Color Club | Vegan Claws

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

Archive for the ‘Color Club’ Category

Color Club Blue-ming

This beauty is Color Club Blue-ming, from last spring’s Blossoming collection. I love this almost-neon-bright pastel turquoise! But I wasn’t quite able to capture its unique shade in the photos, unfortunately… Picture it slightly greener and brighter!

It’s kind of streaky, not surprising for a pastel like this. These first photos in the sun show three coats of polish.

Before the last two photos, I added a fourth coat due to smudging a couple of nails! I also added a layer of top coat. In the shade:

Indoors with flash:

Despite its streaky formula, this is one of my favourite polishes because of its unique colour! Love the almost-neon pastels!

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Color Club

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Zoya Tracie, Meg and comparisons

Since October is Depression Awareness Month (yup, it’s not just for breast cancer!) and the depression awareness colour is green, I thought a green-heavy first post of the month would be appropriate.

So, I’ve got Zoya Tracie and Meg from the Beach and Surf collection, along with nail wheel comparisons with tons of other green shades!

This is Zoya Tracie, two coats. I love this colour, soft yellow-toned green creme base with subtle pearly silver shimmer.

The formula was a little tricky, thick yet threatening to drip down the brush stem, and I had to take care to let it dry between coats to prevent dragging. Worth it for such a great shade! The photos include base and top coat.

Meg is a medium green foil. I also had a little streaking and dragging with this one, but then I didn’t use a base coat for this swatch so that may have been the reason. This is two coats of Meg.

Really nice polish as well, but much less interesting than Tracie to me. Tracie is much more unique.

And now for the massive comparisons! The first photo shows the nail wheels in direct sunlight, and the second photo shows them under the Ott Lite. Clicking on the photos will bring up a bigger version where it’s easier to see the polishes (but then, the caption isn’t included, so the close-up polishes and their names aren’t visible together; sorry about that). Meg and Tracie are the polishes in the middle that are almost touching, one on each wheel.

Zoya Tracie & Meg green comparison wheels

Left wheel, clockwise from top: Color Club Mol-ten, Color Club Kiss Me Mistletoe, Wet n Wild Jungle Fever, Cosmetic Arts You Sleigh Me, Zoya Meg, Kleancolor Metallic Green, Butter London Dosh, Finger Paints Comet’s Collar, NYX Girls Luscious Green, Zoya Midori, Nicole by OPI Make Mine Lime, Sparitual Greenhouse, Gosh Golden Dragon.
Right wheel, counterclockwise from gap in polishes: NYX (Salon line) Lime, Nicole by OPI My Favourite Gold, OPI Simply Smashing, Kleancolor Jazz Olive, Zoya Tangy, Misa Secrets, OPI Bikini Envy, Zoya Tracie, Milani Original, LA Girl Color Addict Urge, Soulstice Telluride, Misa Fountain of Youth, Milani Key Lime Shine, Nubar Baby Sprout, NYX (Salon line) Pastel Pistachio, Nubar Kiwi.

No exact dupes to these Zoyas, but Wet n Wild Jungle Fever is very close to Meg, and Cosmetic Arts You Sleigh Me (next to Meg) is also pretty similar. The base colour of the NYX Salon polish in Pastel Pistachio is pretty close to Tracie, but the NYX polish is just a plain creme without any shimmer. OPI Bikini Envy is the shimmery polish that I’d say is closest to Tracie, but the OPI is lighter, more sheer, and frostier. Actually, I’m thinking Tracie is pretty similar to what it would look like to mix NYX Pastel Pistachio and OPI Bikini Envy together!

A couple pairs of notable near-dupes in here: Color Club Mol-ten and Kiss Me Mistletoe (Mistletoe is scented, though); OPI Simply Smashing and Nicole by OPI My Favourite Gold (which I think is an odd name, my favourite gold is a green??).

Category:

Butter London, Color Club, Cosmetic Arts, GOSH, Kleancolor, LA Girl, Milani, Misa, Nicole by OPI, Nubar, NYX, OPI, Soulstice Spa, SpaRitual, Wet n Wild, Zoya

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Zoya Myrta and Comparisons

Zoya Myrta is from their summer 2012 collection, Surf. I’m slowly but surely trying to do large nail wheel comparison posts for all of the Beach and Surf polishes. I like to see where shades fit into the colour spectrum of similar shades, and hopefully you do too, dear readers. 🙂

Myrta is an orange-red coral shade, with a finish somewhere between foil and glass fleck. This is two coats of Myrta, with two coats of Cult Nails Get it On base coat underneath as I’d heard this polish stains. The two coats of base coat did prevent staining, but did cause a bit of bubbling; not sure if I didn’t wait long enough between coats, or if Zoya just doesn’t play nicely with Cult Nails base coat…

Bright, shimmery, pretty!

