Mattifying

Hello, lovelies! How do my nails look? These are the first pictures since I broke the index nail of this hand and did an emergency teabag fix. It's holding up great!!

As for this post, I bring you a new product today. Or rather, New York Color (NYC) brings you a new product. It's a mattifying top coat (yep, they called it mattifying) they've named Matte Me Crazy.

I was stunned to find this on the shelf. The only matte top coat to be found around here is Hard Candy's, Matte-ly in Love, found exclusively in Walmart. Hard Candy will cost you about $4 for a .35 fl oz bottle. It will even get you a cute little cardboard topper that fits over the cap. This makes finding it in a polish drawer very easy!

But, the reason I was so excited to find this new matte top coat is that NYC costs under $2 for a .33 fl oz bottle and can be bought in a multitude of locations. Sadly, it doesn't come with a cardboard topper and is not so easy to find in a polish drawer. :(

Now for the nitty gritty. Hard Candy has a much thicker formula. Hard Candy passed the drip test with flying colors. NYC ... not so much. It gave two very quick drips and a slower third before leveling out on the brush.

While on the subject of brushes. Hard Candy has a short, rounded brush with a slightly short and round cap. It fits in my hand okay but its short length may not be comfortable for everyone. NYC has a longer and wider brush that's attached to a round cone like cap. My preference in brushes have always leaned towards the wider and flatter. I adore the Sally Hansen flat brush and the new Wet n Wild megalast Pro brush so I prefer the NYC brush.

I don't think Riveting was the polish to go for when testing out a new matte top coat. I know it turned matte but I'm not sure just how matte. I can however tell you that NYC mattified slower than Hard Candy. I was actually kind of pleased about this though. I've had trouble with one part of my nails turning more matte than another with Hard Candy because it dried and turned matte too quickly. I don't know about anyone else, but I paint backwards so my pinkie nail was just settling into fully matte by the time I started my thumb with NYC. I had no streaking or blobs of darker matte with NYC.

I will definitely give you a more thorough answer on just how matte is matte when talking about these two in another post with another mani. NYC may just be a good substitute for the more expensive Hard Candy. We'll see ... probably sometime next week.

Vintage Inspired

Can I just say thank you for all the wonderfully sweet comments on my Spring mani? I know I don't answer the comments as often as I should, but I just want you guys to know that you really know how to turn a bad day around and make a girl happy!! I treasure each and every comment.


I decided to stick to the theme and do something with flowers again. I know this has been done a thousand times before by others but this is a mani I haven't tried before.  So, I figured, why not give it a try? Vintage inspired, here I come!

Natural Evening Light

I tried to keep everything soft without bright sunlight. It just felt right with these nails.

Yep, that's a broken nail. Both index nails broke yesterday and contributed to my very bad day. Sadly, this hand, my left, is by far the worst. And it just grew out from the last break too!! :(

I did a Google search for vintage and came up with this vintage floral wallpaper. That and the tons of other vintage floral nails are where this idea comes from. With this design, I really don't think I can claim anything as mine since it's all been done before. So I give credit to all the nailers out there who have done this design before me!!

I think I'm finally getting the hang of swirled roses. It only took two days of near non-stop practice.

Is there anything you guys would like to see me do on this blog? I'm open to suggestions. :)

Polish Used

• Borghese - Brillante
• Sinful Colors - Beautiful Girl
• Wet n Wild - French White Creme
• Sally Hansen - Mint Sorbet
• Sally Hansen - Green With Envy
• OPI - Uh-Oh Roll Down The Window
• Hard Candy - Matte-ly In Love

Wet n Wild - Disturbia

Pink may be my favorite color but purple is definitely my go to nail polish color. When I'm feeling down, can't decide on a polish, or am just feeling lazy I grab the closest purple and am perfectly content.


This time, the closest purple just happened to be Wet n Wild's Disturbia. I didn't even know I had this color! It was a gift but, while the Disturbia bottle isn't miniature, it is small and a bit short so it got lost in the chaos of my nail polish drawers.


I am so glad I grabbed it this time though because it was just what I was looking for. The polish is thick and creamy and goes on like a dream. Wet n Wild (recently?) switched their Megalast brushes over to their new ManiCurve Pro Brush. Their bottles have also gotten bigger, now holding .45 fl. oz compared to the smaller .30 fl oz bottle I own. However, the Disturbia I have is an older bottle—smaller and without the Pro Brush. That's not to say the brush is small though. It's a goodly sized brush, like a miniature Sally Hansen brush, that holds a lot of polish and smooths it on nicely. It took two coats for full opacity.

As for the polish itself, besides having a great formula, it looks absolutely gorgeous in my opinion. The color is somewhere between a deep purple and a plum that can look completely different in different lights (as seen in the vast differences in purple shown in the pictures). Much like the very pretty shimmer the polish carries. The shimmer is nearly unnoticeable in certain lights but when you can see it sparks with what looks like flecks of red-violet and indigo. You can't really see the indigo here but the red-violet certainly sticks out.

You know me though, I'm not usually one to leave a nail polish to stand alone. First, I gave Disturbia a coat of China Glaze Snow Globe. I will definitely use this combination again. It was absolutely stunning!

Still, that wasn't enough to satisfy me. I took it a step further and gave it one more coat of polish, this time with Hard Candy's Matte-ly in Love matte top coat. Glitter polishes look awesome when you turn them matte. The flakes of glitter don't subtly shift colors anymore but they still shine and pop from a dull background in the light.

The nails got a bit streaky when I was applying the glitter. I didn't want to swamp them in glitter as I have with some previous nails so I was extra careful—probably too careful since the clear got tacky before I was done layering the glitter. I just had to keep going though or there would be large glitter free gaps. The matte top coat smoothed the streaks out fine and I'm sure a regular top coat would do the same.


Disturbia has now taken it's place among my favorite purples and will be in the top three choices next time I'm feeling down, uncertain, or just plain lazy. :)

• Now, just a reminder of the giveaway coming up very soon. There will be three nail polishes, all bought by me. I am unsure about international shipping at this time. I'm pretty sure US laws state that nail polish has to be sent through ground shipping due to it being labeled a hazardous materiel. With this in mind, this first giveaway will be open only to those US residents or those who have a US address they can have it shipped to. When I ship the prizes for this giveaway, I will ask about the laws at my local post office. Either way, I promise I will have a giveaway of something open to any international followers in the coming months. I won't forget about you guys!!