December | 2013 | Vegan Claws

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

Archive for December, 2013

Authority Cosmetics Swatches and Review

Today I have four polishes to show you from the relatively-new brand of vegan polishes, Authority Cosmetics. Two cremes, a slight duochrome shimmer, and a glitter topper – let’s get started with the swatches, shall we? 😀

This great lime green creme is Disco. I used two coats.

The formula was thick and pigmented and went on without streaks; I was really impressed!

The glitter topper, I Heart You, has a clear pink base and is filled with small iridescent glitter and pink and red heart-shaped glitter. I applied one thick coat over Disco and wasn’t sure if it would work out with the green and pink layered, but it turned into a really great olive green shade! I think it actually ended up being my favourite combo with I Heart You! A couple of swirls of the brush generally brought out 1-3 hearts from the bottle without trouble, and there was a little placement of hearts involved to get them distributed evenly on the nail.

The second shade, Paradise, is a medium bright blue creme, also thick and pigmented like Disco. In fact, this swatch shows just one thick coat.

I probably should have done two thinner coats instead of one thick, since I ended up getting a few tiny bubbles as it dried, but I wanted to see if it covered in a single layer.

The sun had gone away so this next pic is under the Ott lite:

Here is one coat of I Heart You over Paradise, turning it a dusty periwinkle. Sorry for the little bald spots in the glitter; I didn’t notice until I took the photos!

Last but certainly not least, the duochrome, Emerald Sky. This is a shimmery green-teal-blue subtle duochrome in a smoky, slightly blue-purple base! (These first photos in natural light are a little too blue, and the later ones under Ott and halogen light are more colour accurate.)

The base is sheer to let the shimmer show through, and the formula is thinner than the other polishes. It builds to a nice glowy colour in just two coats though, which is what is shown here.

Under Ott Lite:

With flash:

Here it is again under Ott lite, with a layer of I Heart You on the ring finger:

I also did a comparison with one coat over black versus two coats alone (bottom to top in the photos).

Applying over black makes the look more opaque and dark, but doesn’t really change much about the colour shift. At an extreme angle, you can see the shimmer shifts more to blue.

This last photo is under halogen light.

Authority Cosmetics is available on their website here. They have just 10 colours so far, but if they’re all like the ones I’ve reviewed here, the quality is great! I have to say I am impressed with these! 🙂

Disclosure: The polishes in this post were provided for review. Opinions expressed are my own honest opinions.

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Authority Cosmetics

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Io, Saturnalia! With Indigo Bananas Polishes

Happy Saturnalia! Today is the first day! I don’t have any nail art or anything, but this gold mani is appropriately festive, I think. Photos are under halogen light except the last one, which is fluorescent office lighting.

This is Indigo Bananas Suneater, with Indigo Bananas Impact on the accent nail. Indigo Bananas is another indie brand with vegan polishes, and they have a lot of great stuff that I was excited to discover!

Suneater is a metallic yellow gold holo with slight green duochrome. Three coats, but it dries very quickly.

On the accent nail is Impact, a metallic gold with green/copper duochrome (wasn’t really able to capture the coppery pink side in these photos) and orange and gold holo glitters in several sizes of hex and some small squares. Two coats over Suneater.

Love these two polishes!

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Indigo Bananas

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OPI DS Signature

Here’s another discontinued, hard-to-find OPI polish that I happened to take pictures of recently: DS Signature, a great medium pink holo. Two coats.

Under Ott lite:

With flash:

In shade:

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Glitter Gal – Navy I Will Navy I Won’t, Big Smoke, and Gloss Boss topcoat

Today I have swatches and reviews of a couple of Glitter Gal’s new releases to show you! For those who don’t know, they’ve just released two new collections of creme shades, a new holo, two new holo topcoats, and a colour-enhancing high-gloss topcoat!

Here are the polishes that I am reviewing today – Big Smoke, a medium-dark grey creme, the new colour-enhancing topcoat Gloss Boss, and the new blue holo called Navy I Will, Navy I Won’t.

Let me start with the grey creme, Big Smoke. Two coats, no topcoat, in the first photo. The formula was smooth and thinner than some creme formulas, but not too thin.

