Let’s walk the indie polish hall of fame, shall we? Nailventurous FLOAM

Yes, you heard (or read) correctly; I, me, myself, was able to obtain a bottle of the much sought-after and VERY original Floam!!! THANK YOU, blog sales: the rummage sales of the polish world!!

. . . complete with the original consistency of sheetrock mud/joint compound – I should know – I stepped off a ladder into a 5 gallon pail of it when I was 4. Ah well, once I got the hang of it, I was able to lay down a not too shabby coat for my double accent nails!

Ahhh that 90's Floam! ...and its cousin, Gak. :-)

When those Floam-esque Salon Perfect polishes came out, I had to get one, and Shocked was the one that jumped off the shelf at me…I kinda have a thing for hot pink. J I also got Bang because it looked – being the operative word – like an awesome neon orange, but upon the realization that it’s just a sorta lame mix of pink & yellow, that one went back to Wally World. You’d think my OSGD (obsessive swatch Googling disorder) would’ve prevented that misconception!

My sincere apologies for the large gap between polish & cutes here.  I think I took this after I'd been wearing this mani for a few days - and I probably (stupidly) pushed back my cutes to boot.

Really fun, no?! I just wish I didn’t feel so weird wearing these types of “kiddie combos” to work… even though I spend the majority of my day in a cube and no one really notices my nails, I don’t like when my nails totally don’t go with my attire. Since I’m obviously not wearing neon dress pants to work. Whatever! It’s a good thing I have a copious stash, so polishes don’t tend to hang out on my nails very long. ;-)

I already commented on the consistency of Floam, but I’ll expound: at first, I had no idea how I was going to get that obtuse mélange of microglitters to lay nicely without forming giant mountain peaks and valleys below…but after doing one hand, I somehow managed to find a technique that worked. At the moment, I really can’t recall what that technique was, but I think it was mostly being very, very careful and sloooow. ;-) I mean, it’s already “dry” and sticky, so keeping the brush out of the bottle for awhile wasn’t going to make it much worse. The nice thing was that you only had to deal with it once per nail – one coat was more than sufficient!

See those peaks & valleys?! Oi. :-/

Explosion was much thinner and took 2 or 3 coats for full coverage/opacity. Next time I might try putting it over a neon pink (like Sinful Colors 24/7 or the very creatively named Kleancolor Neon Pink). Now that I look at these again, I believe I did put a coat of China Glaze You Drive Me Coconuts over the thumbnail on my right hand because a) I had just gotten it & b) I wanted to get an idea of what a jelly sandwich might look like, using Shocked & YDMC. Pretty boring, actually. Too much of the same color, methinks!

I'm not even sure if Nailventurous is still making & selling her Floam, but if you're hankering for something with the same colors as the original Floam, I would definitely recommend Salon Perfect Kaboom from the same collection as Explosion. Although it will take more coats, they'll definitely be easier to apply than this hallowed goop! Bring ON the thinner!!! :-D