Jazz fingers
Y'all remember when I said I wanted to add a little sparkle to my life with garish nail polish? Well, I meant it.
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The world is full of negativity, and I like adding a little color, a little sparkle, a little positivity to my immediate world. My hair bows play a large role in that and now, so will my nails. Now is the perfect time to do it too, since January is usually so cold and bleak.
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The world is full of negativity, and I like adding a little color, a little sparkle, a little positivity to my immediate world. My hair bows play a large role in that and now, so will my nails. Now is the perfect time to do it too, since January is usually so cold and bleak.
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I'm relatively new to the nail polish hobby, so when I learned that some of these polishes react to magnets I darn near did a backflip.
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Seriously, put a magnet under (or over) your fingertip and you can make a number of patterns in the polish. There's a bit of a learning curve when working with magnetics. You've got to hold the magnet in place until each coat is dry, including the clear coat on top. I didn't know that when I wore my first magnetic, Mooncat's "404: Soul Not Found," and while the polish was terribly pretty I didn't get a good cat's eye effect. The colors were still glorious, though. Teal in direct light, purple in dim or indirect light.
My next attempt, with Mooncat's "Black Widow," went better. I had a horseshoe magnet by then and was able to do a velvet look. The velvet effect seems to glow from within.
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Readers of my doll blog may recall that last year I "befriended" a black widow spider. Thus a nail polish themed after such a creature attracted my curiosity.
Other polishes are thermal and react to temperature, like EcoCreatedColors' "Moody Blues," or to the sun, like Mooncat's "Manchineel Tree."
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"Moody Blues" works pretty well in these chilly temperatures (I'm an eejit and almost never wear gloves). When my fingers are warm it's a nice sparkly nude, and when my fingers are cold it's...well, it's blue! It also shares a name with a band I love, so that's a positive.
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"Manchineel Tree" is supposed to shift from yellow-green to a deep yellow under sunlight, but my manicure never did that. Maybe I never was in the sun long enuff; it was too damn hot last summer to be out in the sun for any length of time. The yellow-green is lovely, though. It has a nice orange shimmer inside.
Other polishes are thermal and react to temperature, like EcoCreatedColors' "Moody Blues," or to the sun, like Mooncat's "Manchineel Tree."
<show them>
"Moody Blues" works pretty well in these chilly temperatures (I'm an eejit and almost never wear gloves). When my fingers are warm it's a nice sparkly nude, and when my fingers are cold it's...well, it's blue! It also shares a name with a band I love, so that's a positive.
<show this>
"Manchineel Tree" is supposed to shift from yellow-green to a deep yellow under sunlight, but my manicure never did that. Maybe I never was in the sun long enuff; it was too damn hot last summer to be out in the sun for any length of time. The yellow-green is lovely, though. It has a nice orange shimmer inside.
Pardon my sloppy cuticles! I always make a bit of a mess when I paint my nails. Sadly that manicure didn't live very long, certainly not the two weeks that I try to get out of a manicure. I let my nails grow too long and the polish shelled off when I bent my fingertips one too many times. When one has to grab onto one's pants leg in order to get one's leg in the car, one will bend one's fingertips and annihilate one's manicure. So I try to keep my nails short from now on, and it's paid off. The next time I wore "Manchineel Tree" it stayed put just fine.
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Some of these are just downright ugly.
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LOL, when I was in high school my grandmother saw me sporting sapphire blue nails, and she said "Moon, where'd you get that uuuugly nail polish???" I thought her reaction was hilarious (the answer was Wal-Mart, by the way), and I laughed even harder at Christmastime when she handed me a few new polish bottles and said "I bought the ugliest colors I could find!" Of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I digress. Some of these colors were deliberately made to be unattractive, like Holo Taco's "Born Ugly."
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Now this one...this one looks like dog vomit. Even the eBay seller politely called it "unique."
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This one is called"Dog Vomit" "Taco Tuesday," and it was NOT produced by Holo Taco. This one is another from Sinful Colors, and if it weren't ugly-looking enuff, it's also TACO-SCENTED!!! Now, I love tacos. Hard, soft, cheese, guacamole, black beans I'm all over tacos like flies on a dog turd, but who in the right mind would make a nail polish taco-scented??? Here's what this one looks like on my nails.
