Cult Nails Time Traveler Swatch

I've been listening to Hole all day, slinking back into my Californication fantasies of running away to LA but then I come back to managing bit.ly links, editing photos and somehow that's fine for me. For now. Anyhoo, onto some nail polish.

Here's Cult Nails Time Traveler. The name Time Traveler is an ode to Doctor Who, and the shade is definitely aiming to mimic the TARDIS blue. It does a decent job in tone, and I've always recommended to Doctor Who fans to pick up this shade for the humble name reference. The formula itself is very smooth and applies nicely in two coats. I find this shade to be very deep and the colour is only in the spotlight in brighter light. For those of us in greyer weather, it seems like a very dark navy, almost black from a distance. My swatches below are two coats without top coat:





And here's Time Traveler used as a base colour for OPI Polka.com:





While I recommend Cult Nails as a polish, I find myself a bit disappointed with Cult Nails' social media interactions with me. I started buying Cult Nails in late 2011 and kept telling everyone about this indie polish that was a MUST HAVE! I had feedback on Reddit where some folks said they were skeptical about buying the polish because there weren't any swatches on their shop. I emailed Cult Nails and let them know and about a day later, they linked their blog post with swatches to their shop. Cult Nails grew quickly. I used to reply to them on Twitter with their posts, participate in contests, let them know when I encountered an error and had no response. I don't expect responses, I understand that they are now a fairly large indie company. However, the one and only time I have received any kind of response back from Cult Nails in the 2 years of being a customer, was a short monosyllabic response to a simple joke I made about breaking my No Buy February.

Am I a little butthurt? Yes. I'll admit it. But when you're an owner of nearly 35 polishes (which totals to over $400 at current prices) that I bought with my own money, I do get a little upset as an early adopter and fan. Seeing Cult Nails interact with every other nail blogger in polite and ecstatic ways leaves me a bitter taste in my mouth.

It's a shame because their polishes are truly great.

OPI Polka.com Swatch

I was watching Arrow last night while doing some swatching and I was pretty sure I was going to leave on my professional manicure polish until it chipped off but I just couldn't stand it anymore! Ah well. I was going to continue to burn off the backlog but after I swatched OPI Polka.com from the newest Euro Centrale collection, I seriously can't contain myself!... Urge to share... Rising... This is the polish that also broke my No Buy February once I spotted it so let's make it all worth it! Anyway, I am actually sick right now too so sharing this with you will also cheer me up.

OPI Polka.com is a layering glitter polish - a rich mix of cool purple, teal blue and pink hex glitters with smaller cool purple glitters to help support but not overwhelm. I loved this polish since I saw the silly CGI rendering of the bottle in the press release. I was a little worried it would be like OPI The Living Daylights where it sort of falls flat, but I think the smaller glitters in Polka.com offer a little more dynamic. The colours also work together seamlessly.

The formula is not stubborn and the glitter applies evenly, with no issues. Only once coat is needed to get all the swatches below, which I feel is more than enough. On one note, I think the name of this polish is so revolting, haha! The pun is so terrible. Honestly despite the stupid name, at least the polish isn't a bad joke.

Here is one coat of OPI Polka.com over top Cult Nails Time Traveler:



And here's the same combination, matte-ified using Gosh 'Matt Effect' Top Coat:





I had to keep going so here's OPI Polka.com over top of Essence Oh My Glitter!:



And again, making everything matte with Gosh 'Matt Effect' Top Coat:





This polish was also begging for a jelly sandwich. After having problems with Revlon Girly, I've been thinking on and off about how to improve my lacking love for it. A jelly sandwich was one of my ideas and I applied it with OPI Polka.com using OPI Care to Danse? I started with three coats of Care to Danse? for my base, one coat of Polka.com and then another single coat of Care to Danse? to seal in the jelly sandwich. I absolutely love this look and it actually sort of reminds me of Rainbow Honey Sweet Talk!





Making this jelly sandwich makes it entirely super milky! I love both looks, but unless the other two combinations, I think I am still digging the glossy one in this case.





Sorry for the picture spam (but again I'm not sorry, hehe)! I absolutely LOVE this polish and I have no regrets letting this one slip through my No Buy February. I've also been trying to be better on this blog about offering more dynamic combinations and looks for polish. I'm a little over two months into running Claw of Cthulhu and still looking for ways to improve my swatches, photography, and nail care. All in all, I'm having a good time so that's all that matters.

