Swatch: Indigo Bananas Acid Ocean

The product in this post was given to me as a gift. All opinions are my own.

Happy Monday everyone! It's the last day of August, but summer is definitely hanging on here--it's over 90 degrees today. Yuck!

Today I have a swatch from one of my favorite indie brands, Indigo Bananas. Last year she released a bunch of polishes with beautiful color-shifting flakies, and this was my top lemming from the collection. Acid Ocean is a dark teal jelly with green-blue-purple shifting flakies, plus what looks like some Fantasy Fire-type shimmer! So squishy and ethereal!

Indigo Bananas Acid Ocean. Three coats with Out the Door topcoat.

The formula was on the runny side for a jelly, so I needed three coats to build up the color. Otherwise I had no problems with it! The flakies are the classic type that lie perfectly flat.

Yet another gorgeous IB polish! It's available here for $12 for 15 ml, or $7.25 for 8 ml!

The product in this post was given to me as a gift. All opinions are my own.

Swatch: Indigo Bananas Twice as Bright

The product in this post was purchased by me. All opinions are my own.

Happy Memorial Day weekend to my fellow USians! I hope you're spending the time with your favorite people! We made some amazing lamb burgers that I posted on Instagram--definitely a fun alternative to the typical cheeseburger!

This weekend I'm wearing a very fun summery color from one of my favorite brands, Indigo Bananas! Twice as Bright is a hot pink crelly with intense glassfleck shimmer that shifts cyan-blue-purple-magenta. Seriously, this shimmer is so bright that it glows even in indoor lighting! The name of the polish is definitely fitting! To me, this is classic Indigo Bananas.

Indigo Bananas Twice as Bright. Two coats with Out the Door topcoat.

The formula was great, as usual--it stays exactly where you put it. It's also pretty chip-resistant compared to most other polish (I usually lose chips off the corners of my nails after a day or so). It was still a little sheer at two coats, but I was too busy staring at that shimmer to notice!

Here I tried to get a pic of the color shift in the shimmer, but I couldn't get it all the way to magenta. I definitely noticed it a lot in real life though!

Seriously, if you like pink--or even if you don't--you need this polish. I got a compliment from a stranger on it yesterday! (It's available here in full and mini sizes.)

The product in this post was purchased by me. All opinions are my own.

My five favorite swatches of 2014!

Hi guys and gals! As promised, I'm going to show you some of my favorite posts from last year. Today I narrowed it down to my top five swatched polishes, which was pretty hard, believe me! Are we surprised that they're all purple or teal??

In no particular order (each title is linked to my original post):

1. Glam Polish Leapfrog

2. KBShimmer Sugar Plum Faerie

3. Glitter Daze Poised

4. Zoya Neeka

5. Indigo Bananas We Are the Music Makers

Which of these is your favorite?

Tomorrow I'll be back with my favorite nail art from 2014!

More pics from vacation

Happy New Year everyone!! 2014 sure went by quickly, didn't it?

We got back from our long trip yesterday after driving 5.5 hours through the big storm that was all over the eastern U.S. Now it's time to get back to life (and start eating better again!), but first I'll show you some more manis I wore over the holidays, and a couple other photos!


This was what I wore on Christmas: Happy Hands Metal Heart.

Then for my 10-year high school reunion, I wore Powder Perfect Maneater with an accent of Indigo Bananas Moonlight:

You can't see it in the sun, but Maneater actually has a lot of blue-green iridescent glitter, so I took another pic that shows it better:

Finally, I have a few photos from our visit to the Henry Ford Museum in Detroit. I used to go there for field trips all the time, but I hadn't been back in many years. As you might guess, the museum mainly focuses on the history of technology, especially cars, trains and planes, but they have a lot of other exhibits too, such as the chair Abraham Lincoln was shot in. It's definitely worth a visit if you're in the area.

