esther fox [DOT] com | rantings and such from a Nikon addict

my take on nerdlacquer

Posted on May 13, 2013 by phillynikongal • 0 Comments

I purchased these polishes with my own money, and have no affiliation with Nerdlacquer.

There was a time, not too long ago, that I had no knowledge of Nerdlacquer. Heh, honestly, there was a time when I had no idea what indie polish was. But thankfully those days are over.

Anyway.

Nerdlacquer is somewhat of a “holy grail” in the indie polish community, right up there with Lynnderella and Enchanted Polish. The mastermind behind it was really smart when she created it, since there weren’t any fandom-based polishes on the market at the time. So they immediately became sought after.

And what happens when things become popular? They sell out. Wait, no, that didn’t sound right. I meant, sell out in a GOOD way. As in, completely sold out hard to find. So what happens when things get hard to find? People sell them for more more money because they’re rare.

I’ve been misfortunate enough to miss all of NL’s restocks. So I bought a few from some people on the Julep Swap group (which, don’t EVEN get me started on that travesty of a community; that’s another story for another day). Unfortunately, the ones that I purchased were not the ones I’m truly lemming after, and I seriously doubt I will ever get any of those.

I was able to get my hands on Home of the Untempered Schism, No Medal For Chewie, and Warrior Ethos. See below for my thoughts.

nerdlacquer indie polish nail lacquer fandom

Home of the Untempered Schism, two coats

From the Nerdlacquer website - HOME OF THE UNTEMPERED SCHISM is a warm and sparkling bronze with red, golden, black, and opalescent glitter. Time-locked, can never be duplicated.

I personally loved this in the bottle. The bronze color of the base, plus the added benefit of the red, gold and black glitter, just made it a winner. However, a lot of brown polish doesn’t look too good on my fingers once I put it on, and as such, this was one of them. Which is sad, because I wanted to like it a lot. Now, that’s not to say that anything was wrong with the formula, because that’s FAR from true. It applied like a dream and dried super fast, which I love in a thick glitter. Aside from it not looking good on my nails, my only complaint was that the glitter tends to shift off to one side of the bottle when it’s laying down. An easy fix, but an annoyance when you first take it out of the package.

All photos show two coats of HOTUS over OPI Nail Envy and Orly Bonder, topped off with two coats of Seche Vite.

Home of the Untempered Schism, two coats (ambient studio light)

Home of the Untempered Schism, two coats (direct light, shade)

Home of the Untempered Schism, two coats (direct sunlight)

Home of the Untempered Schism, two coats (ambient studio light)

The next Nerd that I tried was No Medal for Chewie. I am and always have been a Star Wars fan, specifically of the original trilogy. So it’s no surprise that when I first saw this up for sale in the swap group, I had to get it. And there it sat in my “untried box” for ages. It was such a pretty green…in the bottle. Alas, this one went right back up for grabs (to the same lovely gal that bought HOTUS from me). It’s not that I didn’t love the color, because it was really a gorgeous green, it just didn’t look good on me, in my opinion. I am sure there’s a load of things in my stash that won’t look good on me. I digress.

No Medal for Chewie, bottle shot

From the Nerdlacquer website - NO MEDAL FOR CHEWIE is a deep jungle-canopy green with mossy shimmer, packed with emerald green, holo, and gold glitter. GNAAAAGLGHLGLG, HGGGHRHRHHHR? RLLLRGGNNNRR!

Personally, it gave me a Christmas-y vibe. I think it’s just because of the green with the gold. And the gold glitter seemed to be a true gold, rather than a champagne-y gold.

All photos show two coats of No Medal for Chewie over OPI Nail Envy and Orly Bonder, topped off with Seche Vite.

No Medal for Chewie, back shot

No Medal for Chewie, two coats (ambient studio light)

No Medal for Chewie, two coats (direct sunlight)

No Medal for Chewie, two coats (ambient studio light)

No Medal for Chewie, two coats (direct sunlight)

My final Nerd for this post is Warrior Ethos.

In addition to being a Star Wars geek, I am also a Trekkie. So of course, when my friend Amy informed me that she had ended up with an extra bottle of Warrior Ethos, I knew it had to be mine!

