Spotlight on 'Project Polish' Polishes: Quo by Orly 'Night Sky'

Today I have a quick swatch of 'Night Sky', by Quo by Orly

From what I could determine from some internet searching, this polish was the 'Quo by Orly' version of an Orly polish called 'Out of this World', from the Orly Cosmic FX collection released in Fall 2010. I'm assuming that the Quo version would have been released around the same time. I know that I purchased it relatively early into my polish collecting journey, so I'm assuming that I bought it sometime in 2011 or possibly even 2012.

Unfortunately, my bottle of 'Night Sky' has not held up well over the years. As mentioned in an earlier post, about half the bottle had evaporated, and I tried to loosen the remaining polish up a bit with some lacquer thinner.  The polish was nice and loose after that, but when I actually tried to do a manicure with it, it was taking forever to dry! After about 45 minutes had passed and my nails were still not completely dry, I had to give up on the manicure. Now I'm really re-considering my goal to use up the entire bottle. 😞

I think I'll try again one more time with only one thin coat of the polish over one coat of black polish. Hopefully that works...

Light Blue Glitter Mani - Using China Glaze Liquid Crystal and Quo by Orly 'Liquid Crystal'

There's not really much to say about today's simple glitter manicure with subtle stamped stripes...

I wanted to try to use 2 of my 'Project Polish' polishes by stamping one over the other, but the darker colour, 'Night Sky' did not stamp very well. I initially assumed that since it had evaporated and thickened up over the years, it would work for stamping. Unfortunately, it doesn't. I realized during the process that 'Night Sky' seems to be a dark translucent base, with lots of shimmer particles floating in it. So when trying to stamp with it, the stamper would only pick up a thin line of dark purple jelly polish, and hardly any shimmer particles.

So instead of going with a bold negative space image (which would not work due to the consistency of the polish), I stamped subtle lines over the nail for a tiny bit of visual interest. 

Polishes Used

Polishes Used	Stamping Plate Used
China Glaze 'Liquid Crystal'	Winstonia Plate W205
Quo by Orly 'Night Sky'

I had to loosen 'Night Sky' up a bit with a little polish thinner, (and a lot of shaking!) due to how how thick it was originally.  The fill line of the bottle was originally half way down the bottle, though I don't recall ever using the polish! So apparently, half of the solvents evaporated out over the years, and left a thick, gloopy, non spreadable polish. I was able to salvage the polish, and it now works well as a regular nail color.  Now that it is fixed, I hope to use it as a base for my next manicure.

Project Polish

In my Blue and Gold Manicure using Quo by Orly 'Celestial Star' post, I mentioned that I wanted to do a 'Project Polish': A deliberate attempt to use up particular nail polishes over a period time by using them frequently and consistently until they are gone.

In that post I explained that when I was going through my collection, I noticed some glitter and special effect polishes that seemed to be drying up in the bottles. I decided that I wanted to try to use them up as soon as possible, in order to avoid them becoming unusable before I had even gotten a chance to get my money's worth.

I finally got around to photographing and listing all of the polishes that I wanted to include in the project. First here are the pictures:

I'm starting to realize that creme polishes seem to hold up better over time, as all of these polishes that I found that seem to be evaporating away, are glitter and shimmer heavy polishes. I'm glad that they still look relatively good. Some need to be thinned out with lacquer thinner, and some of the glitters may actually even perform better as the base has shrunk away - hopefully this should lead to denser glitter coverage during application.

In addition to the 'Blue and Gold' manicure that I discussed earlier, I have already managed to do two other manicures using some of these polishes. I used Gone Wishin' in my 'Purple and Silver Negative Space Stamping Glitter Mani', and I used 'Scandal, Secrets & Sparkle' for my 'Remembrance Day Manicure - 2018'.