What do you think of OPI Polka.com? Was it worth breaking a No Buy February? What do the kids say about stuff like this? YOLO or something? Ha!... Anyway, off to bed to rest this sick chest of mine... Until next week!

Ruffian Nail Art With Special Guest Rainbow Honey My Love

It is... 3AM and I just finished doing my nails for Valentines Day. It all seemed like a good idea at the time but enh. I am not sure if it turned out. It's one of those times where it's late and I have lost all sense of good judgement. For example: Drinking a huge glass of tea, followed by doing your nails is not the best idea. Take it from me!

So I've interrupted our regularly scheduled programming for Valentines Day. (Barf, I know, I know.) The truth is I never wear pinks or reds and I figure, hey why not? This is a great excuse.

For my "Ruffian Manicure" (I feel weird about using the word manicure because I didn't actually do any cuticle care before painting my nails. I really just painted my nails. Anyway.), I used Color Club Poptastic as the base coat. For a stark contrast, I used Cult Nails Nevermore, a one coat black. I freehanded the shapes and tried to maintain a consistent pink curve. I wanted something a little "more Valentines" and I have been looking for an excuse to use Rainbow Honey My Love so I just went ahead and did it. I hope the results are OK!







I'll save the extended formula reviews for individual polish swatch posts, but this was a great team of colours for this type of nail art. Poptastic was a 2 coater and dried very quick. Nevermore, a one coater, applied smooth and even - and of course lives up to its promise here: being a one coater. Lastly, I love Rainbow Honey My Love. I was having SUCH a hard time choosing between My Love and Dearly Beloved as the special limited edition gift with my order but ultimately I think I picked the right one because A Little Kindness is one of my favourite Rainbow Honey polish. Yum! I'll have to save more words for a review post.

And here's a last one. It's the present I am giving my Valentine. He surprised me at work today with red roses. I never thought I'd be that kind of girl, but there I was, pretty surprised and shocked that someone would visit me at work and hand deliver me flowers. Anyway, this is a LEGO heart. It separates into two pieces and then combined again to create a heart. One of my favourite dates was when we went to the LEGO store and just built things for an hour. I'll spare the cheesiness. It's still 3AM and things could get verbose and sloppy quickly!



So there it is! I'll be posting the last of Rainbow Honey's Sweet Talk collection later today and then consolidate all the Sweet Talk goodness (and then some, shhh!) into one mega post on Friday for reference.

Cult Nails Deal With It Swatch

I've been kind of bummed out lately, but looking back at this swatch makes me remember how fun my nails were that week. Cult Nails Deal With It is from Coco's Untamed Collection. If you are wondering who Coco is, it's actually Maria's daughter. Cult Nails runs as a family, and they do it well and with so much passion. My polish purges are usually done in bulk because I like to indulge in the free shipping. Normally I like to grab the entire collection but I missed the boat and some shades had already sold out. So Deal With It is the only one I grabbed from the Untamed Collection.

The formula is great, however sheer. It goes on quite smoothly, but I really needed 3 coats for full coverage. The lime green is super vibrant and has a hint of shimmer.



I only wore this for a couple of days because my nails were so distracting, ha! But during the short time I wore it, I noticed that the green was very similar to the SMS colour in iOS Messages on my iPhone!



In other news, my order from Nail Polish Canada came in yesterday and I've already swatched the Ozotic colour I got. It's so fabulous and brilliant, I had to resist so hard not to post it today! Aaaaand tomorrow Rainbow Honey's Sweet Talk collection will be up to order and I told myself I wouldn't buy any more nail polish until I've swatched everything in my current collection but waaaaaah, I love Rainbow Honey so damn much.

Cult Nails Behind Closed Doors Collection Swatches

I've posted all of these already but I just wanted to keep em all in one place! I got all these during the pre-sale and some of the colours are already sold out. You can find some of the remaining ones at Cult Nails' online shop. Unfortunately there was a price increase that was effective on January 1st but Cult Nails has proven to be high quality, provide unique and innovative colours and trends and have awesome customer service. Especially with the big boom of indie polishes and needing to stay afloat - I think the price is justified!


All the pretty bottles!

