Formula X by Sephora - Infamous

Happy Saturday, everyone!  Today I'm posting about one of the new Formula X by Sephora polishes called Infamous.  I've seen other bloggers posting about this new line lately, and then yesterday I came across a pin on Pinterest that really piqued my interest even further.  I had a free half hour before picking the kiddo up at school, so I zipped over to my nearest Sephora to see the entire display.  Lots of lovely colors, but only two seemed interesting enough for me to break my general "no more than $9/bottle" rule...Infamous and Legend (I'll try that one out soon)...both part of the "Shifters" portion of the collection.  I paid $12.50 each, and I believe the cremes are $10.50 each.

Sephora's website describes this as a "two-toned metallic" and I'm pretty sure the display claimed these Shifters as duochromes, but I'd have to disagree a little, at least with this color....I say it's a multichrome!  The base is a nice steely grey that has an extremely strong shift to either green or purple.  I'd also say there is some blue shift in there, but maybe that's just part of the purple side of things.  Regardless of all that, this polish is GORGEOUS!!  I looooove grey, purple, green and blue, so it's no surprise that I'm totally in love with Infamous.

Though my photos don't do this baby justice, I made an attempt to try to capture the color shifts and you'll find (many) more shots and some additional observations after the jump....

Inspired by the Spring 2013 Peter Som Custom Trio by Zoya

I was cruising Pinterest a while back and came across some pins promoting the Spring 2014 Peter Som custom trio with Zoya.  Featuring blue, green and a soft coral, it's a pretty color combo that I briefly considered purchasing from Zoya until I remembered that I'd recently bought a coral that was still in my untried pile of polishes.  Digging that out, I searched my stash for complementary colors and waited for inspiration to strike:

So what is that pattern on the accent nail....argyle?  For some reason I kept thinking in my head it was plaid, but nope, that's not right.  Well anyway, this was a fun little skittle mani to do and I was more or less pleased with the result.  I've only just recently started practicing freehand art with some el cheapo brushes I got at Marshall's and cut down to teeny-tiny sizes.  Some days the caffeine from my morning coffee lingers to the evenings, so my lines are a bit shaky, but overall I was happy with my first attempt at this design. 

A description of the polishes I used follows the jump, along with pics showing this mani in matte form and a rare sighting of my right hand....

Blue Green Texture Skittle

I recently swatched my polish collection onto nail wheels and in the course of organizing the wheels, I was struck with inspiration when some of the texture polishes in blues and greens ended up next to/near each other.  As much as I enjoy texture polishes, I don't love them and have to be in the right kind of mood to wear them.  Although I have to say, OPI Alcatraz...Rocks and several of the Zoya PixieDust shades do their best to tempt me into wearing them more often.

Anyway, here is my fun little blue and green skittle mani:

Fun, right?  The sign of a good mani for me is if I want to wear it longer than 24 hours (have I mentioned that I have a LOT of untrieds?), and I definitely kept this one on for longer than a day.  On the second day I experimented with top-coating by putting on a layer of Gelous and then a layer of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri.  I didn't get any photos of that, though....sorry!

More after the jump:

Zoya Carly (+ a dupe alert!)

Oh Zoya, how I love thee.  You help me enjoy colors that are outside of my comfort zone, and Carly is definitely one of those colors.  I consider it a beautiful dark pink, but many others consider it more of a purple.  I have pretty fair skin and feel that anything too bright looks ridiculous on me, but this pretty Zoya toes the line of bright but not TOO bright. 

 

I usually paint my nails in the evenings, then take photos the next day and you can see from the above pic that I started to get tip wear fairly quickly with this polish.  Didn't both me though, since then I had a chance to do this:

I love a good french tip, especially to cover tip wear and gain another day of my mani, and Orly's High On Hope came to the rescue this time.  There is a gorgeous pink shimmer in HoH that closely matched the pink shades of Carly and I looooved the result of these two colors together.

More pics after the jump, along with a close-enough dupe:

Cult Flushed...plus a few others

Behold the pretty pretty....my very first Cult Nails polish called Flushed.  I know I can achieve opacity with it in 2-3 coats, but I had an untried purple creme in the form of Spoiled 2 Weeks Sober and decided to layer one coat of Flushed over one heavy coat of 2 Weeks Sober.  Both polishes were super easy to work with, though I'll definitely do two coats when I wear 2 Weeks Sober on its own.

On the second day I had some tip wear (most likely NOT due to the polish, I'm super tough on my hands/fingers), so I decided to play with some tape and two of my Julie G textured polishes.  I love the result:

 

Be sure to check out more photos after the jump, including ones of this mani before the nail art was added...