We Found Love in a Hostess Cake

I know the actual lyric to the Rihanna song is “We found love in a hopeless place,” but ever since the Fug Girls of Go Fug Yourself pointed out that it sounds more like “We found love in a Hostess cake,” I hear nothing else. Love is fleeting, crinkly cellophane wrappers filled with sugary saturated fats are forever.

For these sweet nails featuring the classic Hostess chocolate cupcake and Tallahassee’s nemesis, the Sno Ball (little Zombieland reference for you there), I made great use out of an otherwise pretty limited use polish, OPI by Nicole’s Roughles in Rock the Look. Textured polishes, and the entire stucco-ish Roughles collection, were all the rage a couple of years ago, but have fallen somewhat out of fashion in recent times.  I think that’s because, save for an intrepid few nail artists willing to fashion them into, say, pink coconut shavings to decorate their lacquered Sno Ball designs, textured polishes really have but one use – adorning your nails in a simple manicure, and maybe also snagging the crap out of your hosiery.

Here I sponged Rock the Look, a rosy pink textured polish studded with the tiniest of matte black glitter, over a plain white creme to mimic the highly unnatural consistency and hue of Sno Balls, before adding a couple of nails’ worth of the classic chocolate cupcake (with regrettably uneven scalloped icing.  We’ll call them factory imperfects – best to devour them straightaway.)

Party Perfect Nails

I suspect there will be a lot of people hitting the holiday party circuit this week, myself included – I’m attending a high school reunion dinner with some ladies I’ve known for over 20 years, and then of course there’s the big show on Thursday (I’m more of a Christmas Eve kind of person than Christmas Day; the promise is always so much sweeter than the actual day itself.)

But no matter the event, we all need pretty nails, so why not consider a festive manicure using this delightful polish, Zoya’s Pixie Dust in Oswin? Textured polishes were all the rage some years ago, and I think people got a bit burnt out on them – speaking from a nail art perspective at least, there’s only so much you can do with a textured polish, plus they can be quite destructive to delicate hosiery.

So they faded from fashion for a bit, but there are still plenty of terrific textured polishes out there, and Oswin is one of them.  Released as part of the Pixie Dust Collection in 2014, Oswin is a rich raspberry red studded with red hex glitter.  Textured polishes with glitter can sometimes present as a bit lumpy, but Oswin dries down to that true, almost dry-looking textured finish with the glitter just peeking out not-too obnoxiously, and is no snaggier than a fine grade of sandpaper.  Perfect for that party, or just about any other time this holiday season.

It Takes Allsorts

Licorice Allsorts, that is!  So I’m not really sure how attractive these licorice-inspired nails are.  Cute though they may be, they’re not exactly cohesive, are they?  I do love the two textured polishes I used on my middle and pinkie fingers to mimic the look of those bumpy-looking pink and blue guys.  I, of course, can’t speak to the taste of licorice at all, because I hate the stuff, but from a design perspective, it’s pretty sweet! 😉

And on my thumb I’ve got two coats of the first indie polish I ever bought – and the perfect addition to this sweet manicure – Candy Lacquer’s Licorice Allsorts.

Blue Icee

Here’s an older polish I’ve heaped praise on in the past, OPI’s Liquid Sand in Get Your Number from one of the Mariah Carey collections (!!) I LOVE this textured polish (have in the past cited it as a prime example of Nailcissism, a very real affliction wherein you’re so blinded by the beauty of your nails, you’re aware of literally nothing else) and my nails were looking extra super fly, and so I thought I’d treat Get Your Number to the proper swatching treatment it has always deserved.

Looking every bit like a glittery, frosty blue Icee, Get Your Number is a super lush aqua blue jelly stuffed with silver holographic glitter. In terms of this matte, textured polish’s texture, it’s very fine, very light – the lowest gauge of sandpaper has more grit. Perhaps owing to the jelly base, this polish also has a ton of depth, and the plentiful silver glitter sparkles prettily from beneath multiple light coats (here I used three.) Gorgeous!

But removal? Was a snaggy pain. It always is with textured polishes, unless you peel your polish off, which I think I’m supposed to chastise you about? Or I would unless I didn’t also peel my polish. Oops.

