China Glaze Aquadelic

Hello there!

I bought China Glaze Aquadelic from Star Trinkets two weeks back, along with two other CG polish: Passion, Reggae to Riches. They are under TSS Blog Sale, click on the links if you wanna catch the rest of the goodies (but pls leave some for me!).

If you don't already know, Star Trinkets is owned by a nice lady called Susan, whom has a personal nail blog called The Subtle Shimmer. She blogs almost daily, with good details on the polish and great swatches. Do visit her sites!


I have used China Glaze Passion for konad stamping in my previous post. So today I'm showing China Glaze Aquadelic! It's turquoise with more green than blue; bright but definitely not neon. It's a summery color, makes one cheery and happy!

As with most of CG polish (or from those in my stash), application is smooth, well-pigmented and not too runny. But it became thick after 30 minutes, which made it harder to manage. Brush also tends to pick up more polish and result in globs deposited on the nails.

It would have been a good manicure, except it bubbled. Or so I think? I am beginning to wonder if those bumps are the result of the imperfections on my nails. I could have used my ridge filler but I painted my nails on a weekday night and didn't have time to redo everything. The next morning I rushed to take photos and zoomed off to work.

Anyhoo, photos show two coats but you can easily get away with one. I freaked out on the bumps and tried to cover them up - of course it didn't work.

And since it wasn't done well, I shall be kind to your eyes by not spamming this post with more photos :)
Thanks for reading!

Splashy Hearty Duochrome

Couple of weeks ago I bought nail polish from SaSa and Daiso. They don't belong to any well-known brands and they are cheap. However like the rest of the cheap polish, they carry strong awful smell and tend to chip fast.

After my failure in nail marbling, I needed something new, easy to accomplish but not too ordinary. I swatched a few from my collection to test the colors and decided on these two:

L-R: Splash S031 from SaSa, Heart No.2 from Daiso

Cute bottle from Heart nail enamel!

Heart nail enamel No.2 is milky white packed with pink and subtle green shimmer. It's a duochrome!

For Splash S031, it's an awesome blue jelly, bright and fresh in shade. It's sheer and may most likely reach opacity in 4-5 coats but I was blown by the jelly finish and the pretty blue. Application for both Splash and Heart was, sadly, terrible. The brushes were stiff, hard to control and all over the place, like they had a mind of their own. It's advisable to put light strokes on each nail and fill up any bald patches with each coat.

Index finger: 1 coat. The rest: 2 coats

3 coats of Splash S031

When dried, I applied Heart No.2. With 1 coat it became bluish-green. With 2 coats it was green with blue duochrome. Outstanding! My curiosity got better of me and I painted the 3rd coat. The duochrome faded a notch down and emerged as turquoise chrome with hints of blue seen at an angle.

Taken indoors, artificial light

Duochrome in green and blue

The next day, I took some shots at the front porch;

The manicure was too thick and resulted in bubbles forming on the nails. Nonetheless I was happy with it. The turquoise chrome was striking and gorgeous! It flashed blue and teal whenever I moved my hands, even my boyfriend liked it.. Ha!

Before heading out to meet my best friend, I received the parcel from Secret Allure!

L-R: China Glaze Crackle in Cracked Concrete, Color Club Fractured in Smash Hit and Nubar 2010

I decided to slap some goodness on my nails... Nubar 2010!

Well hello holo flakies!

Duochrome with holo flakies. How's that?

The magic of Nubar 2010

One complaint: I had the infamous Seche Vite shrinkage; the blue base was evident at the tips. I also realized my previous marbled nails suffered the same fate. I love Seche Vite but the shrinkage is annoying!

3 coats of Splash S031
3 coats of Heart No.2
2 coats of Nubar 2010
Seche Clear base coat
Seche Vite dry fast top coat

Here's a quick swatch of Color Club Smash Hit on my thumb nail.