Show Me Your Nails 2.0

[Tamara76]

Due to some technical glitches with the original Show Me Your Nails Thread, I am starting a new thread with @vegchililover78's blessing (She says "hello," by the way!).

Please share your nail looks, nail art and manicures!

...And don't forget to check out @Beadshopgirl's Nail Stamping Thread for stamping inspiration! ❤️  

https://community.sephora.com/t5/Nailed-It/The-Nail-Stamping-Thread/m-p/3328865

[Titian06]

I love your mani, @RGbrown ! 🥰  These colors are right up my alley! 😁

[RGbrown]

@Titian06 

Thanks so much! ✨

[Saradestin]

I love it so much @RGbrown !! When we are all into intense colors, seeing something more toned down catches my attention even more. Those colors combine to perfection. Gorgeous fall inspired mani that can be worn any time! 😍😍

[RGbrown]

@Saradestin 

Thanks so much! I'm always surprised when I do a mani like this as it's not usually my jam, but I guess even I get tired of bright bright bright every now and again 😂 It's nice to occasionally mix things up!

[Saradestin]

This week I am going with a new acquisition from the last Color4Nails Sale (I purchased only two polishes and non under that sale because one was already on sale and the other excluded) This one is Cadillacquer in Eivor, a gorgeous thermal that goes from a dark eggplant in cold to bright green in warm. It is packed with flakes that go from yellow, orange, to red, magenta. I LOVE it!! And the changes are so quick and intense! When I saw the pictures in the website, I was not expecting them to be true, TBH, but they are! 

@WinglessOne , we have the same great taste! 😁😉

INTERIOR WOTH FLASH

Warm nails - cold tipsColdWarm nails - cold tipsCold nails - warm tips

EXTERIOR UNDER BRIGHT SUN

ColdColdHotHot nails -cold tips

[Skunk12puzzola]

@Saradestin this is just too cool for words, wow....love to see those color shifting!! 💜💚

[Saradestin]

Oh yes it is @Skunk12puzzola ! I love it so much! These thermals have stolen my heart (and part of my money! 💸💸) 😅

[ather]

@Saradestin  Oooo look at that shift! So cool!

[Saradestin]

It is so much fun @ather ! Every time I look at my nails I see something different! 

[WinglessOne]

@Saradestin  Nice photos of the various thermal shifts! 

[Saradestin]

You know them well @WinglessOne ! 😁 

[Titian06]

Amazing and gorgeous, @Saradestin ! 😍

[Saradestin]

Sure it is @Titian06 ! Thank you! 🤗

[RGbrown]

@Saradestin 

Geezus, what an effing beautiful polish (sorry, crude is my love language 🤣). The green, the purple, the flakies, all of it is stunning!!! 😍😍😍

[Saradestin]

It is @RGbrown !! It deserves exactly those words! I have to thank you, because I wouldn’t have checked Color4Nails, where I found this one, if it was not because of your post about their sale 😁

[WinglessOne]

2 new-to-me brands, a few thermals, and a carryover from my last mani that surprisingly hasn’t chipped yet. 

Top row: left hand, aka the saint hand. Bottom row: right hand, aka the dragon hand. All photos use indoor lighting. Not the best ombre/tri-phase photos; might update with more photos later.

Left - the saint hand: 

Spoiler

All are 2 coats unless otherwise stated. 

Thumb: A-England Saint George. A deep blackened teal blue with a rather subtle teal shimmer (amusingly, my camera highlights it yet it’s hard to see in person) and, somewhere in there, even subtler holo glitter… but I don’t even see a holo effect in the bottle, so… 🤷‍♀️ It was opaque at one coat, but I added a second anyway, and I don’t recall if the shimmer was more obvious with the single coat. This polish has a nice wide paddle brush, unlike its counterpart (Dragon)—which is odd since they’re from the same collection. St. George is thicker than Dragon, in a typically too-thick cream polish way, making it kind of a chore to get an even coat. It’s not terrible, but I’ll thin it out anyway. This and Dragon are my first A-England polishes. Had I only bought St. George, I’d be unimpressed by the brand (though I try not to judge an entire brand based on a single item). But then there’s Dragon, which I’ll talk about in a bit. 

Index: Emily de Molly Pale Horse 2.0. A purple > green > slightly gold shifting multichrome with many holo pinpoints. It flooded my nail fold because I expected a thinner consistency. Cleanup created that sharp-looking ridge at the base of the nail, and I’ll probably redo this nail to fix that, using thinner coats. I wasn’t in the mood for that at time of mani (2 AM). This is my first EdM polish, and the original Pale Horse is a shade I once considered buying. According to EdM, this 2.0 version’s more purple than the original’s pink shift and yep, I can see that. 

