Holo Spirals

Today I have some wickedly awesome nails for you! My friend and fellow blogger, Heather, has been raving about some stencils she's tried from smART nails. She says hands down they are the best stencils she's tried. Sooo, I ordered some after seeing some really cool spiral nails on her blog.

Then, life got in the way and it was almost a week before I could try them after I received them. But, they are pretty darn awesome AND really reasonably priced. Shipping does take a while because they're located in Romania, but they are SO worth the wait!

For these nails, I did a base of two coats of You Polish Gravender Aura. It's a pale gray/lavender with just a slight hint of holo. I let it dry completely, then I used smART nail stencil P019 and polished Color Club Eternal Beauty over them and peeled them off. I think Eternal Beauty brings out the lavender a little bit in Gravender Aura and I have to say I think these are my favorite nails I've ever done!! One coat of top coat over it all after it was completely dry and I have unique, beautiful nails that were so easy!!!

Happy polishing!!

The Unprofessional Polisher ;-) 

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! Pardon me for being absent for so long; life got in the way of the blog and I was having trouble finding my niche in the blogging world. There are so many polish bloggers out there and I was trying to emulate some of my favorites, which was causing tons of stress for me! So, new year, new way of doing things!! You'll see less posts but more information on the polishes, plus hopefully a lot more nail art as I delve into that and try some things I've never tried before!

This look was done using some nail things I got for Christmas. My boys know I do my nails a lot and told their PawPaw I needed nail polish for Christmas! Man I love those boys!!! Anyway, I got a small basket full of goodies and it included some things I hadn't ever tried before, like nail stickers and nail polish strips. 

For these, I polished two coats of Pure Ice Siren on my index, middle, and pinky nails. Siren is an amazing bright red cream, and even though in the pic below it shows VNL, it didn't in real life. Then I used Sally Hansen Salon Effects Real Nail Polish Strips in I Love Lacey on my thumb and ring finger. I've never used these before and I have to say I was pretty impressed with their wearability and their ease of use. After that I used Essence French Glam nail stickers that matched on my index, middle, and pinky nails. I am super surprised about the wearability of these stickers, I had zero peeling or removal in the two days I wore these! To finish, I top coated everything with Out The Door topcoat.

Hope you enjoy this look as much as I did and I also hope your new year brings you everything you dream of!

All yours, The Unprofessional Polisher ;-)

My ellagee custom and a giveaway teaser...

Hello!!! I know it's been a long time since I've posted but I've been so busy loving on some new polishes. This one is my favorite of all and warning, this is gonna be a loooooong post!

Custom

I contacted Laura at ellagee about doing a custom for me based on my favorite color. I'm sure you can guess what it is based on the pictures below...it's a certain blue, made famous by a certain jeweler...ahem...

This is what she came up with and I named it Angela Blue. Because it's mine. ALLLLLL MIIIIIINE! Actually there were 3 bottles made. One for myself, one for a giveaway (teaser), and one for my polish bestie, Heather at I Feel Polished. I know she loves this color too so I thought it would be a good surprise for her!

I picked Laura to do my custom because she is crazy easy to work with and I love her polishes (I now have 50. Yes 50.). She sent me pics and let me make the final decision. I absolutely love what we came up with :-) The formula is amazing, it's opaque in 2 coats, and I'm pretty sure if I run out she'll make me more. I hope! I also decided to do an accent nail because this polish is way too pretty for my manicure with it not to shine!