From Memory Alpha:

The warrior ethos had been an important aspect of Klingon society since the time of Kahless, but the warrior aspects became much more dominant beginning in the early 22nd century. Previously, Klingon society was regarded as socially balanced, but over time the warrior caste gained greater prominence, to the point where the Klingons widely came to be regarded as a “warrior race.” (ENT: “Broken Bow“, “Judgment“) The Klingon Bird-of-Prey of the mid-24th century was said to be equipped with the Klingon Empire‘s “best weapons” and “finest warriors.” (TNG: “A Matter Of Honor“)

Warrior Ethos, bottle shot

From Nerdlacquer’s website - WARRIOR ETHOS is a shimmering true red with red, copper, opalescent and black glitter. BLOOD, FIRE, AND METAL…Worf would approve.

Warrior Ethos, back shot

I wanted to be rebellious when I went to my niece’s first communion, so I decided to wear Warrior Ethos. Pfft, I didn’t care…I liked the color. I was in love with it in the beginning after I first put it on, but by the end of the day I had fallen out of love with it. It’s a gorgeous red, obviously. And the formula is much like the other Nerds I’ve tried…nothing short of a dream. It just so happened that after a day, I just didn’t like it as much as I did the day before.

All photos show two coats over OPI Nail Envy and Orly Bonder, topped off with two coats of Seche Vite.

Warrior Ethos, two coats (ambient studio light)

Warrior Ethos, two coats (direct sunlight)

Warrior Ethos, two coats (shade)

Well there you have it folks. My first three Nerdlacquers.

Even though they didn’t satisfy my wants, they still lived up to expectations in terms of formula and application. So I will keep the other Nerds I have on my wishlish, even though they are the most sought-after colors and I will probably never ever get my hands on them. Ha! A girl can dream, can’t she?

You can buy Nerdlacquer directly from the website (when they’re in stock of course), or on Harlow & Co (when not sold out LOL). You can also like Nerdlacquer over on Google+.

nerdlacquer indie polish nail lacquer fandom

Filed Under: Esther's Nails, Indie Brands, Nerdlacquer

holy super mega giveaway batman!

Posted on May 13, 2013 by phillynikongal • 0 Comments

So.

Once upon a time, someone posted in a Facebook group I am in about a huge blogger giveaway that was happening, and she was looking for bloggers and indie makers to join in on the giveaway fun.

Since I haven’t been doing Philly Loves Lacquer for very long, I am currently looking for as much coverage as humanly possible, and I thought that joining in on this giveaway would be a very helpful thing to me!

That being said, Ariel over at Lacquer: The Best Medicine is hosting a SUPER MEGA AWESOME HUGE GIVEAWAY!

I am truly honored to be included in this massive giveaway of awesome, alongside some of my favorite nail bloggers and other wonderful indie polish makers!

There are 30 PRIZES. THIRTY PRIZES, PEOPLE! One of which is two full size bottles of glittery awesome from Philly Loves Lacquer – a bottle of The Devon and Mummers Parade!

The Devon (left) and Mummers Parade (right)

The Devon - a black jelly base with ultrafine lavender glitter, green hex, pink diamonds and squares, blue hex and lavender holo circle glitters. Because it’s a jelly base, the color will become more vibrant as you add more coats.

Mummers Parade - a purple-y plum jelly base with dark pink diamonds, purple hex, orange bar, blue hex, and fine pink, orange and purple glitters.

The giveaway will go until May 27, 2013, and will include both international AND domestic prizes! So there is really something for everyone.

may blogger giveaway nail polish gigantic

You can enter the giveaway here:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

If you haven’t already liked Philly Loves Lacquer on Facebook, please head over there and do it, because it’s a prerequisite for the giveaway!

holy super mega giveaway batman

Filed Under: Esther's Nails, Miscellaneous Posts

the low-down on aly’s dream polish – tiffanytea

Posted on April 30, 2013 by phillynikongal • 2 Comments

the items in this post were bought with my own money

Okay, so, my first actual nail post.

I want to make a disclaimer before I start: you’ll have to excuse my hands. I am normally very self-conscious about them, and only recently have been more comfortable about taking decent photographs of them. The skin around my nails is still fairly dry, but I am working on that! Also, since I’ve been taking Biotin (which will have a post all to itself soon enough), I no longer have nubs (really short nails)!

Moving on…

There’s an indie brand that’s really popular right now called Aly’s Dream Polish. I first noticed it pop up in the Julep Swap Group on facebook, because she’s got like, 70 different holo colors available, among other things. I will admit that, in the beginning, I wasn’t terribly impressed. Some of the colors were just kinda meh, and others just weren’t to my taste.

