Literary Lacquers - A Thousand Christmas Trees (Custom Polish) Swatches and Review

Today's post is super exciting for me. The featured polish was a custom order made for me by the awesome Amy from Literary Lacquers, and it's stunning! She makes the most amazing holos; they have a deep 3D effect due to the jelly-esque formula that suspends micro glitter nicely, and I knew it would be perfect for my dream polish. I asked for a Christmas tree green with little holo glitters to make it look like sparkling colorful lights, and it couldn't fit the description better. Check this out!!

Literary Lacquers - A Thousand Christmas Trees

This is truly a sparkle bomb in the sun. It's the perfect neutral green (not too teal, not too yellow) with strong smooth holo that's accented with multiple sizes of silver holo micro glitter. So gorgeous. So rich. So festive.   I love how the glitter sparkles separately from the rest of the holo, giving it the "Christmas tree lights" glow.

The glitter lays within the layers, not on top, so the finish isn't bumpy or chunky and it's glassy smooth with a coat of Glisten & Glow HK Girl top coat (my favorite).  Although it has a jelly-like formula, it is completely opaque in two coats, though I did three to add a tiny bit more depth (also, I may have dented a nail or two and wanted to smooth it out ;o). It's even beautiful in dimmer lighting as you can see in the photos below (indirect daylight) - I think it shows the "lights" more prominently:

Amy really hit it out of the park, that's for sure.  It's even better than I imagined, and I want to say thank you, thank you, thank you to Amy for making this beauty for me.  It's beyond perfect.  I love it so much.

Now for the best part.

Although this was a custom made for me, Amy came up with a great idea for Black Friday: it's available as a gift with purchase for the next week (11/25/2013 - 12/2/2013) in the Literary Lacquers Etsy shop! All orders between $20 and $49 will receive a mini bottle. All orders $50 and above will receive a full size bottle. There's no code needed; it will be added to your package as it ships! As far as I know, it will not be available at any time after this, so if you want it be sure to get your order in! I highly recommend If It Pleases You (a sultry reddish plum - elegant and classy with an edge) and Jack Rose (a unique caramel), or Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster if you love bright sparkles!

China Glaze - Agro: Holo Layering

Just a quick post today.

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China Glaze Agro and HITS Hefesto

This is China Glaze Agro with one coat of HITS Hefesto over the top. As you can see, Hefesto kind of mutes whatever color is underneath. I love the bright holo effect it creates, but wish it didn't grey out the base color so much. Oh well, the sage green holo it turned into was still pretty awesome.


Here are a couple pictures of Agro on its own:

China Glaze - Agro

Agro is a sage-olive green shimmer that has a bit of that "glowy" appearance. It gains a lot more depth with a top coat, and is on the edgy side of chic.

Agro was part of the China Glaze Hunger Games collection in spring 2012, but as of now it's still available on Transdesign. HITS Hefesto is available at Llarowe and Ninja Polish.

CrowsToes - Triple Black Diamond: Swatches and Review

Ahhh, I LOVE this polish! I swatched it on just my thumb first but was so crazy about it I had to put it on the rest.

CrowsToes - Triple Black Diamond (over China Glaze Liquid Leather

Triple Black Diamond is actually a clear base that's full of small black, purple, silver holo and DUOCHROME SQUARE glitter.  It's mostly opaque at three coats on its own, (which makes the individual black glitter more prominent).  I decided to layer it over black to make the other colors stand out more, and it has incredible depth!   It also looks amazing over A England St. George (Steffels has some awesome pictures of it, which is why I bought this polish in the first place).

CrowsToes polishes can be purchased from Llarowe's shop, but you have to catch them when they're in stock!  

Dollish Polish - Toxic Avenger: Swatches and Review

Funny story about this polish.

