Orly Pink Pixel swatch aaaand nail art with L'Oreal polishes!

Happy Friday you guyses! I've been trying to get this post up for two days because I was excited to show y'all but I've been so busy I haven't been able to find a spare moment for it. Why can't life just be all about painting my nails and blogging, huh? Stupid real world.
Last weekend I went to Sally with my sister and saw the display for the Orly Pixel FX collection, which is Orly's line of textured polishes. I hadn't seen swatches yet, but my sister and I grabbed a few bottles and swatched them on my mom's naked nails (she's so patient and nice to us haha!) and I decided that one could come home with me - Orly Pink Pixel.

When I first applied this polish, I immediately made plans to return it because it kind of just looked like a shimmery glittery mess for a pretty long time. However, I eventually realized that it just had a longer dry time than I was expecting, an once it dried down fully it was so textured and sparkly and beautiful!

It had pretty much dried all the way once I went to bed, but it must have dried a little more in the night because when I woke up the next morning it had, Christmas-like, given me the gift of its full textured loveliness while I slept. This is two easy peasy coats. I'm kind of in love with it.

I wore Pink Pixel for a day on its own and then decided to top it with some nail art and topcoat to see how I liked it that way!

I did these designs on a whim with no planning. I kind of just wanted to see the contrast between the creme and texture and then see Pink Pixel with topcoat, so I started these with the intention of taking them off the night I did them and then doing something else. Once I was about halfway through, though, I realized I already liked them too much to get rid of them that soon!

If you follow me on Instagram, you probably saw the couple pictures I posted of makeup/nail polish hauls that I got for 50% and 75% off at a RiteAid near my office that was closing down permanently. I picked up a few L'Oreal polishes I've been gazing at wistfully for several weeks, and I used three of them for these designs: L'Oreal Not a Cloud in Sight (turquoise), L'Oreal Paparazzi Pleaser (purple), and L'Oreal New Money (green). They were all pretty easy to do nail art with. I had to go over a lot of areas twice, but I think that's largely because the textured base kind of ate the polish the same way it does with topcoat.

I freehanded all the designs with my cut-down mid-length striper brush. I started with the chevrons at the base of each nail by placing a dot in the center of my nail and then painting the thick middle chevron out from the dot. Then I filled in the small chevron at the base of my cuticle and did the outline at the top. The patterns at my nail tips I just made up as I went, and I ended up liking them all so much! I kind of want to do a set of nails based on each one, haha.

These were moderately time-consuming, but mostly because I was thinking about each design as I painted and because I had to paint over most stuff twice. They weren't difficult, though!

I finished off with two coats of Seche Vite, which made everything smooth as glass. I really love Pink Pixel with topcoat, too!

Even though I planned to remove this design the night I painted it, I've been wearing it for two days now and I'm still not tired of it! The colors are obviously right up my alley and I'll also never get tired of patterns on glitter, which is probably why I like them so much. What do y'all think?