Enter Tiffanytea, part of the Macaron Collection.

I started seeing posts about it everywhere, so I figured it was another color fad that everyone was gaga over all at once. It’s basically a really gorgeous Tiffany blue with the added linear holo effect. I did want it, but I didn’t really want to plunk down the cash for it at the time. As it turned out, someone was selling it on the swap group, so I bit the bullet and got it.

As I said over the weekend, I drank the kool-aid. And it was good.

I must say that I love Aly’s bottles. I think the labels really work for them as well. There are a few other indies with similar bottles, but these just work. In terms of formula, it was a little streaky on the first coat. I will admit, I am not really used to using Orly Bonder just yet, so that could be the issue as well. Once I applied the second coat, it was nice and evened out. I probably could have gone with a third coat, because if you look ever so slightly, you can see my nail line underneath. It’s not noticeable though unless you’re looking for it. Obviously it wasn’t enough to bother me, or else I would have gone with the third coat, ha.

Two coats of Tiffanytea over OPI Nail Envy and Orly Bonder, topped off with two coats of Seche Vite.

The weather in Philly has been rather meh lately, and I had been hoping to get a photo of Tiffanytea out in the sun, but I unfortunately missed it by an hour or two. So the daylight photo I have doesn’t really show the holo potential it could. However, I am sure if you search the internets enough, you could probably find one. Like Tahlia’s here on Perks n’ Quirks.

Two coats of Tiffanytea over OPI Nail Envy and Orly Bonder, topped off with two coats of Seche Vite.

When it comes to holos, I am generally not a fan. Give me a good solid frosty polish, or a glitter-bomb, and I am set. However, in the interest of trying new things, and kinda following the flow, I made a holo top coat for Philly Loves Lacquer (currently sold out of the mini bottle, but we still have some full size in stock!). That being said, I wanted to try a coat of It’s Always Sunny (PhLL’s top coat) on top of Tiffanytea, to see if I could get the holo to stand out more, even in artificial light since the sun went away.

One coat of PhLL’s It’s Always Sunny over two coats of ADP Tiffanytea.

As you can see, the artificial light doesn’t do much for letting you see how pretty the holo effect is. You can see it, but it’s subtle.

One coat of PhLL’s It’s Always Sunny over two coats of ADP Tiffanytea.

Finally, a friend over on the Julep Swap Facebook group suggested that I put a coat of Philly Love’s Lacquer Boathouse Row over top, to round it out. I made Boathouse Row pretty versatile, since it’s a very light green jelly base, it’s very easy to layer over something else, such as this. Or, you could do three coats and the green would become more vibrant. I really like how the pink, green, and lavender glitters go so nicely with the color of Tiffanytea. Almost like they were made to go with each other.

One coat of PhLL’s Boathouse Row over It’s Always Sunny and Tiffanytea, topped off with Seche Vite.

So there you have it folks. Since I’ve gone out of my way to try this one, I intend on trying some other ADP’s in the future. I am interested in the rest of her Macaron collection, and she seems to be coming out with more, so that’s always fun!

You can buy Aly’s Dream Polish on StoreEnvy here.
You can buy Philly Loves Lacquer on Etsy here.

Polish used in this post was purchased with my own money, and the opinions are my own. I am *not* affiliated with Aly’s Dream Polish, but I *am* the creator of Philly Loves Lacquer. You can expect PhLL to appear in the majority of my nail polish related posts.

alys dream polish tiffanytea indie nail polish holo

Filed Under: Aly's Dream Polish, Esther's Nails, Indie Brands, Philly Loves Lacquer

refocusing estherfoxdotcom

Posted on April 28, 2013 by phillynikongal • 0 Comments

Oh hey there.

As you might have noticed, I haven’t been around much.

Mr. Fox and I went to Florida back in March, and then his gall bladder tried to kill him so time was spent in the hospital. Then I launched Philly Loves Lacquer and tried keeping up with that. I fell behind in both my online classes due to hubby’s illnesses, and thankfully both my teachers are graciously lenient to my surprise. I managed to launch a website I had been working on, Paul Meyer Studios. Then hubs was back in the hospital for a crippling kidney stone, and I got behind even more. After that debacle, I started getting ready for my first restock at PhLL, and right before I reopened the Etsy shop, my asthma decided to rear it’s ugly head and put ME in the ER. And now it’s today.