Flushed

Disciplined

Afterglow

Coveted

Bitten

Cult Nails Flushed Swatch

I guess I've been settled into work now but I still wish I was on vacation. I've been hooked on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and I sort of just want to veg out on the couch and watch it. Perhaps I was too busy over the holidays? Ah well.

So I've finally completed swatching Cult Nails' Behind Closed Doors collection. I say "swatching" but I actually wore all these colours for several days and the durability was awesome. With a thick coat of Seche Vite, I had barely any tip wear. I'll make another post so I can put all the colours together in one happy place!

Flushed is a bold purple with a cool bias. It's more of a cooler purple than a warm toned one. Application was flawless within 2 coats and there was no fuss. There is a subtle shimmer (of course, Cult Nails ALWAYS has a shimmer) of pink. Awesome stuff. Maybe I'll use this for my Justin Bieber joke nails when I get around to them? I found some hilarious temporary tattoos at Zellers (godspeed) and think they'd be pretty funny to use on a highlight nail or something.

Cult Nails Coveted Swatch

Yay 2013. I actually don't care too much for New Years... Traditionally it's always been the worst day of the year for me but I made an extra effort to keep it low key and good times were actually had. I got to hang out with my BFF from London and we didn't even countdown. It was actually glorious.

Anyway I am just looking forward to continuing to post all my nail things on the blog and hopefully improve on my application skills, as well as general nail care. I've always been really bad at maintaining my nails, especially the health so I am going to try to work on that. Not a new years resolution, but something I've been trying to do for the last couple of months, especially after that huge break a couple of months ago! Almost recovered!

Here's Cult Nails' Coveted. I have to admit that I really looked forward to it at first but when I applied it, the formula along with containing those giant glitter shards was really irritating! I don't like it when nail polish is advertised as a "flakie" when it's really just "giant shards of glitter". The 'flakie' glitter can best be compared to China Glaze's Luxe and Lush and Revlon's Moon Candy. It's a complete mess. If you are lucky, you can make it look great, and even the surface with a thick application of Seche Vite, but asides that, this was not a pleasure to apply.



I'll have to compare this to Cult Nails' Iconic as well because this is advertised as its green sister. Hopefully it's much better for application!

Cult Nails Afterglow Swatch

I'm back after 2 weeks of being offline for my Christmas vacation. I wish it was more because for some reason, I am not feeling well-rested at all. Damn! Anyway, at least I got to do my nails a few times so I'm playing catch up now.

Here's Afterglow from Cult Nails. I thought it was going to be plain but it has a life of its own with the pink shimmer. It's a copper, or bronze tone and it seemed to go with anything. Most of the Behind Closed Doors collection goes well with anything. All-season, if you will. :)

Cult Nails Bitten Swatch

Growing out my nails is always frustrating. I am finding this year has been really bad with breakage. I need to be more careful. Anyway, I was done with Disiplined and itching to get back into my vampy colours. Also, I figured this would be a nice send off into vacation! I am off for a whole week and a bit! I hope to be sleeping in, painting, wrapping gifts, doing my nails of course... I'm looking forward to just relaxing. I need it!

Here's three coats of Bitten. The formula was good - it's always good with Cult Nails. You can usually get away with 2 coats with most Cult Nails polish, but I like full coverage and 3 generally ensures that.



It's a fairly nice raspberry colour with Cult Nails' signature shimmer. It's pretty, I dig it. I believe as of today, it's still available on Cult Nails Shop.

Cult Nails Disciplined Swatch

Continuing to grow out my nails again. Skyfall lasted so long on my nails, I hardly had any tip wear. I wanted to try something new as my collection of untrieds just keeps growing and it's shameful. I picked up Cult Nails' Behind Closed Doors collection during the pre-sale - which I mostly got for Coveted. I tried it for a bit but unfortunately my nails are so short, I found the flakies getting caught at the edge.

I went with Disciplined as I wear a ton of dark colours. Dark nail polish is my jam. I thought I'd try something new.

As with any Cult Nails' formula, it was slick. I find that it's better if you work quickly, rather than getting meticulous about your strokes and going over multiple times. I used 3 coats as my first coat was rather thin. Seche Vite was used for top coat.



Now, I'm still figuring out how to capture all the shimmer in my swatches but I have an underexposed photo that brings out all the colours that come out when the light hits it right:



I like how playful the shimmer is, and how neutral this polish is otherwise.