Modern and Mermaid Manicures!

I've been experimenting with a few of my green nail polishes the past couple of days. I tried out a sleek and modern muted look with triangles on my friend Vanessa last night.

I used a light gray sephora mini polish as the base, and made the triangles with Deborah Lippmann's Almost Paradise and Illamasqua's Milf.

I really like the way it turned out. It's pretty subtle from far away, but exciting and pretty up close.
I went in the opposite direction with my nails. They are intense.

I've been wanting to try out Deborah Lippmann's Mermaid's Dream and finally went for it. It reminds me of mermaids, of course, but it also brought to mind peacock feathers.
I played it up with some Revlon gold franken (gold coin mixed half and half with golden makes the perfect gold) half-moons with Illamasqua and Revlon's golden dots on top.

I just got some new dotting tools in the mail. Got em on ebay for like 49 cents! It was a pretty good deal.
I'm gonna get out and enjoy the beautiful weather!
Saroca

Hawaii Manicures

This year I've been doing a lot of travelling, and for most of that time I used Sephora testers around europa to keep my nails painted. But while I was in Hawaii I stayed with two awesome ladies that had a nail polish collection of their own to play with!
I did a couple of manicures inspired by Kauai. One on myself, and one on my buddy Caroline.

I did a red to orange gradient using sally hansen candy apples creme, essie meet me at sunset, and a really pretty tangerine by zoya.

Caroline's was different shades of blue and turquoise to mirror all of the gnar that she rode. (surfing)

The sea foam base color was milf by illamasqua, but i'm not sure of the others.

Life in Hawaii was really hard
I also have an update for those of us interested in the Lynnderella spending scandals on ebay: people are INSANE! A bottle of chartreuse glitter polish just sold for over 900 dollars.

Chartreuse Grit limited edition. The most expensive bottle of nail polish. And no one's ever seen swatches!
Aiight, I'm going to bed

saroca

NOTD: Girly bits - Mother May I? Swatches!

I am excited to finally wear my first "indie" polish today. I had no idea there even was such a thing until a search for the most expensive polishes on ebay introduced me Lynderella. (A little more on that here.)
Turns out there are a lot of amazing people out there taking it upon themselves to make the polish that's missing out there in the nail racks at drugstores around the world. Thank you!

Some of my favorites are Girly bits, KBShimmer, and Lynderella. But those are the ones that I've seen the most of, too. You can find all sorts of exciting new brands at online stores like llarowe, ninja polish, and Harlowe & co. Ninja Polish and Harlowe and co. allow you to set up alerts to tell you when your favorites are back in stock, too, which is really helpful because it seems like everything's always out of stock when I want it.

Anyway, on to the polish! I love it. I am in love with it.

Artificial light.

Flash.

Sunlight.
My one complaint about this is that out of three coats on each nail, I only got two of the red square glitter pieces to come out. Those are my favorite part! But I think it's really beautiful anyway. My roommate says it's "too understated," but I think he's too used to my really crazy manicures. That's part of why I like it, it doesn't jump out at you at first. It makes me happy just to look down, it's such a fun, cute combination.
The variety of glitter is really exciting, too. There have gotta be at least 12 glitters at work here, all different shapes, colors, and sizes.
Thank you Girly bits! You are honestly an inspiration.
Gotta get to work!
In my next post I want to show off a franken I made as an attempt to dupe my favorite Paul & Joe nail polish that was lost in a tragic accident.

Love,
Saroca

Lynnderella Insanity!

Could this be considered the most valuable nail polish collection of all time?

This is currently active. Watch this out-of-control bidding here.
I'm excited to see how high it goes in the few days remaining!
If your mind is still un-boggled... wait until you see this!
...

That's right! Crazy rich people are spending over 700 dollars on a single bottle of nail polish. I can't wait to see where that one goes. Watch the auction here.

Sorry for the few posts. I don't have any readers yet, and I'm pretty behind on a project outside of the nail world.

