Julie G Tangerine Dream

Today I have a pretty cool polish to share with you-- and a textured one at that! This is one of the first textured polishes I got, when I purchased the Julie G Frosted Gumdrops collection through Groupon (hooray good deals!). This is Tangerine Dream, which is described as a "citrus orange with specs of sparkle." The color of this polish definitely optimizes citrus and looks just like a ripe, juicy orange with tons of gold shimmer.

Now, I have a quick disclaimer: my pictures below are four coats. That said, in normal everyday wear, you don't need four coats to wear this polish. I initially put on two coats, but then spent several days helping to move my lab and my manicure suffered. Since I'm also trying to photograph polishes as I wear them, I slapped two additional coats on top of my old manicure so it wouldn't look completely awful. I think 2-3 coats would be fine for Tangerine Dream-- there was just a hint of visible nail line with two coats, so I think three would get rid of it completely. Additionally, while I generally find textured polishes are no more difficult to remove than regular polishes, four coats required a little bit more elbow grease to remove.

Artificial light - flash:

Natural light - shade:

Natural light - sun:

Textured polish is HUGE right now and looks to remain that way at least through the end of year, since Zoya released a fall "Pixie Dust" collection and OPI is including five Liquid Sand polishes in their holiday collection, and I get the feeling it's a love it or hate it relationship. I honestly thought I wouldn't like them, but when I got the chance to try them, I found that I actually really love them. The texture gets worn down as you wear them, so even if it's a bit rough to start, it eventually become smoother. Additionally, they're super easy to wear: base coat (or not), slap on a couple of coats, and you're good to go! As far as my own taste goes, I prefer the sparkly textures to the flat ones, but to each their own! Tangerine Dream looks stunning in any lighting condition.

I love the way Tangerine Dream looks on the nail and definitely love how easy the textured polishes are to wear. I have worn several of the Julie G texture polishes and so far have been really impressed with them all. Hopefully I can the rest of them swatched and on the blog soon! 

4th of July Skittlette Mani!

Hey all! Hope that many of you are having a good time celebrating the 4th of July-- and if not that you are having a pleasant Thursday! This post is a little late because we've been doing a lot of cleaning around the house so we can move furniture and prep for the arrival of the twins, and in doing so lost our internet connection for awhile, whoops!

For this 4th of July, I had a hankering to try out a skittlette manicure, as pioneered Marta of ChitChat Nails. She recently did a tutorial on how to create this manicure and so I took it for a test drive! I already had in my mind two polishes I wanted to use: Julep Fireworks, a red/blue/silver glitter polish, and Julie G Hot Cinnamon, a red texture polish. Because I was afraid that the glitter and the texture might be too much, I decided to just do glitter tips and not full accent nails. I pulled out Cult Nails Tempest and Time Traveler and viola! A 4th of July manicure was born!

And, in true Marta fashion, I'm using props to show off my manicure! For this I used my husband's challenge coin from the Navy job he completed this past year, and a navy/white striped skirt that I'm wearing today.

Artificial light:

Natural light - sun:

I really like how this turned out. Since Hot Cinnamon has shimmer but not necessarily glitter, I don't think it clashes with the glitter from Fireworks-- nor does it look too busy. Part of me wishes I had used a lighter blue, given how close to navy blue Time Traveler is, but it's so easy to work with that I don't mind it, even if it is a little dark.

Happy 4th of July!