Sation Oh My Oceania

Yes, another NOTD! Sation has recently revamped their line of polishes, and Oh My Oceania is the first one I've tried. If the others live up to this one, there will definitely be more of these in my future.

First, Sation has revamped both their bottle and brush. The old standard round bottles have been replaced with this:

I really, really like the new bottles. They feel heavy and solid. The brush is super nice as well. The brush is of the wider and flatter variety, but not so wide that I had difficulty polishing my pinky nails - so smaller than an OPI Prowide brush, to give you an idea.

Look at this color! Look at the shimmer! I mean, seriously. This is one amazing polish.

The formula was very, very impressive. It was just the right consistency, no pooling or puddling or any other weirdness. Very smooth, very pigmented, but I didn't experience any staining either on my cuticles or my nails.

Two very enthusiastic thumbs up from me! =D

The new Sation line is available at nailsupplies.us and TransDesign, here and here respectively. They are also available on the Sation website, here. Since I was ordering just one bottle, I ordered mine from this eBay seller.

Hope y'all are all doing well, and thanks for reading!

butter LONDON Victoriana

I actually wore Victoriana for the first time months ago, and completely forgot to post my pictures. Whoops! 

Perfect formula, two easy coats.

I love the silvery shimmery finish on this one. It makes me think of brocade, which I suppose is the idea with a polish named Victoriana. =)

I don't own many Butter London polishes. I find the price tag a little hard to take on their more standard colors, but I will pony up when the finishes or shades are more unique. I guess that's true for me with a lot of brands though!

Sorry I didn't have more to say on this on. It's really a great polish, but I'm just coming off of a 2-day migraine, and I'm finding it difficult to summon much enthusiasm. Trust me, it's not the polish - it's me!

Hope you all are doing well. Thanks for reading! <3

Dollish Polish Expecto Patronum

You know how awesome it is when you really want a polish, and then when you finally get it, it actually exceeds your expectations? That's what happened to me with Expecto Patronum. =)

I had wanted this polish for months, and I finally bit the bullet last time Dollish Polish restocked. I ordered this one and Cold Winds Are Rising (Game of Thrones, yeah!), and I decided to wear Expecto Patronum first. Because it's white, and because it's a jelly, I expected to have issues with streaking and opacity. The little bits of beautiful teal peeking out convinced me that any work I had to do to make Expecto Patronum look good would be worth it. 

This is the part where it exceeded my expectations. After one coat, I actually gasped at how pretty it is. After two coats, I was shocked that I wasn't seeing streaks and that it was almost opaque. Three coats, and it was perfection.

The end result is this delicate, ethereal beauty. It dried quickly, even at three coats, and it's smooth with just one coat of top coat. I really can't believe how much I love this polish.

I mean... wow. Just wow.

Dollish Polish is available at Dolly's Etsy Store for now, but she has said that she's relocating soon, so keep an eye on her Etsy page so you know what's up. Just like a lot of the indie brands these days, she does close the store occasionally so that she's able to keep up with the demand. But I promise, this polish is completely worth it.

Some New Barielle Shades - Swatches and Comparisons

Barielle has added something like 90 new shades to their lineup, and I ordered four of them a couple of weeks ago. Once they arrived, I realized that I had somewhat similar colors in my stashes for three of them, so I did some comparisons. Here we go.

First up is Lilly of the Valley. It's a little sheer, but it built up okay after three coats. The formula is decent - a little on the watery side, but nothing horrible.

This reminded me a lot of FingerPaints Sketch N Etch. As you can see in this pic, they're not exactly dupes, but they are pretty close. Overall, I like Sketch N Etch better. I feel like the color is deeper, and the fact that it's slightly cooler makes it more wearable for me.

Next is Island Breeze. The formula on this one was better than Lilly of the Valley. It's opaque in two coats.

The closest thing I own to Island Breeze is Orly Bailamos. Bailamos is lighter, but these polishes are definitely cousins.

Then we have Sky's the Limit. Great formula, two coats, no complaints.

The interesting thing about Sky's the Limit is that it's nearly identical to FingerPaints Artistic Azure, which is one of my very, very favorite blues, and which is now discontinued. If you've had a yen for Artistic Azure, this could be a great replacement for it. They are even more alike in person than they look in this picture.

And finally, End of the Rainbow. Sadly, I am not a fan of this one at all. It was still patchy and kind of transparent at three coats, and it's frostier than it looks in these pictures. One of my friends said that it looked better layered over black and that it may look good layered over a darker teal, so I guess I'll try that before tossing it in the swap box. But on its own... yeah, not thrilling.

