Nails of the Day - Pink Glitter Gradient and Handplaced Glitter Flowers

 I've seen these hand-placed glitter manis floating around the internet and desperately wanted some diamond shaped glitter to play with.  I must admit I didn't try terribly hard before Sinful Colors Shine on Me was received in an exchange.  Combined with a couple pearl rhinestones, Julep Madeline and sponged gradient of Wet N Wild Sparked, I have some of the girliest nails on the planet.
 



I love how flashy this glitter is; So eye-catching!



Nail Fail - Holographic Gradient

Last night was a big exciting deal for me: a company dinner/show to celebrate some of our top talent! I was determined to have a mani that was befitting such an occasion. After brainstorming with Rachel, I decided on a holo gradient.

I ended up using Color Club Miss Bliss and Nabi Hologram Effect in Purple. The sponging looked promisingly flashy! I was surprised that the color of the Nabi changed from a redder purple to a much bluer hue when sponged. Once the seche was applied, though, my hopes for a pink to purple holo gradient were quickly dashed. The pigment from the nabi penetrated the seche which effectively covered the holo and the pink!

Forgive the obvious color editing! The true color refused to be captured by a mere smartphone.

I didn't have time to start from scratch  so I tried to save it by placing a bit of Miss Bliss at the base of the nail and dry brushing it down. Accent nails got a coat of Nabi Jumbo Purple Glitter and Coco Allure Risqué Business. Though it didn't turn out how I wanted (at all), it i can't say I hate it!

Emily de Molly - Dark Forces

Here's my next Emily de Molly polish, Dark Forces.
It's another gorgeous polish! Not surprising, though. The large glitter was not fished for, as you can experience with larger pieces. Just like the other Forces polishes, it's in a jelly like base. This time, I used Rimmel Black Satin as a base. No bald spots this time!

The large holo circle glitter is becoming my favorite thing lately. They give off so many flashy flashes. Yeah, I said flashy flashes.  Another polish I am in love with.

Flashy flashes!

Any chance you get, GET ALLLLLLLL THE FORCES POLISHES! 

Don't forget about the giveaway! When we get to 200 likes on Facebook, there will be an additional polish for every prize!

Rachel

Emily de Molly - Oceanic Forces

LEMMING #3 - CHECK!

Ever since I saw Emily de Molly's polishes, I have loved them. But her Forces collection... I... I... I....... I WANTED them with every fiber of my being. They were the first ones I saw with the large circle glitter. In my humble opinion, a masterpiece of lacquer.

Now in these pics, I didn't use a color base, so you can tell they are realllly jelly like. Forgive the tips poking their heads out. I had some shrinkage with my Seche. Even with this, I don't care! I still loved how they came out.

Bald spot alert!

I left this one a little blurry to show the sparkle of the glitter. Soooo stinking gorgeous!

I purchased these from Llarowe. Yes... During the insanity purchase-a-thon. So worth it. 

Still got the nubbins, but they are growing out pretty fast, so can't complain tooo much.

Do you have any of this collection? What are your thoughts?

Rachel

piCture pOlish - Voodoo, plus special guest OPI Funky Dunkey

Ah, the saga of the temporary insanity continues... Another installment of "I went nuts when Llarowe restocked" is here for your viewing pleasure.

I got my first piCture pOlish, and lemming down! It was so dreamy using. The first polish I used that was so easy to paint with that I didn't need clean-up! Some may say that I should have done a little touch up here and there... BUT I WAS SO PROUD! So yay for first time painting nails like a really person instead of The Bride of Frankenstein.

This pic is in direct sunlight. Outside it just sparkled like crazy! When the bottle came, it was mostly a gold/coppery dusting of glitter on the bottle, giving it a more brown than red vampy look. So, I remember thinking... Is this what I ordered?! So, I put it off putting it on. OH THANK GOODNESS I FINALLY USED IT! One of my absolute FAVORITES right now.  This pic, to me, really represents the dark, luscious, saturated color. The sparkle is not really popping in the pic though. SO.... I did a macro. Well... AS macro as *I* can get right now.

