Essie - Lapis of Luxury

I recently saw Lapis of Luxury on a coworker and had to have it immediately. This cornflower blue jelly is slightly grayed out in real life, with a subtle hint of lavender that is nearly impossible to capture in a photo. These gray and lavender undertones are what make this polish a complete win for me. The second photo is a bit more accurate color wise.

Here it is with a coat of China Glaze - Black Mesh. This is a fun but I currently love Lapis too much to justify covering it with anything.

China Glaze - Black Mesh / Zoya - Charla

I'll admit my last crackle combination wasn't making me jump for joy. It was interesting and different, but I was still on the fence about it. Well yesterday I was wearing Charla with no intention to put crackle over it and then I got bored and decided to see what happens. I AM IN LOVE. The crackle is a lot less obvious in this combo, from far away it can come across as a deep sparkly green. Once you get close up you get glimpses of the fun crackle texture. My mom even gave this her stamp of approval, which was a huge feat considering my last crackle attempt creeped her out to the point where she didn't even want to look at my nails.

Charla is even more saturated and sparkly in real life. These awkward photos are the most color accurate.

China Glaze - Black Mesh / Wet and Wild - Grey's Anatomy

Oh dear, has it been 8 months? While I abandoned this blog, I have not abandoned nail polish. I'm going to jump right in with some crackle polish. This is China Glaze - Black Mesh over Wet and Wild - Grey's Anatomy. 

I was on the fence about crackle polish in general until I saw my friend Kim wearing OPI's Teenage Dream and Black Shatter. It looked amazing on her and I immediately hunted down my own bottles. My first attempt at this combo was a bit of a failure as I was still getting used to using crackle polish. Teenage Dream, while very pretty, is just as annoying as any other glitter to remove so I decided on something a little easier to handle on my second attempt. 

Grey's Anatomy is a subtle grey/pink duochrome that works well under crackle polish (it's very similar to OPI's Not Like the Movies from the Katy Perry line). It comes across sort of nude and basic in these photos, but trust me that pink shimmer is there. This was 3 coats of Grey's and one very thick coat of Black Mesh.