Overall, I guess I'm a little disappointed. They aren't bad, exactly, but they certainly aren't unique. The formula on them wasn't good enough to make me really want to chose them over the other similar colors I own. I'll probably keep Sky's the Limit just because Artistic Azure is discontinued and I love it so much. I'm afraid the others are probably destined for my swap box.

I hope these comparisons and swatches are helpful! Thanks for reading. =)

NerdLacquer Event Horizon

Today I have Event Horizon, the last of the three NerdLacquers that I purchased a few weeks ago. Event Horizon features a murky teal jelly base that's packed with teal and holo glitters, plus some teal hex glitter. 

This is two coats. It looks absolutely fine at two coats in person, and the base doesn't look nearly this sheer in real life. Lighting and macro are unforgiving mistresses in this case though. 

I find all NerdLacquers incredibly difficult to photograph. It's hard to show just how sparkly they are, and the depth of the colors is really hard to convey in pictures.

The formula was good - a little on the thick side, but there's a TON of glitter in there, so it didn't bother me too badly. I used a coat of Gelous and a coat of Pro FX, and it was little gritty as it was drying, so I added another coat of Pro FX. It's completely smooth now.

I ended up taking a ton of pictures trying to capture just how awesome this polish is. These are some of the better ones:

So there ya go, Event Horizon. Amazing. =)

NerdLacquers are available on Amanda's Etsy shop, NerdLacquer.com. Her shop is closed for a few days while she catches up, but she says that everything is still in active production. She just needs a few days to catch up after getting slammed with orders. *adds fuel to the fire* 

Thanks for reading!

NerdLacquer Antisocial Media

Another huge winner from NerdLacquer. Shimmery teal with tons of fine glitter plus teal and gold hexagonal glitter. Absolutely stunning. Dig the bottle shots.

I used three coats for this mani. Two was almost good enough, but I wanted it a tiny bit more opaque.

I topped Antisocial Media off with one coat of Gelous and one coat of Pro FX. I'm not entirely certain that it needed the Gelous, but I figured I'd err on the side of caution. It's smooth as glass.

The formula is fantastic, completely fuss-free. I'm just as impressed with Antisocial Media as I was with Shiny. 

Beautiful, no?

I absolutely want more of these. I love the colors and the formulas, and I adore the names and themes. =D

Hope y'all are doing well! Thanks for reading!

a-england St George

Gird your loins and hide your wallets! Today I have one of the most amazing polishes I've seen in a while, St George, from a-england's new collection, The Legends. I have a mixture of outdoor and lightbox photos for you because I was really doing everything I could to capture just how amazing this polish is. The lightbox photos pretty accurately represent what the polish looks like indoors for me.

What we have here is a scattered holographic polish that I've seen described as dark teal or forest green. Against my skin tone, it certainly does pull more to forest green than to teal, though I have seen some people on whom it does look very teal indeed.

The holographic effect is not very apparent, but it's definitely there. But even when the rainbow sparkles aren't showing themselves, this is still a serious stunner of a polish.

The formula is to.die.for. This is two coats, but that's only because I'm a habitual two-coater. It looked just like this at one coat. The formula is on the thicker side, but not in an annoying way, and it flows quite precisely on the nail. I barely had to clean up at all.

St George instantly shop into my Top 20 polish list - maybe even Top 10. It's that beautiful. I own nothing like it. Get it. Seriously!

The a-england Legends collection can be purchased on Llarowe when it's in stock. You can also order directly from a-england, but you currently have to do so by e-mail because the collection is not up on their site yet. The contact address is hello@a-england.co.uk. They offer free worldwide shipping, and mine took less than a week to arrive. =)

Happy Tuesday! Thanks for reading!

Nubar Indigo Illusion

Okay. I have no idea how to describe this polish, but I'm going to try! Indigo Illusion is another of Nubar's stunning duochromes. I would say that the base color is a pale, murky teal. I was expecting to be slightly more blue, but it has a distinct green tinge on my skintone. It has a shimmer that is sort of a lilac color.

The duochrome in Indigo Illusion shifts to a light purple, which I couldn't seem to capture, then all the way to green and to gold.

This polish was a major challenge to photograph, so I finally settled for just taking a bunch of pictures instead of trying to capture the individual color shifts. 

It really is simply amazing, and I own nothing even remotely like it. I was afraid that it wouldn't work on my skintone, but I truly ended up loving it. The formula was flawless - very easy to control, full coverage in two coats. Total love.

Hope you all are having a lovely Sunday evening. Thank you for reading!