Ok, first. This photo is not edited AT ALL. It's so crazy hot awesome it came out. It looks so velvety.

As much as I LOVED this by itself, I wanted to try out something new I also got from Zulily when they had the OPI duo's on sale. OPI Funky Dunkey was paired with OPI Black Spotted!!!!!!! ANOTHER LEMMING X2 DOWN! To have the opportunity to FINALLY get Black Spotted for less than $4 billion?! That's just... I'm verklempt. Mucho fotos soon.

Moving along... I did some nail art with Funky Dunkey. I am actually proud of it. It's me. Fun, jagged, understated, and lovely. Iffffff I do say so myself... Also, I googled color wheels and played with colors and this is my favorite combo that I made... MOVING ALONG....

In these pictures the sparkle comes out better. I took them in direct sunlight. This is the first set of pics that I took without artificial light. 

To conclude, this I am pretty proud with this post. I think I did a good job with the color combo and the pics. :D

Don't forget about our giveaway. As I posted in FB,  *IF* *WHEN* we reach 200 likes we are adding an additional polish per prize. We will reveal the prizes after reaching 150 likes. There's a Julep, two Barielles and an Ulta.  Don't miss out on your chance to win a CUSTOM indie +1, 4 Barielles +1, 3 Calvin Kleins +1, and Orly Duo +1!!!!!  Pretty sweet deal. 

Rachel

Essie - For The Twill Of It

Essie, you hath bestoweth upon us ungrateful mortal beings upon this Earth a great gift. Thou hath createth thine jewel of the spun cloth inspiration. We are but slaves of the polish wand. Patrons of glitter and duo-chrome. We thanketh thee.

This unworthy mortal being has had the great fortune to procure two of Essie's fall line, For The Twill Of It and After School Boy Blazer.  I got these when Cut and Blow had them on sale! The moment I saw For the Twill of It i was smitten.  It did not disappoint. While looking at the rest of the collection, After School Boy Blazer was such a rich dark navy, I wanted it immediately. Truthfully, they are all so wonderful. Restraint was with me that day alone.

These polishes were so difficult for me to capture. You can see the color shift some on For the Twill of It. It is so much more vibrant IRL.

In Sunlight

Indirect light

After School Boy Blazer was a one coater, but I did two because I got some streaks with my novice hand. Again, it is so rich in color. I really loved the blue in it.

This was another very difficult polish to capture. It's so dark that it is almost black, but it has this almost glow of blue. I really love it. I did have a little bit of staining on my cuticles, but I'm sure better painting would remedy that.

I also recently got Coco Allure's Risque Buisness. Over this dark blue I got more of the red sparkle than the green seen over other colors. In some lights the green does show, but it was hard for me to capture that.  On Llarowe's sight are some excellent pics of it. 

I can't wait to try this topcoat on other colors. It is so flashy! I also, in my insanity of purchasing, got Girly Bits Shift Happens. It has some similar flashes of color, so a comparison of them is definitely forthcoming!!! When I do that, I will do try harder to getting that green to pop it's head out.

Rachel

Glitter Gal - Brain Freeze

I FINALLY figured out my camera. Man... That's pretty pathetic. And all by accident. HOWEVER, it allows me to do better macro shots! Guess I gotta do a better job of painting and taking care of my cuticles.
I recently had to go down to nubbins because I was not so kind to my nails, and picked off polish that took part of the nail with it... Live and learn.

Ignore the fuzzy background. Nothing to see here...

The holo in this is really great. It's pretty linear, and you can tell in the macro shot in the second pic. I am so in love with Glitter Gal polishes. They were in my top 5 first lemmings, and when Llarowe restocked, it was kismet. 

While I looked through some of the other shots of Brain Freeze, I noticed that I captured this pretty well in comparison. Pretty proud of that. I wanted to do justice to this wonderful polish.

