japanese glitters

Winmax Delicia - No. 12
Promance - No. 14

Konichiwa my friends!!!!! ^_^v*~~ Life has been good in Tokyo, despite the brevity of this trip. It's always good to get out of the country at any opportunity you can. Okay so tonight, I'm featuring two polishes that I've adopted from the Land of Sushi.

I'd just like to whine a little first before starting: Damn you, Seche Vite - you shrank my polish. (Especially my ring and pinky fingers pictured, damn it.)

Ok. Winmax Delicia No. 12 is a very strange, strange polish. It's a very dark Slate gray shade peppered with tri-coloured micro-glitter (teal, orange and dark blue and MAYBE some purple unless the blue bits are playing tricks on my eyes). And it's a unique strange ... wait for it ... frosty jelly base.

WTF? I know. But let's just introduce Promance No. 14 first.

Promance No. 14 is a clear-based polish base with holographic glitter as well as blue and purple star-shaped holographic glitter pieces suspended in it. Yes, I did not mention 'dense' despite how the bottle looks chock-full of glitter. More on that later.

This No. 12 must've been borne from some kind of Frankenpolish freak accident... Then again, I bought this from Daiso which probably explains why it's such a bizarre polish. I actually quite liked the dusty gray effect it had - pretty similar to the effect of OPI My Pointe Exactly from the NYC Ballet collection - because of the jelly-ness of the base. I was really convinced that it was a jelly from the slightly gooey consistency that formed on the inner side of the bottle neck and the sheerness of the first coat. By the second coat, however, there were signs of a pearly sheen and slight streaking... The third coat just looked kind of weird, really. Frosty jelly - such a pretty/ugly sight! Very weird indeed. Oh and the little micro-glitter bits also disappointed me because they looked so pretty and sparkly in the bottle - nicely sparse, and had a whole chill, faded, galaxy-ish vibe going on. But no not really. Glitter barely showed up at all on the nail and they even looked gritty. Seeing that the micro-glitter was quite fine, I guess my only explanation is that the frosty-jelly base shrunk while drying. I hate how bottles fool us.

Since No. 12 was SO weird (idk it's probably that would be considered 'indie' and 'radical' in the nail polish industry but I think this is too freaking weird for me)(and this shit is sold at Daiso)(but a pretty good deal for 100yen)(WTF) I decided to layer it over with a glitter polish, after a coat of Seche Vite to speed up dry time. This, btw, will help prevent the sunken look of large glitter pieces.

On a side note, my mom was so cute in Tokyo - after I purchased No. 12, she said, ''Then what glitters are you going to put over that?'' #Momknowsbest. ^_^v And I should mention she discovered Promance No. 14 at some overpriced knick-knack store that sold like functional keychain-sized digital cameras and Happy Tree Friends merchandise. Impressive actually, how she managed to find this starry gem. #Momtrulyknowsbest. ^_^v*~~~

This polish, like most other polishes containing large pieces of glitter, was a bitch to apply. But screw that, it has freaking blue AND purple holographic stars!!! Every other polish pales in comparison. So anyways if you were wondering how the stars look so perfectly random on my nails, it's because I placed them there. Or most of them at least, some of them were being real biznatches and sticking to each other or refused to come off the brush until the final stroke. The stars were also really sparse on the brush despite me fishing for them. It's like trying to catch a couple of smart goldfish from a fishbowl. But in reality, it's me trying to scoop up a couple of inanimate star-shaped glitter pieces that don't move/think independently in a polish bottle which turned out to be very challenging. Though it realistically should be easier to handle than the goldfish scenario and unfortunately makes me look more stupid. (Damn.........)

Well, overall I do like this look. The smokiness of No. 12 - evident near my fucking dried out cuticles - makes it look more dreamy and far-away than just a flat out black creme. Though, I'd have to say the holographic glitter and the shapes of the stars would stand out much more on a clean creme base in a sharp colour like black. Also, while trying to space the stars out, streaking from dragging the large glitter pieces created ugly shallow trails that showed quite obviously because of the frostiness of the base. :-( Annoying, really - fuck frosts. :"( At least the holographic glitter helped to mask that pretty well. Glitter always saves the day. (Yay Team Glitter!)

Also pardon the pictures of my nails if they turn out to be hideous; I just painted this on and went straight to typing this post, without even taking snapshots yet. I'm going to do that after typing this post. My top right corner of my right pinky is definitely destroyed from typing capitals (AS SUCH) while holding down the Shift key.

So what do you think of this look? No or go? And I wonder what to post next - more Japanese glitters or something from OPI's The Amazing Spiderman collection... It'd be nice to post what you wanna read.

x, Ish.