Finger Candy Favourites: Behind the Scenes

I’m always somewhat hesitant to recommend a specific product, company or retailer because I have found that everything that’s said about one person’s trash being another person’s treasure holds absolutely true, particularly in the world of beauty-based retail. On the balance of probabilities, purely from a numbers standpoint, one or two people are going to have a negative experience with a company or a product that I can’t say enough good things about, and vice versa. It’s an inevitability, and excepting cases where the quality of a product or a company’s services are indisputably – by anyone’s standards – garbage, it’s really something of a personal preference crapshoot. We all march to the beat of a different drummer (Travis Barker is my life’s drummer, in case you were curious), or, to cycle back up to the top of this paragraph, trash/treasure.

But over the course of my rather short nail art “career” I have run across a number of excellent, can’t-live-without-em products and retailers, and I would be remiss – REMISS! – in not sharing the love, with the hope that you find them just as great as I do. And in the interest of not swamping you with 8,657 rhapsodizing words on the subject of nail art and nail art-related products, I am going to split this post into a few different sub-posts, starting with some of the behind-the-scenes goodies of the nail art world.

HAND AND NAIL CARE

For someone who sops her hands in noxious chemicals nearly every single day, I have a remarkably casual approach to nail care. As in up until about a year ago, I just didn’t. I’ve never been a huge fan of hand cream (to mangle a joke from the Big Bang Theory, why do you want your hands to feel like veal?) and at first I thought that my cuticles were just fine, thank you very much (they weren’t.) But I quickly came to realize that a consistent approach to hand and nail care keeps the raggedy bits at bay, and I now make sure to treat my mitts to multiple daily doses of soothing, delicious-smelling hydration.

To that end, I pretty well exclusively use a range of items from Sunny’s Body Products, an indie retailer I have sung the praises of before. Sunny’s offers a number of products, from lip balms and bath whips to sugar scrubs and lotions, although I’m partial to their cuticle oils and balms, rich, emollient concoctions of nourishing oils in your choice of (as of the writing of this post) over 400 unique scents. I particularly like that Sunny’s offers nearly all of their products in generously-sized sample packs, so you can try out all sorts of wild and wooly scent combinations without a massive financial outlay. My Sunny’s stash, as it’s known around Instagrammy parts, is downright small – a few oils, a couple of creams, a lush lip balm – but I do have a favourite product and scent in Sunny’s Cuticle Oil in Autumn Harvest, a rollerball-topped applicator filled with all sorts of good-for-you oils in a sweet and spicy, gorgeously gourmand scent. If all of that sounds delicious to you, you can purchase Sunny’s products through their site here.

TOPCOAT

For my money (and for anyone who buys it, you already know it’s one of the more expensive topcoats on the market) you can’t beat Seche Vite. It is the king of high shine, lightning fast topcoats, drying to a rock hard, ultra glossy finish in seconds. Some folks aren’t fans, citing Seche’s rather elevated price tag and tendency towards mid-way bottle glop, but I very much am, in no small part owing to the fact that without Seche Vite, I NEVER would have ventured beyond my first hesitant attempts at nail art (raggedy little watermelons and streaky strawberries.) I remember finishing my designs and then sitting back, thinking, “Is this it? These look…all right, I guess?” But then I remembered the bottle of Seche Vite the saleswoman added to my order as the gift-with-purchase, an item I had totally overlooked, having never used a topcoat before, and decided it wouldn’t hurt to give it a whirl. And not only did it not hurt, it was – befitting its name – the perfect finishing touch, smoothing out all the fruity lumps and bumps while adding some much-needed depth and shine. You’ll never convince me there’s a better topcoat, so you might as well save your breath! But just in case I’ve managed to convince YOU, you can find Seche Vite at Sally Beauty Supply, Nail Polish Canada and certain well-stocked drugstores (Rexall here in Canada, for instance.)

CLEAN-UP

You should do it. Always. It takes seconds (unless you’re tidying up after a water marble) and displays a level of care for your work (and anyone else staring at your hands) that’s just plain old nice to see. I clean up all of my manis by dipping a small, flat-headed brush into pure acetone before running it around the edges of my nails. It’s a great, simple technique for tidying up the occasional blip and blob (and believe me, even two years in there are still PLENTY of blips and blobs), but it’s also quite drying, so you’ll want to dab on a bit of oil to soothe the savage cuticle beasts (one of Sunny’s magic potions, perhaps?) My small brush (actually not small enough, but it’s due for a tinier replacement pretty soon) comes from Michael’s, and the acetone I use, Beauty Secret’s pure acetone, is another product available at Sally Beauty Supply.

