Anything "Duochrome" or "Chameleon" can also be found using the tag "Color Shifting"

Updates & Notices

Warning: This blog and some info within is out of date. The date of any updates are usually noted at the top of each page/entry. As of 1/08/20, all pages have had dead links removed/repaired as well as 2010 entries and 2011 Jan-July.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Wet 'n' Wild Fast Dry polishes- Updated

Wet 'n' Wild appears to have spiffed up their normal line of Fast Dry polishes and released some limited additions as well, many of which I saw at my local Walgreens. I snatched up a few and then a few extras after some store-hopping.

I don't have any nail swatches myself at the moment because I spend time working around the house and yard during the summer and it ruins my nails, not that I had great nails to begin with. However, The Brilliant Brunette, a polish blogger, has a very nice entry with nail wheels displaying swatches of the main line and the limited editions - I encourage you to go look as I did.

The regular ones are mostly vibrant colors and cutely (maybe too cutely) named after television shows. The ones I decided to buy were, as shown from left to right: Teal of Fortune, Grays Anatomy, 9.0.2.1.Orange, Buffy the Violet Slayer, Saved by the Blue, SaGreena the Teenage Witch, Sage in the City, and Party of Five.

Most notable of the collection I thought were 9.0.2.1.Orange, Teal of Fortune and the Party of Five glitters. 9.0.2.1.Orange and Teal of Fortune are extremely glittery even if they are a bit sheer. Party of Five was a nice addition to the polishes I use for frankens with it's multi colored and multi sized glitters.
Teal of Fortune and 9.0.2.1.Orange

The others that I purchased have dupes in other brands; though perhaps not identical, they would be adequate substitutes.

Gray's Anatomy is a duochrome polish but extremely sheer. It's also a match for TKB Trading's Travel to Venus pigment (when used in polish). While it doesn't appear so from the bottle, they are both similar to Sally Hansen (Nail Prisms) Emerald Amethyst.

Buffy the Violet Slayer is a great purple but a close dupe if not exact match to Sinful Colors Let's Talk which is always available. It's also a slightly bigger bottle for the same price.


SaGreena the Teenage Witch, though a decent green and I love greens, is close enough to Sinful Colors HD Nails that I might've passed this one by.

When I was digging through my polish today, I realized that Sage in the City is very close to Sally Hansen's Hi Def from the original HD line.

Saved by the Blue closely matches two other polishes I own: China Glaze's Frostbite and Sinful Colors Midnight Blue. Saved by the Blue fits in between them based on vibrancy. China Glaze is on the right.

As I mentioned above, Wet 'n' Wild also released a set of limited edition polishes in a collection they called Mermaid's Cove but I found these only at my grocery store, not at Walgreens. I was able to grab one bottle of Waves of Enchantment and Ocean Grotto, both highly sparkly polishes which I adore. This weekend I managed to grab three more bottles of Ocean Grotto from CVS but no luck on the other.

Four of the limited editions: Oceans Grotto, Waves of Enchantment, Diving for Pearls and Magic Trident.

Waves of Enchantment and Ocean Grotto

The other colors were not original or exciting enough so I only bought two other polishes, Diving for Pearls and Magic Trident. After swatching them, I decided that Magic Trident, though it’s a limited edition for Wet 'n' Wild, is nearly identical to Sinful Colors Cloud 9.
All in all, it's a decent assortment of colors from Wet 'n' Wild but as they are not always available in my area, it was worth knowing about the alternatives. -MK

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Saturday, June 11, 2011

Franken: #268 Tweeker

Franken polish #268 Tweeker, one of my franken base experiments, was a project I used TKB's syringes for because it started out in a mini bottle, was later drained into a full size (15ml) bottle and the amount multiplied. The supplies used were: 2 BBs, TKB Trading's Basic Yellow and Basic Blue bases for the green base, their Glamour base for glitter and the clear coat. The glitter isn't your standard glitter, it's actually TKB's Turquoise Tweak.

The green base was a combo of  1 ½ ml yellow base, 1 ml blue base, and 1 ml Clear Coat, then drained into a regular size bottle. To that I added +22 drops blue base and 34 drops yellow base making it 1/3 full. I added 3 drops (the mini spoon) of TKB's Turquoise Tweak and Glamour Base up to the ¾ mark (I mark the bottles). 30 liquid drops is equal to 1ml.


Photographed indoors. Nails tipped with a gradient of Turquoise Tweak, at least that was the idea.

While there has been some settling, there has also been some that stayed suspended and it looks like what it's supposed to look like, a sparkly green, before I shake it up. The only problem is sheerness so if you attempt to make this one, you might want to adjust the amounts slightly. For the pictures below I lost count of how many coats I used to make the green opaque enough.

Tweeker alone, outdoors in partial sunlight.

Outdoors, daylight but no sun.

Indoors, daylight but no sun.

After looking at it on my own nails I decided to do the glitter gradient on the tips because in most lighting the sparkle wasn't obvious enough…

Indoors under the lamp.

… But I didn't say I did it well.

Outdoors, sunlight but not direct.

-MK

Saturday, June 4, 2011

My Thoughts on Social Networking

I was reading a book today and there was a quote/comment about there being a time that the word "network" was not a verb. Now naturally that was before the popularity of places like MySpace, Facebook, Yahoo and the like, probably before everyone had cell phones as opposed to "land lines" and rendered the White Pages useless. Now, however "network" is a verb and damn near everyone has their own page, myself included. It's convenient no doubt; if anyone wanted to find me they certainly could, after all you can send a "friend request" to anyone but its the use of the word "friend" I take issue with. One, if you have 80 something "friends" on your list, what are the odds you talk to those people with any regularity? Which brings me to my second question: why the hell would you bother friend requesting someone you don't plan on ever conversing with? My definition of friend is not synonymous with "someone I used to know"- if they were my friend it wouldn't be "used to know", it'd be "I know them". Friend requesting doesn't imply true friendship any more than being a friend on a Yahoo Messenger list or being a watcher on DeviantART. "Social" networking is bullshit. People were not meant to be place holders, ego boosters or time killers.