Minty Spring Mani

With spring technically here (still too cold and dreary looking), I opted for a bright and fun manicure. This is Essie Mint Candy Apple, a pastel blue-green, and China Glaze It's a Trap-eze!, a multi-color glitter suspended in a milky white base. Obviously, It's a Trap-eze! is my accent nail. This just reminds me of candy.

Indirect sunlight

Fluorescent dorm light

It's a Trap-eze! is surprisingly opaque and covers well enough for me in 2 coats. I had to manually move around some of the glitter to make it more spread out, which isn't a huge deal.

Mint Candy Apple and I have a love-hate relationship. I love the color but the formula is a streaky, goopy mess that required me to apply 3 careful coats to even things out. Even then, it wasn't self-leveling so I had to depend on a thick layer of top coat to hide all the little bumps and ridges. ALSO, even though the color is nice, it isn't what I really fell in love with. My friend has a bottle, which I tried over a year ago (see below). I don't know if it's my camera, but it looks a lot greener than my own Mint Candy Apple. Google images also seems to show either a bluer version or a true mint green version. What are you doing Essie....

This is much greener than my current Mint Candy Apple....hmm...also derpy nails lol

Del Sol Knock Out

This is a polish from Del Sol, which makes colors that change in the sun. In the shade, Del Sol Knock Out is a very pale, beige-ish light pink. In the sunlight, it turns a medium pink color. Knock Out has the tiniest bits of shimmer but they're effectively invisible. The color is pretty but unfortunately the formula was very sheer and quite streaky. It took 4 coats to reach full opacity and evenness. The color change happens only in direct sunlight (I'm guessing the mechanism utilizes UV radiation) and returns completely to the light color within a minute when I go back in the shade. Also, Knock Out started chipping right after I took a shower so....not so great on that part. The first time I wore it, entire chunks would just fall right off but I thought it was just because I didn't use base coat or top coat. I guess it's just the formula, though, since I did use base coat and top coat for this mani but a huge chunk chipped off the middle finger anyway. Unfortunately, the weather was really dreary when I wore this so I have no color change shots on my actual nails.

Chip-a-palooza

It's supposed to turn the color of the sticker in sunlight.

Left: Color of bottle before prolonged sun exposure
Right: Color after direct sun exposure for about 30 seconds

It's quite pink now.

Here you can see the left half of the bottle changing back to the light pink color, while the right side is still darker pink.

Orly Snowcone

Orly Snowcone is a cornflower blue creme that I got as an end-of-the-term/spring break gift for myself. I managed to not buy any nail polish for three months before this, so yay for me. (I don't count the $3 I spent at CVS on some random cheapo polishes lol.) Anyway, Snowcone is nice, thick, and opaque. The fingers shown here only have a single coat. I did have to do a second coat on my thumbs because of some patchiness but that was my own fault. Fun fact: Orly bottles have 0.6 fl. oz...which is, like, a lot.

Also, Orly reminds me of the "O RLY?" owl hahahaha. I spend too much time on the internet.