January | 2012 | Vegan Claws

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

Archive for January, 2012

OPI DS Tapestry

A quick post today to show you OPI DS Tapestry, #29 in their designer series line (one of the later ones, so I think it’s still relatively easy to find compared to the original DS releases!). It’s a very nice scattered holo in a rusty medium red with orange and rosy brown undertones – I’d call it a true brick colour. Apparently OPI calls it a “dazzling deep rose”; I have to disagree. Anyway, this is two coats, and the formula is wonderful as is usual for DS holos.

Sunlight:

Shade:

Indoors (under halogen light):

And sunlight again:

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OPI

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Sally Girl TTFN and comparisons

If you’ve been to a Sally Beauty Supply store lately you may have noticed that they have five new shades in their Sally Girl line of mini nail polishes. I got a couple of the new ones, including this one called TTFN. And guess what, these new ones actually show the names on the bottles! At the top right of the little sticker along the side. No more cross-referencing the 6-digit number on the sally.com site to try to figure out what the polish’s name is, haha!

Two coats of TTFN. It was a little streaky on the first coat, but a second thicker coat evened everything out. Colour-wise, this slightly dusty, minty sage green is in between Orly Ancient Jade (which is a tiny bit deeper and brighter), and Misa Catch a Flick (which is a little lighter), as the following photo shows (top to bottom, Catch a Flick, TTFN, Ancient Jade).

In terms of formula, Ancient Jade had a formula that was thinner than TTFN but was also more pigmented and opaque. Catch a Flick had a formula similar to TTFN, a little streaky on the first coat but evening up at the second.

I also compared a couple of other colours for reference. Thumb to pinky, NYX Girls Algae, much darker and bluer, Orly Ancient Jade, Sally Girl TTFN, Misa Catch a Flick, and Nubar Vogue Vert, lighter and more of a dusty yellow-based sage.

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Misa, Nubar, NYX, Orly, Sally Girl

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Cult Nails Super Powers Collection

Today I have for you Cult Nails’ Super Powers Collection, released for Winter 2011-2012. This contains the flakie polish Clairvoyant, which was formerly a limited edition called Unicorn Puke. I was lucky that I bought the collection during its pre-sale, because Clairvoyant is now sold out and they’re not sure if they’re going to be able to make more, since one of the flakie ingredients was discontinued by the manufacturer. Hopefully they’ll find a new source!!

Clairvoyant:

This is three coats of Clairvoyant (no top coat), a medium purple jelly with multicoloured iridescent flakes. The flakies are pretty similar in colour to the new Fingerpaints Twisted flakie, but with the obvious difference of the purple base. Love this polish, hope it isn’t gone for good!

Power Thief:

Power Thief, a neutral medium chocolatey brown with silvery shimmer flecks that sort of reflect different colours in the light. This was two coats (no top coat) and the formula was thick but smooth. Another favourite from this collection.

Time Traveler:

Tardis-blue jelly! This was the thickest of the collection. One thick coat might even be enough, but I did two regular coats. No top coat here; look at that shine! Deep yet bright blue, love it!

Mind Control:

Sheer charcoal with duochrome purple shimmer flakes that shift to greenish-gold in the light. This one had the thinnest formula of the collection; this is three coats (no top coat), and it did need the third. It wasn’t especially difficult to apply, though. I decided to do a comparison with two other polishes I have.

Index to ring: NYX Deep Space, Cult Nails Mind Control, Color Club Alias

These all have fairly thin formulas (in fact I’d say Mind Control has the thickest of the three), and all are shown with three coats. The NYX has larger, but more sparse shimmer flakes than Mind Control does. Color Club Alias has a noticeably more purple base (as the second photo shows) and has denser sparkle than the others. Alias is my favourite of the three, but I haven’t really been into these sorts of charcoal/purple shades lately. They’re all very nice polishes with decent formulas, though.

Finally, I have some photos of Clairvoyant layered over the other three polishes in the collection! Index is two coats of Power Thief, middle 3 coats of Mind Control, and ring one coat of Time Traveler. All have one coat of Clairvoyant over top. The sun was starting to set here so that affected the colouring of the photos a bit.

Overall, a great collection! The polishes range in consistency but all were easy to work with. Looking forward to their next collection. Which coincidentally has just been announced today on Maria’s blog (Maria is the creator of Cult Nails). It’s called Let’s Get Nekkid and features four nude shades with golden shimmer and a (sadly, limited edition due to the ingredient issue) aqua-green flakie! Looking forward to it!!

Category:

Color Club, Cult Nails, NYX

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Kleancolor Holo Pink and Holo Orange over Milani Retro

Kleancolor has a half dozen of these holo glitter polishes in different colours; I decided to layer the pink and the orange over 2 coats of Milani Retro, which is a pastel coral creme with subtle shimmer (and a nice formula!).