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I had a hearty LOL at this one, and anything that can make me laugh is a good thing in my book. And I gotta hand it to Sinful Colors for taking a chance on this one. All of Sinful Colors' Sweet & Salty collection is interesting; GingerlyPolished had a lot of fun trying 'em all out. "Pizza Party" also looks a little (a lot?) like vomit.
For this next one we go from controversial to downright infamous. This is OPI's "Pineapples Have Peelings Too!"
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I've noticed that in general yellow and green nail polishes (particularly yellow) get the most flack, and this is definitely yellow. "Pineapple" is kinda legendary among nail polish enthusiasts, because just about everyone hates it. It's got huge pieces of glitter and a sheer base color, so it's not the easiest stuff to put on.
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The haters have a point; this polish was a pain to put on and a pain to take off, and it was lumpy when I wore it. But I didn't find it that ugly. As with "My Happy Bass" it was a pretty good fall color, and it'll lend itself well to late spring too. For the record, I Scream Nails also did a gold-yellow polish with glitter flecks, called "All That Glitters." I don't have that one in my collection yet, but it's more cohesive than "Pineapples Have Peelings Too!" By the way, I think it's kinda a shame that yellow isn't popular for nails, as I wore yellow a lot in high school. It was a lovely, creamy banana shade, and it brightened many a day spent in algebra or history class.
Above I said that yellow can get a lot of hate, and that rule appears to apply to some shades of brown as well. The best examples I found are Holo Taco's "Solo Mission" and China Glaze's "Lug Your Designer Bag." Both were brown with iridescent flecks, and...I like 'em both, but I admit that they might be off-putting for some. "Solo Mission" was so hated that Holo Taco pulled it after only a year. I wasn't able to find "Solo Mission" on the secondary market (for a reasonable price, anyway), but I did find a bottle of "Lug Your Designer Bag" in pretty good shape.
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This reminds me of a nice gommy chocolate bar, softened from the heat of your hand. Mmm-mmmm! It doesn't look too bad, but it admittedly was divisive among my friends at the library. Some folks love it and some hate it, so I'd classify "Lug Your Designer Bag" as a wild card in the Ugly Uno card deck.
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Another interesting wild card is Starrily's "Blueberry Pi," which is NOT brown. This one is still available from Starrily, unlike the two brown ones.
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Nail polish fans don't like this one much on its own...
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...but when worn over black it's glorious (the black base is xxxx's "yyyy").
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Or it's glorious if you love blue. After Grandma hated my sapphire-hued nails my collection has never been without at least one deep blue shade. Right now my favorite of the blue ones is KBShimmer's "Constellation Prize." The shade of blue and the celestial theme bring to mind one of my favorite Faberge eggs. Or the TARDIS, take your pick.
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Yep, Grandma would've hated this one! By the way, Grandma and I had an extremely good relationship, but when she thought something was ugly she didn't hold back. She was funny about it though, not hateful like her sister/my great-aunt could sometimes be. Seriously, there were times when I wanted to tell Aunt Kathryn to mount her broom and fly away somewhere.
Speaking of flying and of the TARDIS, this one is called "Little Blue Box." Etsy shop AbominationCosmetics supplied this one, and it is indeed the perfect shade of police box blue. Being a Whovian I had to give this one special mention. Grandma would've hated this one too, LOL.
<show it on me>
Alrighty, that's quite enuff about ugly and about blue! Next I want to say a few words about green. My doll friends know of old that green is my favorite color, but when I was in high school green was not an easy color to find. I could find chrome shades and acid green shades, but a just plain grass green shade? Never found one, and that was a swine since my high school colors were green and gold. Maybe I just didn't know where to look, because green is everywhere.
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The Mooncat shade is called "Plankton." When I was wearing that one I said "Well, this stinks" at least once a day.
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Honorable mention goes to one of my magnetics, ILNP's "Mad House." This one is actually beautiful purple shade, but when magnetized it throws green stripes.
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"Mad House" makes me think of my sister and me. She loves purple, I love green, and we're both just a little mad.
Before wrapping this up I want to look at bar glitter. Some polish lovers hate bar glitter, and that of course made me want some polish with bar glitter in it. Behold! From left, these are DrunkFairyPolish's "Slice of Heaven," Jessica Cosmetic's "Witch's Brew," and TwinkleHexPolish's pink and blue bar topper.