Here are my nail wheel comparisons with Myrta! I used pretty much any polish in remotely the same colour family here, so the wheel is full! I realized afterward that I probably should have numbered or somehow indicated the start position on the wheel, but hopefully it’s not difficult to find Myrta as it’s pretty much at the top in both photos (more specifically, it’s the one right above the letter ‘L’ in the word ‘WHEEL’ that is on the centre of the wheel) and right next to it is the matte Manglaze polish (I applied topcoat to only half of this matte shade’s swatch). As usual, each swatch shows a progression of one, two and three coats of the given polish.

Like last time, I have to apologize again for the lack of appropriate lighting to properly and accurately show the nail wheel comparisons. Again, I did one photo in the sun and one under the Ott Lite. I’m waiting on a soft lightbox that I ordered, so hopefully soon I’ll be able to take better photos of these types of comparisons. Sun photo:

Clockwise from top: Zoya Myrta, Manglaze Butt Taco (matte, left side of swatch with topcoat), Color Club Feel the Beat, LA Colors Fiery Orange, Nubar Arencia, Milani Metal Gear, Orly Flicker, LA Girl Copper Alloy, No Miss Tamarack Tangerine, Soulstice Rio, LA Colors Coral Reef, Milani Glitzy Jam, Milani Just Peachy, Milani Melt With U, LA Colors Aztec Orange, Orly Emberstone, Milani Orange Burst, Milani Flashlight.

Ott Lite photo:

In terms of similarity, I’d say that Myrta is closest to LA Colors Aztec Orange (4th shade to the left of Myrta), although Aztec Orange has a sheerer base and more sparse shimmery flecks. As you can see, some of the shades on the wheel are dupes or near-dupes to one another, notably Milani Orange Burst and Flashlight, and the trio of LA Colors Fiery Orange, Nubar Arencia, and Milani Metal Gear.

Category:

Color Club, LA Colors, LA Girl, Manglaze, Milani, No Miss, Nubar, Orly, Soulstice Spa, Zoya

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Comparison: Color Club’s Pure Energy and Wicked Sweet

As mentioned in my previous post, here is my comparison of Color Club’s two neon blue polishes with turquoise shimmer, Pure Energy and Wicked Sweet. These photos were taken several months ago, during a week when I had my nails filed into little claws. I’ve done this a couple of times, but it usually only lasts about a week before the points start breaking off and I file them down.

The photos show three coats of each polish. On my index and ring is Pure Energy from the Electro Candy collection; on my middle and pinkie is Wicked Sweet from the Wicked Sweet collection.

The formula was good on both of them, thin and smooth. They’re a little sheer, hence the three coats.

Wicked Sweet is a scented polish; it smells like blueberry candy.

Aside from the scent these two polishes are practically identical. The main difference is that Wicked Sweet dries a little glossier before topcoat. There’s no topcoat in the pictures, and in this last picture you can kind of see how Wicked Sweet is a little more reflective which brings out the shimmer a bit more. Being neons, neither of them is especially glossy before topcoat, though. I wonder if it’s the scented additive that also adds that slight bit of extra shine…

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Color Club

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Misa Skinny Dipping and Comparison

Skinny Dipping is the second of two polishes I got from Misa’s Hot Summer collection for summer 2012. It’s a gorgeous neon aqua shade with blue shimmer!

The polish was fairly sheer; I think the sheerness helps add depth with the shimmer though. I used three coats here.

The consistency was a little thin on the first coat, but seemed less so by the third coat (that’s probably the effect of the humidity that day…).

The polish dries to a satin finish due to the neon pigment in it. I didn’t use any top coat for these photos, so as you can see it’s definitely not totally matte.

I really love the blue shimmer in this! In the shade:

This polish is quite unique, at least in my collection. I did a comparison to the most similar polish I have, Color Club Wicked Sweet (which itself is basically a dupe of Color Club Pure Energy; that reminds me I have some old posts still waiting in the archives that I should really get around to posting some day!). Left to right, Wicked Sweet, Skinny Dipping, Wicked Sweet, Skinny Dipping:

These two polishes are kind of like opposites – Wicked Sweet is blue with turquoise shimmer, and Skinny Dipping is turquoise with blue shimmer!

I also used three coats of Wicked Sweet, although it wasn’t quite as sheer as Skinny Dipping. This next photo really shows off the difference in the base colours:

Another big difference between the two is that Wicked Sweet is scented; it has a blueberry-candy scent to it.

I like how these two complement one another!

Category:

Color Club, Misa

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Color Club Frills and Cult Nails Feel Me Up

I did some fun glitter nail art that’s been on my nails for several days now! (A long time for me, haha!)

