Thursday, February 13, 2014

LynBDesigns swatches



LynBDesigns ~ Various polishes
Cacophony, Oh, You Beautiful Idiot, This is Halloween & Iocaine Powder

I’ve had these four polishes sitting in my box of untrieds for longer than I care to admit, so I decided to squeeze all four of them into one post!

Cacophony
Cacophony is a blue jelly with blue and iridescent glitters. I love the colour, which is why I bought it in the first place. I’m not a huge fan of jellies – I find them extremely hard to work with.

It takes three coats to make this look its best. Drying time between coats is on the slow side, which definitely is not a plus for a three-coater in my book. Add that I applied a layer of (also slow drying) Gelous to smooth out bumps. And there’s also a layer of fast drying topcoat on the whole thing.

But I love the final result:


The mix of blue and iridescent works in my opinion.


Some of the glitters were a bit hard to control, so it wasn’t really easy to get the polish to get as close to the cuticles as I wanted it to.


Verdict:
I love the colour and the glitter is absolutely gorgeous. It’s like magic to stare at the glitters floating around in the jelly. The drying time is really a show stopper for me though.


Oh, You Beautiful Idiot
Clear base packed with blue and green glitters, plus blue stars.

I wasn’t quite sure whether this is a layering glitter or a glitter that works on its own, so I decided to try it out as a solo polish. It’s a complicated glitter to work with. I got glitter all over the place, up the walls, in my hair -  and had to dap around the corners of my nails to get it is close to the cuticles as possible. I didn’t at all succeed in the way I wanted to. Kidding about the walls & hair btw :)

But anyway, three coats is what I’m wearing on the pictures. Drying time between the coats is really good – what a relief! :) I applied a layer of Gelous and then a layer of topcoat, and here’s what it looks like:


Here’s a close up of the bottle, so you can see that there are quite a lot of stars in there. I did get some on my nails too, but they drowned in the glitter.


Here’s a last shot in different lighting. If you look really close you can see a couple of stars.


Verdict:
I love the mix of blue and green glitter, and I really, really like the added stars. The very quick drying time is a huge plus. Downsides are that the stars drown and that the formula is really tricky. It’s difficult to avoid getting glitter all over the place. Next time I'll use this as a layering polish for sure!


This is Halloween
It’s described as a deep purple base with copper coloured duochrome loaded with purple and orange smaller glitters. I fell for that description and for the swatches I saw. Little did I know that what I was going to get wasn’t quite what I’d seen online. I hate it when that happens!

The base looks gravy brown to me, and brown is a show stopper as far as I’m concerned. Don’t like it. Had I read anything about brown in the description, I just wouldn’t have bought it, end of story.

But anyway, it is what it is. So - the formula is ok and the polish builds up to opacity in three easy coats. Drying time between coats is a bit on the slow side, although the glitters do spread out evenly and effortlessly, so no problems to report with that.

And I have to tell you that this polish photographs oh so much prettier than it actually looks in real life, haha!! No wonder I was tricked into buying it.

Here’s three coats and a layer of topcoat:


I like the orange and purple glitters.


This picture may show you what I’m talking about when I say that the base colour looks brown to me.


Verdict:
I wanted to love this polish SO badly! There’s even a picture of Jack and Sally from A Nightmare before Christmas on the bottle, and I love that movie. But brown…blecccch - No. I can’t wear that and feel good at the same time. Sorry and all that. 

Iocaine Powder
It’s described as Small flakies, microfine holographic powder, and microfine iridescent glitter. It can be used on its own, but of course you know me better than that. I layered it over black – but this topper works over pretty much every and any colour you can think of.

Here’s one coat over black (plus a layer of topcoat):


It’s pretty dense, so I reckon that it’s true that it can be used on its own.


I’ll wear this over a whole variety of colours. I have it over black here to show you its potential.


Verdict:
Yes please! This is a fantastic topper. It dries fast, and it makes a great difference to whatever polish you decide to layer it over. It does need a topcoat over it, so it can shine to the max.


That’s my remaining LynBDesigns polishes. Which ones would you keep – and why?

10 comments:

  1. If I had to keep only one, I'd choose the first one, because I love this shade of blue and glitters :)

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    1. That is also an extremely great looking blue glitter, I really like it too :)

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  2. I'm not so into Oh, You Beautiful Idiot, but the rest are gorgeous!!

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    1. Thanks! I'm not sure I did "Oh, You Beautiful Idiot!" justice, I think it would have been better off layered. But you know that I like to know how my polishes work on their own :)

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  3. Wow so many beautiful polishes. I think I really like the first three ones, they're gorgeous with all the glitter. :-)

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    1. Glitter is definitely good! :) I love the shimmer too, and hope I get to use it a lot :)

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  4. This is Halloween actually catches my eye :) so pretty.

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    1. Mmmh... I'm not sure about that one - it's definitely too brown for me :)

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