Mermaid Nails + A Mini Lesson in Photographing Flakies

Lately I haven't been feeling very inspired when it comes to nail art, but after swatching Sinful Colors Kissy yesterday the colors got me thinking of the mermaid/fish scale nails that I have seen around. I've been meaning to get more practice painting designs on my nails so I thought fish scales would be something fun and easy to do!

Accent nail is two coats of Sinful Colors Rise and Shine topped with one coat of Sinful Colors Kissy. The scales were painted with Rise and Shine. The other nails are two coats of Love and Beauty Nude topped with two coats of Essie Shine of the Times.
This mani is essentially a collaboration of many of the things that I love in nail polish: flakies, glitter, accent nails, nude polish, and teal/green polish. Love.

Something I've learned from photographing Shine of the Times (and I'm sure this applies to other flakies as well), sunlight is necessary if you really want to capture the flakies. It's the difference between this

and this!

Helllooo giant difference. Also, if you're wondering, that's one coat of Essie Shine of the Times over two coats of OPI Russian Navy.

SinfulColors Dream On and Kissy

This week Walgreens has Sinful Colors nail polish on sale for 99 cents each. I went in determined only to buy two colors, and man was the decision hard! I was immediately drawn to Cinderella, but in the end I picked Kissy and Dream On.

This is three coats of Dream On. My index and middle fingers have a top coat while the other two fingers have no top coat. As you can see it dries slightly matte, which is a characteristic of most neons. The most accurate description that I can think of for this would be neon magenta. And man is this color hard to photograph. Most pictures that I took turned out like this next one;

*not accurate*

This is closer to how it looks in the bottle, although this is still a little too pink and should have more purple to it. It dries closer to the first picture. As for the application and formula, I had not problems. This is easily a two coater, but I decided to go with three. This is a really neat color and I'm glad I picked it up because I don't have many neons or pinks, so it's a good addition to my collection.

Next up is Kissy. First I just have to say that this color is very pigmented and will stain a bit if it gets on your hands. The up side is that it's really easy to apply; I had barely any cleanup at all. I only left it on long enough to swatch, so I'm not sure if it will stain nails, but my guess is probably.
I think this polish is the best of both worlds, because you can layer it over other colors without losing them and it's also opaque in two coats if you want to wear it on its own!

One coat over the first three, two coats on the pinky

My personal favorite is over Shawn because it really brings out the green in this polish. Kissy is made up mostly of blue/green duochrome glitter in a teal base, but there are also some hints of gold in there as well.

This shows off the green and gold better

This polish is amazing and my only regret is not swatching it with a matte top coat.

Sinful Colors Kissy and Dream On retail for $1.99 and can be found in Walgreens stores and online. There is also a Sinful Colors website, but it is currently closed for maintenance. These do often go on sale for 99 cents at Walgreens, or there will be coupons in their weekly ad.

Julep Megan

I meant to review all of the Julep polishes that I received one after another, but as you can tell that didn't work out the way I had planned. I've been extremely busy with theatre and I just got some time to swatch Megan and Hayden.

I'm going to start with Megan, which is described as "a playful and sultry Mediterranean aquamarine shimmer".

This is three coats of Megan with one coat of Julep Fast Dry Top Coat.

Sunlight

I absolutely loved the way Megan looked with a matte top coat! I did one coat of Essie Matte About You on my index and middle fingers.

Sunlight 

As I said before, I used three coats. You could probably get away with two but I think it looks a lot better with three. Application was great and I needed almost no cleanup. I was pleasantly surprised when I put this on because I expected not to like Megan as much as Leah and Hayden. It still isn't as unique as the other two but I can see myself wearing it with a matte top coat (just look at that last picture!). Would I buy this if I saw it in a store (especially with a $14 price tag)? Probably not, but I am glad to have it in my collection.

Julep Megan retails for $14 at Juelp.com