Pink Sugar

I’m ending this week of unintentionally rainbow-ordered manis the way I began it, with a swatch, but this time of an older, textured glitter polish from my stash, Nicole by OPI’s Candy is Dandy from last year’s super sweet Gumdrops Collection. I posted a photo of this polish last Spring when it first came into my possession, but with the benefit of a year comes MUCH better looking nails and a greatly improved polishing technique (to say nothing of my enhanced iPhotography skills), and so I thought I’d take another run at this sparkly textured beauty.

And never are well-tended nails and careful polishing more important than with textured lacquers, let me tell you. There’s not a lot of after-the-fact tinkering that can be done, so go slowly, paint carefully and allow each layer to dry fully before moving on to the next. I also find it helps to tidy as I go; I keep an orangewood stick with a pointed tip nearby to quickly scrape off any little over-polished boo-boos. Having said that, Candy is Dandy provoked very few inadvertent boo-boos in the first place, applying smoothly and covering completely in three light coats. Texture-wise, this polish isn’t too rough. It actually feels very much the way it looks – like your nails have been dusted with pink sugar. Of course, if you absolutely detest the sandpapery texture, you can always top it with one thick coat of Seche Vite; it looks quite (Candy is) Dandy that way.

Regrettably, the Nicole by OPI collection, a trend-oriented, drugstore alternative to OPI’s pricier salon line, seems to be on a bit of an extended hiatus. I haven’t seen any new polishes come out for the Nicole line since last year’s four-piece Roughles Collection, which is a shame, because the Nicole line skews a little less expensive and a whole lot more fun than OPI’s regular offerings. Come back to us, drugstore nail polish choice!

Fizzy Pop

This textured gradient mani is meant to look like those little sugar-dusted gummy cola candies my friends and I used to buy from the 7-11 for a penny a piece (heavens, that was a very “old timer” kind of statement – what are these mysterious pennies and 7-11s the daffy old lady is nattering about?) and is indeed inspired by the brown base polish I used here, Models Own cola-scented Fizzy Cola. It’s a cute look, albeit a tad washed out, but regrettably not worth the hassle of working with Fizzy Cola.

I’ve commented before that I’m not a huge fan of crapping all over a polish or a polish maker just for the sake of being disagreeable – to each polish their own and all that jazz – but when my experience with a product is overwhelmingly negative, I feel like I ought to say something, if only to give people a heads-up as to what they may be running into. Call it a PSA – a Polish Service Announcement.

And what you’re running into here is maybe the poorest polish I’ve ever worked with. I’ve been lucky in that I’ve purchased very few dud polishes – just a handful – but this one really stands out, and not in a good way. Which is a shame, as my experience with the Models Own brand has been a good one (love their fruit-scented, pastel collection.) As you can see, the colour’s quite nice, a cool, mid-toned brown shot through with gold and silver shimmer. The scent’s pretty great, too, a smell I’d describe as being caught somewhere between cola and chocolate. But the consistency and ease of application? Those things that absolutely make or break a polish, no matter its pretty colour or scent? Terrible. Thick and almost lumpy (a giant, disgusting blob oozed off the brush and back into the bottle with an audible plop, putting me off all creamy foodstuffs for the next few days), it dried in visible ridges the second it hit my nails and left thin wisps of polish along the tips of my talons where the brush left the edge of my nails. It’s also completely unsuitable for nail art detail work, as it dries far too quickly for you to do anything other than marvel at its glue-like qualities.

As always, I like to point out that batch lots can find one dud bottle amongst 1,000 winners – there’s always that chance that you got the crap bottle – but over on Nail Polish Canada’s site there’s a review of Fizzy Cola that’s pretty much in lockstep with mine. I can’t say what the issue is with this particular polish, but it certainly doesn’t seem to be racking up the fans. Save your money on this one. And here’s to the second polish in the candy-scented Models Own collection I bought being nothing like this one!

