Nail Mail: Lynnderellas!

Last week I got two packages in the mail on the same day.

I got some nail art tools and brushes, including my first dotting tools, that I had ordered at the end of April from this store on ebay recommended by Lacey of Lace & Lacquers.  She had used the tools for an Easter-themed manicure.  You can see her manicure and more pictures of the tools here.

I also got my first two, my only two Lynnderellas.  I got them during a flash sale the week before last on llarowe.com.  They didn't take long to get to me!  I got Cauldron Drippings, which I had been wanting for a while, and I got Funny Money on a whim.  Turns out I don't really like Funny Money now that I see it up close.  If any of you would like to trade with me and are interested in Funny Money, please let me know.  I've never done a swap or trade before!

I also got HITS Speciallita No Olympo Ares, a truly red holo, deep cherry red!  This was also from llarowe.com.  I am just a sucker for that No Olympo collection of holo polishes.

Here are some pictures of the packaging and the bottles and some swatches on nail wheels:

Cauldron Drippings on #14 on the top wheel (and #15 on the top wheel is HITS No Olympo Ares and #13 on the top wheel is Lynnderella Funny Money).  China Glaze Cross Iron 360 on #9 on the bottom wheel and Confetti 053 Papa-Razzi on #10 on the bottom wheel.  I was trying to find a suitable "underwear" color for Cauldron Drippings so that I don't have a crazy amount of glitter layers from Cauldron Drippings.

#13 on the bottom wheel is L'Oreal L'Orange.  This may be what I end up using as my "underwear" for Cauldron Drippings (#14 on the top wheel).

All my HITS No Olympo holos.  Ares is #15 on the top wheel, Demeter is #6 on the bottom wheel, Hermes is #7 on the bottom wheel, and Poseidon is #8 on the bottom wheel.

 

Funny Money is #13 on the top wheel.  On the bottom wheel, #7 is China Glaze Holly-Day, and #8 is China Glaze Glittering Garland.

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HITS Speciallita No Olympo Hermes Gold Holo

HITS Speciallita No Olympo Hermes is a light gold holo polish, a kind of taupe gold that almost looks nude on me in certain lights. It has a very noticeable holo effect, even indoors, but it's not as strong as the holo on HITS Speciallita No Olympo Poseidon.  The formula was good, I like the thinner and longer old school brush, and the application was easy.  The polish goes on in easy thin coats.  I used three coats.  Two would have been enough, but I wanted to cover up any nail line, so just to be sure, I used three coats.  I used Seche Vite on top.  Seche Vite didn't cause shrinkage, but the Revlon Quick-Dry Top Coat that I add every morning did cause shrinkage.  This is a very classy gold holo.  I think it's work appropriate and it's also a nice touch on a night out.

I still have this manicure on today.  I will be taking it off tomorrow.  I plan to put on Revlon Whimsical tomorrow, but I haven't chosen a blue polish to wear under Whimsical yet.  If any of you have worn Whimsical before, please let me know if you wore a different color underneath.  I'm thinking I may use Sinful Colors Cinderella.

The Hermes manicure has lasted a while, though.  I put it on last Sunday, so it's been 6 days.  It still hasn't chipped, but there's serious tip shrinkage and tip wear and noticeable growth.

In the pictures below, I am marking my photos with my blog address for the first time.  I looked for an iPhone app to use to watermark photos on the iPhone, but many of them will significantly reduce the resolution of the photo.  I have a couple of apps on price watches to see if they lower the price, and those apps are not supposed to reduce the resolution, but we'll see.  Right now I'm using the PicShop HD -- Photo Editor app.  It was free for the day yesterday (and today, too, I think).  From what I can tell, the newly saved photos with my blog address are about half the size of the original photo files, but at least the images still look O.K. to me so far.  If any of you use a good iPhone app to watermark your photos on your iPhone, please let me know.  And, let me know if you think the resolution of these photos is much lower than my usual photo resolution.  You should still be able to click on photos to make them larger and hopefully sharper, too.

These next two photos were taken in my office, under office lighting.  The top photo is without flash, and the bottom photo is with flash.  You can see that the polish has a holo effect even indoors under regular office lighting.

The next few pictures are in sunlight:

Indirect sunlight, and still there's a lot of holo!

Different angle of indirect sunlight.  Cool gradient effect.

Indirect sunlight.  This gives you an idea of what the polish looks like without the big holo fireworks.

Again, in indirect sunlight, after several days' worth of wear.

If you are interested in flakie polishes, please don't forget to enter my first giveaway.  I am up to 45 followers now (YAY!) and almost 2,000 page views, so I may be having another giveaway once this one ends.

Thank you for reading my blog!

HITS No Olympo Poseidon Holo Blue Polish

This week I've had HITS No Olympo Poseidon on my fingernails.  It's a blue polish with a strong holographic effect.  I got it on llarowe.com.  I got hardly any shrinkage from the Seche Vite I used on top of Poseidon.  It didn't dull the holo effect, either.  My daily addition of a coat of Sally Hansen Quick Dry Top Coat has not dulled the holo, either, but it did cause significant tip shrinkage.  The polish has worn well, though.  So far today it's been 5 days of wear, and I have no chips.  Application was very easy and so was cleanup.  I would recommend this polish for "beginners."  I am still learning so much about polishing my nails, but applying this polish was easier and more foolproof than most polishes.  The polish applied evenly and dried quickly.  I liked the thinner brush.  As opposed to the OPI pro wide and other wide brushes, it's more like the old Revlon brushes.  I used one coat of Sally Hansen Age Correct Growth (discontinued), three coats of Poseidon (but it was fine at two coats), and a coat of Seche Vite, and I added a coat of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat every day.  Below are some pictures.

Color when not in direct light.  The actual color is a little lighter than in these pictures.

In sunlight.

Indoors, office lighting, with flash.

Indoors, with flash.

Sunlight.

After 5 days of wear, in partial sunlight.  See how well it holds up?

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