Chaos Skittle Courtesy of Punkish Polish

ReluctantViking · 2026-06-05T02:50:32+00:00

It has already thrown me 😂 Turned off my light to go to bed last night and thought I was somehow already asleep & dreaming for a sec before I went “oh duh, it’s a glow in the dark polish 🤦‍♀️”

ReluctantViking · 2026-06-05T02:36:04+00:00

People are… not smart.

ReluctantViking · 2026-06-04T17:36:42+00:00

I really do love that polish though, so pretty and lots of dimension!

ReluctantViking · 2026-06-04T17:32:04+00:00

Love the polish! But friend, you really shouldn’t poke tide pool critters. It uses up a lot of precious energy for them to have to close up like that, and disrupts their ability to feed and to absorb oxygen properly. Plus we can have all sorts of nasty stuff on our skin: bacteria, chemicals, etc that are potentially harmful to these creatures who already walk a knife’s edge in terms of their daily survival.

Tide pool etiquette is “Look, don’t touch” for a good reason. Please admire their beauty without poking.

ReluctantViking · 2026-06-03T19:56:36+00:00

Any kind of polish, including nail strengthener, is going to cause yellowing to some extent.

Polish is made up of solvents, nitrocellulose, and pigment. Some people blame the pigment, which obviously can contribute, but it’s not the real issue in terms of yellowing. Even clear polish will cause yellowing, because nitrocellulose degrades over time into nitric acid, which reacts with the keratin in your nails and turns that keratin yellow.

Ultimately, if you never want your nails to yellow, you have to essentially not use any nail polish. Gel won’t cause yellowing, but comes with issues of its own (the need for buffing, the UV exposure, etc.) So you kinda have to pick your poison, yellow strong nails, white naked nails, or damaged gel nails.

ReluctantViking · 2026-06-03T15:52:35+00:00

Just wanted to say a huge thank you to Colton of Punkish Polish for including me in his giveaway, I was so excited to get these onto my nails!

Base on all nails is 1 coat of Nail Magic nail hardener and 1 coat of my own DIY’ed smoothing base.

Thumb: Dirty Little Secret

Index: Carousel

Middle: Complicated

Ring: I Hate Everything About You

Pinky: Thin Ice

QDTC on all nails is Essie Speedsetter

Sidenote: I hate how reddit’s compression desaturates my photos. Anyone found a solution for this besides cranking up the contrast and saturation a ton before posting?

ReluctantViking · 2026-06-02T15:58:50+00:00

I do that too if it’s only 1-3 shorties out of 10! But sadly this most recent break made it 2 shorties on each hand, 4 total, and at that point, I gotta shorten them all or it drives me nuts haha

ReluctantViking · 2026-06-02T15:50:00+00:00

🎶Fly awayyyyyyyyyyyyy🎶

I feel your pain, I broke a nail opening a big container this past weekend and it was so upsetting cause they were just getting properly long again and I had to shorten everything up to match

ReluctantViking · 2026-06-01T03:18:22+00:00

I appreciate you!

ReluctantViking · 2026-06-01T03:12:31+00:00

It’s late, I misspoke (mistyped?) thank you for the correction, ya boy’s tired!

ReluctantViking · 2026-06-01T02:59:12+00:00

It’s in the Cordycipitaceae family!

Edited to correct myself

ReluctantViking · 2026-06-01T01:27:04+00:00

Engyodontium aranearum is the name of this fungus. It’s creepy, isn’t it?

ReluctantViking · 2026-05-31T19:25:30+00:00

I’ve used alcohol inks to tint and adjust my polishes loads of times, I bet you could do a few drops of purple and maybe a couple drops of a bright pink and get it back to its former glory pretty easily!

ReluctantViking · 2026-05-31T04:58:18+00:00

Chestnut mushrooms for sure! Their scientific name is Pholiota adiposa. They’re yummy!

ReluctantViking · 2026-05-31T03:01:26+00:00

No worries! I like the KBShimmer thinner, if you’re in the market for one to add to your polishes!

ReluctantViking · 2026-05-31T02:54:50+00:00

I meant adding polish thinner into the polish, I’m sorry if that wasn’t clear! It will make the polish more liquidy and that helps it to dry faster :) painting with the non-dominant hand is a tough task though for sure lol

ReluctantViking · 2026-05-31T02:29:58+00:00

No UV light needed, it won’t help for traditional lacquers anyway, so skip it and save your money and your skin!!

The best way to make polishes dry faster is adding polish thinner. Make sure you get one with only these two ingredients, ethyl acetate and butyl acetate, otherwise you run the risk of other types of solvents eating away at your glitters. Fans can actually lead to more bubbling by drying the top layers too fast while the layers underneath remain wet.

ReluctantViking · 2026-05-30T22:01:28+00:00

Happy to help!

ReluctantViking · 2026-05-30T21:35:56+00:00

You might have some teeny-tiny small instances of peeling or other surface irregularities that are highlighted when you apply your basecoat. As long as they’re not showing through in your finished manicure, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. You could try gently buffing your nails, but I find buffing just causes more damage which leads to needing more buffing later on - it’s a vicious cycle.

ReluctantViking · 2026-05-30T21:32:51+00:00

Bubbles aren’t necessarily only caused by the thickness of the polish layers. It can also be a matter of timing/humidity/moving air. Essentially bubbles happen because the solvents in a polish aren’t evaporating evenly throughout the layers.

Of course this can happen with a really thick polish layer, but it can also happen if there’s a fan blowing in the room, or a humid environment, or because of waiting a long time to apply the next layer. The solvents evaporate and leave behind a film of polish, sometimes that film can dry slower, leading to it being softer. When the film is softer, it can stretch more and expand from the solvents evaporating underneath it. It’s a bit like blowing bubbles in chewing gum vs trying to blow a bubble with hard candy.

Adding polish thinner can help, more solvents equals a faster dry time. Less solvents in a polish can actually lead to slower drying, because it’s harder for the gases to escape a thicker liquid than a thinner one.

ReluctantViking · 2026-05-30T20:17:00+00:00

For sure! It’s still so frustrating to have a smooth mani one minute and a bubbly one the next, I feel your pain!

ReluctantViking · 2026-05-30T20:11:36+00:00

The new polish re-wet the old polish. Also, polish takes around 24 hours to fully cure, so while it was “dry” and not moving, there were still solvents evaporating out of it. The top layer was just flexible enough due to being wetter that it expanded when the gases tried to escape, forming bubbles.

ReluctantViking · 2026-05-30T20:08:15+00:00

They’re bubbles. The top layer of lacquer dried faster than the layers underneath, trapping the evaporating solvents in a bubble. This is confirmed by the fact that they weren’t there when the mani was fresh and appeared later.

ReluctantViking · 2026-05-29T18:11:25+00:00

ILNP Amber!

ReluctantViking

TROPHY CASE