XOXO mini post

Hello my lovelies! Glad to finally report that my pc is now 95% functional! I am still attempting to recover a few things and going through the not-so-fun process of putting "things" back where they go. I think after so long of not regularly posting I will be starting back a bit slowly at first. I am going to try to post at least once a week but of course I am shooting for more. I haven't decided if I am going to pick a certain day to post every week or go freestyle.

Here is a little mini post of my own XOXO (Hugs & Kisses) from my Etsy store Dragon Lacquer. XOXO contains metallic glitter in a translucent pink base. Shown with one coat over a white base with no top coat.

One coat over white base

Macro bottle shot

I hope you enjoyed! Since I am pretty new to the whole indie polish making crowd, I have been doing all the swatching of my polish for my store myself. I am, however, looking for some fellow bloggers to help ease my swatching "burden"....so...if you are a blogger who posts more regularly than I have been and have at least 100-200 followers and would like to do a review of my nail polish, cuticle oil, or my soon to be released hand creme & cuticle butter, please shoot me an email over at dragonlacquer@gmail dot com. Please provide me a link to your blog as well.

Much love (and more blogging soon), The Dragon Lady

Essie Nothing Else Metals

Next up in the Essie Mirror Metallics is Nothing Else Metals, a pale lavender foil. Again swatch photos are shown two coats over one coat of Essie Grow Stronger with no top coat, unless stated. The formula was the same on this one as Blue Rhapsody, you can see the Blue Rhapsody post here. Slightly temperamental in application but second coat came out good. Very pretty, very light lavender color.

I decided to add and accent nail and stamp over Nothing Else Metals with the silver from this collection, No Place Like Chrome. I used Mash-40 image plate. I was a little disappointed that the silver and lavender were so similar in color, but after a while I decided I kind of like the subtle stamp effect. However, I think I will have to do a side by side of all five colors when I'm done so you can more accurately see the color differences. These photos are with one coat of Seche Vite over the stamp.

Much Love, The Dragon Lady

Orly Can't Be Tamed

Today's polish is from Orly's Flash Glam FX Collection, called Can't Be Tamed. It has medium purple hex glitter and small silver hex glitter in a clear base. I expected it to be one of my favs but sadly due to some application issues it sits at the bottom of the list. The formula (at least my bottle) was pretty thick, I imagine this has a lot to due with the sheer amount of glitter in there. There is A LOT!! Another issue I had with this one was that it was a pain to get the individual glitters to lay flat. I had to poke them down before they dried and it probably needed another coat of Gelous or Seche Vite to smooth it out. This is one coat over a black creme with one coat of Gelous.

Can't Be Tamed isn't as "Blingtastic" as the others have been but I think I'll try thinning this one out a bit and trying out again. Much Love, The Dragon Lady

Orly Flash Glam FX Collection Teaser

Lightbox

 In my last post you saw that I managed to score Orly's new glitter collection from Sally Beauty. I decided to sample them before I choose my vacay mani and wow. Just wow! I couldn't believe how sparklie these were I just had to post some pics. I am going to attempt to squeeze the time to swatch these all over black before I go and use them as posts while I'm in Fort Bragg. So on to more pics!

Sunlight

On the nails, 2 coats of polish no undies. On rings, one coat over black. I haven't finished the rings I am making from this collection yet (still need to set stone) but keep an eye out for them either in a future giveaway or on Etsy or both. Hubby has been bugging me to do something to pay for this addiction to polish, LOL!

Sunlight

Sunlight

Sunlight

Lightbox

Can't Be Tamed Macro

Spazmatic Macro

Mermaid Tale Macro

Be Brave Macro

Sashay My Way Macro

Stay tuned for more glitter-awesomeness! I'm swatching Be Brave first and I'll post that later today. The rest will come over the next four days! Don't forget to enter my current giveaway ending 5/31! Much Love, The Dragon Lady

Week 16: Dotticure Mani

 For the 52 Week's challenge I am a bit behind, so I figured i'd just use the polish from my previous post for my Week 16: Dotticure Mani. If you missed my last post I used two coats of Sinful Colors Zeus over a nail treatment base coat and topped it with Barielle Ultra Speed Dry Top Coat. Since I am behind on the 52 Week Challenge manis I thought this color would provide a good base for the Dotticure mani I needed to do. Here's my inspiration for this mani from Polish Amor.

I used my dotting tools to dot on Sally Hansen hard to Tell (shimmery, pearl white) randomly half way to 2/3 the way down my nails. I kind of like it, sort of reminds me of a purple spotted egg or something. I am thinking about a dot-gradient next time.