That’s all the wisdom I have to drop on you today, but as all the great TV shows say, to be continued!

The A-Team

Without getting too nihilistic on you, friends who come here to see nail art but instead get lured into 1,200-word diatribes on my cats and/or The Lost Boys, 2014 was a bad, bad year. To be sure, there were some lovely, wonderful moments – new babies! an unexpectedly fun road trip! the discovery of Misfits! – but for my family at least, and a distressingly large number of my friends and acquaintances, 2014 was a year defined by loss, grief and hardships great and small. I won’t be sorry to see it go.

Okay, so 2014 sucked. But do you know what didn’t? These nail polishes! Which seems like the ultimate in ridiculous non sequiturs, but really, in a year that’s been as unpleasant as the past one, why shouldn’t we take a moment to appreciate the things that gave us a bit of joy, even those as immaterially material as silly old nail polish? No good reason that I can think of! And so I present to you this photo gallery of the polishes that rocked my world this year, a motley assortment of holos and flakies and industrially chunky glitters that prove that good things – and sometimes good, don’t-hate-the-world feelings – truly do come in small packages. 😉

Sitting atop the heap and not included in this gallery is my pick for polish of the year, Candy Lacquer’s everything-and-the-kitchen-sink glitter, Candy Cane Fiesta. I’ve expounded on its loveliness – some may say at length! – so I’ll say no more before it develops a swelled head.

The following nine are presented in no particular order or ranking – they’re across-the-board beautiful and so well made, I’ve found uses for them in multiple manis this year, and will continue to well into the new year. Here’s to the little lacquered things!

1. Polish Me Silly’s pink, white and blue glitter topper, Mr. Bubble.

2. Smitten Polish’s red shimmer-infused purple jelly, You Saucy Minx.

3. KB Shimmer’s Hawaiian Punch-in-a-bottle, Belle of the Mall.

4. KB Shimmer’s grass green glitter jelly, Get Clover It.

5. Orly’s silver holo of the year, Mirrorball.

6. Dance Legend’s cobalt blue jelly flakie, Sun Still Sleeps.

7. Candy Lacquer’s super fruity matte glitter, Citrus Smoothie.

8. KB Shimmer’s Frozen-in-a-bottle, Snow Much Fun.

9. Polish Me Silly’s pink-to-gold-to-green chrome flakie, Stop Flaking on Me.

Polish Me Silly’s polishes are available through their Etsy shop. You can find KB Shimmer’s wares through their own site if you’re an American customer, or through Harlow & Co.’s site if you’re an international customer. Smitten Polish’s goods are available through their Big Cartel site, as are Candy Lacquer‘s. Orly polishes are available at brick and mortar Sally Beauty Supply shops, as well as their website. Finally, Dance Legend polishes are best and most reliably acquired through international stocklist Llarowe’s website.

Silver and Gold

When it comes to nail polish, I am not one for metallics. Pale to the point of near see-throughedness, metallics just don’t show against my skin tone very well, particularly those of the sallowing bronze and golden variety. By the by, that’s got to be a new record for me in terms of made-up words. Two in one sentence? You’d never know I have a university degree in journalism. I blame the television shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Simpsons for allowing me to think that proper English involves putting the suffix “-ey” on the end of things (“Woah, looks like somebody hit the tanning bed HARD; you’re so orangey!”) or that there can be no pop culture stone left unturned. It’s a disease, truly (actually, it’s so not; the etymology of language is fascinating, particularly that derived from popular culture, although I absolutely put my foot down at the thought that whale-fart-donut emojis are a step forward in the history of human communications. Some day archaeologists are going to dig up all our iDevices and have a bloody field day with the stupidity of our reconstructed SnapChats and re-Grams and Tweets.)

Having established that metallics are not my favourite, however, I still went out and bought these two fantastic polishes from Orly’s holiday Sparkle Collection, twinkly gold Bling and holo silver Mirrorball, because they are pure, holidayey (!) perfection. The way the light plays off the sparkles embedded in both reminds me of my mom’s Christmas dinner tables (I suppose they’d be called “tablescapes” now) when she’d set out tons of candles and turn the lights straight off, and we’d dine in an intimate little bubble lit with gently flickering candlelight.

