Interesting Crackle Nail Polish Discovery

Alright, so I have a slightly abusive relationship with. Crackle nail polish.  Until very recently, I could never get them to work, like EVER, no matter what I do to try and change it.  And suddenly, they magically started working for me; I was super excited.  This was the first picture I tweeted when I got them up and running, actually:

They are two of the crackles from the Nicki Minaj line by OPI if I remember correctly on top of Orly Platinum.  But yeah, so anyway, I really love crackle polishes now that they’ve decided to work for me and do what they are supposed to do.  However, as I found out today, that is not always the case.  These polishes do not act right sometimes …

Let me explain my thought process before I tell you what I did, because it’s sort of a doozy. ^^;;  I just moved to NYC and started a new job, and this was a very sudden change for me.  Like, so sudden that I had an interview Thursday and started the next Monday, so I had to pack and move several hundred miles in three days or so.  Yeah, hectic.

Needless to say, during those three days I didn’t have much time for beauty endeavors, and because of all the packing and moving boxes, my nails suffered horribly.  Only one outright broke thankfully, but the polish was in a sad state when I was done.  What was once a neat manicure with OPI’s Pink Friday (another from the Nicki Minaj collection I realize ironically) was chipped and horrible, and I didn’t have time for a manicure.

So, I decided that the best thing to do would be to put crackle polish over the top of it instead of taking the time to remove the polish and put on a whole new color.  I figured when the polish cracked it would disguise the chipped polish underneath, and might even give a two toned mosaic effect too.  Well, I put on a quick coat of polish, and something very interesting happened.  Let’s see if you can spot it in this picture.

Can you tell? … Look REALLY carefully and you’ll see what I mean when I explain.  The best example of what happened is actually my thumb, so I’ll give you a close up.

Excuse the mess, but you can see how the part near my cuticle cracked nicely, while up near the free edge it isn’t cracked at all?  Well, where it is nicely cracked is where there is pink nail polish underneath the blue crackle, and where this is no crack is where the Pink Friday chipped off.  You can also see it a bit on my middle finger above as well, and there are almost no cracks on my pointer finger, which was the one missing the most pink polish.

Obviously my idea was a failure, and I’ll have to get this polish off tonight and sorted out – but I found it very interesting that the polish didn’t react to my bare nail like it did to the pink nail polish.  Not sure if the same thing would happen if you put plain clear polish first, but maybe this was part of my problem before?  Putting crackle polish on without a base of some kind that the crackle polish would react to …?

Dunno, but I figured it was an interesting tidbit to let you guys know I discovered ^^;;

Let me know if you have any good tips or tricks about that tricky crackle polish, and let me know what you want to read on here :3

Until next time!

Review: Baby Lips by Maybelline

Alright – this is partially a quick review, and partially testing out blogging-on-the-go, because I just got the WordPress app on my phone.  We’ll see how this goes.

But first – a story! :3

So, I was at work yesterday, and I had my chapstick out, whatever. So, I dropped it (it was my Burt’s Bees with mango butter – the only one I like) and one of the warehouse guys came past carrying a box, so he wasn’t looking at the ground. I’m sure you can guess what happened.

Snap.

Crackle.

Pop.

He stepped right on it worth his steel toed boot.  Needless to say, it was rendered useless to me.  After a quick dig through my purse (I really shouldn’t be allowed to carry big purses xD) I realized that I didn’t have my back up, Chicken Poop, with me. And yes, that is the name of the chapstick, or as the bottle calls it, Outdoor Lip Junk.

As you can see, I had a dilemma on my hands.

On my lunch break, I headed over to Walmart, hoping they’d have my mango Burt’s Bees. And suffice to say that if they had, you would not be reading a review right now… ^^;; I’m a bit picky about chapsticks, so I was into real problem territory now – but I was saved by the most excellent Gregory Gorgeous as I wandered around. If you don’t know who he is, do yourself a favor and YouTube him. As previously stated, he is most excellent.

Anyway, I saw the Maybelline Baby Lips chapsticks, but saw that they had SPF20 in them, which I am not a fan of because I find that things with sunscreen in them trends to be greasy.  But then I remembered that in one if his videos, Gregory Gorgeous said he really liked these lip balms. So I looked again, and decided why not?

I haven’t been a fan of tinted lip balms since my escapade with Yes to Carrots, so I opted for 05 Quenched, which is the clear one (the picture I took is at the top of this review).