Much Love, The Dragon Lady

Untried Tuesday: Sinful Colors Zeus

 Wow, just wow. The color on this is just beautiful. A dusty purple with a pink shimmer. This is two coats over a nail treatment base coat and one coat of Barielle Ultra Speed Dry. The formula was a little on the thick side but still applied extremely easily and left no brush strokes or any other issues. I was shocked as to how opaque this was with just one coat. If I had done a thick first coat I don't think I would have needed a second. This just got bumped up the the fav list! Now I am kicking myself for not buying more of these, I do think I have one more from this collection floating around....Neptune, I believe. I might just have to use that one next. And yes, I managed to bang my ring finger on the light box as I was getting ready to take pictures. So much for thinking it was dry!

Much Love, The Dragon Lady

Swatch & Review Saturday: Wet n Wild Chrome Hog-Quartz School

Natural light

I picked this up yesterday even though I am currently on a No-Buy for the month of April. There were several other colors in the display. Here's the picture of a Wet n Wild Chrome display from Nouveau Cheap, this is the picture that had me grabbing my wallet and keys and heading out the door.

As you can see from the picture, there is 2 blues (a light and dark), a green, a pink, a light purple, a gold, a bronze, and a silver. After finding the display case at my local Rite Aid, I was a little disappointed to see that the blues, and the pink looked like dupes of the Color Club foils (Lumin-icecent, Cold Metal, & Hot Like Lava) which I already have so I didn't need. I'm not really a gold wearer so I passed on that one too. I thought about grabbing the copper one because I don't have a copper foil (still might go back for it). I had the silver one in hand and realized it was a warm, gold-toned silver or a cool-toned gold however you want to call it, so that went back to the display as well. The green is a brighter yellow toned green so it's not a match to Color Club's green foil, Perfect Mol-Ten so I may make another excuse to go and retrieve that one as well. There was one bottle of the bunch though, that I absolutely knew was coming home with me and that was Hog-Quartz School, a lavender foil. Notice I call them foils not chromes. To me a chrome is smooth and more reflective, these are not. They are frosty like foils.

Now I feel I should mention that these aren't normal Wet n Wild price, they retail for $3.99 a bottle. If they'd been $1.99 I probably would have just grabbed them all! Also, the bottles are small, not mini small but somewhere between mini and regular sized. Again if they'd been full sized I may have bought more. Anyway, I went to put this beautiful looking polish on this morning and was surprised to see how thick it was (maybe it's just my bottle, I don't know) and the brush was kind of crappy and flared a lot at the end. Surprisingly though, I applied just wonderfully. Go figure! It went on smoothly with no hiccups and was opaque in 1 coat, but I gave it 2 just out of habit. There was no dragging or bare spots and it actually dried pretty quickly on it's own. I also tossed on a coat of Seche Vite (not photographed) to see if it changed the look at all and it doesn't. Also unlike chromes, this polish didn't show every little flaw which is nice.

Lightbox

Lightbox

I tried to mattify this mani but it was almost impossible to tell that it was matte. Also, my light box hates this polish, I don't know why. The true color shot is the top most one taken outside with an overcast sky. The ones in the lightbox make it seem a dustier lavender.

Final thoughts, if you have the Color Club foils you may want to run out and snag the non-duped colors and if you don't I'd recommend grabbing them up while they last. I hear these babies are Limited Editions. =(

Much Love, The Dragon Lady

Easter Mani #3 - Easter Chickies

I saw this adorable Chicken mani by Kelly @ Kelly's Kolors. I just had to try it out. I admit that although yellow was once one of my favorite colors, being a redhead it really just isn't my color. I didn't want to do 5 yellow chickies, so I thought I'd give you my 5 colored chickies instead.

Kind of like these:

I used China Glaze Dance Baby, Sally Hansen Mellow Yellow, Color Club Twiggie, China Glaze Bahamian Escape, and Revlon Charming. Same base colors I used for my first Easter mani, the Easter eggs.

For the beaks and claws I used Wet n Wild Sunny Side Up (orange creme). For the eyes I used Wet n Wild Black creme.

 So here they are:

Then I added some sparkle with a coat of China Glaze Fairy Dust.

Sorry, the sun was out wanted to see some sparklies after so much rain!

So, after seeing my chickies SOMEONE else wanted chickies. Sounded close to this, "Chickies! Chickies! Please! Cherry top!" Yes, the two year old wanted chickies enough to use the magic words Please with a cherry on top or at least her version. Now I want you to stop and think a minute about how small a two year old's fingernails really are. We are talking about 2/3 the size of a small polish brush, the pinky might be less than half. Those of you with kids or younger siblings know what I'm talking about. I should have posted this on it's own with the post title, "An Exercise in Patience." LMAO! She begged for these but would NOT hold still for them. Kept trying to lean over and see what I was doing. Oy!

The oldest also wanted some chickies and she wanted a bunny as an accent nail...we'll see how that goes and maybe I'll post it tomorrow. For now, goodnighty all and a great big thank you to all my followers for well, following! ;)

Much Love, The Dragon Lady

P.S. As I am previewing this Bug-bug is in my lap pointing at the screen and yelling, "Mine chickies." She actually scratched and peeled hers off hours ago. LOL