Glitter explosion: Lynnderella The Glittering Crowd

I've been wanting a crazy glitter for a while. Standard rainbow glitter is cool and all, but sometimes you just want something really nuts. I came across a few good options in my search -- Starrily's Toy Story comes to mind. But somewhere along the way, I discovered Lynnderella's The Glittering Crowd and fell in love. Finding it, though, was bound to be tough.

From what scarce information I could find on this polish and the Lynnderella brand as a whole, it debuted in 2011 as part of Lynnderella's very first line of nail polishes. Apparently, Lynn was a bit of a celebrity on the Makeup Alley forums, and was known for mixing her own custom nail polishes, which was a pretty new phenomenon at the time. Other polishes in her inaugural collection included Connect the Dots, a black & white hex/bar glitter topper which would be imitated by countless other brands, and Shape Shifter, which featured holographic glitter of various shapes. These polishes would make waves in the community and probably contributed to the popularity of indie polish on the whole.

That being said, this was not an easy polish to track down. It's now a decade old, which is never a good place to start. Even in the event that production of this polish continued after its initial 2011 introduction, I don't think Lynnderella makes it anymore. In fact, I'm not 100% sure if Lynnderella still makes polish at all. But...

I did find it online and it sat in my bookmarks for a little bit. I figured I'd buy it when I had a little extra cash, since dropping $16 on a single bottle of nail polish is a little steep, especially as someone with very little indie experience. One day, I was thinking about its beautiful multicolored goodness and clicked on the link to see that there was only one bottle left in stock. I knew it had to be mine!... and that brings us to today.

(Yes, I know my nails are nubby... I'm sad about it too.)

I read that this polish contains over 100 different types of glitter, and I wholeheartedly believe that claim! On my middle finger alone, I see:

• Aqua star glitter

• Large mint round glitter

• Medium yellow hex glitter

• Small periwinkle hex glitter

• Small green holo hex glitter

• Small yellow holo hex glitter

• Small aqua holo square glitter

• Small yellow square glitter

... and so many more, it would take me forever to write it all out.

It really is like confetti on my nails! I have lots of different multicolored and multi-shape glitter, but nothing this crazy. I adore the variety in shape, color, finish, and size. And you wanna know the crazy part? This is one coat. Any more and I think it'd simply be too overwhelming. It also evens out pretty well for a chunky glitter -- 2 coats of Seche Vive have reduced it to a very slight lumpy feeling. 

Even the right hand makes a rare appearance to demonstrate just how nuts this glitter is. I'm sure this would look even better on longer nails, since there'd be more real estate for a wider variety of glitter, but I feel it works well on short nails too. I think you could cover a turd in this stuff and I'd think it was pretty. I'm not the biggest glitter fan, but this is simply too good! 

On a personal note... you may have noticed that this post is a little less refined than usual, and there's a good reason for that. These past couple of days have been pretty jam-packed. I adopted a new kitten. It's a very exciting thing, especially considering that my name is on the adoption papers and she's staying in my room while she acclimates to her new home. Her name is Stella, she's a Russian Blue mix (which means pretty gray fur and adorable mauve paw pads!), and she has my heart. She's approximately 10 weeks old, which is already a tough age for kittens, but her curious spirit makes it that much tougher. I've spent nearly the entire duration of writing this post trying to avoid getting my fingers bitten and backspacing after she walks across the keyboard. As I type, she has her little butt all up in my face... and now she's walking across the keyboard again... and now she's going after my fingers... and now she's biting my laptop. I've only had her for 2 days and I'm already worn out, but it's a rewarding type of exhaustion. She's cuter than you can possibly imagine, and I just about die inside when she curls up on my chest and falls asleep after an intense play session. Even the grosser parts of being a cat owner, such as scooping the poop, aren't that bad. I always hated when people would call themselves 'cat moms' or 'cat dads', but I think I'm starting to understand. She's the first kitten I've had in my adult life, and I am basically her sole caretaker... the sense of responsibility weighs heavy on me, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I love her so much, even if she is, quite frankly, a little shit.

And until next time... PEACE! xoxo

Happy Pride! Rainbow jelly dotticure

WARNING: PERSONAL DRIVEL AHEAD. SKIP TO THE RED LINE TO BYPASS MY RANTING.

My relationship with pride month is a complicated one. While I'm not super open about it (partly because of a very devoutly Christian extended family and partly because I don't feel it's an important facet of myself), I am bisexual and thus I am included in the festivities. I have known that I was bisexual from a very young age, around 11 or 12, and was initially very excited to learn that there was an entire community for people like me. However, as the years went on and different sects of the LGBT sphere splintered apart amid rising tensions, I started paying less and less attention to all of it. I'm bisexual, and that's that... I just didn't feel the need to spend my energy obsessing over it and arguing with people who are unwilling to accept me as I am.

