Brain Mush

Hey kids! Sorry it's been awhile, I've been a neglectful blogger :(  My assignment took me longer than I expected to finish which then resulted in less time to study for yesterday's exam. For anyone who's ever had to force themselves to read 500 pages of information dryer than the Sahara desert in less than 24 hours in order to pass their subject, I salute you. You will also understand why my brain has turned to mush. I've vowed to do my reading weekly next semester like I'm supposed to. YEAH RIGHT. We'll see how that goes... Anyway, you guys don't really care about my mushy brain, you just wanna see my nails. So here they are:

This was evidently the result of brain mush. I should have waited til today to do my nails rather than being over-eager and doing them last night. Due to the brain mush, this was purely experimental with no planning involved. This polish was the third Revlon one that I bought at the Myer stocktake sale, so I wanted to try it out. It's called 'Emerald City' and it's a matte suede. In my last post I said that I wanted to do a quick review of the 3 polishes that I got, so I'll do that in a moment.

Firstly though, about those beads on my nail...I had ordered some tiny steel beads off ebay (3 times actually, from 3 different sellers), and each time they arrived at my door I'd open the package to find that the container had come apart during shipping and that half the beads were missing and the half that remained were all mixed up. Here's a comparison of what my beads should have looked like, and what they did look like:

Would you accept that? I didn't. I got a refund all 3 times. One seller responded to my complaint by asking me to just re-sort the beads in to their colours. Ummmm excuse me? There are supposedly 2000 of these beads in each wheel and they're literally 1mm big. Would YOU want to re-sort them? Didn't think so. The third time I even asked the seller to tape the lid shut to avoid this. They ignored me. So I've stupidly ordered some for a fourth time. This fourth seller sells them in a different packaging, so fingers crossed this packaging stays intact. If you guys are going to buy these steel beads online, I recommend getting them from a seller who doesn't package them in the wheel. In saying that though, all my other beads etc have been packaged in these wheels and I've had no problems. Must just be something about these steel thingies.

Anyway, I have 3 wheels full of mixed up steel beads and no idea what to do with them, so the idea behind this was to simply cover the tip of one nail in clear top coat and then shove my finger into the beads. I HAVE THE BEST IDEAS! Not. It kinda worked I guess. But as you can see in my photo some of the balls had already fallen off just half an hour after putting them on. I did put a clear top coat over them to seal them on my hand that's not in the photo, but that just made the colours run. Kind of like the colours run off 100's and 1000's when they get wet. Actually, it was exactly like that. So top coat as a sealant isn't an option. If you're going to do something similar I suggest using nail glue. Also, shoving your finger into the beads isn't the greatest idea. I suggest using a rhinestone picker (if you're not sure what these are check out my Tools section) and placing them on a couple at a time.

My gosh, this post is getting long. Sorry! I still want to do a quick review of those Revlon polishes though, so if you don't care much for Revlon you can stop reading here.

Here's a couple of photos of the 3 Revlon polishes I picked up a week or so ago. The first one is in indirect sunlight, the second is in direct sunlight:

The colours in a clockwise direction are 'Girly', 'Emerald City', and 'Sublime Strawberry'. I would recommend all of them.

I'll start with 'Girly'. I think this colour might have been from the Edgy Elegance collection in 2011. It's a very pretty lavender-silver colour. It's probably best described as a frosted look. The camera didn't really pick it up, but it has a very interesting effect, there are distinct patches that are silver, and distinct patches that are lavender, but at the same time they blend together. It's very hard to explain. The formula on this is easy to work with, and it looks great with a matte top coat. Also, when I was taking this one off my nails, I found that the remover striped away the purple first, leaving a platinum silver underneath. This could be interesting to play with if you want a 'distressed' look. I might play with this sometime. My only annoyance in this polish was that it took FOREVER to get off. Might be worth soaking your nails to get this one off.

Second up is 'Emerald City'. I bought this one out of pure curiosity, plus the name relates back to the Wizard of Oz, so I had to have it. The bottle describes it as a 'matte suede', and I was curious to see what a matte suede looks like. For $4 in the sale I couldn't pass this up. I was pleasantly surprised. Very easy formula to work with, and it dried completely within about half an hour, which shocked me since I didn't use my fast drying top coat with it. As it's a matte I would have lost that effect by applying a top coat, so I'm a bit skeptical as to how long it will last without chipping. I'll update this post to let you know at some point. In saying that though, if you do want to use a top coat it really does look stunning with a bit of shine, it really brings out the subtle shimmer in it. I've put a clear top coat on the tip of my swatch in the photos above. Another interesting tidbit: it feels like teflon. Strange huh? Water runs right off it!
UPDATE: Without a top coat Emerald City lasted 5 days on my nails before chipping. That's better than most of my other polishes WITH a top coat. Of course, I did have a bit of tip wear after a few days, but that's to be expected with any polish.

Last but not least, ' Sublime Strawberry'. This is one of Revlon's scented polishes, so I bought this one out of curiousity too. The consistency on this one wasn't quite as nice as the other two I bought, but it's still workable if you're fast. I just found that it got tacky quickly. I was quite surprised about the strawberry smell. It really did smell nice, even when I was putting it on. I was convinced that once I put a top coat on the smell would disappear, but it still smelt pretty even with the top coat. I mean, I'm not gonna walk around smelling my fingers, coz let's face it that would just be creepy, but from a novelty perspective it's a bit fun.

So that's it! If you don't have access to China Glaze or OPI (or those other 'salon' brands), or just want something a bit cheaper that's still got a good formula, I recommend Revlon.

Sorry that was such a long post, think of it as compensation for my disappearance during exams. My last exam is on Monday, so maybe by Wednesday or Thursday next week I'll have a new post up. After Monday I'll have 5 weeks of HOLIDAYS! So you can expect blogging to go back to normal :)