Here's a list of the names of the polishes above that I want to use up as part of the project (the grid of names is in the same order as the pictures in the collage):

China Glaze I love Your Guts	Kleancolor Starry Night	OPI Glow Up Already!	Nicole by OPI Nicole... Spotted!
Nicole by OPI Honey-Dew You Love Me?	Quo by Orly Turquoise Moonlight	China Glaze Water You Waiting For?	Quo by Orly Celestial Star
Nicole by OPI Rich in Spirit	Claire's Cosmetics Flashing Lights	China Glaze Liquid Crystal	Nicole by OPI Gone Wishin'
China Glaze All Wrapped Up	Quo by Orly Night Sky	China Glaze Snow Globe	Nicole by OPI Scandals, Secrets & Sparkle

Now, I've never done a 'Project Polish' before, so this will definitely be a new and interesting experience for me.  Since I love nail stamping, my approach will be to use one of these 16 polishes as the base for a nail stamping design for each of my manicures. Three of the polishes are technically toppers ('Honey-Dew You Love Me?', 'Flashing Lights', and 'Snow Globe'), so there's also an option of doubling up for each manicure: using one of the polishes as a base, and then one of the toppers to complete the look. The best thing about this approach is that I will still be able to use all of my other polishes along with these ones, so I'm not limited to just 16 polishes.
I think the most challenging polish to work with will be China Glaze's 'I Love Your Guts', a frosty semi-matte red textured polish with black micro-glitters from their 2014 Halloween collection 'Apocalypse of Colour'.  I previously used it for my 'Halloween Themed Test Mani', and my 'Red and Black Tree Mani'.  Since the polish already makes quite a statement on it's own, my first instinct is to use it for Halloween-type designs, but I'm going to have to try to rethink that now that Halloween is over.
I've decided that I don't want to come up with an arbitrary deadline for using up the polishes. I can commit to trying to use them for every manicure, and to trying to do my nails more frequently, as needed. I don't want to commit to changing my nail polish every day (as many other 'Project Polishers' suggest), as I typically spend a lot of time planning and executing my nail art, and I like being able to wear each manicure for a few days, in order to decrease the total amount of time I spend doing my nails on a weekly basis. Also, I think forcing myself to do my nails everyday would eventually feel like a chore.
Now that I am in a nail polish collection culling frame of mind, I'm starting to notice some other polishes that I would like to add to the project. I may make this project on-going, and as certain polishes are used up, I may add others to replace them. We'll see how this goes...

Blue and Gold manicure using Quo by Orly 'Celestial Star'

Today I have a quick 'remix mani' to share:

Polishes Used

Quo by Orly 'Celestial Star'

Sally Hansen Color Foil 'Yellow Gold'

I kept my ring finger the same from my previous 'Venetian Marble Mani', and painted over the other fingers with a deep blue sparkly polish from Quo by Orly, called 'Celestial Star'. I did a bit of stamping on the thumb (not shown), and middle finger, using an image from Bundle Monster + Magically Polished Collaboration plate BM-XL205. The polish I stamped with was Sally Hansen Color Foil in 'Yellow Gold'.  I also embellished the middle finger by painting a diagonal section in gold over the stamp, and then dotting along the edge with the blue polish.

This was one of those situations when my previous manicure was showing a bit of chipping on a few nails, but I didn't feel like removing my nail polish and starting fresh with a new manicure. Hence the remix mani, where I salvage or touch up any nails that still look fine, and paint over and/or embellish the rest!

I believe that the 'Celestial Star' polish was also untried, so I'm happy that I got to use it. I bought it years ago, along with 2 others from the same collection (the others were called 'Turquoise Moonlight', and 'Night Sky'). From what I can see on line, it looks like they came out around 2011. I noticed the polishes when I was organizing my collection recently. All 3 of them looked like they were thickening and evaporating in the bottles, even though I don't recall ever having used them (I may have years ago, and forgotten perhaps?), and the bottles seemed to be completely closed. I noticed this with a few other glitters, foils, and crackles. It seems that my creme polishes hold up relatively well over the years, but on occasion, some of the special effect polishes will thicken and/or dry out.

In addition to the 3 Quo by Orly polishes I just mentioned, I found 7 others that this appeared to be happening to. I put them aside to do a 'Project Polish' with - a challenge to use them up within a certain time period by putting them into heavy rotation. This may be a little tricky though, since they are all special effect polishes. I'm going to have to get creative to still be able to incorporate nail art while using polishes as my manicure base! I'll try to do a more detailed post later with pictures of the polishes.

Blue Glitter Impromptu Mani

Today I have a quick post to share an impromptu mani that I threw on over my last manicure. I even recycled the gold accent nail from that mani.

Sorry that the picture is a little out of focus - I literally only have this one semi-usable shot of the manicure! I didn't get a chance to take photos right after doing the mani, as I usually prefer to do. As a result, I almost forgot to get a picture entirely! At one point, I did this quick snapshot of the manicure just in case I forgot to do a proper photo shoot before I removed the polish. Sure enough, that is exactly what ended up happening!