Here's the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile:

Rosa Parks' bus:

FDR's presidential limo (they also have JFK's limo, which was actually used by other presidents after JFK was assassinated in it. Kinda morbid, don't you think?):

One of their special exhibits was a Lego display with some models of Detroit skyscrapers:

I'll be back soon with a roundup of some of my favorite manis from 2014!

October's Gimme That Polish!

Hi all! Sorry for the radio silence the past few days--my in-laws were visiting for the weekend, then yesterday was Mr. ALIQUID's birthday! Being the boring people we are, we celebrated by getting Chinese food and visiting a new grocery store that just opened here. Thrilling!

Anyway, here finally are my top five lemmings from my Pinterest wishlist for October! Lots of beautiful fall and winter shades here. As usual, go visit the original reviews for more photos!

1. Lilypad Lacquer - Envy Me

As I think I've mentioned before, holos with contrasting shimmer are my new favorite thing, and I absolutely love the jewel tone green and purple together here. Lilypad is one of those brands I keep seeing everywhere and want to try every single one of! This polish is exclusive to Hypnotic Polish, a Netherlands-based stockist. (swatch by Very Emily)

2. KBShimmer - Mauve On Over

OK, glitter crellies are my other favorite thing, especially when the color combo is unexpected. This is from KBShimmer's new winter collection, but it doesn't really read winter to me. What do you think? (KBShimmer shop | swatch by The Nail Polish Challenge)

3. Delush Polish - Misty Day

Ahhh, look how much depth this one has! I love the pops of color among all the green. This one reminds me of an enchanted forest. (Delush Polish shop | swatch by The Nail Polish Challenge)

4. Indigo Bananas - Gods & Monsters

In my opinion, Andrea of Indigo Bananas is the queen of multichrome polishes (and one of my polish muses in general). This one is a prime example. She uses the old-school flakies with a super intense color shift, and it just looks like the epitome of fall to me. Droooool. (Indigo Bananas shop | swatch by Polish Hound)

5. A England - Virgin Queen

It feels like a while since we've seen a new A England collection, and this newest one is stunning as always. They do the best scattered holos! The blend of silver and gold here is just uber-classy. (A England shop | swatch by Marine Loves Polish)


Honorable mention: Powder Perfect - The Stars Are Shining Brightly

I'll be back tomorrow with my favorite manis from October!

June's Gimme That Polish!

One day I'll manage to do my Gimme That Polish post before the month is actually over! At any rate, here are my five favorite polishes of the ones I pinned to my wishlist last month. Check out the original blogger reviews and let me know your biggest lemmings in the comments!

1. Indigo Bananas Acid Ocean

Andrea of Indigo Bananas continues to be amazing with her new collection of jelly flakies. I love the way those toxic green flakies pop out of the murky blue base...it reminds me of a bioluminescent sea creature! (Indigo Bananas shop | swatch by The Mercurial Magpie)

2. KBShimmer Look High and Holo

I had to have at least one jelly glitterbomb this month! This one is super colorful and perfect for summer. Plus, come on, holo glitter! Yes please! (KBShimmer shop | swatch by Nail Polish Wars)

3. Glam Polish Rivendell

OK, not only is this a Lord of the Rings-themed polish AND a teal polish, but just look at those flecks! Flakes and flecks are probably my #1 favorite "thing to put in nail polish", so I'm all over this one. (Glam Polish shop | swatch by Accio Lacquer)

4. Powder Perfect Deceptively Sweet

This one's uncharacteristically girly for me, but I love the muted lilac base color, and the gold shimmer makes it special but still restrained. You definitely need to check out the full-size pics to appreciate this polish! (Powder Perfect shop | swatch by The Nail Polish Project)

5. Northern Star Polish Electric Lime

Mmm, this shade of green really hits the spot for me. The combo of the green with the various colors of glitter makes me think of tropical fruit! An awesome polish for summer. (Northern Star shop | swatch by The Mercurial Magpie)

2014 Blogger Challenge #11: My polish stash...photographed!

Good morning! I'm finally returning to the 2014 Blogger Challenge. You might have noticed that I haven't done it for a couple months--there were some prompts I didn't have much to say about, then I kinda got distracted. But I thought today's topic would be a perfect place to get back on the horse. The prompt is collections. What do I have a giant collection of? Nail polish, of course! If you like to see pictures of organized stuff, you will like this post!

