China Glaze Awakening Swatches + Review

So a couple of weeks ago, I won the lovely Lady Mariana's China Glaze Giveaway... (Her blog is here). I got my items in the mail yesterday and was eager to swatch them!



















First off, I love the packaging. The model wearing Zombie Zest is totally hot.

You get 3 colours -- Mummy May I (cute name), Zombie Zest and Ick-A-Body (again, kinda cute), and also a Fast Forward Top Coat. It's a full size, which is a good deal. I'm going to try it out and post a quickie review of it after a few uses... never tried it!

Now for bottle porn and swatches. I have two swatch pics, the top will be non-flash, and the bottom will be flash. You'll have to excuse my not-so-great swatches. I'm A) not an experienced nail polish swatcher and B) I have no remover with me and had no way of cleaning up without picking at my nails.


























































Ick-A-Body: This is a black base with orange hexagonal glitter. I love this even though some would consider it cliché. Sure, it's typical Halloween colours, but I think it could work just as a fall colour. This one is different from Mummy May I, which I will show later. This one is predominantly glitter. The picture is 3 coats, no top coat, but was opaque in only 2 coats.


































































Mummy May I: This is a base base with fuschia/purple hexagonal glitter inside. This is different from Ick-A-Body in that the base is more like a jelly. It's strange... the glitter is more sparse, but when you put the bottles side by side... they look as though they should be the same. I am not sure whether China Glaze was going for the more sparse glitered jelly like look, or if that was an accident. Because of the jelly quality of the base, this one took 3 coats. The photo is 3 coats, no top coat.































































Zombie Zest: This is an olive/mossy green base packed with green, gold, brown and aqua shimmer. Yeah, say that 3 times fast. This color is fantastic! I will admit that on the first coat, I thought it was disgusting. It looked like baby poo. But, on the second and third coats, the deeper green base and sparkles came through and made it look more solid (instead of like a zombie barfed on your hands). This one is much smoother than the other 2, you could go without a top coat if you had to. I think this is definitely my favorite.

Overall, another solid release from China Glaze. All 3 definitely get my approval. I like that they are obviously Halloween but could be worn in the fall/winter season and still be appropriate. I think I will be rocking Ick-A-Body on Halloween night :)

Let me know if you have any questions... do you have this set? What do you think of the colours?

Oh AND... what are YOU going as for Halloween? Let me know!

Making Your Own Nail Polish

Yeah, yeah, nothing original. I wanted to try my hand at it after I was looking at my manicure last night thinking, wow, this looks like Mac Rose pigment in nail polish form. So I looked up how to make nail polish from pigments... and here we are!

First of all, here is my current mani, China Glaze Awakening. It's totally gorgeous even though pink isn't my thing.











































Excuse my sorry nails. Two of them broke last week and I had to cut them all back to match... I want my nails back! It's so hard to paint short ones.

So, onto making my own polishes. You need your loose eyeshadow pigment of choice, a bottle of clear nail polish, and something to drop the pigment into the bottle with. The neck is quite narrow and I originally tried using a teaspoon but that wasn't working. I later used the tip of a metal nail file... that worked fine.





















That's right. I'm making two =P.



















The paper funnel thing DID NOT work. At all.



















We then tried scraping it off of the spoon... a lot got wasted.

For this one, I used Barry M Oyster Grey. Zomg... look at it...




















The pink doesn't show as well in the polish as it does on your eye. I did not take it out into direct sun so it probably will have a secret pink shimmer. Yaaay! I made my own taupey nail polish!




















This was fairly sheer so I added more pigment in. I can't tell you how much I used. Maybe 1/4 of a teaspoon? It would be good in two coats, though.



















You know it's coming...
























































































That's right. I used Barry M Petrol Black. It looks pretty amazing. I had to use quite a bit of this one as the black base was really sheering out when mixed with the clear polish. This will be AMAZING in direct sun light. Totally excited...

When out going for the clear polishes, I picked up two others that I was interested in.























It's LA Splash Golden Seahorses and Sally Hansen Mystic Lilac. Mystic Lilac is new and I think Seahorses has been around for a while. I saw the LA Splash one on Pink Sith and fell in love... didn't even notice that my Ulta carried LA Splash polishes before! They are gorgeous on the nail as well...

























2 coats of this will be love. I know it.

























This is quite sheer but I think it will be good in 2-3 coats.

In case you noticed how odd my nail swatches look of my frankens and the 2 new ones I got... wanna know why? Yep. They're my boyfriend's nails. Mine are painted and he volunteered, because he is amazing. I thanked him, of course:




















He's such a good sport. That's all for today!