Cinnaburst

Okay, who remembers Cinnaburst gum? Wait, is Cinnaburst even something we should be talking about in the past tense, or is it still in production today? I can’t remember having seen it at a store in ages. Right, you wait here and I’ll be back in a jiff. *scampers off to consult Google*

All right, here’s what I’ve gleaned about Cinnaburst chewing gum via the almighty interwebs. Firstly, I’m spelling it wrong. Its official spelling is Cinn*A*Burst, which puts it in contention for the award for dumbest use of a symbol within a proper noun (see also Ke$ha and, of course, Prince, whose name for a while there was nothing but a symbol.) Secondly, it seems as though it *might* still be in production and *may* still be available at certain specialty and/or out-of-the-way shops, although there’s precious little information about it online (the most common Google search amongst only 11,000 entries was asking where on earth one might procure a pack of the stuff.) Thirdly, and finally, the last nail in the Cinna-coffin seems to be an overwhelmingly large number of “Does anyone remember Cinnaburst gum?” posts with links to tragic fads and fashions of the ’90s. To answer the question, no, it appears as though no one does remember Cinnaburst gum.

Except me! Because I loved the CRAP out of that stuff. It was a stick gum that was studded with these weirdly delicious and gritty little flavour crystals that would snap when you chewed, sending little bursts of cinnamon-flavoured food additives shooting into the back of your throat like super low grade Pop Rocks. It ran out of flavour in about five minutes flat (but really, what gum doesn’t?) and only came in packs of five or six sticks, so you were forever running out, but damn, that gum was great.

And so like I always do when I determine that something is great, I paint it on my nails! Here I tried a smoothed-out textured jelly sandwich (if that’s not a new nail art animal, I don’t know what is) to get that vaguely sparkly, red-speckled look of a stick of Cinnaburst. I went by the usual jelly sandwich method, using a light, sponged-on coat of Cinapro’s Nail Sugar in Cherry Cola in between two coats of a sheer, glitter-infused textured polish, Essence’s Hey, Nude! The texture on Hey, Nude! is quite fine, so it wasn’t necessary to add a topcoat, although I like the way a coat of Seche Vite adds depth and brings out the lovely silver and red sparkles in the mani (sorry, flavour crystals! I mean flavour crystals.)

Patrick

Patrick Star, SpongeBob SquarePants’ starfish best friend, provided the inspiration for these nails, which highlight Patrick’s cute and dorky board shorts and nubby, pink-hued skin (the key there being Nicole by OPI’s Rock the Look from this spring’s Roughles collection, a matte textured polish that looks just like pink, bumpy Patrick.)

Disney Girl Challenge: Edna Mode

Again, much like Ursula and Cruella, I would never classify sharp, sassy Edna Mode from The Incredibles as a girl (rather, a black-clad, one-woman force of high fashion and wry remarks) but she’s a lady in the Disneyverse, and so for the purposes of this self-imposed challenge, she stays. Edna gets all of The Incredibles’ best lines (“My god, you’ve gotten fat”) and knows her superhero garb (“No capes!”) but based on her weird little black leather/rubber tire outfit, she has no clue how to dress herself.

Still, these nails, based on Edna’s funky little outfit of indeterminate material, were super fun to plan and, for a nice little change, utilize texture over colour. On my index and ring fingers I did a bit of fishnet-type taping work, layering a black textured polish over a simple black base, evoking the diamond scale pattern on the sleeves of Edna’s dress. And then on my middle and pinkie fingers, I layered matte black polish, striping tape and a couple of coats of Seche Vite one atop the other to create Edna’s puffy black dress (that really does look like an upside down lampshade made out of inflatable Vespa tires.) Finally, I added a pair of Edna’s iconic black rimmed glasses to my thumb. All the better to cut you down with a withering glance with, my dear.

Disney Girl Challenge: Elsa the Snow Queen

I’m actually partial to the black and teal and magenta outfit Elsa wears before she bolts from Arendelle, but I respect her need to let it go (LET IT GOOOOOO!) and change into something a little less restrictive and high-necked.

This is the first manicure I’ve done inspired by Frozen, though surely not the last (between the two of them, Elsa and Anna have one MAJOR wardrobe.) I’m particularly proud of the tone-on-tone striping tape work I did on my index and ring fingers that I think looks like the glittery rectangular sequins on Elsa’s ethereal ice blue dress. And snowflakes, because, you know, everything’s Frozen (no, really, that movie has taken on a life of its own; these days, everything truly IS Frozen.)