More goodies to come from my lapse of sanity purchasing spree...

Rachel

Giveaway!

OH YES IT IS HERE!!!!
Avast me hearties! Weigh anchor! We be on a journey to Polishlandia!
Where the pretties be sparkly, and the color abounds.

In celebration of the change in the name of this blog, we are having a GIVEAWAY!

Replygif.net

He's so sexy.

Ahem...

We have four wonderful prizes!!!!! 

Prize 1: Carpe Noctem Cosmetics - No Sweets for Sweet Jujie

This is a custom polish Emily from Carpe Noctem Cosmetics made! IT IS INSANITY OF BEAUTY IN A BOTTLE! I asked her to do a polish for my kitty, Jujie. Emily generously donated another bottle for our celebration! He was recently diagnosed with diabetes, and it was a very scary road towards this. He is way better now, but no more carbs for Mr. Kitty!

This is No Sweets for Sweet Jujie over aEngland Tess D'Urbervilles. NSfSJ is in a sea green/teal jelly base with large holo circle, gold hex, and magenta hex glitter.  The green base is the spitting image of his eye color (which I asked for), and the glitter is like candy and wrappers! Emily is so amazing to work with, and she really cares that the polish turns out exactly how you want it. Thank you to infinity, Emily!

 Prize 2:
Three Calvin Klein Splendid Color polishes. Fuchsia Pink, Salmon, and Bright Fuchsia. I thought these are so summery, and thought would be perfect for the giveaway for this time of year.

Prize 3:

Four Barielle polishes in Exquisite Dance, Positive Zen-ergy, Secret Admirer, and End of the Rainbow. They aren't really as summery, but I thought they really went well with each other.

Prize 4:

An Orly duo of Ultra Violet and You Are Not Alone.  The pic shows them a bit darker than in person. I tried to get as good of a pic, but my camera was not wanting to cooperate.

This giveaway will run from August 14 to September 19 (Talk Like a Pirate Day, btw). When it's over, thar shall be treasure! This is for U.S. only. Still looking into how to get the international ladies in on the treasure!

There are a few mandatory entries, and all entries will be verified. Those who do not participate correctly will be disqualified.  All prizes are brand new, and purchased by me, Rachel. Once the prizes are mailed, the blog owners are no longer responsible for the items.

Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Smitten Polish - The Ghost of Jupiter

HOORAY!
Our first post as Swatchbucklers!

I have for you today Smitten Polish's The Ghost of Jupiter. This is an AMAZING polish. It is chocked full of glitter, and what a wonderful dark blue base! I am a huge fan of round glitter, and am so happy to be able to try this out.  As a novice, I had the teensiest trouble with application. Only because I was so excited to have this, that I kinda slapped it on with enthusiasm. I would recommend this to EVERYONE! Simply, a must have for all polish lovers. I am dying for more of Smitten Polish.
There is a bit of tip issues because of my Seche being a brat. Didn't detract from my awe at all!

I purchased this from Llarowe. They are having a huge restock, so get it while you can!!! 

Once I get the hang of taking pics with my camera, I will try to get better macros. 

Until we meet again on these wild seas!

Rachel

Stained Glass Nails

I saw a tutorial for this on r/redditlaqueristas and quickly decided it must be copied.  The original was a lot of low pigment high pay-off glitter. I wanted to throw in a bit more color in my attempt but found that I have a limited collection! Fortunately, I just got a bunch of de-stash polish from Rachel (read as: a freaking haul) that included some colors I'd love to include in my next attempt. 

Please forgive my cuticle! I slammed it in a door recently.

 

Not Pictured: The way light passed through the tips of my nails like stained glass.   You can almost see it in the second shot (index finger) but seeing it on all nails was really rather neat.

Challenge - TEA NAILS - Bigelow Constant Comment

Ok, so this is my last post as a Newly Obsessed. As bitter sweet as it is, we are off on a new adventure, with new treasure to capture. We shall seek new fortunes! YARRRRRRR!