Saroca

Zoya - America GIVEAWAY!!

Not sure how long this'll last (I'm assuming till the 5th), but if you order a bottle of this polish, by following this link, and enter "freedom2" as your promo code, you can get a free bottle of Zoya's America with FREE shipping! woo hoo!

Thanks to my extremely awesome friend ZOYA for the hot tip! You are the best!!

love,
saroca

Fourth of July Manicure Experiment / First Post!

Hello nail polish bloggers of the world!
I have just spent the past few weeks discovering the vast universe of nail polish addicts out there, sharing their beautiful, touching stories. ;) After a descent into the void of Sally Hansen Turquoise Opal nail polish swatches (that is the BEST polish IMO, hence my blog-name), I started to feel like this part of my life and personality needs more of a voice! I want to be more inspired and more creative! And I hope joining this amazing nail polish community online will continue to help with that, as it has over the past few weeks.
I would like to think that I have a unique style and passion for manicures that goes beyond the average nail polish enthusiast. I've been hoarding and painting with polish since I was a little kid. I'm now a muralist, and 26 years old, but my first painting ever (a valentine for my 8th grade boyfriend) started with a sheet of construction paper and about 25 bottles of nail polish.
I actually still have most of those bottles, and thanks to sally's beauty secrets nail polish thinner, they all still work!
Anyway, it's super late and tomorrow's the fourth of july! So I should hit the hay soon... I am just dying to show off my USA inspired manicure that I did tonight.
I used a technique that I learned from More Nail Polish but I adapted it a little bit.

I did a kind of random water marble in reds, whites, golds, and blues. (I used Clarins - 38188, essie - meet me at sunset, deborah lippmann - footloose, sally hansen - candy apples creme, essie - beach bum, illamasqua - phallic, revlon - gold coin, jane - megawatt, zoya - elizabeth arden ?, and opi - alpine snow.) Then i took a piece of plastic bag to pick up the designs, cut out shapes, and started applying the shapes to my almost-dry base of OPI alpine snow.

It didn't go very smoothly at first, so to salvage the situation I decided to embrace the chaos and am super excited about the results! I just kept taking small bits of the marbles and collaging them over each other until I thought it looked cool enough to stop. I then lamely attempted to cover up my ugly areas with Deborah Lippmann's Boom Boom Pow, applied sporadically. Then the final Seche Vite layer.

here they are in sunlight, a little more red than the pics last night.

The pinky is two coats of DL - boom boom pow over one coat of jane - megawatt, a 90's glitterbomb.

And I couldn't let my first post go by without showing off my Sally Hansen's Nail Prisms - Turquoise opal.
It is the most magical polish I've ever seen. Today is not only a day when I celebrate the birth of my dear nation, but the day I buy two bottles of passable T.O. dupe - Ozotic 505 at shop.llarowe.com! I use my precious original (first love) bottle of turquoise opal very sparingly, and decided it would last longer as a toenail polish. So here are some toe swatches, with a couple of dupe-esque polishes that I was comping.

These are all legit, with the exception of the pinky toe. I used Wet n Wild - grey's anatomy as a base, because I think that using a black base coat destroys a lot of the gorgeous depth of the color, and I am too cheap to do four coats of SH. I think it was 2 coats wet n wild, 2 coats sally hansen, and the pinky toe has one coat of Hits Mari Moon - Artsy on top. (Not a passable comp. Too indigo.) It looks like Mari Moon's cutie pie might be a closer match.

On this foot I have 2 legit T.O. nails on the left. The middle toe and big toe are a similar, but much less vibrant, Chameleon - Nucleus. The second toe in (index toe?) has a coat of Mari Moon - Artsy on it. All topped off with Seche Vite. I can thank the nail polish blogs for filling me in on that totally amazing topcoat!

That's not all! But it's all for tonight.
Happy fourth of July!!!

Saroca