Needless to say, it’s been an eventful time since the last non-Instagram related post I made. And honestly, blogging hasn’t been on my mind at all. Well, I take that back. Blogging at estherfox.com hasn’t been on my list of priorities, however, I had been rolling around the idea of starting a nail blog. If you know me, you’ll know that I adopted an obsession with nail polish last November thanks to a friend, and it’s been all downhill (in a good way of course) since. I’ve been battling dry skin and brittle nails for quite some time, and I’ve only recently fixed the problem with the help of daily moisturizing, cuticle oil, and 2500mg of high potency biotin once daily. I am finally at the point where I want to swatch my whole collection and then some.

So that brought me to a dilemma yesterday. While I was in the shower, I seriously considered archiving the entirety of estherfox.com and combining my identities into “phillyloveslacquer”. But then I remembered that I like to rant about shit on here and on Twitter, and I don’t want that associated with my business. I eventually decided that, rather than scrapping EFDC and making a new blog, I would instead segment EFDC into the areas that I want to continue writing about: life, health, nails, and the occasional bitch fest.

My reasoning for wanting to bring nails into EFDC is because there seems to be somewhat of a lack of interesting *honest* reviews. There are tons of nail bloggers, and I get annoyed with several things: one, the bigger bloggers are all blogging about the same things (and while it’s nice to see different takes on one color, it does get a bit annoying); two, I see more and more “products used in this post were provided for an honest review” and less “I bought this with my own money and I just want to talk about it honestly”. Don’t get me wrong though, because I don’t mind company-endorsed reviews. My issue with it lies with the fact that I feel like a lot of these review posts are too fluffy and robotic. I mean, surely there must be *something* wrong. It can’t all be rainbows and ponies.

You may be thinking, “but, don’t you make polish too? aren’t you going to send your stuff to some bloggers?” And you would be correct. I have every intention of sending my stuff to some nail bloggers (some of my favorites in fact!!). But I went to great lengths to make sure that the bloggers I was sending stuff to were part of the few honest reviewers out there that’ll let me know if I did something wrong so I can fix it.

And I digress. I seem to have lost my train of thought.

Oh yeah, refocusing!

I am going to be making a few changes here on EFDC. If you don’t want to read my nail posts, you don’t have to. You’ll be able to subscribe to a separate RSS feed/mailing list for those if that’s all you want to read. You will still be able to subscribe to everything though, if you so desire. One of the first projects on my list of things to do is an indie polish challenge. Using xoxojen.com‘s indie shop list, I plan on going through all of them and buying 1 to 2 bottles (this will obviously be a slow process, since money is rather tight these days) to swatch and give a brutally honest review. If I don’t like it, I’m going to tell you why. If I love it, I am going to shout it from the roof tops. There may be snark. I may start a war in the indie polish world. But, I would think that most people would extend the same brutal honesty to me if they were in my shoes. As I mentioned before, if I don’t know what’s wrong, it can’t be fixed.

My return to the blogosphere may not be exactly like how I imagined it when I first started estherfox.com, and even though I am NOT a big fan of change, sometimes change is good. And I am confident that this change will be better in the long run.

So, for now, I shall catch you later.

If you’re a new reader, you can subscribe to my email list here. It sends an email when I post a new post. Or you can follow me on Bloglovin. Whichever you prefer

esther fox dot com refocusing blogosphere blogging change

Filed Under: Just Me

Weekly Instagram Roundup #13

Posted on April 12, 2013 by phillynikongal • 1 Comment

1. chipotle goodness
2. i’m sorry, was this your spot?
3. caesar salad at manayunk brewery
4. urg
5. just hangin out
6. can I help you? oh yawn.
7. don’t tea bag me
8. coldbrew fail
9. outgoing nail mail
10. black and blue sparkles
11. almost there.
12. homemade smoothies
13. yes.
14. inbox zero euphoria
15. guilty pleasures
16. lunch at panera
17. from the Apple Store bathroom
18. my first NerdLacquer and Scofflaw Nail Varnish
19. whims.me
20. mini bottles for Philly Loves Lacquer
21. Love Park in the wild
22. chicken and broccoli stir fry
23. 1831 days

Filed Under: The Instablog

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