This will obviously be image-heavy, so click the jump to see it all!

The Neverending Pile Challenge: Indigo Bananas Medusa Transducer

The product in this post was given to me as a gift. All opinions are my own.

Happy Friday! I think my interview this morning went well! I still need to take a little test so they can make sure I know how to use Excel...I think I should be fine. :-P

Anyway, today's Neverending Pile Challenge prompt is glow-in-the-dark. As far as I know, I only have one glow-in-the-dark polish, and luckily it's an untried! Indigo Bananas Medusa Transducer is a very sheer charcoal grey jelly with orange-green iridescent glitter and little silvery flecks. Plus it glows teal in the dark!

Indigo Bananas Medusa Transducer. Four coats with Out the Door topcoat.

This is a super spooooky polish! I'll need to wear it again in October! It is very very sheer--I needed four coats to get it opaque--so next time I'll definitely layer it over something else. The formula was excellent as per usual with Indigo Bananas, although I would have liked more glitter payoff per coat. I don't think it took too long to dry.

Here's the teal glow! I charged my nails under my lamp for a while and then in the sun for just a few minutes, and the sun definitely charged them more quickly.

Total untrieds tried: 32

The product in this post was given to me as a gift. All opinions are my own.

FingerFood's Theme Buffet #11: St. Patrick's Day

OK, I realize St. Patrick's Day was two days ago. But I was nonstop busy mixing polish and filling bottles to get my blogger samples shipped out! I didn't even have any polish on my nails for two days! Soooo I did my St. Patrick's Day mani today. I'm only 1/8 Irish and I don't like beer, so the holiday isn't that exciting for me. But I do like green!

For three of my nails I used China Glaze Four Leaf Clover topped with Indigo Bananas Lucky Strike (two very apropos names!), and for my accent nail I used Zoya Ziv with Four Leaf Clover for the shamrock. To do the shamrock, I just made four large dots and dragged a toothpick through each.

Did you celebrate the holiday this week? Green milkshakes maybe?


Check out the rest of this week's St. Paddy's Day manis!

An InLinkz Link-up

FingerFood's Theme Buffet #7: Abstract

Hey all, it's time once again for FingerFood's Theme Buffet! This week's theme is abstract nail art. I decided to make a second try at one-stroke art; I based my pattern on this golden veil design by Lucy's Stash. I'm not sure if I like the result--I had a hard time getting the colors to blend properly.

I started with a base of Indigo Bananas Wise Up, Janet!, a lovely lavender holographic glass fleck. I did the one-stroke parts with acrylic paint. Finally I added Revlon matte top coat.

I need to keep practicing one-stroke art! There are so many beautiful designs you can do with it (many at Lucy's Stash!).

An InLinkz Link-up

Swatch: Indigo Bananas We Are the Music Makers

The product in this post was given to me as a gift. All opinions are my own.

OK, so I promised I'd show off one of the color-changing glitters I used in my sparkly chevron manicure. Here goes! This is Indigo Bananas We Are the Music Makers, a teal-tinted polish filled with tiny glitter that shifts from green to blue to purple to red and even to orange and yellow! Whew, we nearly made it all the way around the color wheel!

Check out the beauty:

You can see the shift in the bottle already!

Indigo Bananas We Are the Music Makers. Two coats with Out the Door topcoat.

At normal light angles the polish looks mainly blue-green (even greener in indoor light) though you can see some sparks of other colors!

Shifting...

Shifting... (Do you like my artsy camera angles??)