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LOL, when I was in high school my grandmother saw me sporting sapphire blue nails, and she said "Moon, where'd you get that uuuugly nail polish???" I thought her reaction was hilarious (the answer was Wal-Mart, by the way), and I laughed even harder at Christmastime when she handed me a few new polish bottles and said "I bought the ugliest colors I could find!" Of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I digress. Some of these colors were deliberately made to be unattractive, like Holo Taco's "Born Ugly."
<show the bottle>
This one was apparently based off of Pantone 448 C, an olive drab shade that I usually see reserved for camo or military garb. Not gloriously beautiful, certainly, but it's got its place in the world. I personally like "Born Ugly," because it's an extremely versatile shade and it's particularly good for fall. This is how it looked on me.
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Definitely not as flashy as my other stuff, but I don't find it hideous. I wish I could've gotten all four of Holo Taco's pretty-ugly colors, or the Haute Garbage Capsule, as they called it. In addition to the creme "Born Ugly" there was a magnetic, a hologram, and a glitter, and they all weren't half-bad.
Another one in this "love it or hate it" category is Essie's "My Happy Bass."
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This one is a yellow ochre shade, kinda like Dijon mustard...or the sky before a tornado roars through. I can't find the pictures online anymore, but I've seen pictures of the sky over parts of Indiana on April 11th, 1965, hours before the Palm Sunday outbreak commenced. The sky was glowing yellow. I kid y'all not. Green is usually the color folks associate with tornadoes, but certain shades of yellow are not to be trusted either. Anyway, "My Happy Bass" isn't as versatile as "Born Ugly" is, but it suits itself well for fall.
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Or for summer, as it reminds me of how the sky can look when the sun shines through a thin layer of smoke. Thank God, I've not yet seen the sky glow yellow due to violent weather. I've seen it glow green a couple'a times, though.
<show it on me>
Definitely not as flashy as my other stuff, but I don't find it hideous. I wish I could've gotten all four of Holo Taco's pretty-ugly colors, or the Haute Garbage Capsule, as they called it. In addition to the creme "Born Ugly" there was a magnetic, a hologram, and a glitter, and they all weren't half-bad.
Another one in this "love it or hate it" category is Essie's "My Happy Bass."
<show the bottle>
This one is a yellow ochre shade, kinda like Dijon mustard...or the sky before a tornado roars through. I can't find the pictures online anymore, but I've seen pictures of the sky over parts of Indiana on April 11th, 1965, hours before the Palm Sunday outbreak commenced. The sky was glowing yellow. I kid y'all not. Green is usually the color folks associate with tornadoes, but certain shades of yellow are not to be trusted either. Anyway, "My Happy Bass" isn't as versatile as "Born Ugly" is, but it suits itself well for fall.
<show it on me>
Or for summer, as it reminds me of how the sky can look when the sun shines through a thin layer of smoke. Thank God, I've not yet seen the sky glow yellow due to violent weather. I've seen it glow green a couple'a times, though.
Another Essie color is "Belugaria," and it's another "love it or hate it" shade.
"Belugaria" hails from when textured or "caviar" manicures were all the rage, and if the YouTube videos I've seen are to be believed then they legit do look like caviar.
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That's certainly an interesting look! It makes my nails look a little like smashed blackberries, which coming from me is a compliment because I love blackberries. This polish isn't as pleasant to the touch as my others are, though, and it was a bitch to clean off. Still, I applaud Essie and "Belugaria" for being unique. It was no gray area when I wore it.
Now this one...this one looks like dog vomit. Even the eBay seller politely called it "unique."
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This one is called
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I had a hearty LOL at this one, and anything that can make me laugh is a good thing in my book. And I gotta hand it to Sinful Colors for taking a chance on this one. All of Sinful Colors' Sweet & Salty collection is interesting; GingerlyPolished had a lot of fun trying 'em all out. "Pizza Party" also looks a little (a lot?) like vomit.
For this next one we go from controversial to downright infamous. This is OPI's "Pineapples Have Peelings Too!"
<show it>
I've noticed that in general yellow and green nail polishes (particularly yellow) get the most flack, and this is definitely yellow. "Pineapple" is kinda legendary among nail polish enthusiasts, because just about everyone hates it. It's got huge pieces of glitter and a sheer base color, so it's not the easiest stuff to put on.
