Finger Paints - Artistic Azure and Icing - Starlight

Sometimes I don't know when to leave well enough alone, and this is one of those times.  Artistic Azure has been in my untrieds FOREVER.  I did a mini-swatch of it some months ago, and in the maybe three minutes I had it on, it stained like whoa.  I know this put me off wearing it, but I'm glad I did.

Basecoat:  Salon Sciences Fiberglass Network (2 coats, didn't help)
Color:  Finger Paints Artistic Azure (3 coats)
Color:  Icing Starlight (1 coat)
Topcoat:  David (1 coat)

The camera just does not do this color justice.  I actually wish I had skipped the coat of Starlight altogether, AA is that gorgeous.  It is a little bit more green-tinged than comes across in the photos - despite the blue you see in the Starlight bottle, it doesn't affect the color of the polish underneath at all.  I imagine it would if you wore it over a really light color, though.

Artistic Azure reminds me a little of China Glaze Frostbite - it's very, very vibrant in person.  It's so vivid it's distracting.  Just gorgeous.  And yep, this stained like crazy, even with two coats of basecoat - and I picked off almost all of it before I got out the remover.  In the same vein, cleanup sucked.

And, even though I wish I hadn't used Starlight on top, I do really, really like it - I intended to put one coat on my thumbnails as an accent nail and liked it enough that I used it on all my nails.  Some glitter topcoats can really be a pain to work with - the glitter distribution is uneven and you end up doing multiple coats just to get even coverage.  Starlight isn't like that - what you see is one coat, with no attempt at ALL to arrange any of the glitter.

These are both huge wins, just maybe not together.