The yellow is Cult Nails Feel Me Up, a nice warm sunny yellow, and the coral is Color Club Frills, a deep pink coral.

Both have nice creme formulas that go on quite smoothly (Feel Me Up is my new favourite yellow!) and are shown with two coats.

I dabbed the coral glitter on with a finger while the yellow polish was still tacky. I got this glitter to use for making frankens, but haven’t done so yet. It’s from the online store GlitterUnique and it’s listed as solvent-resistant. When I bought it, it was called “matte salmon” glitter but I checked the site and they’re now listing it as “matte hot pink”.

The large yellow hexes were something I picked up elsewhere and was hoping I could franken with as well, but it turns out they totally melt in polish, unfortunately! But they are still nice as nail art. For these, I applied a drop of topcoat and then pressed them onto the nail, doing so carefully to get the hexes straight.

I then sealed everything with two layers of top coat. Oh and on the right hand, the colours are reversed; the first three fingers are the coral design and the last two the yellow. Love this manicure!

Category:

Color Club, Cult Nails

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White Creme Comparison

Today I’ve got a comparison to show you of the plain white creme polishes that I own. As you’ll see, one of the four is the clear winner in terms of opacity and formula!

From left to right, we have: Color Club French Tip, Kleancolor White, Sally Girl Pure, and Milani White on the Spot. This is the order in which I acquired these polishes, and getting the Milani from their fast-dry line with its supposed “one coat formula” is what prompted the comparison. I was skeptical and figured that was total BS since white cremes are notoriously streaky and badly-behaved, but as it turns out, the Milani white is actually *almost* a one-coater so the claim is only a slight exaggeration!

This first photo shows one coat of each polish, index to pinkie (bottom to top) in the same order as the bottles. I applied them all with a fairly thick coat (basically just not wiping off the brush on the bottle rim before applying), since whites and pastels usually benefit from a light touch rather than applying a lot of very thin coats which tend to go on streakier.

As you can see, the Milani on the pinkie is actually not bad, some bald areas but not too streaky looking! The other three polishes were very similar to one another (in terms of how the photo looks, the Sally Girl on my ring finger has an unfair disadvantage here, since that nail has the most ridges and for some reason has more of an orange stain than the others!). They were streakier and less self-leveling than the Milani. My mini bottle of Kleancolor needed a few drops of thinner in it, but that was no doubt just due to the fact that it’s the one I’ve actually used the most. I actually prefer the Kleancolor’s thick consistency among those three other polishes.

Here they are at two coats (without top coat). You can see that the Milani on my pinkie is the most opaque and smoothest; the others are slightly ridged lengthwise since they don’t self-level as well as the Milani. In terms of drying time, I didn’t really notice the Milani being much quicker than the others or anything, but they all dried fairly quickly.

Next I wanted to compare them in terms of how well they do for stamping. As a base I used one coat of Kleancolor Plum (followed by some quick dry top coat), then I used a design from Konad plate M15 and stamped on each polish in the same order as before (here, left to right). Please disregard the smudged/missing and crooked parts (augh, that pinkie!); that’s just user error and not the polishes!! They all worked pretty similarly but the Milani and the Color Club gave a slightly brighter white image.

Next I stamped using the French tip designs from Konad M86. (Polishes are in the same order index to pinkie, so now, right to left.) As you can see they don’t work so well for these larger-area images, though the actual gaps in the design are more user error than anything else. None of them leaves a very opaque image though; the stamps all have a sort of rippled look to them. Not sure if that could be reduced a bit by using a lighter touch when transferring the image onto the stamper. Again the Milani and Color Club give a slightly brighter result.

After stamping on the French tips I carefully went over them again with polish, just brushing it on, to fill them in and attempt to make them somewhat presentable. Here’s the result; all of them worked fine for this but the Milani did give the smoothest result. In terms of brushes, I should mention that the Fast Dry Milanis have a flat wide brush, similar to OPI and Kleancolor brushes. (Even the Kleancolor minis have a flat brush, though on a smaller scale. The other two polishes here have skinny round brushes.)

Another photo featuring Wade in the background!

So there you have it; best white creme polish in my (albeit limited) experience is definitely Milani’s White on the Spot!

Category:

Color Club, Kleancolor, Konad (stamping plates), Milani, Sally Girl

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Color Club holos and Konad plate M86

I was recently asked by Nail Polish Canada if I’d like to review one of the new Konad stamping plates they’ve added to their selection of image plates. The three new ones, M86, M87, and M88 are all French tip designs of various types.

This is the plate I received, M86, plain French tips with a pronounced inner curve, and an across-the-nail band that resembles a frilly lace garter.

