Featuring: Jessica Iridescent Eye + Glitter!

I know, I know.  I've been severely neglecting my blog.  I'm so very sorry!

I got caught up in filling Etsy orders and work has been insane.  BUT I'm back in full force now!

Today I'm going to be showing you all a Chanel Peridot dupe by Jessica called Iridescent Eye!

Jessica is a brand I hadn't heard of until recently and I was surprised to find is quite affordable.  You can pick up Iridescent Eye and many other Jessica polishes at Ninja Polish for $5.00 to $6.00!

Check her out:

As you can see, Iridescent Eye is a pretty green/gold/blue metallic-esque duochrome!  The formula on this polish was pretty descent, albeit just a tad bit streaky.  Streaky as in you can kind of see the brush-strokes, but this is typical of a chrome/metallic polish.  Two coats would be enough to make this polish opaque, but the pictures above show three!

Now I saw swatches of this and Peridot online a lot and I thought I loved it, but the green/gold just doesn't look awesome with my skin tone :-/  SO I decided to slap on some glitter over-top that I hadn't tried, but I didn't know what would go with a duochrome.  Well, why not add some 27 more colors to it? So I added OPI Rainbow Connection:

It's kind of all over the place, even with just one coat of RC, hah! But it grew on me after a while.  I decided I really like Rainbow Connection and am going to try and use it more!  However, I still am not totally in love with the look of Iridescent Eye on my skin tone, so keep a look-out for it on my blog sale page, which I hope to update this weekend.

Hope you all are well!

<3 Whitney

Featuring My New Favorite: Zoya Charla

Hellllloooooo girlies!  I am so PSYCHED that this time next week I will be in Florida at Disney World!  Horray!  I am planning on taking fun, bright polishes, but if all goes as planned I won't even have time to do them :)  Zoya Pippa is definitely on my list lol.

So I'm always the last person to jump on the bandwagon for pretty much anything, Zoya Charla being one of them.  I've seen tonnnss of swatches and jewelry made from Charla and I always kind of wanted it, but I refuse to pay Zoya shipping.  So when their Valentine's Day sale came around for a free red polish and free shipping with any other polish purchase I grabbed both Charla and Ivanka!

Holy. Moly. God. Almighty.  I can't believe I missed out on this beauty for so long.  If you're like me and don't buy things that everyone else likes, forget that you're like that for 5 minutes and order this immediately because it's gorgeous!

I understand that all of these pictures are nearly identical, but I probably took 40 of them and had a hard time choosing, lol...

Charla is a super gorgeous blue/teal/green duochrome (triochrome?) shimmer polish that flashes all sorts of pretty sea-worthy colors in the sun.  Zoom in on that sparkle, seriously, it's worth it.  Charla went on opaque in just two coats and followed suit with all of the other Zoya polishes with great formulas!

I never used to wear cool colored polishes, it was just pinks and reds, and boy am I glad that changed.  Do you guys have Charla?

<3 Whitney

More frankens!

Ohh dear what a busy week I had last week!

I finally got our guest bedroom set up with all of my polish things because I got tired of taking up the BF's man cave and living room.  I bought a desk and put it together all by myself and filled it with frankening supplies and polish related goodies!

The boyfriend and I also decided to start volunteering for the Make a Wish foundation, so we had a (long) meeting for that, too.  He did it in Ohio and asked if I'd like to do it with him here and I said sure because who doesn't need to do something nice for others sometimes?

Then I had guests come down and visit this weekend!  My nails have been BARE for like 5 days.  Ugh!  And I broke two...sad story.

Anywho, I thought I'd show you guys the rest of the frankens I made for my first "collection" I'm calling Transition Metals.  Because...they're named after transition metals (I = nerd).  I'm super excited for this because I've been making frankens for a while and I love it!  I was hoping to get to the point where I can sell them on Etsy or something, but I'm not sure what reaction I will get.

I mean, I can't be the only nerdy nail-polish enthusiast who will be as excited as I am about elemental names, haha.  So here's the next couple I've made.

First up: Fool's Gold

I wish I had painted my nails with this on a day it was sunny!  This is three coats of Fool's Gold in artificial lighting and I just couldn't capture the vibrant gold glitter that's in this polish!  It's a metallic gold based polish with various sized gold and holographic gold glitters!  I'm not into golds, usually, but this is one of my favorites.  And it's appropriately named after the 79th element: gold!

Next up: Iron Man-ia

Iron Man-ia is a red jelly based polish that consists of both fine red and gold glitter and large holographic gold hex glitter.  It needs three coats to become opaque, but there's a decent amount of glitter, so if you were using it as a layering polish, one coat would probably do.  Named for iron, the 26th element, and a little bit of comic book nerdiness as well :)

Next up, going a different route other than glitter: Manganese, Please!

Manganese, Please, is a dark teal based polish that has a slight duochrome aspect to it.  In certain light it goes from dark purple to teal to blue, but it's a lot more subtle than Co-Balt of Lightning that I showed you the other day!  It's got a bit of a shimmer to it, but it clings to the ridges in your nail...I think I've got a bit of an iron deficiency and you can really see the vertical ridges in my nails in the second picture.  You can also see where I messed up on my ring finger...but let's not focus too much on that!  I used three coats for this picture.  Manganese is the 25th element. 

Last up is "Can I buy you a Zinc?"

Holos show your ridges very well, too apparently!  Can I Buy You a Zinc? is a dusty green/gray holo.  This is another one I had to do photograph in artificial lighting, but would do better in the sun.  Inside it definitely has a more gray tone to it, but outdoors it's very obviously green.  I was going for a brighter green polish here, but I ended up liking this one a lot anyway!  This one only needs two coats for full opaqueness.  Can I Buy you a Zinc is named after Zinc, the 30th element.