This last Challenge is inspired by Tea. Tey and I are big tea drinkers, and love the names and designs of the packaging, so why not? My favorite tea of all time (or at least up to this point in my life) is Bigelow's Constant Comment. It's a black tea with citrus and spice. This tea my mom and I would drink on cold days, when we were sick, or just because. This was the only thing that came to mind when I thought of this challenge.
I TRIED to recreate the teapot on the package front, and the tea cup and saucer on the back of the packaging.  There is a black to orange gradient that really stood out as something to recreate.

Image from vitacost.com

The black is Rimmel Black Satin, orange Julep Mischa, bronze Finger Paints Figure of Art.

Please forgive the cuticle area. Julep's Mischa has a lot of silver micro glitter and it got EVERYWHERE. The blurring of my cuticles helped a LITTLE, but... Well, whatever.
I love how the tea cup and saucer came out. The tea pot was a little more wonky, but I still think it's cute! I love doing these challenges, they remind me of my family, friends, and times of fun.

We will be on a little hiatus while the site is being revamped. So stay tuned! We WILL have a wonderful prize at the end to celebrate!

Rachel

Ahoy, mateys!

Newly Obsession is no longer so new. In fact, we're so obsessed we're pretty much old sea dogs at this point.  Like all of the good sea dogs, we're out to plunder more polish-booty and possibly do rogue type stuff (mostly, we just want more lacquer). 

All that being said, we're retiring our newness in favor of something more fitting for our silly and awesome ways.  Our blog will be relaunching soon with a new design, new name, and a giveaway!

Challenge - Inspired by Tea!

On my daily list of priorities, a cup of tea is mandatory! There's something about a cup of freshly brewed tea that says, "Hey me! You're RAD! Have something awesome. In fact, I recently purchased a comically huge mug so I can enjoy MORE tea as I reflect on how important I am.

One of my current favorites is The Tea Table's Masala Chai because it is such a rich, complex and unique blend.  If you're in the market for a new chai, it is the bee's knees with a bit of milk and sugar.  In fact, the Masala Chai convinced Mr. Husband not all tea had that weird "I just came out of a soda fountain" taste.

I tried to take this one a bit literal and was inspired by the experience of enjoying a cup of tea. 

On my accent nails I did a watercolor technique to try and meld some of the colors used like the spices in my favorite beverage: deep brown black tea leaves, a warm metallic cinnamon,  creamy taupe vanilla and a bit of warm yellow for the ginger root.  The other nails are also a watercolor technique but I hoped it would mimic the way milk and black tea swirl together when first combined.  

They didn't turn out how I'd hoped as the average human wouldn't see "tea" in these. I do love the look though! It's very subtle and feminine and will look great wrapped around my tea mug.

Scofflaw - Wyld Stallyns!

SAN DIMAS HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL RULES!

I have been DYING to say that ever since I ordered this polish.

I loved this polish the moment it touched my nail. Perfect formula, as always Scofflaw. The purple is so great. GUSH GUSH GUSH!

Thank you Scofflaw for bringing me out of my Moratorium! LOL!

Rachel

You can purchase this polish either from Scofflaw's Etsy shop, Llarowe,  Shoppe Eclecticco, and Femme Fatale.

This polish was purchased by me, and no compensation for review was provided.

Challenge - B Horror Movies and A Song - Rocky Horror Picture Show

It's been too long! Life has been busy and I always tend to slow down on the polish when I've had to mow my nails down because of a break. Is there anything more devastating to a polishaholic? It takes the wind RIGHT out of my sails!

Without furhter adieu, I present my Rocky Horror Picture Show and Science Fiction/Double Feature manicure!

To start, here is the Rocky Horror piece of this mani! From index to pinky, we're representing Magenta (Space Hair), Columbia (glittery top hat), Frank N Furter (Lab Coat), and Rocky (stunning little monogramed briefs).

And for the Science Fiction/Double Feature, I freehanded using polish the iconic lips of the opening song! I'm so proud of this one!!