Doctor Lacquer Apollo Swatch

Ever have those nights where you have an idea of what you want to do, but nothing works out?

That was this night.  Ugh.

So I ended up with a single color mani, which I almost never do anymore!  But you know what?  I got to try a new indie brand, a new polish from my Secret Santa, and I love it!

Here is Apollo from Doctor Lacquer!  More pics and info after the jump, as well as a review of Yellow Stopper as a peel off base coat, and some pics of my nail fail from the same night!

Doctor Lacquer Apollo

So I'm trying to take better, more professional looking photos.  How's it working for me?  What do ya think?  I'm now using Phonto for my watermark and to crop my pics.  I love that I can perfectly size and place my watermark, and keep it in the same font as my blog.

Anyway, let's start with Yellow Stopper as a peel off base.  If you remember, I bought American Classics Yellow Stopper from Sally's Beauty Supply.  It's meant as a topper for your natural nail or for a french manicure.  Alone over your natural nail, it neutralizes the yellow color and makes it less stained looking.  However, under your polish it turns into a peel off base coat that helps when swatching several polishes at once, or when using glitter bombs that normally take twenty minutes to remove with a lot of harsh acetone.

From my last post (link here), I used one coat of Yellow Stopper under my KBShimmer Christmas mani.  Two days later, as I was filing down my middle finger nail because it was a bit round for my liking compared to the rest of my nails, the entire polish popped right off.  You can see below.  I mean, full sheet, all coats, completely intact, popped right off.  Pretty cool, eh?  Except that I wasn't ready to paint again!  I hoped to get another day out of it, but I've also read you can get 1-3 days out of Yellow Stopper as a peel off base.

Yellow Stopper as a base made my polish pop off with minimal effort!

I had several ideas in mind, and had been eyeing up the Christmas stamps on my Cici&Sisi set 1, but no clear direction for my next mani.  I shrugged, started pulling everything out, and went to work.  I only took a couple of pictures, and I really wish I took a pic of my lint roller, which was full of stamping fail.  Oh well.

OPI Alpine Snow topped with Zoya Jolie on index and pinky

The nice thing out of this was that I used an untried, a Zoya polish that I got as part of my 3-free-polish-gift from ordering $50+ in Zoya polish.  Above is one coat of Zoya Jolie over two coats of OPI Alpine Snow.  It gives your polish a nice pearl look.

Glam My Mani skinny chevron nail vinyls

I planned to "candy cane" my index and pinky fingers with Orly Star Spangled, which is a great sparkly Christmas red.  I used my skinny chevron nail vinyls from Glam My Mani.  While they turned out pretty decent, I smudged my middle finger and had to put another coat of Alpine Snow on, then I accidentally stamped Santa upside down, and I could not scrape my sleigh image well enough so every one was smudged when I picked it up.  Fail after fail after fail.

OH-OH-OH says MY Santa!!

I gave up after three hours spent on this mani.  Three freaking hours.  Thank goodness DH took the little to bed for me.  So I went with a completely un-Christmassy theme and reached for my Doctor Lacquer multi-chrome flaky polish from my Secret Santa!

Doctor Lacquer Apollo topped with KBShimmer Clearly On Top quick dry topcoat

This is Apollo, which is part of their Something Spatial series.  It has multichrome microflakies in a clear base.  I probably should have put it over a base color, but as you can see, it can be built up to opacity with three coats.  

Doctor Lacquer Apollo

I added some grey gems for more bling.  I took a flash shot just for shiggles and got this interesting navy blue color.

Doctor Lacquer Apollo with flash

Stuck my hands in water and voila!  Look at those shifts!!

Doctor Lacquer Apollo underwater

So much fun!

Color shifts from Doctor Lacquer Apollo (underwater)

This is a beautiful color to play with.  Unfortunately, since it's winter here in PA and the sun decided to hide, I didn't get a sun shot of this beauty while I had this mani on.  Oh well, the sun will come out... um... someday... lol.

One day I will have a macro lens for my camera and wow you with some macro shots.  One day...