These are holo glitters, not smooth holo particles, so they do dry rough. They also don’t dry all that quickly, but don’t take as long as the Kleancolor layering glitters which can sometimes be really bad! Shown are two coats of each glitter, with top coat. On their own, they may need 3 coats for opacity; I’m not sure.

In the sun:

The pink and orange are both pastels; they appear darker and more pink/coral here because of the coral polish underneath.

In the shade:

I didn’t really care for the pink all that much on my skintone, but I really like the orange and plan to try it on its own as well as over other bases. Also looking forward to trying Holo Yellow!

Category:

Kleancolor, Milani

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Multi-Coloured Glitter Comparison

When I reviewed Soulstice Spa’s LA in October, I mentioned that I would do a comparison with several other multi-coloured glitter polishes I have. It’s been a while but here is that comparison. I don’t own the famous “original” glitter of this type, Deborah Lippmann’s Happy Birthday, but here are the ones I do have.

From left, OPI Rainbow Connection, Soulstice Spa LA, Essence Circus Confetti, NYX Girls Carnival, Wet n Wild Party of 5 Glitters. Click on any of these photos to see more detail in the larger versions. And please excuse the pink-stained nails! All of these polishes have clear bases and any pink or orangey colour you see is just the evidence of my most recent manicures.

Here they are at one coat, thumb to pinky in the same order as above: thumb OPI Rainbow Conncetion, index Soulstice Spa LA, middle Essence Circus Confetti, ring NYX Girls Carnival, pinky Wet n Wild Party of 5 Glitters. OPI and Essence are clearly the densest of the bunch, followed by the Soulstice.

At two coats:

And at three coats:

As mentioned above the OPI and NYX are denser than the others, and the Essence and Wet n Wild are least dense. The OPI is different in that it has larger hex glitters in addition to the small and medium.

Colour-wise, the Wet n Wild is the most different among them since it has fewer colours and lacks any yellow or warm-toned orangey red glitter. It’s also my least favourite of these polishes for that reason. The Essence polish has more pink glitter than any of the others, including some lighter pink, and has some darker blue as well. NYX Girls Carnival is missing the light pink and dark blue of the Essence, but also has small cool-toned cherry-red glitter that the others aside from Wet n Wild don’t. OPI Rainbow Connection and Soulstice Spa LA are similar colour-wise to the NYX Girls but without the cool-toned cherry red. I’d say the NYX also has a higher concentration of yellow glitter, and the Soulstice has a lower concentration of pink glitter. The yellow glitter in Essence is a paler than the yellows in all the others, more of a gold.

My picks from these are, well, the denser ones/ones with the most yellow glitter – NYX Girls Carnival and OPI Rainbow Connection, followed by Soulstice LA!

Category:

Essence, NYX, OPI, Soulstice Spa, Wet n Wild

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Orly Au Champagne

This lovely white pearl-finish polish is Orly Au Champagne from the holiday 2011 collection. Unfortunately I had an incident involving my index finger and some packing tape before I could take pictures, so I decided to try to cover the chip with stamping which didn’t work that well and went on crooked, but anyway…

This is two coats of Au Champagne, no top coat. It dries to this great semi-matte pearly satiny finish, really cool. The polish is thick but smooth and easy to work with. I used Kleancolor Metallic Sapphire to stamp on it with a fleur de lys design from Konad plate M15. The Kleancolor metallics are great for stamping; my stamping skills are still less than great heheh.

Category:

Kleancolor, Konad (stamping plates), Orly

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OPI Fly and comparisons

At the risk of making it seem like all I post is OPI, here’s yet another one! This is OPI Fly from their recently released Nicki Minaj collection. I wasn’t going to get any polishes from this collection but when I saw them in store I couldn’t resist getting Fly. I’m powerless against turquoise!

I didn’t have any good light for swatching but I figured I’d just do it anyway. This is two coats of Fly, no top coat, in natural overcast light.

With Flash:

Since I’m a total sucker for this kind of colour, I (of course) already had a polish that is very, very close to Fly, that polish being Milani’s Fresh Teal, which is one of their neons. I also added Kleancolor Catch Me to my comparison, since it’s fairly similar as well.

These are all two coats, no top coat – index and ring: OPI Fly, middle and pinky: Milani Fresh Teal, thumb: Kleancolor Catch Me.

In overcast natural light:

With flash:

Milani Fresh Teal is just a tiny smidgen brighter and greener than Fly. I found the Milani more opaque than the OPI at one coat (it could probably be a one-coater if you use a thick coat). Both applied really well and were self-leveling.

The Kleancolor is similar to Fresh Teal in terms of hue but is a few shades lighter (and is the most opaque of these three polishes, easily a one-coater, like a lot of Kleancolor cremes are); I just thought I’d add it for comparison’s sake.

I should probably redo this comparison when there’s sun to do a better job of showing the differences, as the flash tends to wash things out…

My preference/recommendation between Fly and Fresh Teal is Fresh Teal. Not only is it less expensive it’s also a bit more opaque and brighter.