Dollish Polish - Toxic Avenger

Toxic Avenger is an amazing duochrome AND holo foil. The duochrome is similar to Orly Space Cadet or Hard Candy Beetle: it's a purple to gold/green duochrome in a teal base, but this has a ton of holo pigment added to it. Usually, the holo takes over in the sun, and the duochrome really comes out in indirect light. Basically, it's just all-around interesting! It's also not being made anymore, so I'd pretty much given up hope at ever finding a bottle.

This was from a couple Dollish sales ago when the "bonus mystery shade" was a mini bottle of the original Toxic Avenger. I actually didn't know about the sale until it was already 15 minutes into it or something, and all the Toxic Avengers were in carts already (if you don't know, Big Cartel SUPPOSEDLY will hold it for 30 minutes once it's in someone's cart so it doesn't get taken from them while they're in the payment process).

So I waited for another 15 minutes (wildly refreshing the page) until it was finally dropped from someone's cart into MINE... WOOHOO! I was so excited and hurriedly went to payment and just as I was about to pay on Paypal's site... BOOM, it's gone out of my cart (obviously, Big Cartel's hold does NOT always work). OH, MISERY!

So I sat there for ANOTHER half hour wildly refreshing waiting for someone else to let go of one in their cart. And FINALLY, I got one and was able to pay for it, and you can bet I did it LICKETY SPLIT.

I know the story sounds dramatic, but really, even if I hadn't have gotten it I would have just moved on with my day. I LIKE the chase of nail polish sales on Etsy/Big Cartel/whatever. I think it's fun to try and snag the polishes I'm longing for, but to me it will always still be just nail polish. At the end of the day, there are so many more important things to me.

But yes, I DID spend an hour of my life refreshing a web page so I could get this polish, and it was totally worth it!

Like I said, unfortunately (because of availability of ingredients) Dollish Polish isn't making this polish (at lease with this particular formula) anymore. It could be she releases it with a new formula in the future, so be on the lookout for it!

Tony Moly Galaxy: Swatches and Review

I finally caved in and bought the Tony Moly Galaxy collection. We all know how much I love glitter, so it was only a matter of time... At first I was only planning on picking up the two or three that were my favorite, but I'm glad I got all of them because most of the others won me over completely!

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Tony Moly - Mercury

Mercury is made up of lots of small silver glitter with some sky blue and red mixed in. The base is slightly tinted grey, but it doesn't make much of a difference because the glitter is so dense. This is the most shiny of the set, and ended up being one of my favorites.

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Tony Moly - Earth

Earth is a translucent navy blue base with steel colored micro glitter and small fuchsia holo glitter. It's not as sparkly as Mercury, but still incredibly interesting!

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Tony Moly - Mars

Mars is a mix of small copper and micro orange glitter with a sprinkling of royal blue micro glitter that's not always apparent. In fact, I couldn't really see it in the bottle until I held it in the sun. I kind of wish the blue glitter was a tad bit more prominent but it's still a really awesome accent! I love brown and copper glitter so I figured this would be one of my favorites.

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Tony Moly - Neptune

Neptune is a crazy blend of green glitters in a sheer green base. From what I can tell, it has olive/gold and forest micro glitter as well as medium grass green hexes. I love green polish and glitter, but didn't expect to like this one as much. I wish it had another accent color like the rest of them to add a little bit of pizzazz.

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Tony Moly - Jupiter

Jupiter is comprised of small lavender and indigo glitter and medium cerulean blue holo glitters, but to spice things up it also has a sprinkling of copper micro glitter! I wouldn't be nearly as captivated if it didn't have the copper, but this ended up being one of my favorites as well!
*Aside note:  This one kind of reminds me of The Hungry Asian's Sea Creature because of Sea Creature's purple micro glitter accent amongst the teal and blue.  LOVE.