Accent nail

For my accent nail to go with Angela Blue, I was inspired by the lampshades made famous by *cough* Louis Comfort Tiffany. His lampshades are so beautiful and coveted by many. Especially by me. Anyway so I found a picture of one with red, orange, and purple flowers and decided to do my own take on it. For the base I used another custom (SURPRISE!) from Laura that came with my Angela Blue, Sweet Heather, inspired by the white ribbon that's on the boxes from the aforementioned jeweler :-) Then I used a very small dotting tool and Zoya Elodie, a medium orange/coral, and made an irregular dot in the middle of my nail. Using the same dotting tool, I used Pure Ice Siren (red), ellagee Haleakala Sunrise (pink shimmer), and ellagee Aloha Oe (purple shimmer) to make irregular shapes for the petals. Next I used Essie Go Overboard (dark teal) for the leaves. Then using a very small nail art brush (and a shaky hand but remember, I did this on my left hand...and I'm left handed o.O) I used Sinful Colors Black On Black to fill in the lines and actually make the petals and leaves. Then I drew some random lines coming off the flower to indicate the "lampshade" part. I thought it turned out really well, considering A) this is my 2nd attempt at free hand nail art and B) I did it right-handed!

Giveaway

I have one more bottle of Angela Blue to give away to a lucky reader. As soon as I hit 100 likes on Facebook and 100 followers on IG, be looking for a chance to win a bottle of my custom!!

Pretty in blue,

The Unprofessional Polisher

Holy Holo Part 1 :-)

If anyone reads my ramblings on here at all, you must know by now that my favorite polish finish is holographic. I love the rainbow effect (Rainbow Syrup all the things ;-) ) they give off, plus they're just so cool! Before I started blogging, I had no idea holographic nail polish even existed. I was living under a rock somewhere in Missouri minding my own business I guess!!

For my birthday, I bought myself the Color Club Halo Hues Collection. My fellow blogger and friend, Heather from I Feel Polished, and I were talking about the awesomeness that is holo and she said I should get the Color Club holos because they were absolutely amazing. So of course I got on Amazon and sure enough they were there and I purchased them before Heather even got the complete sentence out of her mouth!! Amazon's one click ordering is going to be the bane of my wallet's existence!!

Ahem.

Anyway, here are 3 polishes from the collection I bought. All had super smooth formulas, all wore REALLY well (I wore Kismet for 5 days and only one nail chipped) and all were super beautiful!

First is Cosmic Fate. Color Club describes this as a peachy holographic shade, but I would call it orange. I am not a huge orange fan, but I loved this polish!

Next is Kismet. Heather said this looked gold to her. On my nails, it was most definitely light green. The pics are true to the color it was on me. Simply gorgeous!

Last but certainly not least is Miss Bliss. It is a rose pink and so beautiful!

I still have 3 more polishes from this collection to try out, so be looking for a post on them next week! All in all I'm very, very pleased with these and my enabler (heh heh) for telling me to buy them! I'm looking forward to getting more Color Club polish in the future!

PS, I have started a super secret stash of my best loved polishes that no one else can use. Ever. Ever ever. Because I'm a polish nazi. Anyway, these 6 Halo Hues are in the super secret stash. Shhhhhh. I said nothing. :-)

Always polished,

The Unprofessional Polisher

ellagee Doctor Who collection Part 2--the greens

Holy cow! Summer hit Missouri this past week and the air has been so humid it is hampering my abilities to polish! Which is why, despite my best attempts, this post didn't happen last Friday as it should have...my polish wouldn't dry, it was applying all goopy and wonky, and in general I was a hot, cranky, tired mess!

Finally though, here is the last 2 of the 4 polishes I bought from ellagee's Doctor Who collection, and all I can say is...WOW.

First up is Void Stuff...it's a beautiful emerald green jelly polish loaded with green glitters! I used two coats, but should have done three thin ones...this was when I realized the humidity was hampering my polishing. I had trouble with this polish and I have no doubt it was the weather!! The humidity seems to mess with jellies more than any other formula, and I had some troubles with it wanting to goop up at the end of my nail and then pull back. I didn't have this problem with Sexy Old Girl from the same collection so I'm thinking it was the weather. I really thought I would love this polish, but it didn't speak out to me. It's a beautiful color, and so shimmery and shiny in the sunlight, but wasn't a favorite out of the 4. Here it is, in all its emerald green glory:

Next up is Medusa Cascade. Now, as I mentioned in my previous post, I'm not a Whovian. So I have no idea where the inspiration and name came from for this polish. All I know is O.M.G. wherever the inspiration came from, it was amazing!