Category:

Kleancolor, Milani, OPI

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Dark teal comparison featuring Nicole by OPI

Someone on a nail board I frequent asked for a comparison of Zoya Cynthia, from last fall’s Smoke collection, and Nicole by OPI Khloe had a Little Lam-Lam from their new Kardashian collection. (Now let me just say that I don’t know anything about the Kardashians except that their names all start with K and they’re on the cover of a lot of magazines in the supermarket checkout line. So, I really don’t know what this polish’s name refers to, but anyway… I’ll just refer to it here as Khloe!)

Cynthia is definitely darker (almost looks black in low light), and has less green in it. I found another polish in my collection that’s much closer to Khloe, Joe Fresh Hunter. I also added LA Colors Jungle to the comparison, but it’s a significantly lighter teal than the others.

Here are the four polishes at one coat, under my Ott light. From left to right, Zoya Cynthia, Nicole by OPI Khloe Had a Little Lam-Lam, Joe Fresh Hunter, and LA Colors Jungle.

Cynthia is the darkest of the bunch and the least green; it’s a blackened teal but it could also pass for navy. At one coat it also has a pretty cloudy texture to it.

Two coats (no top coat), overcast natural light:

Khloe has a really smooth formula, great application. Joe Fresh Hunter is nearly identical in colour, though I prefer Khloe’s formula and brush. Not that Hunter’s formula is bad either. My brush on Hunter was a little screwy though; it has one bristle just slightly longer than the others. I’ll have to trim it… The brushes are fairly similar in shape though, both wide and flat, which I personally prefer in a brush shape.

Two coats, still without topcoat, setting sun:

At first I was going to say that Hunter is maybe a hair darker and less green than Khloe, but I don’t know if that’s even accurate (it almost looks like Hunter is slightly lighter in these photos – apologies that they aren’t the greatest; I did what I could with the light I had!) Either way, it’s really hard to pinpoint any differences in the two colours. Khloe does dry glossier before top coat, though.

So there you have it, a less expensive alternative to Khloe for those of us who have access to Joe Fresh polishes, although Khloe’s formula is slightly better and the bottle contains more polish (a standard 15 ml, versus 6 ml).

Category:

Joe Fresh, LA Colors, Nicole by OPI, Zoya

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A couple of recent OPI glitters

A few weeks ago I did this alternating manicure with two of OPI’s recent glitter polishes. Excuse Moi? is from the Muppets holiday collection, and Nicole by OPI Disco Dolls is from the Kardashian collection. They have a lot in common so I thought they would go well together.

The two polishes are very similar in that they have the same kind of multi-coloured medium hex glitter in them, but obviously the bases are different. Disco Dolls is an orangey-gold fine glitter in a clear base, while Excuse Moi has a pink-tinted base packed full of fine glitter. I think the glitter itself is mainly silver, but it looks pink with the base colour.

These swatches were 3 coats, although both of these are pretty dense and you could probably get away with two coats. Both were easy to apply without having the glitter clump together or anything. This is with top coat; both are kind of gritty and need a layer or two of a good top coat.

Category:

Nicole by OPI, OPI

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OPI Man of La Mancha

Happy New Year everyone!

I recently got this discontinued OPI on eBay (it was released in their 2003 Holiday on Broadway collection) and it immediately jumped straight to the top of my list of favourites. It’s an amazing duochrome (well, multichrome really) burgundy/red that flashes through shades of orange, yellow and green at different angles, and also has a ton of fine sparkle in it.

Shown is two coats of Man of La Mancha over one coat of Kleancolor Black, my favourite one-coat black. Man of La Mancha is from OPI’s old formula (contains toluene) and so is super-smooth and easy to apply. It’s a pretty sheer polish, as many good multichromes are, so I put it over black which really shows off all the colours it shifts to. I haven’t tried it on its own or over other colours yet, but am looking forward to!

I also added a coat of Nubar 2010 flakie polish on my ring finger – the flakes have the same colour scheme as Man of La Mancha so I thought they would go well together. However, Man of La Mancha is just so sparkly and awesome that the flakies weren’t even visible in most light! In the the photos with the turquoise background below, you can see the flakes though. Those were taken in my bathroom under incandescent lights.

Anyway, I’ll let the photos do the rest of the talking – short version, if you have a chance to get this amazing polish, do it!!

Category:

Kleancolor, Nubar, OPI

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Vegan Claws

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

Archive for January, 2012

OPI DS Tapestry

Sally Girl TTFN and comparisons

Cult Nails Super Powers Collection

Kleancolor Holo Pink and Holo Orange over Milani Retro

Multi-Coloured Glitter Comparison

Orly Au Champagne

OPI Fly and comparisons

Dark teal comparison featuring Nicole by OPI

A couple of recent OPI glitters

OPI Man of La Mancha

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