<show it on me>
The haters have a point; this polish was a pain to put on and a pain to take off, and it was lumpy when I wore it. But I didn't find it that ugly. As with "My Happy Bass" it was a pretty good fall color, and it'll lend itself well to late spring too. For the record, I Scream Nails also did a gold-yellow polish with glitter flecks, called "All That Glitters." I don't have that one in my collection yet, but it's more cohesive than "Pineapples Have Peelings Too!" By the way, I think it's kinda a shame that yellow isn't popular for nails, as I wore yellow a lot in high school. It was a lovely, creamy banana shade, and it brightened many a day spent in algebra or history class.
Above I said that yellow can get a lot of hate, and that rule appears to apply to some shades of brown as well. The best examples I found are Holo Taco's "Solo Mission" and China Glaze's "Lug Your Designer Bag." Both were brown with iridescent flecks, and...I like 'em both, but I admit that they might be off-putting for some. "Solo Mission" was so hated that Holo Taco pulled it after only a year. I wasn't able to find "Solo Mission" on the secondary market (for a reasonable price, anyway), but I did find a bottle of "Lug Your Designer Bag" in pretty good shape.
<show it>
This reminds me of a nice gommy chocolate bar, softened from the heat of your hand. Mmm-mmmm! It doesn't look too bad, but it admittedly was divisive among my friends at the library. Some folks love it and some hate it, so I'd classify "Lug Your Designer Bag" as a wild card in the Ugly Uno card deck.
<show it on me>
Another interesting wild card is Starrily's "Blueberry Pi," which is NOT brown. This one is still available from Starrily, unlike the two brown ones.
<show it>
Nail polish fans don't like this one much on its own...
<show it on me>
...but when worn over black it's glorious (the black base is xxxx's "yyyy").
<show it over black>
Or it's glorious if you love blue. After Grandma hated my sapphire-hued nails my collection has never been without at least one deep blue shade. Right now my favorite of the blue ones is KBShimmer's "Constellation Prize." The shade of blue and the celestial theme bring to mind one of my favorite Faberge eggs. Or the TARDIS, take your pick.
<show this on me>
Yep, Grandma would've hated this one! By the way, Grandma and I had an extremely good relationship, but when she thought something was ugly she didn't hold back. She was funny about it though, not hateful like her sister/my great-aunt could sometimes be. Seriously, there were times when I wanted to tell Aunt Kathryn to mount her broom and fly away somewhere.
Speaking of flying and of the TARDIS, this one is called "Little Blue Box." Etsy shop AbominationCosmetics supplied this one, and it is indeed the perfect shade of police box blue. Being a Whovian I had to give this one special mention. Grandma would've hated this one too, LOL.
<show it on me>
Alrighty, that's quite enuff about ugly and about blue! Next I want to say a few words about green. My doll friends know of old that green is my favorite color, but when I was in high school green was not an easy color to find. I could find chrome shades and acid green shades, but a just plain grass green shade? Never found one, and that was a swine since my high school colors were green and gold. Maybe I just didn't know where to look, because green is everywhere.
<show the bottles>
The Mooncat shade is called "Plankton." When I was wearing that one I said "Well, this stinks" at least once a day.
<show this on me>
<elaborate>
Honorable mention goes to one of my magnetics, ILNP's "Mad House." This one is actually beautiful purple shade, but when magnetized it throws green stripes.
<show me wearing it>
"Mad House" makes me think of my sister and me. She loves purple, I love green, and we're both just a little mad.
Before wrapping this up I want to look at bar glitter. Some polish lovers hate bar glitter, and that of course made me want some polish with bar glitter in it. Behold! From left, these are DrunkFairyPolish's "Slice of Heaven," Jessica Cosmetic's "Witch's Brew," and TwinkleHexPolish's pink and blue bar topper.
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I don't know what the deal is with bar glitter. I love it! All three of mine are toppers, by the way, but some bar glitter polish can be a base too.
Last July I read a post on Reddit where a young woman (yes, a young woman) told an older woman that men don't go for extra-glittery nail polish. Got news for ya, sister: a lot of us with glittery fingertips are too old to give a flying burrito what men think, and men who mind don't matter anyway. My dad happened to love my blue nail polish, the same stuff Grandma hated, so beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.
Last July I read a post on Reddit where a young woman (yes, a young woman) told an older woman that men don't go for extra-glittery nail polish. Got news for ya, sister: a lot of us with glittery fingertips are too old to give a flying burrito what men think, and men who mind don't matter anyway. My dad happened to love my blue nail polish, the same stuff Grandma hated, so beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.
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