That being said, I am not ashamed of my sexuality. I think the capability to love both men and women is a beautiful thing, but it's only a tiny piece in the puzzle of me. Who I am romantically involved with has no bearing on me, my personality, interests, ambitions, etc. I understand the desire to be loud and proud about it... having confidence in oneself is admirable and, unfortunately, escapes many people. But for me, it's just another aspect of myself, as much as being a woman or having green eyes. It's not something I control. It just is. 

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That being said, I could never pass up the opportunity to do some rainbow nail art! Even if I don't attend parades or add a frame to my Facebook profile pic (hello, homophobic aunts!), I can still show support on my nails. This is a manicure I would do any time of the year, but it just feels especially appropriate now!

I'm not too big on nail art in general -- I mostly prefer to swipe on a couple coats of a color I like and be done with it. When I do decide to get artsy, though, I always reach for my dotting tools. While I like to think I've developed a rather deft hand in the 3 years I've been regularly painting my nails, I'm useless with fine details. I do have a nail art brush, but I've failed miserably on the half-dozen occasions I have tried to use it. I'm also useless at doing... polka dots. They seem foolproof, but I just can't align them the right way! Instead, I like to take this scattered approach. I'm unsure if there's a proper name for this technique, but whatever it is, I love it -- it's so stupid easy and looks gorgeous every time!

For this look, I started with 3 coats of OPI Bubble Bath, one of my favorite nudes. I then used the entirety of Essie's 2019 Glazed Days collection for the dots, as well as Pure Ice "Beware" for the silver glitter. The result is, in my opinion, beautiful! Things started getting a little muddy on the pinkie finger -- I definitely should have used a smaller dotting tool -- but overall, I really adore how this looks. My boyfriend said it reminds him of Smarties (the European version), which I can get behind! I can tell that I'll be staring at my fingers for the duration of my time wearing this. I could also see this as a birthday or New Years' look, it's just so colorful and joyous!

Well, thanks so much for reading to this point. Have a wonderful rest of your month -- I hope you are able to be your authentic self safely and peacefully <3 And until next time... PEACE! xoxo

Vintage rarity: China Glaze Open Sky

Though I almost never show it, I have a pretty sizable collection of vintage China Glaze. I have a Helmer drawer full of the really old bottles with the ridged cap (like the one you'll see today), and about 3/4 of a drawer filled with pre-2006 white labels. And let me tell you, some of my favorite polishes of all time come from the first 10 years of China Glaze. Off the top of my head... Draped in Velvet, Anklets of Amethyst, Dorothy Who?, Cat's Eye, Crystal Ball, and so many more. I wouldn't say that this one quite makes the all-star list, but it's still a fun little polish and a time capsule of the time it was released!

Not a whole lot is known about the history of China Glaze. The brand reportedly started in 1998 and has been chugging along ever since then, but aside from that and its acquisition by American International Industries in 2005, there's not much info out there. All I can say about this specific polish is that it was released sometime between 1998-2002, seeing as this style of bottle was used during that approximate timeframe. (There was also an earlier bottle, which may have been a prototype or available to professionals only, that has not been documented anywhere online aside from the vintage polish Facebook group... I have 2 of these, so maybe I should post about them!)

Open Sky is, as the name suggests, a sky blue frost. It's a little less vibrant IRL... it's more slate blue than the robin's egg shown in this picture. It's veering into metallic/chrome territory with how silvery it is! When was the last time a polish brand put out a color like this? Hell, when was the last time this was considered fashionable or trendy? Of course, I care very little about what's in style, so I love this. I imagine that the average consumer, though, would not appreciate its brushstrokey finish. This is one of those polishes that has no forgiveness, no wiggle room, no margin for error. It will show every single lump, bump, and slip of the brush! I've been trained well with all the streaky frosty goodness I've encountered in my time, but if someone who can barely get a creme polish on their nails without it looking like a trainwreck were to try this, I don't even want to imagine how this would go down!

At the end of the day... I like this polish. A lot. Enough that I own two bottles of it (though I picked up this vintage specimen mostly for collecting purposes). Even with all of its flaws (...its many, many flaws), I look down on my nails with delight. It's just another one of those times where I'm reminded how much I truly love vintage nail polish. There are so many funky colors and finishes that you just don't see today... either because they've fallen out of fashion, or because the methods of their production have been lost to the sands of time (for example, the ChG Babes in Toeland foil-glass fleck finish apparently cannot be reproduced with modern ingredients). Yes, we now have the luxury of holo and multichrome and flakies and all that good stuff, but I'll take a hideously colored toluene-formaldehyde stink bomb over a modern indie polish any day of the week. :-)

And until next time... PEACE! xoxo