Middle: Cadillacquer Eivor (3 coats). A tri-thermal that’s blackened blueish plum when cold and bright cabbage green when warm, with an in-between berry purple phase and lots of iridescent orange/pink/red flakes and glitter. This one’s fun! If I wash my hands in cool water, sometimes this nail will show a band of bright green along the nail line while the rest of the nail’s still some shade of berry or plum. Or I’ll get cold state color(s) on the center of the nail while the perimeter is green, as my fingertip warms up. 

Ring: Painted Polish Regal AF (3 coats). A tri-thermal that’s deep blue violet when cold and pink when warm, with an in-between purple phase, packed with gold flakes. That shift is different from what the brand describes: blue violet is supposed to be the in-between phase. Painted Polish sent this to replace the broken bottle from my previous order, hooray! Regal AF is a very reactive thermal: this pink nail’s tipped purple right now while no other thermals have started their warm-to-cold shifts. (Well wait, Eivor does have a dot of purple on my left middle nail tip now.) 

Pinky: Painted Polish Mermaid In Mauve. A lovely deep mauve with purple, turquoise, green, and gold flakes. I didn’t leave home today or even go outside, so I haven’t been able to see this (or any other polish, aside from Imogen) in direct sunlight yet. If the weather’s not overcast tomorrow and I’m not feeling crummy again, I’ll get to see if Mermaid shimmers in the sun. 

Right - the dragon hand: 

Spoiler

All are 2 coats unless otherwise stated. 

Thumb: A-England Dragon. A warm deep green with coppery shimmer and rather subtle holo glitter. Like St. George, this was also a one-coater that I added a second coat to. Unlike St. George, Dragon has an annoyingly thin round brush, but I had almost no trouble painting this large nail. Dragon behaved much better for me than St. George: a better consistency (not too thick or thin) and more self-leveling. Plus, the shimmer’s more evident in person. So is the holo, which is still very subtle but more noticeable than St. George’s holo in person. (And I do see some holo rainbow in Dragon's bottle.) Overall, Dragon is gorgeous. 

Index: Cadillacquer Eivor (3 coats). Even on this short nail, thermal shifts start when this fingertip gets chilly, and the display is very noticeable. 

Middle: Cadillacquer Ivo (3 coats). A thermal that's charcoal brown when cold and pink when warm, with copper, red, pink, and gold flakes, and plenty of powder blue hex glitter. I stalked this shade for a while. Now that I have it, I’m in love with it. Some of that may be personal bias: I don’t know if Cadillacquer named this polish after a specific person, but this shade looks very 1980s 4AD to me, especially Cocteau Twins album/EP artwork. Back in the day, Ivo Watts-Russell was the mastermind behind the 4AD record label. I think of him and various 4AD bands (especially Cocteau Twins) each time I look at this nail. 

Ring: Zoya Imogen. This Magical PixieDust has been on this nail since June 28 and shows just slight tip wear. I decided to keep it in place and put a regular PD on an adjacent nail for texture comparison. Both PDs are bare (no top coat). 

Pinky: Zoya Dahlia. A regular matte PixieDust that's black and loaded with silver glitter and reflective pinpoints. Running my thumb over Dahlia and Imogen, they’re both gritty. But thanks to Dahlia's smaller glitter sizes resulting in more grit per cm, this polish feels more sandpapery than Imogen. Also, poor Dahlia’s getting outshined by Imogen’s big holo dots. Dahlia’s still very sparkly though. 

5 of these polishes are from my recent Color4Nails order, and 9 are new additions to my collection. Well, technically all 10 are, but I've worn Imogen before (actually didn't remove it for this mani) so it's less new than the others. After gathering the many old polishes scattered about and wondering why the heck I keep ordering more, I decided it's time to buy some swatch sticks so I can keep track of everything. I also have an ongoing Powerpoint/Keynote file of nail swatch photos for that purpose, which is why I'd resisted physical swatch sticks. But I think physical swatches will be helpful down the road. 

[ather]

@WinglessOne  Ooooo Dragon is so pretty!! 

[WinglessOne]

Thanks @ather !  I wish I could show off Dragon's very subtle holo rainbow. Even when I see it in person, my camera doesn't. 🤦‍♀️

[RGbrown]

@WinglessOne 

Ahhhhhhh, they're all gorgeous, I can't even begin to pick a fave. I'm so glad you were able to get Regal AF, it's stunning!