I decided to use two Color Club holographic polishes, Revvvolution and Worth the Risqué, since these are very pigmented one-coat polishes, and so, good for stamping.

As you can see in the pics, my metal scraper already left some scratches on the surface of the plate, but this is normal when using a metal scraper and it doesn’t affect the results at all.

If you’ve never used French tip Konad designs before, I will say that there is a learning curve to it. I had never used Konad French tips and I had to practise at least a half-dozen times before I got something that I felt was decent enough to photograph. What helped me a lot in the end was watching this French mani tutorial by blogger The Polished Mommy. She goes through two different methods for French tips, one of them being Konad, and part-way through the tutorial when she demonstrates rolling the stamper onto the nail tip starting at one side, I had an “aha” moment, as I’d previously been trying to stamp head-on and the tips would almost always turn out crooked. I’d definitely recommend watching it if you’re like me and trying this type of stamping design for the first time!

The base polish is two coats of Revvvolution, by the way (the second one wasn’t all that necessary but I added it just in case, since I was photographing it), and there is no top coat on these first photos.

Another thing I learned in practising was to choose the right size of design for each nail. The plate has five tip sizes, and although it seems kind of silly to me now, at first I tried to use all five of them largest to smallest from thumb to pinkie. I ended up realizing that was a mistake, and to choose the correct design for each nail based on which one’s width seemed to best match the width of the nail.

I ended up using the second-largest tip on my thumb, the second-smallest on my index, middle and ring fingers, and then the smallest on my pinkie. I was actually kind of relieved that I wasn’t using the largest one in the end, since the greater width of that one makes it a bit trickier to avoid scraping right down to the plate in the center of the design and ending up with a bald spot and having to start over. Not sure if this would be less of an issue when using an old credit card to scrape, like many people do, instead of the metal Konad scraper. The four smaller nail tips didn’t give me any trouble like that, though!

I then decided to add the lace-garter design across my nails, but of course the first one I did went on kind of crooked and with bald spots (some day I’ll get better at stamping, I swear! haha); I then applied the others haphazardly on purpose so that at least they’d all be similar! I still like the way it turned out. I also added topcoat before taking the rest of these photos.

I was really happy that Worth the Risqué works so well for stamping. These two holos are gorgeous in the sunlight!

Although at first I was getting a little frustrated when I couldn’t get the tips stamped on straight, once I watched the tutorial and practised a little more it became a lot of fun to play around with this plate! Previously I’d only ever used French tip guide stickers (well, and tried freehand once, but that didn’t turn out well enough for me to be satisfied with it) but the thing with those is that you have to make sure that the base is completely dry before applying the stickers or else removing them will remove some of the base too. So, I’m really glad to have this plate; I’ll surely be doing French tips on my manis a lot more often now!!

If you’re in Canada like me you can find this plate and others here at Nail Polish Canada. (edit: I just noticed on their site that they also ship to the US.) You can probably also find them wherever you normally get your Konad plates; I’m not sure how widely available the newly released ones are at this point. 🙂

Disclosure: the stamping plate in this post was provided to me for review. Opinions expressed are my honest opinions.

Category:

Color Club, Konad (stamping plates)

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Color Club Metamorphosis and comparison

Today I have Color Club Metamorphosis to show you, and a comparison to Nicole by OPI Iceberg Lotus which I previously blogged about here. These two are very close dupes!

Metamorphosis is from Color Club’s recently released Take Wing collection for summer 2012. It’s a teal glass-fleck with blue/violet duochrome.

Here it is at two coats in natural overcast light. Formula was great.

And here are the two polishes side-by-side in the bottle.

On the nail, two coats each. Index and ring are Metamorphosis, middle and pinky are Iceberg Lotus. The only difference I saw is that Metamorphosis is slightly denser/more opaque.

Two coats each over one coat of Kleancolor Black, again index and ring are Metamorphosis, middle and pinky are Iceberg Lotus. It doesn’t really show in the pictures, but Iceberg Lotus seemed to show very slightly more duochrome, probably because it’s slightly more sheer.

So there you have it; I’d say these are definitely dupes! Good thing they’re awesome! 😀

Category:

Color Club, Kleancolor, Nicole by OPI

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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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Vegan Claws

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

Archive for the ‘Color Club’ Category

Color Club Blue-ming

Zoya Tracie, Meg and comparisons

Zoya Myrta and Comparisons

Comparison: Color Club’s Pure Energy and Wicked Sweet

Misa Skinny Dipping and Comparison

Color Club Frills and Cult Nails Feel Me Up

White Creme Comparison

Color Club holos and Konad plate M86

Color Club Metamorphosis and comparison

Cult Nails Super Powers Collection

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