I was surprisingly impressed with this collection! All of them had wonderful formulas that were opaque in two coats (however, they all required at least a coat of Gelous and Seche Vite to make them glassy smooth) and they weren't too thick like some glitters can be. I was so enamored with the "accent" colors in all of them, especially Jupiter.  The odd thing about them was that none of the bottle actually have the planet names on them (in English, anyway). They are labeled GT01-GT05.  Also, Neptune is 04 and Jupiter is 05... weird.

My only complaint is that they didn't do one for ALL of the planets! MOAR GLITTER!

I bought my set of these off ebay and they range from about $32-35 for the set or $7-9 each.

Zoya Beach and Surf: Accent Nails

The first thing I noticed about the Zoya Beach and Surf collections was that they all seem to have a "match" in the other collection. There are plenty of swatches out there for Beach and Surf already, so I wanted to give it a twist and show how wonderfully these work for multi-finger accent manicures! I like more contrast for single-finger accents, but prefer the colors to be more closely related for the multi-finger accents.

Check out how well these go together!

Zoya - Wednesday and Zuza

Zoya - Tracie and Meg

Zoya - Arizona and Myrta

Zoya - Shelby and Rory

Zoya - Lara and Kimber

Zoya - Reagan and Carly

Of course, you don't have to pair them up with the most matching color. You can also pair random ones together. For instance, I loved the look of the orange and teal together so I paired Arizona with Zuza for this single-accent:

Zoya - Arizona and Zuza

Overall, while the colors are quite pretty and beach-y and summery, I have to admit that I was disappointed in the collections.  After the killer Sparkle (Summer 2010) and Sunshine (Summer 2011) collections, I was REALLY hoping for more spectacular bling from Zoya for this year.  I know that many others love shimmers and cremes and will be delighted with this collection, but I can't help but feel let down a bit.

I think Arizona was my favorite even though I don't own or like very many orange polishes.  It is the perfect soft, yet bright creamsicle orange that I think would be perfect on finger or toes at the beach!  Carly was also a standout.  It's a rich, intense purple foil that I have nothing even close to in my collection, and it's nearly a one-coater!  Some of the others I liked, some I didn't, but all had excellent formula.  Most are slightly thick and cover in two coats.

The Zoya Beach and Surf collections are both available now at the Zoya website.  They retail for $8 each or $48 for each sampler set.


(These products were sent for review.)

The Hungry Asian - Sea Creature and Sneeze Breeze: Swatches and Review

The Hungry Asian has made some incredibly unique and beautiful polishes. I picked up two of them recently, Sea Creature and Sneeze Breeze, and they are pretty incredible.

The Hungry Asian - Sea Creature

Sea Creature is a mix of dark emerald micro glitter and medium blue holo hex glitters with a sprinkling of small violet glitter. I've seen a few random pieces of medium silver holo hexes as well in there, but they're kinda rare. This is all in a clear base, but it covers almost completely in two coats on its own, or in one coat over a base color (shown here over Rescue Beauty Lounge Teal).

This color JUMPED into my favorite nail polishes of all time. The teal/green/blue overall tone of this plus the holo sparkles is a very stunning combination. Add in the little purple sparkles here and there and it is a true winner in my book. It also has a great formula that only requires a coat of Gelous and a coat of SV to be glassy smooth. I don't think there is a single thing that could make this polish better than it already is.

The Hungry Asian - Sneeze Breeze

Sneeze Breeze is a mix of neon blue and black glitter in a clear base. The formula on this one is a little tougher. It doesn't dry quickly like most glitters, so you have to wait quite a while in between coats or it stays gummy and creates globs when you add the second coat (you can see on my ring finger that I didn't wait long enough and it got a little lumpy). Two coats is all that's needed, but it's a pretty thick formula. BUT if you have the patience, the end result looks so cool! Like the Nailventurous lacquers, the matte neon glitters have an amazing overall effect - it's like sprinkles of color without the bling.

The Hungry Asian has an Etsy shop where you can buy these and her other awesome polishes. They come in full sized bottles for $8.50 or cute little mini heart bottles for $4.50.