When I first started getting into the indies and smaller brands, I swear I heard that A England's holo were super strong and really special, but the few I've picked up have only been "fine"? They're nice polishes, and I'll grab one on sale here or there, but I've never been impressed enough to go out of my way looking for them. Maybe it's just that I'm not versed enough to know which collections are the best or most desirable, but overall, the brand is "fine, whatever" for me.

Do you have a label maker? If not, I humbly suggest one for a swatch stick project. When I first started swatching mine, I was all "oh a sharpie will be fine", and then proceeded to rub the writing off quite a few over the next few months, even with minimal handling. I don't remember exact counts now, but I think I started swatching around 500 polishes, and was much closer to 1000 when I finally caved and got a label maker...labels became a months-long project, a few here, a few there, and would have been soooo much easier if I had just bitten the bullet and tackled it when I swatched everything to begin with. 

I list the polishes in the notes of all of my pictures and put them in a nail folder so I can find them easily, but swatch sticks are definitely helpful as well...it's way easier to compare them right next to each other than trying to mentally hold two pictures next to each other (and even more so when it's a shade I haven't used and photographed yet...that's the bulk of my swatch stick activity, seeing how different unused polishes look together for potential future manis). I am building towards a photo album of every single polish I own, but that'll take a while, especially since I keep buying more lol, but polishes are swatched on sticks as soon as they arrive, so at least I've got those available as a tool in the mean time! 

[WinglessOne]

Thanks @RGbrown ! Regal AF was well worth the extended wait! 

A-England is odd... 

Spoiler

Even at their own site, where they describe some polishes as "blazing holo," their promo photos are completely holo-less. Normally I'd chalk that up to how tricky is can be to capture holos on camera. But now that I've tried 2 polishes that supposedly have some holo glitter (Dragon does, but I dare someone to show me any trace of rainbow in St. George), I'm very unlikely to buy anything else from this brand. I love Dragon, but I don't trust the brand's shade descriptions, and who knows if other polishes misbehave like St. George. 

I redid my St. George nail this morning because the original goopy application bothered me. This time I used a single fairly thin coat. That got me full opacity but still no self-leveling, so I had to go in with a second very thin coat to try smoothing things out. I keep thinking of how some Londontown Lakurs are frighteningly patchy on coat one but magically smooth out on coat two. St. George isn't like that. (Eh, I'll still try thinning it though.) And the shimmer's no more evident in one coat than it was in two—plus, I still don't see anything remotely holographic here. And this is from someone who's not a linear holo fan. Here I am hunting for a rainbow, however faint, that supposedly exists, and being very disappointed that it's not there. 🤣 

If Color4Nails accepted returns, this polish would be one. At least I didn't pay full price, and I can maybe use it as a base color. I might do a brush swap between St. George and Dragon, though. 

I do have a label maker, but ordered smaller tape to fit the swatch sticks. I've done that Sharpie "what the heck did this used to say" dance too many times with other acrylic surfaces to take chances. 🙂 At some point, I'll build a personal database of nail swatch photos (same with lip swatches) so I can easily find things by color family and/or finish and do side-by-side comparisons. Meanwhile, swatch sticks will be helpful as you mentioned. 

On the day I plan to remove a mani, I sometimes throw a white or black quick-dry polish over my thumbs (sometimes also other nails) and then swatch a few polishes over them, to see how they work together. I like using my thumbs for this because I can swatch 4-6 shades on one nail that way, in very close proximity, for easy comparison. I'm about to remove all polish from my nails anyway, so why not play a little first? Swatch sticks are still a good reference tool, of course. 

[RGbrown]

@WinglessOne 

I'm sorry to hear St George was such a dud. I'm sure thinner will help with the texture, but yeah, their holo (or lack thereof) is a bit disappointing. I can't remember which one now, but one of mine is the same...it's supposed to be a holo, but if it's got any, it's dang near impossible to detect 😐

Speaking of skinny tape (yes! Worth it!), I saw someone once that said they just use the wider tape and then cut them all down before sticking them on. What?!? Nope nope nope, I couldn't imagine adding that to the to-do list while doing these up 😳😂

I definitely had to make a couple of educated guesses while labeling my older sticks, ones that had gone completely blank. I'm fairly certain I got them right, but I'm not sure I'll ever know 100% unless I lay out all of my polishes and match up the sticks with them. Not happening, not any time soon at least 😋