I have one more in this "collection" called Copper-nicus (which I named after copper before I realized one of the obscure elements is called Copernicium, hah!  Oh well), which I haven't got around to swatching yet.  It's a copper looking color on it's own, but it's a red metallic duochrome over black.  Very pretty!  I'll show you guys later :)

So what do you guys think?  I'd like some feedback on these!

I know I've talked a lot in this entry, sorry!  BUT someone last post commented when I asked for help thinking of element-related names that I should post pictures of the polishes I made to better help them think of names.  Welllll, I'm going about it a bit differently.  All of the elements that I knew what colors/finishes I wanted them to have, I've pretty much either made or planned.  Now I'm trying to think of names for the rest first and then plan after, hah.  I don't know if it's a bit backwards or not, but oh well!

I still have the ones I listed in the first franken post I need help with, but here's a few more:

51 - Antimony
34 - Selenium
24 - Chromium
77 - Iridium
74 - Tungsten

Thanks for reading guys, I know this was long!

<3 Whitney

Frankennnn!

So I still haven't got an e-mail response from my giveaway winner katiebug!  Girl, send me your address!  :)

BUT that's not what this update is about.  I want to show you ladies a fraken polish I made recently that I like a lot!  I've been frankening up a storm, which is why I haven't updated lately. 

So here's the big surprise: I'm making element themed polishes!  Hopefully when I get things worked out I'll put them on Etsy.  I've got a decent amount made and I'm super excited about the nerdiness of them all ;)

Here's a preview of one!  It's called "Co-Balt of Lightning" :

Co-balt of Lightning is a duochrome polish that changes from teal to blue to navy to purple depending on the lighting.  All of the pictures shown above are with one coat of polish over black in window lighting.  It goes on pretty smooth and one coat is definitely all you need over a dark polish!  You may need to zoom in to see all the colors, I just couldn't capture them with my camera!

So what do you ladies think?

I'll probably give some away to bloggers in the future to review!  But in the mean time, I'm having a hard time coming up with names!

So here's what I'm going to do.  For each franken post I do I'll list a couple of elements that I don't have names for, and if you think of a name, send me an e-mail (Estyles.ww@gmail.com), and if I choose the name you thought of, I'll send you a bottle of the franken when I make it!  Here are a few elements I'm struggling with:

22 - Titanium
31 - Gallium
38 - Strontium
48 - Cadmium
64 - Gadolinium
88 - Radium

Thanks ladies :)

<3 Whitney

Zoya "Jem" from new Smoke and Mirrors Collection!

Oooh dear.  SO I've been meaning to post, oh I don't know, maybe like 5 different polishes I've taken pictures of during my moving/unpacking process, but I just haven't got around to it!  Sorry! 

I have been sent some Barielle polishes to review...but I still have one left and I'd like to do them all at once.  So then I was going to update with one of my new fav polishes, Zoya Whitney (biased much? hah), but I tried Zoya Jem today from their Smoke and Mirrors Collection and it's so fabulous that I want to show you all NOW! 

Soooo excuse me for the amount of pictures...they are all kind of similar but I wanted to show you guys all the color you can see in this fabulous dark purple.

Love love love.

I've been having great luck with Zoya.  I took advantage of their buy one get two free...even though shipping costs the same as a polish.  I've been wanting Whitney and another Kimmy, so I thought I'd try this as well!

Anywho, this lovely, what I would call duochrome, went on great in 2 coats and could be a 1 coater if you're in a rush.  It shows a lovely array of purples, reds, and bronzes in the sun light and it looks decent on my nubbin nails.  I've broken a bunch during moving and unpacking, which is a bummer, but with a little cuticle TLC they look a bit better already. 

The only downside was that since I'm not used to wearing darker colors I thought I'd be able to clean up quickly after slapping it on--but even with acetone it turned my skin a little purple.  I'm assuming it'll wash off, though!

Wooo so have any of you guys tried the Smoke and Mirrors collection?  I haven't found any place around here who sells Zoya (no Ultas, sad story!) so I probably won't be ordering any unless they have a really great promo :)

Okay, hopefully I can update more this week now that my photos are edited!  Hope you all are greaaat!

<3 Whitney

OPI Not Like the Movies -- verdict: meh

So I saw OPI's Not Like The Movies a while back in a supply store and picked it up because I'd heard good things about it.  Green usually isn't my color and I wasn't sure how I felt about it in the bottle so I stuck it in my stash and kind of forgot about it. 

Anyhow on my polish trying-spree the other day I figured I should try it!  Needless to say, I wasn't super impressed.  I think it's a strange idea for a duo-chrome polish...it goes from a metallic silvery green to a purple, neither of which I wear too often on my nails.  Loads of people love this, though.  I know that there's another version of NTLM out there that ISN'T duo-chrome, but mine definitely is, hopefully with my pics you can see it!

I also decided to do the OPI black shatter as an accent finger since these polishes are both from the Katy Perry Collection:

You can see the "gunmetal gray" that people talk about here...

There's a flash of purple and green!

You can see a wide variety of colors in the bottle here!

Like I said, I did not like this polish on me.  I love duo-chromes but since I'm not a green polish wearer, it just didn't suit my taste!  The formula was great, though, it went on real even and smooth and I *think* this is three coats, but it could possibly be only two! 

I did, however, love how the black shatter looked over this polish--it crackled amazingly well! 

Overall...doesn't suit my skin tone, and I might be the only one who doesn't love this polish.  Since I doubt I'll be wearing this again I added it to my swap list if anyone wants to swap for it! 

Hope you guys are enjoying your weekend!

<3 Whitney