Let’s start with the smell. It’s very light, and makes me think if those little oval shaped white hard candies that taste like imitation coconut extract. Surprisingly good, since I don’t like scented makeups. 🙂 As for the consistency … Well, that’s a win too! xD You can definitely tell there’s sunscreen there, but there’s only enough to give it a sort of creamy texture, not enough to make it greasy, which I also love.  Add that to the fact, that as Gregory Gorgeous said, it’s not that you NEED to keep applying it, it’s just fun to. I think it has something to do with the pretty large applicator…

See? But either way, great product, I really like it, and I’m thinking of trying the colored ones now when I wear lipstick to work!

I’ll add the star rating later – I can’t figure out how to do it on my phone xD But jsyk it will be a 5 🙂

Gelous Advanced Nail Gel Coat Review

Alright y’all – this is the review I wrote several months ago on this product, Gelous Advanced Nail Gel Coat.  I’ll just let you see what I had to say on the subject … Unfortunately I didn’t have a phone with a decent camera when I wrote this review, so I don’t have any pictures of the actual manicure I’m mentioning, and I’m not sure if I still have this nail polish (I was unfortunately unable to find the receipt, so I couldn’t return it to Sally’s), but if I ever find it, I’ll do another manicure with it just so I can take pictures of it.

The Review:

I was looking around online to find a new base coat – my go-to, (Jessica Cosmetic’s Bend Don’t Break) was running out, and it’s a little expensive, so I wanted to see if I could find an alternative. I ran into a lot of reviews for this product, mostly good, a couple bad, and my birthday is coming up – so my mother, as an early birthday present of sorts, went to Sally’s and bought me a bottle of this.

I just did a new manicure this morning before work with this as a base coat – and true to form, as a lot of other reviews have stated, it takes about 10 minutes to fully dry on my natural nail – but that’s fine. I budgeted that time to wait for it. Did my penguin french for fun, and decided to see how it worked as a top coat – I’ve seen a few reviews sprinkled here and there that say this works as a good thick top coat as well, and can be applied once daily in a thin coat over nail polish to help keep it from chipping, if you have problems with it like that.

I waited an entire 45 minutes for my manicure to dry before I put a top coat on – I did my nails while drinking my coffee, carefully got ready for work (which is something I’m pretty good at by now) and just before leaving, after I put my jacket on, I put this on as a top coat.

First of all, it STILL somehow smudged my nail polish – there was feathering all along every color boundary on my nails that I spent an extra 10 minutes trying to adjust with the brush so that it didn’t look so bad. Ok; fine – the nail polish didn’t dry as fast as expected, and this is specifically recommended as a base coat. I can live with that.

So I drive to work, and start my day – that was at 7:30 this morning. At nearly 10:30, three hours later, I itched my temple, just above my hairline – brought my hand back and there were lines on the nail I itched with from the texture of my (curly) hair. HOURS later.
Ok; so maybe this is just not working out for me – but I do see that there are several reviews that say people just use this on their natural nails and then use a top coat over top of that, and it’s fine. Luckily I had some Seche Vite in my purse, so I carefully dig it out and paint it over my sad nails, which now will most likely need a new manicure tonight when I get home.

It is 12:15 now, and I just looked at my nails; not only is my nail polish now bubbling, mostly in the white nail polish, but also a little in the black and orange, but it’s STILL not completely dry. Even after Seche Vite, which dries in no time flat normally, if I touch the polish, I leave indications of fingerprints.

Would I recommend this to anyone? Not a chance. Most reviews say that it’s better to use a base before you use this base coat. That seems a little redundant to me; if I wanted to use a different base coat, I would just use a different base coat. If you want a good base coat that will strengthen your natural nails, just use Bend Don’t Break by Jessica; it’s more expensive, (about $15/bottle), but it works MUCH better than this hot mess.

The ONLY thing this MIGHT work for is a clear nail polish if you’re going natural with a base coat under it and a top coat over it, but even then – it bubbled for me, which was really frustrating, since this is a new bottle. And even if you only have clear nail polish on, you can still see bubbles – I wouldn’t trust it not to look like a glass of milk after a two year old with a straw got to it.

I don’t have a UV Light because I have natural nails that are pretty strong/long, and I take good care of them, so I don’t need gel nails or anything like that – but nowhere does it say that you NEED a UV light; this product should work as intended without one.

Worst birthday present ever; I’m hoping my mom still has the receipt, and maybe I can get rid of it.

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

Unfortunately I can’t give half stars, or I would give it a half a star, just because zero stars I feel like would suggest there’s no product or I didn’t use it xD