them! Isn't that bottle labeling cute? I love the sparkly pumpkin and that font.

China Glaze Crimson

I'm a little behind, you guys! I apologize - I've got to reply to all of your lovely comments over the past week, and I am squeaking this post in pretty late as well. I have polishes photographed, but not edited and I don't have any posts scheduled. I've been pretty sick with the flu over the last week, and am now on the road to recovery. The hubby managed to avoid it last week, but he's now coming down with it, if my deductions are right. So I'll be taking on his workload this week! I'll try to keep up though - but I just wanted to let you know what's been going on, since I've been backlogged about replying to comments and such, and if my posts aren't full on at the normal times. Thank you for your patience, and for always coming by!
Anyway, on to tonight's post - China Glaze Crimson. This is the twinner to yesterday's dark polish, Near Dark. Actually, it's deeper, to be honest! I'm still trying to figure out the name, because Crimson is actually a deep, vampy plum purple. I only used two coats for full coverage on this. Crimson is also part of this year's China Glaze Halloween offerings.
Okay, as with yesterday's post, I wanted to show you guys the base color, so I've taken a shot of my nails with just one coat on - yes, there's a boo-boo there. Oopsie. But you should be able to see the purple-red base pretty well at least.

Next shot in sunlight.

And, in low light. See, it's definitely darker than Near Dark, right?

SUPER shiny. I'm actually wearing this as a pedicure color because I have been craving a darker color on my toes lately, and I love this.

China Glaze Near Dark

This polish will not appeal to everyone. But those of you that love the dark, sexy polishes like I do? You'll LOVE this. Near Dark is one of this year's Halloween polishes from China Glaze, and it's a deep, dark murky swampy green. It's got a tinge of yellow to it, which is perfect for a Halloween shade, right? I only needed two coats for the level of opacity you'll see in my pictures. Super shiny and easy to control, too.
Okay, so I really wanted to show you what the base color of this looks like. The first picture is only one coat, so ignore the streaky and uneven look.

This photo is what it looks like in normal lighting.

This is in bright sunshine, you can really see the green here.

And because I can't ever resist a little layering, I decided to play up this sexy polish with a layer of Color Club Covered In Diamonds, which was recently gifted to me from Amanda of Nail Polish Enthusiast! Thanks girlie, I love it.

So, what's your stance on those deep dark sexy polishes? I've still got Crimson to show you from this collection, that will be tomorrow night's feature!

China Glaze Spellbound Top Coat

Okay. I'm going to show you a polish that is VHTF (very hard to find)! China Glaze Spellbound top coat came out for Halloween of 2009, and it was L/E. I think those of us who managed to nab this are probably hoarding it!
Mind you, I've had to baby mine. I mean, it's ridiculous how much I've had to baby it - about a year after I bought it, I was checking out my stash and saw that this was completely dried up. I mean, it was down to about a quarter of a bottle, and when I went to open it and pull out the brush - bam. Dried up glitter. I went to work on it, and it took me forever. Lots and lots of polish thinner, along with some clear polish. Seemed to work, and then a couple months later I noticed it drying again, so back with the polish thinner. I've had to do this several times but now, it seems to be just fine. I've got a little gunked up glitter in the neck of the bottle, but had no troubles with this application.
So, this is a clear based glitter - small and large orange hex glitter and large silver hex glitter. It's fun to place over different colors, as it is billed as a top coat, but I once saw this over the top of a silver and that's how I like it best. You could use China Glaze Millenium, or another chrome, but this time I used a silver foil - China Glaze Cheers To You from last year's Christmas collection. Divine! I used two layers of Spellbound on top of Cheers To You.

Now, let's be honest - this was a pain to remove. I did soak it down for about ten minutes, but still - I ended up with little silver glitters everywhere. Was it worth it? Heck yeah, I LOVE this pairing. It's so awesome!
So that's the first of my Halloween features. Do you have Spellbound or are you desperately lemming it?