Sunset Orange

Last week, Wal-Mart had a whole bunch of polishes on sale. It wasn't a huge sale (about $1 off each) but I did manage to pick up a few polishes that were in line with this summer's trend. The first of these was Rimmel Lasting Finish Pro in Sunset Orange.

While initially it may appear to be similar to Caribbean Coral, the polish from my previous post, I can assure you that they are most definitely different. Sunset Orange is definitely more orange-leaning, and of a lighter shade than Caribbean Coral. Sunset Orange is a creme, whereas Coral has some shimmer. Lastly, Coral is much more opaque, only needing a second coat to even things out. This is three coats of Sunset Orange, and there is some VNL (though not as apparent in person). The colour is absolutely fabulous though, so the extra coats would be worth it.

I'm trying to get myself more into orange shades for the summer. I know that this has orange in the name, but it isn't a true orange for sure;. Orange is apparently really in right now, and I just want to be cool. I just want to be COOL.

Hot, Hot Gradient

The past few days in Toronto have been SWELTERING, and I've been cooped up in the house on my days off avoiding the heat at all costs. It felt like 35 degrees at 8:30 in the morning when I bravely decided to venture to Tim Horton's for an iced coffee! I simply adore the miracle of air conditioning.

I've only done gradient nails once before; twice if you count that one that I did on a nail wheel that didn't turn out so well. With that in mind, going in to doing this mani, I was prepared to fail. I followed a tutorial from The Beauty Department.

Here are the polishes that I used:

L to R: Wet 'n' Wild Sunny Side Up, Wet 'n' Wild Blazed, Wet 'n' Wild Dreamy Poppy, Rimmel Sunset Orange, Sally Hansen Caribbean Coral

You can also see the makeup wedge that I used in the background. I had a bit of a problem figuring out what order the colours would go in, though. The middle polish was a lot more pink than the others and I couldn't figure out where it fit in. I took a couple of pictures that display the evolution of the order of the colours in this gradient.

Eventually I settled on the bottom picture's colour scheme, with the pink right below the Caribbean Coral. If you're not familiar, what you do is soak the makeup wedge in water and then squeeze out most of the water until it's just damp to the touch. Then, you paint on stripes of colour on the sponge in order and dab it a few times on a piece of paper so the colours blend a little bit before you finally sponge it onto your nail.

The tutorial didn't mention anything about painting a base colour on your nails before doing the sponging, but for this mani I decided it would look a lot more blended and bright if I painted my nails a bright orange first, so I started with one coat of Sunny Side Up, a polish that I salvaged from the dead with some Orly polish thinner, that I had bought just that morning...like I knew that I would need it!

Indoors, flash

Indoors, Natural Light

Sunlight

I'm really happy about how this turned out. The base colour, which normally leans more yellow, turned into a more bright, pink-leaning hue with the coral shades sponged over it. It kind of reminds me of a blood orange. This gradient technique was a little bit time consuming, but easy nevertheless. I will definitely be trying this again sometime.

Supernova

So I saw this thing on a bunch of other blogs, and I thought I would try it out since it was so cute and it looked like candy. My excuse for changing my nails last night was that my previous manicure was not "professional" enough to wear to school today, but...

Obviously this was not any more professional than the last. But I really wanted to try it out. I put 1 coat of American Apparel - Supernova under 2 coats of Rimmel - French Rose from their French Manicure Pro collection. Supernova is a bunch of larger multicoloured (blue, orange, red, green, silver, and gold) hex glitter mixed in with smaller round silver, gold, magenta, and orange pieces, with even smaller green glitter in a clear base. I think it's close enough to Happy Birthday to fill that hole in my collection without me having to drop the $20+ on the actual Happy Birthday, and it was made especially better by the fact that I got this puppy for $3.

I like how the sheer pink polish mellows out the multi-coloured glitter and made it somewhat less inappropriate, haha. Initially I didn't like how the silver glitter turned white, but it's growing on me. The only think that hasn't sold me on this look is the fact that the sheer pink French Rose actually looks a little gray, which isn't the cute candy look I was going for -- if I ever do it again, I'll definitely try a pinker polish.

Here's a close-up of the index finger on my right hand:

I put a thinner layer of pink on this hand than I did on my left (pictured above) and I think I like having more of the glitter show through. I'm definitely digging how the gold glitter turns a pale yellow. I don't know why, but the little green pieces floating in the cloudy off-white top coat kind of reminded me of sour cream-n-onion chips...it was probably my hunger talking.

In other news, I came home to find that my mom tried to organize the miscellaneous polishes I had lying in a basket on top of my filing cabinet. I  never realized how many I actually had until I saw today that the miscellaneous polishes (not counting the ones in my rolling storage tower and the ones hiding in my desk drawer) filled 2 shoeboxes, neatly lined up! I quickly promised myself that I would not buy any more, but we all know that this is the emptiest of all promises, especially since the OPI Holland collection is coming out and I want I Have a Herring Problem and Wooden Shoe Like to Know in addition to Zoya Skylar so bad it's a bit ridiculous.

And so, that ends the hour of lazing around for me. Hopefully in 2 weeks I can come up with something a little more lab-appropriate. :P