A couple of days ago I broke my right thumb nail. I panicked. So, naturally, Crackle was involved.

I trimmed and filed down the offending, broken thumb nail, then put China Glaze Tarnished Gold Crackle over everything. Somehow it eased the pain (not physical pain, thankfully)!

The base polish is Butter London Wallis.

I really like how this turned out and I have to say that I LOVE Tarnished Gold Crackle. It's so super pretty, especially in the bright sun. It has silver shimmer mixed in with the gold, which makes it both special and gorgeous.

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As I'm sure you probably know, I'm not a big swatcher. I kind of hate swatching. But I received some encouragement from my friends on MUA and busted a move earlier this afternoon! I swatched the new Revlon scented Fizz polishes. All are shown at three coats with no top coat.

From left to right: Pineapple Fizz, Orange Fizz, Grapefruit Fizz, and Watermelon Fizz.

My nails are stained, which sucks. I would totally wear these sheer if they weren't stained! At any rate, I can see these being great for layering and also some would be fine on their own with three or four coats, probably.

From left to right: Colada Fizz (the bottle looks baby blue), Apple-tini Fizz, Mint Fizz, and Grape Fizz.

Mint is quite opaque, actually. It also stains like crazy!

Grape might be my favorite, but I really do like them all. The glass-flecked shimmer is so lovely and almost looks like wee little flakies!

I wish I could tell you more about the scents but I have quite the head cold right now. :( In the swatching process I recall generally fruitiness and I do believe I smelled the mint. That's about all I know. I scratched the stickers on the bottles in the store and actually liked how they all smelled. Scented polish is a double-edged sword for me. I very much enjoy the novelty but also find that I get annoyed by the smell at the same time!

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Faye sounds kind of like a Granny name to me. If your name is Faye and you are not a Granny I will go ahead and apologize for my generalization.

This is three coats of Zoya Faye.

I really love this polish.

It's so sparkly and shiny and just unbelievably beautiful.

Application was great although my wear wasn't the best ever. I don't think Zoyas ever give me really great wear. They're not officially crappy on me, just, I wish they were better. Maybe I need to find the magical combination of the right base and top for me, for this particular brand.

In any case, I love Zoya's great colors! They continue to please me with new and pretty colors that I want.

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I wore this a few days ago. I wanted to try out some of the OPI Pirates of the Caribbean polishes that I got last weekend. I started with two somewhat thick coats of Mermaid's Tears.

I only have indoor pictures of this because I did it at night...but you get the idea.

I added a coat of Dior Rock Coat for fun. This was my first time trying it, too.

Sadly, the brush on my Rock Coat is quite wonky and ridiculous, so I had a hell of a time with my application.

It ended up looking a little streaky, but overall I can see this having potential. Also, I didn't care much since I knew I would be putting Silver Shatter on top!

Now, for the finished mani. I added Silver Shatter.

Please pardon the sore spot on my pinky. My cuticles are looking sad, too, because I couldn't use cuticle remover due to sore spots! Vicious cycle. Note to self: stop nibbling on your cuticles!

I wasn't in love with the overall look, but it did grow on me after time. Maybe because I had just taken a little length off my nails I thought they looked very stubby and short with these polishes on! I have also decided that Shatter and Crackle can make my nails look and seem stubbier in general.

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Today I wore China Glaze Sea Spray with White Cap over it. I used two coats of Sea Spray and one coat of White Cap.

Sea Spray reminds me of my bed sheets and my current set of bath towels! I like this color. It was almost a little frosty on its own, so I'm glad to have put some shimmer on top.

White Cap is beautiful! It's whitish, goldish, and a little iridescent. It reminds me of Lorac's 3D Liquid Lustre (which I adore). I can see myself putting this over lots of polishes.

Do you know I wore Ozotic Pro 621 for five days? The first day ended badly in chips. Then I reapplied it the next day, alternating a coat of Palladio Fuse with a coat of polish. That was the trick, I tell you! Four days nearly perfect after that. It did look a little dull and odd by the third and fourth day because I didn't have top coat on, but honestly, I could not believe how well it held up. Many times I banged my nails badly and thought for sure it would chip, but it did not! :) Good stuff. This is how I'll be wearing my holos from now on.

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Sephora listed some new polishes about a week ago. I went ahead and ordered some of them, sight unseen! They were just too tempting. This is one of them.

This is two coats of L70 It's Time To Rock!

I was blown away by this little bottle as soon as I took it out of the box. It has a twinge of pinky-purple blue duochrome that only barely translates to the nail.

It's loaded full of gorgeous sparkly blue, silver, and pinky-purple shimmer.

It somewhat reminds me of $OPI If You've Got It, Haunt It, yet is really quite different.

I really like this color and had no problems with the formula or application (even though I'm not a fan of the newer, bigger brush).

Here are a few indoor pictures to show the different aspects of the shimmer. (Never mind that my camera refuses to focus where I want it to on the manual mode. I suck).

Some of the other colors I bought look pretty MEH...but a couple others are looking promising. I really should learn to wait. :)

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This is three coats of Zoya Apple. I used Seche Vite as my top coat here and I don't think it agreed with Zoya's formula entirely.

I say that because I had some strange rippling/wrinkling on the middle finger and I swear I did not bump or disturb it. I'll be sticking with Poshe over my Zoyas in the future.

When I applied Apple I had a huge déjà vu moment and remembered Color Club Magic Elf.

In my mind, I figured they were dupes...but also wanted to do a comparison to find out for sure.

Above picture is a full on blazing sun pic - check out that awesome, blinding shimmer!

Magic Elf bottle is on the left. It was from a mini Holiday set last year.

You can see from the bottles that there is a difference. Magic Elf is deeper and more golden.

Three coats of each. Magic Elf is on the middle and pinky fingers (but with no top coat).

I quickly bumped and smudged my pinky, so these are Apple sandwich pictures with Magic Elf in the middle. :)

I really like them both, and normally I go for cooler tones to match my skin, but I have to say honestly that I prefer Magic Elf a little more. I think it's just a tad prettier and more gorgeous.

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This was a mani I wore on Thursday and yesterday. I had hoped I would still be wearing it today, but I had a few chips last night, sadly. It's another combination with Clarins 230. I promise I have a palette-cleanser in store for you as my next post!

I started with three coats of Color Club Alias. Alias is not unlike Cetuem 224, but it's loaded with gorgeous chunky shimmer (I'm not positive, but believe it would be considered "glass-flecked").

Alias is mostly a lovely deep purple, but does have a bit of a duochrome flash to it with gray and green. It's a lovely polish and I wish I had pictures of it by itself to show you.

I added a coat of Clarins 230, the magic maker.

It added pinkish red shimmer with a twist.

I really love these two together. Really. Love.

I couldn't get much of a green flash (only the slightest hints), but it did flash orange nicely at times.

I wish that Alias had been a bit more opaque so I could have gone with two coats instead of three, but really, I can't complain much. Other than being a bit sheer, it applied well.

I love how 230 looks all glowy, lit-from-within, and alive in these pictures here (above and below).

The picture below is one of my favorites because you can kind of see hints of green around the base of the three nails on the left (mostly the index and middle). It reminds me of the green mist from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader movie. I know, I am a total dork.

Here is Georgia taking a sun bath yesterday. She's very pleased it's getting hot out again.

This is her sleepy, lazy face. Gotta love all those "freckle" spots on her face. :)

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