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

Low to mid priced polish comparison

Back last year (or maybe earlier this year...I'm not sure) my friend and fellow blogger Heather over at I Feel Polished did a blog post on how to paint your nails. She says that any polish can last a long time provided the application is done well.

Because I'm naturally a curious person and because I had two red polishes in my untrieds bin, I decided to put her theory to the test. The two red polishes I had in my untrieds bin were both low priced polishes available at Walmart. To make the test fair I picked two mid priced polishes from my stash to test with them. I wanted to see if the low priced polishes would last as long as the mid priced polishes and how their formulas compared. I polished these on a Saturday morning before my household chores when I knew my nails would be getting a workout, and I left them on 24 hours.

The four polishes I used for this test were (from pinky to index finger on my right hand) OPI Wocka Wocka, Zoya Nidhi, NYC Madison Avenue, and Pure Ice Siren. A little about the polishes themselves:

OPI Wocka Wocka--formula was smooth, clean up was a little difficult (it liked to stick in the cuticles really well), did not stain

Zoya Nidhi--formula was thin (I used two coats and could have used three), clean up was difficult because of the shimmer (it left glitter everywhere), did not stain

NYC Madison Avenue--formula was thin (I used two coats and could have used three), clean up was easy, did not stain

Pure Ice Siren--formula was great, two coats was awesome, clean up was easy, did not stain

I polished them on all exactly the same. I used ellagee Grip for my basecoat, I wrapped all coats of polish around my tips, and I used ellagee Glass as my topcoat.

To be really fair, I painted the 4 polishes I used from index to pinky on my left hand, knowing that most people typically use their index and middle fingers more than their ring and pinky fingers.

The results of the test after 24 hours:

After 24 hours every nail had tip wear except the pinky on my left hand which was polished with Pure Ice Siren. None chipped, and I could have worn it for another day or two easy. I was absolutely shocked that out of the four my favorite was Pure Ice Siren, which I had been putting off trying because I'm a polish snob and didn't think a cheap polish from Walmart would be worth a crap. And I have proven Heather's theory correct...It's not how much the polish is, it's how you apply it that's key and I made a point to myself that some more expensive polishes aren't as good as some cheaper polishes. It all depends on the formula!

Yours in scarlet,

The Unprofessional Polisher