Getting down to brass tacks on these gold and silver polishes, both were easy to apply with great opacity and tons of sparkly shimmer. I’ve seen a few reviews of Bling, a clear polish stuffed with gold holographic microglitter, where the bloggers suggested it’s too sheer to work as anything but a glitter topper, but I had zero problems getting it to full opacity in three light coats. Formula-wise, the eensy weensy glitter in Bling is super dense and dries to an ever so slightly textured finish, but you can always fix that with a coat of Seche Vite (which you should anyways, because it deepens the holo effect and draws out all those pretty golden rainbows.) Here’s Bling throwing sparkles all over the place outdoors in indirect light (pretty impressive given that the day was overcast) and under the shimmer-inducing pot lights in my kitchen.

And while I may have talked up Mirrorball the other day in this post, it bears repeating: It’s a stunning polish and the standout in Orly’s holiday collection, while still remaining appropriate for year-round use. Also, do you know how hard it is to find a great holo in an actual brick and mortar store like Sally Beauty Supply, where I picked up these beauties? Pretty darn hard! So get on that! Meanwhile, let’s take another twirl beneath the Mirrorball.

Beneath the Mirrorball

Swatches of this gorgeous holographic polish, Orly’s Mirrorball from their holiday Sparkle Collection, have been making the rounds over on Instagram for the past couple of weeks, and I’ve only just barely been able to hold myself back from buying it now, now, NOW! But yesterday I was messing around Sally Beauty Supply with my mom when a lone bottle of Mirrorball caught my eye, and when she offered to act as my polished fairy godmother, at least for the day, well, how was I to say no? So I didn’t, and now it’s mine, ALL MINE (insert maniacal laugh here as I press my fingers together like Mr. Burns.) I was so excited, I pretty much had to hold myself back from spiking a nearby loofah into the ground and engaging in an elaborate touchdown dance through the aisles. Strange reaction to a bottle of nail polish? Okay, sure, I’ll give you that, but who among us hasn’t busted out some highly dubious boogie moves right in the store when they’ve actually got that item we just had to have? No one, I’m guessing, and that includes my husband, who shops at Sally more than I do (there are no sweeter words in the world than, “I popped into Sally Beauty Supply on the way home and look at all the fun stuff I bought you!” Sorry, girls (and guys), he’s not available for lease or sale, because you don’t throw back the fish that buys you nail polish and fixes your computer. You just don’t!) Long story short, I seem to have a good number of people lining up to buy me gorgeous nail goodies, and that is absolutely something worth dancing for. Beneath the Mirrorball even. 😉

Princess Pink

Because sometimes you just want ultra sparkly princess unicorn nails, and who’s going to say no to the woman carrying a loaded lacquer bottle? Enter Cinapro’s Nail Sugar in Cotton Candy, a sheer pink jelly polish loaded with iridescent rainbow glitter. Like its sister polish from the same Sugar Rush line, Sweet Tooth, it has a cool co-ordinating LED light in the cap, perfect for lighting your way to pinked-out polish paradise. This polish doesn’t look particularly opaque, and so I layered two coats of Cotton Candy over one thin coat of a sheer pink creme, but you could easily get it to full opacity in three coats, ensuring that each coat dries completely before adding another layer, lest you suffer the horror of nail polish drag. Cinapro is a new-to-me brand, and if you like their polishes as much as I do, you can find their light-up goodies at Sally Beauty Supply.

(Pretty) Smelly

This polish, Cinapro’s Nail Sugar in Sweet Tooth, is 80 kinds of shimmery, glittery holo goodness (it reminds me of Fraggle felt, which makes no sense, as I don’t believe there was a blue spotted Fraggle) but holy cats, does it stink. Nail polish is nose hair-singeingly smelly under the best of circumstances, but this one is in a class all its own (so much so, if naming it were up to me, I’d call it Toxic Tanzanite.) So while it may make a beautiful, unique addition to your stash (there’s an LED light in the cap!) you may wish to exercise a bit of caution if you’re particularly scent sensitive. There’s a wealth of fun colours, glitters and textures in the Nail Sugar line, and I snagged my light-em-up bottle at Sally Beauty Supply.