Then I added a layer of Gloss Boss topcoat. Super shiny, and dried quickly!

Nice, simple deep grey! The previous photos were with flash. Here’s one under the Ott lite without flash:

And now, the new holo, Navy I Will, Navy I Won’t! I’ve gotta say, the colour is great and the name is great, but I wouldn’t have put the two together! It’s a medium, saturated/almost bright blue, not a navy.

I used two coats; the formula was great. These first two photos are without topcoat, the above with flash and below with just the Ott lite. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to photograph it in sunlight, since, well, it’s the darkest month of the year, here!

There is a very slight teal-leaning metallic shimmer to the surface of the polish, when the light shines on it, as you can see in some of the photos.

Gloss Boss is said to enhance holographic polish, rather than dull the effect like some topcoats tend to do. The rest of the photos include one layer of Gloss Boss, and as you can see the holo is still obvious and the polish is a lot glossier. Again, the above photo is with flash and the following is under the Ott lite.

I’ll have to round up all the topcoats I have at some point to do a comparison on how they each affect holographic polishes!

A couple more flash photos to show off this beauty… Check out the linear holo flame:

These and the other new releases are available on Glitter Gal’s website: http://www.glittergal.com.au/. I’m not sure when their other distributors will get these collections in, but I imagine it’ll be soon!

Disclosure: The polishes in this post were sent for review. The opinions expressed in the review are my own honest opinions.

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A’dor Beauty Supplies Queen

A’dor Beauty Supplies is another indie polish maker with vegan polishes that I found on Etsy.

Queen is a warm metallic purple with multiple sizes of hex and square gold glitter and very small pink glitter throughout. The above photo is the most true to colour; the others look slightly too blue.

Photos are under halogen light except the last one. I used two coats of polish and found the formula to be smooth and thick.

With flash:

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A'dor Beauty Supplies

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Pretty and Polished Sundown

Indie brand Pretty and Polish has a number of thermal colour-changing polishes; this one is Sundown, released earlier this year. All these photos are taken with flash. The second one is also near a window so it appears lighter.

In its cool/room temperature state, Sundown is a light apricot orange colour, with matte hex glitters in orangey yellow, pink and pale yellow.

In its warm state, the base turns to a soft golden pastel yellow, and the golden shimmer in the base becomes more apparent.

Yep, my fingers are extra red in that warm photo, due to dipping them in hot water!

Here is Sundown in a transition state, I love it! When I was in a warm location (i.e. not my cold apartment haha) I would sometimes find that it would stay in a state of yellow nail bed and orange tips. 😀

These photos show three coats of the polish, plus top coat. You could probably get away with two coats but I didn’t want to take chances that it would end up appearing streaky when warm, since the warm colour is notably paler than the cool colour! I found the polish easy to apply; I did a little bit of “placement” of the glitter, but not too much. The formula is fairly thick, as most thermals are due to the nature of the colour changing pigment. All in all, a great polish!!

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Pretty and Polished

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OPI Movin’ Out

I’ve got an oldie, hard-to-find polish to show you today. This is one of my favourites, OPI Movin’ Out from the Holiday on Broadway collection from 2003! One coat over black, showing off the warm purple-to-green multichrome and red-to-green colour shifting pigment sparkles. So gorgeous! The photos were taken under the Ott lite, except the two noted.

In the shade:

With flash:

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Kunimitsu Orange Tabby

I have another Kunimitsu Nail Potions swatch to show you today!

This is Orange Tabby, a light orange creme with small orange bar glitter and several sizes of orange hex glitter.

On my index finger, I layered it in two coats over Pretty and Polished Crush, because I thought it was going to be sheer, but I was wrong! The other nails show three coats of Orange Tabby by itself.

I did have to do some shaking between coats and searching with the brush to get the amount of glitter I wanted out of the bottle. Not a high price to pay for an adorable orange polish!

I didn’t include my pinkie in the first few photos because I had done a layering experiment there too, and wasn’t really thrilled with how it turned out. I did two coats of Orange Tabby over Pretty Serious Seasonal Sunset, and while the combo isn’t bad, I don’t really like it next to the other nails! But anyway here it is in the last few photos.