Shimmer Polish Carol with some blue triangle nail art!

Hey loves! I've been kind of a slacker about blogging for the last week or so but I'm back! I'm gonna hopefully make up for my absence by showing y'all a few cool things this week, starting with Shimmer Polish Carol.

I just have to tell you guys right off the bat that I'm basically in love with this polish. My sister and I said that it looked like a beach in a bottle the first time we saw it and after wearing it I still think that. Carol is a gorgeous little thing composed of blue, copper, and gold hex glitter and microglitter, and (I think) some dark brown or black microglitter and hex glitter as well. It is seriously stunning.

These pictures show two and a half-ish coats with two coats of Seche Vite. It was opaque in 2 coats but I added another thin coat since I was taking pictures of it and I'm a perfectionist. It's a bit of a hungry glitter but not too bad and application was perfect. I have no complaints!

I wore Carol on her own for a couple days and then decided to spice her up with a little bit of nail art. I recently received a set of detailing brushes for review from Born Pretty Store and I was excited to try them out so that was an added bonus.

The set comes with four brushes in sizes 0, 00, 000, and 0000 (from smallest to largest).

I took the above picture to compare the brush sizes. From left to right the brushes are 0, 00, 000, 0000, and my small cut-down detailing brush that I usually use. The detailing brush I'm used to is a lot smaller than the ones from the BPS set, so I was a little nervous about trying these brushes.

I also did a quick comparison of line thickness using each brush. From left to right the lines were made using brush 0, 00, 0000, 000 (I messed up the order when I was doing the test lines haha), and my original detailing brush.

Since I'm used to such a tiny brush I decided to try the smallest one in the Born Pretty set (0). I didn't like it at first only because it was thicker than what I was used to, but after a couple minutes I got the feel for it and started liking it a lot.

Originally I was going to do some sort of wave-like shapes on my nails since this polish reminds me so much of the beach, but then my hand just started painting triangles (all on its own) so I went with it.

The triangles were all freehanded with the size-0 brush from the Born Pretty set using China Glaze Hanging in the Balance, which I wanted to use with Carol because it's almost the identical color of the blue glitters. Also because I am having a bit of a love affair with it.

I did this as sort of a quickie design on Sunday afternoon and planned to take it off and paint my nails again later that night, but I ended up liking it so much I just left it! Something about the rich blue creme on top of the insanely sparkly glitter just really makes me happy, and I'm sure you guys know how much I love some triangles.

Even though I was nervous about using a slightly bigger brush than I was used to, I got the hang of it pretty quickly and I can say I'm really happy with these brushes. I will probably cut down a couple of them to see what they're like that way too! The quality of the brushes also seems nice - they seem sturdy and well-made and the shape is perfect. I can't speak to longevity since I just started using them but if I remember to I'll give you guys a progress report in a few months.

I had been wearing Hanging in the Balance on its own on my right hand while I was wearing Carol on my left, so I decided to do some glitter gradients too! Carol gradated beautifully and as you can see on my ring finger it also makes a lovely layering polish (that's one coat over HITB). I'm smitten with the way this glitter looks in gradient form.

LOOK! I also took a macro(ish) bottle shot of Carol to show you guys! This polish seriously has so much going on that it's kind of impossible to see in pictures, much less try to describe, so I wanted to try to do it a bit more justice with a bottle shot. I don't have a macro lens but I took a pic anyway and then cropped it close and I think it looks almost as nice as a real macro! I hope so anyway...

WHEW. That was a BIG POST for me to start this week with. I hope y'all had a great weekend and I'll see you again soon!

P.S. You can find Shimmer Polish on Etsy and the listing for Carol is here. The brushes I used are from Born Pretty Store here and you can get 10% off using my code CLJ61.

Disclosure: Shimmer Polish Carol and detailing brushes were provided to me for review. All opinions are my own and are in no way influenced by anyone.