A vegan nail polish blog. A celebration of colour and light, as well as of justice for nonhuman animals.

Posts tagged ‘matte’

LA Splash Komodo Dragon

Hi all, if anyone’s reading ;) Back from my hiatus and going to try to start posting regularly again. :)

The polish I have on today isn’t new, but I think it was way before its time! This is totally a pre-texture craze texture polish! It’s Komodo Dragon by LA Splash (the bottle says Kamodo Dragon, but that just looks so wrong…)
These first two photos are under a halogen light (actually I think it might be a compact-fluorescent imitation of halogen, but anyway…)

LA Splash Komodo Dragon - halogen lamp

It’s a matte, metallic olive green with gold and green fine glitter that dries to a rough bumpy texture. This is two coats over a ridge filling basecoat. I didn’t have any trouble with application, although it’s quite a thick polish and it’s best to wait a few minutes between coats to let it fully dry. One coat was almost enough; maybe if I’d loaded up the brush with more polish I would have stopped there.

LA Splash Komodo Dragon - halogen lamp

I remember seeing a swatch stick of this on a blog at some point, and the blogger’s review of it was basically, “wtf is this, it’s muddy olive green, it’s not shiny at all, the glitter isn’t very sparkly, and it dries all bumpy! gross!” Heheh. But nowadays it seems to fit right in with all the textured polishes popping up recently.

Next photo is in overcast natural light:

LA Splash Komodo Dragon - overcast natural light

Unfortunately there’s no sun here today. These last two photos are with flash:

LA Splash Komodo Dragon - with flash

LA Splash Komodo Dragon - with flash

I personally think this polish is pretty cool, after all! :D

Layering with FingerPaints flakies

Back in January Sally Beauty Supply released an awesome collection of flakie polishes under their FingerPaints brand called Special Effects. These have been reviewed tons of times online already and are probably sold out by now at most Sally stores, so I just wanted to share a few layering combos I did with some of these polishes over the last few weeks. Unfortunately there wasn’t any sun for any of these pictures though.

Two coats of Motley, the green-blue-violet flakie, over three coats of Sally Girl Peabody in very overcast natural light:
Fingerpaints Motley over Sally Girl Peabody

Fingerpaints Motley over Sally Girl Peabody

Two coats of Asylum, the red-yellow and blue-violet flakie, over two coats of Nubar Pink Flame, again not very good lighting; this is artificial light:
Nubar Pink Flame with Fingerpaints Asylum

Nubar Pink Flame with Fingerpaints Asylum

Two coats of Twisted, the most colourful of these flakies (it’s pretty much like all the others in the collection mixed together), over two coats of OPI Russian Navy Suede, overcast light:
Fingerpaints Twisted over OPI Russian Navy Suede

Fingerpaints Twisted over OPI Russian Navy Suede

I definitely like the last combo best – I’ve determined that I really prefer flakies over dark colours where they stand out clearly, rather than over pale colours.

A few Halloween manicures

A few Halloween NOTDs (nails of the day) from the past couple of weeks! (Although, really, I would wear these anytime!)

Milani Flashy Orange with Wet n Wild Ebony Hates Chris stamped on (I’m not very good at stamping yet…)

Milani Flashy OrangeThe other hand, with scurrying spiders!

Milani Flashy Orange

A candy manicure: China Glaze Liquid Leather with Nubar V for Men matte topcoat, in an attempt to make nails that look like Panda Licorice!

China Glaze Liquid Leather, Nubar V for MenWet n Wild Cougar Attack (I broke down and bought this on ebay… I doubt they even release these limited edition collections here in Canada…)

Wet n Wild Cougar Attack

The next day I added some nail art using the orange and black striping polishes from the Orly Instant Artist “Flights of Fancy” collection. The collection also included a dotting tool which is what I used to create the web-like design.

Wet n Wild Cougar Attack

China Glaze It’s Alive from their recent Halloween release:

China Glaze It's Alive

It’s Alive with OPI’s glow-in-the-dark Zom-body to Love as slimy tips:

China Glaze It's Alive, OPI Zom-body to Love

My attempt at capturing it glowing in the dark:

China Glaze It's Alive, OPI Zom-body to Love

Happy Halloween everyone! :)

Orly Flagstone Rush and China Glaze Brownstone

These were my nails of the day last Friday. I started out with Orly Flagstone Rush, a metallic reddish brown (just a bit too dark to be a copper). It’s a two-coater with a nice formula; a little bit of attention is needed to get the brush strokes straight but it’s not too hard to work with. It’s one of Orly’s core colours.

Orly Flagstone Rush

I then added some half moons (my first attempt at half moons!) in China Glaze Brownstone from their fall 2011 Metro collection, thinking its brick red-brown creme finish would complement and contrast with the metallic Orly in an interesting way. I liked how it turned out! Brownstone has a wonderful smooth and creamy formula, by the way.

Flagstone Rush and Brownstone

Then I decided to mattify it using Nubar V for Men – not sure which way I prefer, I like them both!
Flagstone Rush and Brownstone, Matte

These photos were all taken indoors in the light of my new Ott light, on account of it being dark outside!

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