Medusa Cascade is a multi-chrome, shade shifting, wonderful batch of goodness that shifts from gold to yellow to orange to green to teal to blue. My boys said it was very dragon-like...whatever that means. Let me just say I spent 15 minutes in the shower looking at my nails from all angles in and out of the water to see all the colors. Yes, I am, in fact, easily amused, however this polish is just simply gorgeous. The formula is smooth but because it is a chromie, brushstrokes can show. Here it is, Medusa Cascade:

See all the pretty colors?!?!?! My friend Amy said it was no wonder I loved this polish because it was like the beach and ocean all in one polish. All the things I like :-)

Sadly I think Medusa Cascade is gone because Laura can no longer get the pigments used to make it, but she was working on some dupes of the original formulas of some of the multi-chromes in this collection so keep checking!

Forever polished,

The Unprofessional Polisher

ellagee Doctor Who collection Part 1--The Blues

Today I have a couple of amazing polishes from ellagee's Doctor Who collection. I have to admit, I've only seen about 7 episodes and so I haven't completely jumped on the Doctor Who bandwagon, but it is a quirky show, I'll give it that! I got 4 from the collection, 2 greens and 2 blues and today I have the blues for you!

Onto the polish!

First up is Sexy Old Girl. Everyone who watches Doctor Who knows he travels in the TARDIS. Well, this polish is a TARDIS blue jelly with holographic glitters! It is so beautiful! My camera went into sparkle overload and couldn't quite catch the awesomeness of Sexy Old Girl. I had a few problems with the formula on this one, only because there is so much glitter and it wasn't cooperating for me. But once I got it on, WOW! It's a stare at your nails all day long polish!

Next up is Trenzalore, named after the place Doctor Who can't go to. What a pity because if it is as gorgeous as this polish, he's missing out!

You know how sometimes you find things in life that is like a part of your soul, a piece of clothing that just soothes you when you put it on, a blanket that automatically makes you feel cozy and comfy, an animal that seems like they're a part of you? This unexpectedly happened for me with Trenzalore. I kid you not! It was the first polish of the four I tried because I thought it was the ugliest in the bottle. My thoughts were, "Eh, I'll wear this one for a day then I'll take it off and try the pretties." It was more like I put this on, and I wore it for FOUR DAYS until one nail was so chipped I HAD to take it off.

Trenzalore is a soft blue-gray polish with subtle scattered holo. Formula is smooth and amazing and just seeing these pics I want to run home and put it back on. I LOVE this polish!

There you have it! The blues of the Doctor Who collection from ellagee. Both can be found at www.ellagee.com along with the other amazing polishes from this collection!

Found my soul mate polish!

The Unprofessional Polisher

Ellagee Wham!

I love glitter. I love holo.

I LOVE holo glitter!

Today's polish is almost too much for words. This is Wham! by ellagee, a gorgeous mix of white and yellow gold holographic glitter. It's not really a texture polish, but because of all the glitter, it isn't smooth. However, with a coat or two of top coat, it is as smooth as a cream polish, and YOWZERS!!! THE SPARKLE!!!

Formula is okay, a little difficult to manage because of the glitter, but I wore this for 2 days with no glitter snagging or chipping! Removal, well, it is a grouch. But that's to be expected with any glitter polish. I just soak a piece of cotton ball in remover, slap it on my nail, and put a rubber sorting finger over it. Then I do crosswords or watch TV for 10 minutes and ta da!! Glitter is removed!

Ok, so here is Wham! under normal light:

Here is Wham! under muted sunlight:

And here, here is Wham! with flash to show the beauty it is:

Wham! is really blingy and really flashy, but for the record no one at work ran away screaming, "My eyes! My eyes!" so I think it's safe to wear for all occasions :-)

And, if yellow gold is more your thing, check out Kachow! If white gold is more your style, check out Boom!, all at www.ellagee.com.

Or just go to Laura's site anyway, because there will be something you'll love there. Trust me ;-)

Have a sparkling weekend!

The Unprofessional Polisher