Girly Bits Hocus Pocus (aka the best polish ever if you love holos like me!)

Hey everyone! Today I've got for you what is probably one of my new favorite polishes! Girly Bits Hocus Pocus! Hocus Pocus is a really simple holographic top coat that can be used with any base polish. I wanted to try and show you all exactly what that means with a bunch of before/after-type photos!

First though, this is what I actually ended up wearing for a few days. Unfortunately, I wasn't quite genius enough to take any pictures of Zoya Yasmeen before I added Hocus Pocus. Oops.

Over Zoya Yasmeen

Over Zoya Yasmeen

Over Zoya Yasmeen

Over Zoya Yasmeen

 If that wasn't enough to make you swoon, check under the jump here for more pictures with different colors!

Finger Paints Lemon Sour (And I owe my camera an apology)

So, I looked back and my camera is about 6 years old. I got it in 2005 so it's probably about time for a new one anyway, buuuut it wasn't what was turning my hands purple!

I got bored today and decided to finally make a light box. It is ugly and really badly constructed, but it work! (Long tutorial short: get a box, cut out the sides but leave a slight edge, then cover the holes with tissue paper and shine a light from the top, or side.) Haha. So, I thought I would use the same color polish I was wearing when I was complaining about my camera. Finger Paints Lemon Sour. I'm a sucker for yellows so I had to pick this up. (Side note: from their Gumdrops & Lollipops collection. Sucker. Har har. Ok.... anyway.) As it turns out it really isn't my favorite. I like the idea of the color. I really, REALLY do. Unfortunately, my hands don't like it as much. I think, looking again, that the awkward purple/red is noticeable even when I'm not taking a picture of my hands. Sad. :( Usually I don't care, but the color didn't really pop at me either so this probably isn't a color I'll be wearing much, if at all.

How does the light box look? I'm pretty thrilled. I'll have to try it with some other colors to see how they look. (I'm using this as a comparison from last post, which was taken in front of my computer while I was sitting on my bed.)

Like I said, I want to love the color, but it really does look terrible on me. That said, application was only so-so. The formula on this was thick and gloopy for me. It didn't want to flow over my nail well, so I had obvious glumpy lines and when I tried to smooth them out I got attacked by air bubbles. They aren't in this picture because I put a top coat on almost immediately, but only on this hand. My other hand is air-bubble city. I put a little thinner into the polish and that seemed to help with the actual application.

P.S. My baby, Ophelia, was very against the idea of using this box for my lighting needs. I set it on the ground and she just hopped right in and didn't want to move!

Finger Paints: Asylum

Hello everyone! Today I have for your one of the the flakie polishes from Finger Paints! This is my first time trying this one out, which is actually sort of sad since it took me so long to get a hold of it! I walked into Sally's one day and say these on display. I think I was trying to curb my spending on polish at the time so I only grabbed one and told myself I would come back for the others on pay day. I purchased Motley, which is a gorgeous blue-colored flakie. A week or so later I go back into Sally's intending to purchase the rest of the collection, only to find they are all gone. And they weren't just gone from the Sally's closest to me, they were gone from ALL of the Sally's in town. (I'm in a small-ish city in the middle of the United States.)

I figured I would just check back periodically and sooner or later they would get these back in. Fast forward two months and there was still no word on if they would be coming back. I was really bummed because they weren't online anywhere either (that I could find) and it was starting to look like I had completely missed out. All the while I'm reading blog after blog about them and just DROOLING because they were so pretty! Anyway, it was maybe two weeks ago when I walked into my Sally's to see if they had any of the Magnetic China Glaze polishes and I think my eyes about bugged out of my head when I saw a half-full display of these Finger Paints flakies! I managed to grab this one and then did the awkward happy dance because I finally had it! Yay! So...without further ado... pictures!

All of these are two coats of Finger Paints Asylum layered over Julep Viola. Viola is a deep, blacked purple. Not usually my favorite, but it worked great here. I'm not a fan of black or almost black polishes, but I wanted to flakies to stand out, and I don't like straight black much. (Maybe because I was one of the gothy high-school kids and wore black polish regularly then? I don't like the rewind maybe?)

Asylum is a mix of orange and dark blue flakies. This was my favorite of all the flakies offered because it shifts nearly every color of the rainbow depending on the light and your hand position.

I tried to get as much color shift as a could but my camera is really old and terrible. You can see the orange, dark blue, green, and some yellow on my pinkie though!

And a closeup

That's what I had one yesterday. Then, because it really makes the flakies pop, I went ahead and mattified it! Usually I don't like matte, but flakies are one of the exceptions. I used a matte topcoat from Warpaint Beauty, which can be purchased from Hot Topic. (For like $4, which works for me since I don't use matte topcoat often.)

What do you think? Matte or glossy? The other colors of the collection are Flecked, a green flakie; Motley, a blue flakie; Flashy, the orange/red/yellow flakie like Sally Hansen's Hidden Treasures, Essie's Shine of the Times, or Nubar 2010; and Twisted, which is pretty much all the flakie colors. I already have Motley, and I hope to get Flecked and Twisted as well. Flashy is one that you can pass on if you have any of the similar versions I mentioned.