Here are the polishes that I used:

Polishes Used

L.A. Girl Glitter Addict ‘Jostle’

Sally Hansen Triple Shine ‘Wavy Blue’

Essie ‘Rock at the Top’

Quo by Orly ‘Filthy Rich’

The manicure is just a simple royal blue shimmer polish topped with a royal blue glitter polish. The gold accent nail is essentially the same, but there, the gold glitter polish is applied in a glitter gradient.

Camo Mani

I've been wanting to do a camouflage manicure for ages. Now that we are in to September, and we're starting to see more fall clothing and fall colours I figured that now would be the perfect time to try the look out!

Cute Monster Mani

Today I have a cute monster manicure to share.

 

Polishes Used	Plate Used
OPI ‘Nein! Nein! Nein! OK Fine!’
China Glaze ‘Pelican Gray’	Konad M11 (cute monster image)
Quo by Orly ‘Limelight’	Konad M57 (leopard print pattern)
China Glaze ‘White on White’
Konad Special Polish in Black

The Konad M11 plate that I used to stamp the monster image featured in this manicure has been around for quite some time, however I just bought it on sale recently. I just couldn't resist the adorable cartoon images on it! 

I really love the colour combination of nail polishes that I used for this manicure - it's nothing super complicated, but I just think the bottles look so good lined up together!

The base polish I used is 'Limelight' from Shopper's Drug Mart's store brand of polishes 'Quo by Orly'. It's a neon pastel yellow polish, and I absolutely adore this shade! After choosing such a bright base colour, I wanted to tone the look down a bit, so I used black, white and a couple shades of gray for all of my embellishments. For the dark grey leopard spots, I used ‘Nein! Nein! Nein! OK Fine!’ from OPI's fall 2012 Germany collection. I dotted the inside of the leopard spots with China Glaze's 'White on White' (core collection). The monster is coloured in with China Glaze's 'Pelican Gray', from their Spring 2011 'Anchor's Away' collection. The monster's black outline was done with Konad Special Polish in Black.

I really like how this manicure turned out! It's so bright, whimsical, and cute - perfect for summer!

Crackle Polish Challenge #19 - Diagonal Stripe Themed Mani

2015 Crackle Polish Challenge Manicure #19

Featured crackle application:
Using manicure tape to mask areas of a crackle combo to create diagonal lines of clear polish.

Featured crackle polish:
OPI 'Red Shatter'

Diagonal Stripe Themed Mani

Polishes Used:
Quo by Orly 'Filthy Rich'
OPI 'Red Shatter'
Konad Special Polish in White

Plate Used:
Moyou London Holy Shapes Collection - 07

Polishes Used

I like how my thumbnail turned out in this manicure. The tape removed cleanly, and the way it breaks the shatter polish into sections is a pretty cool effect.  Overall, I'm kind of on the fence about this manicure - I don't necessarily hate it, but I don't love it either. Oh well, the beautiful thing about nail polish is that you don't have to wear it forever!  LOL!

Crackle Polish Challenge #18 - See-Through Stripe Mani

2015 Crackle Polish Challenge Manicure #18

Featured crackle application:
Using manicure tape to section off strips of a crackle combo to create alternating stripes of clear polish, and crackle polish.

Featured crackle polish:
OPI 'Pink Shatter'

See-Through Stripe Mani

I'm back with another instalment of the 2015 Crackle Polish Challenge. It was really nice to have a little break from crackle manicures, but I'm really looking forward to finishing the last 4 manicures in this series (that's 4 including today's).

It seems to be a big trend right now in the nail art community to include sections of clear polish in manicures.  So to finish off the Crackle Challenge, I've been thinking of ways to combine today's trend with crackle polish, a big trend from about 4 years ago.

I like how this manicure turned out.  I really like the minimalism.  It doesn't feel like a crackle mani, it feels more like a clear mani with a little embellishment.  I think this really updates the crackle look by toning it down.

Polishes Used: 
China Glaze 'Pinking out the Window' (Spring 2015 'Road Trip' Collection)
OPI 'Pink Shatter'
Quo by Orly 'Soft Spot'

Stay tuned for my next post, which will also feature a fusion of the clear polish trend of today, and the crackle polish trend of the recent past!