This is about as far as I could get it, but in person you can see the orange shift at some angles too. Absolutely stunning!!

And of course the formula was a dream too! Not at all thick like you might expect a glitterbomb to be, but not runny either. I got sufficient coverage in two coats alone (although Andrea notes that this polish looks great layered over a solid color too!). It was a tad slow to dry--but I didn't care!

Indigo Bananas hits it out of the park again! You can buy We Are the Music Makers at the Etsy shop ($12 for 15 ml or $7.25 for 8 ml). Oh, and did I mention there are two other polishes just like this one but with different color shifts?!

The product in this post was given to me as a gift. All opinions are my own.

FingerFood's Theme Buffet #4: Sparkle!

It's time once again for FingerFood's Theme Buffet! This weeks' theme is sparkle, and of course I had a million options to choose from, but I decided on some polishes I just recently got my hands on. I participated in a nail polish Secret Santa alongside Andrea of Indigo Bananas, and I wound up with nine new bottles of IB! Three of them are these awesome color-shifting microglitters in tinted bases, and I used them all for this mani.

My inspiration was this sparkly chevron mani from Nail Addicted Sisters.

I feel so glam right now!! The polishes are, top to bottom: Indigo Bananas 2% Butterscotch Ripple, We Are the Music Makers, and Pure Imagination. I didn't really show off the color shifts here, but I plan to wear each of these alone later on and show you the magic!

I'm also really glad the stained parts of my nails have grown out long enough to be able to do this mani. :-P

Check out the other lovely ladies' sparkly nails below and on our Pinterest board!

Six-month bloggiversary giveaway!!

Well, dear readers, today my blog has been alive for exactly six months. The time has gone by so quickly! I'm so grateful for everyone who's followed, liked and left comments. And to show my gratitude, I'm having a giveaway!!

The prize has been generously donated by Andrea at Indigo Bananas, which is fitting, since my very first blog post was a review of her polish Anansi (still one of my favorites!). Indigo Bananas is becoming well-known throughout the indie polish world for beautiful glass fleck, multichrome and holographic polishes. And now she's making glow-in-the-dark polish too!

That's right, the winner will get their choice of two polishes from Indigo Bananas' new collection! Here are descriptions of each polish (visit her Etsy shop to check out swatches):

• Medusa Transducer: charcoal jelly with orange-gold-green shifting iridescent glitter, a mix of microshimmers, and glows teal in the dark!
• Enchante: red jelly with black glitter, glows blue in the dark
• The Secret to Life:  dark purple jelly filled with a complex mix of flakies - pink, purple, silver, blue predominantly are visible, along with larger (real) silver flakies and violet iridescent shreds that shift color from green-blue to blue to violet
• Moonlight (Clair de lune): real silver flakie based polish that has purple, black and holographic microglitter
• Earthshine (Clair de terre): dark green jelly polish packed with many types of shimmer, flakies and glass fleck pigments. Larger silver flakes are interspersed with pink, blue, black, violet, red, gold and silver flakies
• Wise Up, Janet!: glass fleck based linear holographic polish that is lavender leaning lilac with a strong silver flash to it
• Great Scott!: medium blue heavy fleck polish with strong green-gold shimmer, and scattered holographic microglitter, glows strongly blue in the dark
• Hope: released for breast cancer awareness month, a linear holographic pink polish with subtle pink/gold shimmer
• Lime Warp:  bright, lime green glass fleck shimmer, with scattered holographic microglitter, that grows a bright green in the dark
• green, teal, and blue glow-in-the-dark topcoats!

Now for the nitty gritty: the giveaway is open internationally. You have to give your email address to enter (so I can contact you if you win!), but all other entries are optional. The winner will have 48 hours to get back to me, otherwise I'll choose a new winner. All entries will be verified, so no cheating!

