Beauty Misanthropic

1 coat Essie Ridge Filling Base Coat
3 coats Sinful Colors Love Nails 282
2-3 coats Julep Carly on accent nails
1 coat Nail Pattern Boldness Glitter Food
1 coat Sally Hansen Ultimate Shield

Sinful Colors Love Nails is a drugstore budget polish in a transparent dark teal semi-metallic.  Not a great formula, 3-4 coats for opacity, goes on streaky and a little thick (even though it's so see-through).  Considering you can buy Sinful Colors polishes for $2 or less though, I'm happy enough with it.

Julep Carly is a dark teal (leaning more blue than green) glitter polish in an essentially clear base (it may be a bit blue-tinted, but it goes on transparent from what I can tell).  Small and very small hex glitter, medium to high density.  3-4 coats will be mostly opaque, but you may want a base color to make it easier to remove as well.  Formula is pretty good for a dense glitter, but also a little thick.


Nail Pattern Boldness Glitter Food is a top-coat for smoothing out the appearance of glitter polish.  It can also be poured into bottles of glitter polish that have "gone flat" to make the glitter suspended evenly again.  So far I am finding it effective, it did significantly smooth out the top coat, and may have done even smoother with another coat.

I love aqua colors and Julep Carly is a very bright, seductive color. Super flattering and pretty on anyone.  It's a cheerful, very showy manicure in the sunlight, but I think it really stands out as an evening color.  Fabulous pick for a dressy night out, it looks amazing under artificial light and I personally like it better as a nighttime polish.

1 coat Essie Ridge Filling Base Coat
1 coat Sally Hansen Ultimate Shield as base coat
3-4 coats Julep Vivien, OR Julep Harper as accent nails
2 coats SH Ultimate Shield as top coat

Julep Vivien is a champagne gold superfine glitter with medium gold hex glitter chunks, medium density.  Even 4 coats did not achieve 100% opacity, maybe about 90% opacity.  I usually don't care for gold polishes, but this is a very flattering color.  A little classy.

Only annoying thing was the hex glitters wanted to clump on my nails, and go onto the edges instead of the middle, impossible to spread around evenly.  I have a love/hate thing with glitters, but they are super popular this season.

Julep Harper I was actually a bit dubious about when I saw the bottle at first, but I actually really like it.  It's like Julep Portia turned way the hell up - a dense glitter mix of mostly medium aqua, a bit of light gold and bright cobalt, in a aqua jelly base.  Opaque with 3-4 coats.  Definitely "mermaid nails".  A lovely color.  It is bright, yet milky.  This might be fun to try as a matte next time.  It ate up my top coat, as glitters tend to, more than Vivien, but definitely do multiple top coats on both.

Even with all these extra base and top coats, this one is peeling off faster than usual for me, these pics are about 4 days in and I'm probably taking it off tomorrow before I start picking at it and ruin my nails.  Usually SH Ultimate Shield will let me wear a manicure for 7+ days (sometimes over 10 if I don't use my hands much), which is why I use it even though it takes FOREVER to dry compared to other top coats.

This week, I applied 2-3 coats of Nicole by OPI My Lifesaver over 1 base coat of Essie Ridge Filling Base Coat, with one light coat of Julep Portia on top.  I think I might have gotten a bad or tampered-with bottle of My Lifesaver from drugstore.com because it was like trying to apply Elmer's Glue, thick and gummy.  Bleh.  I will try to put in some nail polish thinner next time to see if I can save the bottle from the trash (lol name irony).
I kind of wish I had bought a bottle of China Glaze For Audrey instead, My Lifesaver was less of the robin egg blue I wanted, and more greenish.  It's a little too bright or something, it just doesn't have a flattering look.  The Portia glitter helps a little though, for me, gives it more of a 'day at the beach' look.  This is maybe a good polish for those trying to do more of a "doll" or "lolita" look.

I had to do 3 coats of the polish to even it out, it goes on very opaque, but shows brush strokes way too easily.  It went on very messily, despite efforts to smooth it out.  I didn't bother with much of a top coat or cleaning it up well because I plan on changing polish soon.  Can't wait to try out the new Julep America the Beautiful!