14 July 2015

Bear Pawlish Jabberwocky

The second mani I did this past weekend features Bear Pawlish's Jabberwocky, which was gifted to me by a friend during a nail polish swap I participated in.


This beautiful polish is a shifty, multi-chrome described on the website to shift between blue, red, gold and green. It also appears to me to have a little bit of holo sparkle in there, but it's not overwhelming by any means. This picture kind of shows some of the red, blue, purple shifts. The green and gold is apparently quite elusive; like a leprechaun.

Bear Pawlish Jabberwocky Swatch

Before I get to the macro, I promised a funny story. So I bought a lens set for my Galaxy S5 a while back thinking I could be like the cool kids and do macro shots. I did my due diligence as a responsible consumer and read reviews on Amazon prior to purchasing and using my lens set. I also read the directions upon receiving the set; well, I didn't really read them, per se, since it was mostly pictures, but I did my best to decipher the directions prior to use. All of this thorough research showed that I needed to unscrew the macro lens from the wide-angle lens prior to use. So I unscrew the two lenses and put the top one into the lens clip like a boss and attempt to take a macro of one of my nails. No dice. My camera wouldn't focus to save my life and I got frustrated and naturally assumed the problem was with my $500 smartphone and not the $10 lens that I was using. Obviously it wasn't operator error because I knew what I was doing! So I grumbled about lens being stupid and macros being stupid and how I didn't really want to take macros anyway and tossed the whole lens set into my purse.

Actually, not my purse, because I don't carry small, cute purses anymore. I tossed the lenses into my Mom Handbag. I've resigned myself to the fact that I'm old and a mother so I now carry a handbag and not a purse; I've also resigned myself to being called "Mrs." instead of "Miss" and not being carded anymore for my box of wine at the grocery store. But that's neither here nor there. As many of you may know, things that go into the bottomless abyss that is the Mom Handbag never emerge until a much later time, which is what happened with these lenses. As I was digging around looking for something else (the kitchen sink, perhaps?) they stumbled toward the top and I figured I'd give them another go. I was also encouraged by some ladies in a nail group I'm a part of as they described the trial and error they went through to get their macro lenses to work. This time I decided to try the other half of the macro-wide-angle-lens-combo, just for shiggles. And lo and behold, the skies opened up and the angels sang and macros were to be had by all.

Bear Pawlish Jabberwocky Swatch

Before I move onto the nail art, I'd like to comment a bit on this polish. I was afraid it was going to need an undie because the first coat is quite sheer. However, it quickly built to opacity after two to three coats. I say "two to three" because the formula was a bit tricky for me and some fingers didn't even out as nicely as I would have liked in two coats. For those of you that have used Bear Pawlish before, you know their brushes are pretty small and very different from any other brush I've used. I don't think that inherently makes the polish hard to work with, though. I actually enjoyed the smaller brushes on the other Bears I've used. But this one was a lot trickier. The polish didn't level well and went on thicker in some places than other. Once I got the hang of it, I was able to get good coverage in two coats, but it wasn't the easiest applying polish I've ever used. It is a beautiful color, though, so it's worth the fight.

And now the art.

Bear Pawlish Jabberwocky

I wanted a stamp that wouldn't cover up the shifty goodness of this beautiful polish, so I went with these spermy-looking guys from uberchic beauty 3-02. I guess they're little suns or something, but the detail didn't come out as pronounced as it looks in the picture on their website. I stamped with M Polish Snowberry, which shows up beautifully over the dark base color.

And, because I learned a new trick and need to show off, here's a macro:

Bear Pawlish Jabberwocky

Also, just for fun, I did a different design on my thumb using the large image from plate 3-02. The M Polish and my faburnails stamper pick up the detailed lines so well. Stamping has really become my go-to nail art because it's so quick and looks so wonderful.

Bear Pawlish Jabberwocky

-twp

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