Giveaway ends on October 21 at midnight (EST)! Good luck!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Swatch: Indigo Bananas Immortal Game

The polish in this post was purchased by me. All opinions are my own.

Today I've got some pics of an Indigo Bananas polish that came out this summer in the Fiery the Angels Fell collection (inspired by Blade Runner). Immortal Game is a teal crelly with pink-to-gold shifting glass flecks, plus some purple flecks and holo microglitter. My pics really don't do this polish justice--the pink shimmer is way more prominent to the eye than it seems here. It's mesmerizing to look at!

Indigo Bananas Immortal Game, two coats, plus Out the Door topcoat.

It was tricky to capture the gold color shift, but I got a little bit of it here:

The formula, as usual, was lovely and easy to use. And I only needed two coats! Teal is, of course, one of my favorite colors, so I'm gonna be wearing this for as long as possible (good thing Indigo Bananas polishes tend to wear like iron!).

By the way, there's another reason why I'm showing you an Indigo Bananas polish right now, but you'll have to check back on Monday to find out why. ;-)

Immortal Game is available at Indigo Bananas' Etsy shop ($10 for 15 ml or $6.25 for 8 ml); she ships internationally! You can also find Indigo Bananas on Facebook and Instagram

The polish in this post was purchased by me. All opinions are my own.

31-Day Challenge #11: dotted spirals redux

You may remember that a little while ago, I attempted to do a dotted spiral mani but didn't quite pull it off because the dots were too far apart. I knew today's 31DC prompt would be my big chance to redeem myself.

Definitely better. From a distance this mani looked like a mosaic, which was pretty cool! The base color is Indigo Bananas Halcyon (has a nice shimmer which is just barely peeking through) and the dots are L'Oreal Creme Puffs and OPI You're Such a Budapest.


Look at all these dotty manis!

Swatch: Indigo Bananas Executive Transvestite

 The polish in this post was purchased by me. All opinions are my own.

My first ever post was a review of an Indigo Bananas polish, and now I have another! Indigo Bananas is an indie brand that first started gaining renown with an amazing collection of multichromes, and has now expanded to holographics. Her Executive Holos collection is inspired by Eddie Izzard; what I like about the collection is that each polish is not just a holo, but has something else going on too.

Executive Transvestite (great name!) is described as "a gold linear holo foil (metallic and holo at the same time) with a scattering of small gold flakies throughout". I tried to capture both the holo and foil aspects of the polish in my photos. The pics aren't as great as I would have liked, as my camera is apparently confused by linear holos, but I think you'll get the idea!

In the shade, Executive Transvestite fools you into thinking it's just a plain old gold foil:

Indigo Bananas Executive Transvestite, 3 coats with 1 coat Out the Door quick-dry topcoat. Shade.

But then you go into the sun and it's WHAM RAINBOWS!

Indigo Bananas Executive Transvestite, 3 coats with 1 coat Out the Door quick-dry topcoat. Direct sun.

Notice that you can still see some gold flakes in these shots too.

Indoors the holo is generally weaker, and depends on the light source. Here are a couple pics.

Indigo Bananas Executive Transvestite, 3 coats with 1 coat Out the Door quick-dry topcoat. Indoors with daylight lamp.

Indigo Bananas Executive Transvestite, 3 coats with 1 coat Out the Door quick-dry topcoat. Indoors in lightbox.

The formula on this polish was really great and easy to apply. Occasionally one of those gold flakes got stuck on my nail tip, but no biggie. The polish did take a while to dry, even with a quick-dry topcoat, probably because I needed three coats of it.

Here's one more bonus pic I snapped while lying in bed! Look at that rainbow!

Executive Transvestite is available on Indigo Bananas' Etsy page ($12 for 15 ml or $5.50 for 5 ml). She's currently transitioning to a new bottle shape, so the polish might be temporarily out of stock. Indigo Bananas is 3-free, vegan and cruelty-free!

The polish in this post was purchased by me. All opinions are my own.