blue | Vegan Claws

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

Posts tagged ‘blue’

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:

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:

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:

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.

Category:

FingerPaints

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China Glaze Optical Illusion

I was very excited last night when I received this in the mail! (And surprised – that seller shipped fast!!) Optical Illusion, from China Glaze’s brand new Prismatics collection, which I believe is due out in stores in March.

China Glaze Optical Illusion, one coat layered over one coat Kleancolor Black

I was all prepared to be disappointed with this, first of all since the first press release made it seem like they were going to be holographic polishes, but it eventually became known that they weren’t, and second of all since there are very few swatches online as of now and the ones there are, well, to be honest I wasn’t really impressed with the looks of the polishes.

But now that I have one of them any disappointment has totally evaporated! This is a really cool polish!

China Glaze calls these chroma glitters, and uses the phrase “holographic-like technology” in its description of these. I was very curious about this, since I understood “chroma glitters”, glitter and duochrome, but I was at a loss as to what they meant by “holographic-like” technology. So, it’s not holo but it’s holo-like?? Turns out that description is pretty apt! When I look at the polish on my nails sparkling in the light, I can swear it looks like there are small holo glitters in there, but looking at the bottle none of the glitter appears to be holographic! Feels like one way or the other, my eyes are playing tricks on me! The name of this colour definitely fits!

Anyway, on to the swatches. As usual you can click on them to see larger versions. I took some of the photos last night in artificial light and some this morning in indirect daylight, and they aren’t the greatest photos ever, but I’m hoping to make up for that in sheer numbers, ha! I took a bunch in various different indoor lighting to try to show off different aspects of the polish. These first photos are all indoor, artificial light, two coats of Optical Illusion and one thick coat of Poshe topcoat. Please disregard the bald spot on my ring finger, I didn’t notice it during application!

Still indoor, with flash:

Next, I decided to layer Optical Illusion over black since that tends to show off duochrome really well. The rest of the photos show one coat of Optical Illusion over one coat of Kleancolor Black, with Poshe topcoat. These first ones are indoor, artificial light. You may notice I have stray glitter stuck to my fingers in these. I was too excited about taking more photos to bother fully cleaning up the residue after removing the Optical-Illusion-only version!

Artificial light, with flash:

From this morning, in natural indirect light:

Natural indirect light, with flash:

Well. As you can see from the photos, this is a turquoise microglitter polish with all sorts of different coloured glitters, both small and hex shaped medium, that sparkle like crazy, as well as duochrome that flashes magenta-purple. Pretty amazing!

I had no trouble with application; it’s quite thick like these dense glitters usually are, but it wasn’t problematic. It dries rough as is to be expected. After the single thick layer of Poshe I put on, the one coat of Optical Illusion over black now feels only very slightly textured on my nails, so I’m sure a second layer of topcoat would get it totally smooth. Certainly not the roughest glitter out there!

As you might have guessed by now, my verdict on Optical Illusion is two thumbs up! I definitely want to get a few more from this collection!

Category:

China Glaze, Kleancolor

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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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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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NYX Jungle

This lovely polish is NYX Jungle! Turquoise blue with golden-green shimmer. This is 3 coats, so if you can’t stand visible nail lines then this polish may not be for you. Personally, I love it and don’t mind that it’s fairly sheer. It would also be good for layering over an opaque creme. The formula was great, no issues with application. If you’re in Canada you can still order this polish from nyxcosmetics.ca; not sure where else it’s available as the other websites where I buy NYX don’t have it anymore… Definitely worth hunting down though!

Oh, and these photos are without topcoat.

Category:

NYX

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Cult Nails Fall 2011

Since Cult Nails’ winter collection is already up for pre-sale on their website (until November 11th), I realized that it’s well past time for me to post my swatches of their fall collection!

I originally bought these polishes in the last pre-sale and received and swatched them in August, but wasn’t happy with some of the photos (hmmm, seems like I’ve said that before…) so I recently redid the swatches for Awakening and Enigmatic. So if my nails and the conditions of the photos look different, it’s because they are!

Awakening

This is a muted teal creme; I love this kind of colour. The formula is thin and it’s sheer and a little streaky on the first coat, but with three coats as shown here, it evens out to a smooth creme finish.

Enigmatic

This is a vampy raisin coloured polish; it has a sheer brownish base with plum coloured shimmer that has flashes of reddish and bluish shimmer particles when the light hits it. An interesting complex colour, but like Awakwning, the formula is very thin and sheer, and it was streaky at one and two coats. This is three coats in the photos, and to be honest I think it might have benefited from a fourth.

In a Trance

This is an army green with gold shimmer. I love this!! This one had a great formula, the best of the collection. It was smooth, self-leveling, and easy to apply. This is three coats.

I also wanted to see how this compared to OPI At Your Quebec and Call and a few other olive green polishes I have. From the bottle comparison it was clear that they aren’t dupes, but they are similar.

Here is the comparison photo, from thumb to pinkie: Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics Swamp Thing ( a creme, but I wanted to see how the base colour compared), Zoya Yara, In a Trance, OPI At Your Quebec and Call, and China Glaze Cat’s Eye. All are three coats, all have good application. As usual, you can click on the photo (and any of the other photos) to see more detail.

The base colour of Swamp Thing is indeed close to In a Trance’s base colour, although Swamp Thing is a bit darker. Zoya Yara has more of a blue-grey tone to it so it’s not close at all. At Your Quebec and Call is the closest to In a Trance, but the OPI is slightly more sheer, has a denser shimmer/slight frostiness. The reflection from the denser shimmer makes it look a tad lighter overall. China Glaze Cat’s Eye is lighter and more yellow than In a Trance, and is frostier than the OPI.

Hypnotize Me

This is a pretty unique polish! Sheer aqua blue-green with duochrome aqua/violet glitter (although these photos didn’t capture the violet, it’s quite obvious on the nail when seen at an angle). It’s got a jelly finish, but it dries fairly matte. For the photos I used Nubar Diamont as top coat, but it also makes a great accent nail as-is for any satiny-matte polish. Without topcoat, when dry, it’s not completely smooth but it’s not bumpy either; more like a very fine sandpaper. With topcoat it becomes smooth. The polish has a kind of weird goopy texture, but the application isn’t problematic at all. It’s meant to be a layering polish but I like it by itself too. This is three coats in the pictures.

And here it is layered (one coat) over the other polishes in the collection: from top, In a Trance, Enigmatic, Awakening. It looks great over all three of them!

Overall this is a great collection; I really love the colour choices! I’m looking forward to their winter collection…

Category:

Cult Nails

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Soulstice Spa swatches

Soulstice Spa is a relatively new brand of all-vegan nail polish that I learned about a few months ago, so I figured what better way to start off my vegan nail polish blog than to review a few of their shades.

Here are the five polishes I picked up on my first Soulstice purchase: Rio, Milan, Kona, Tokyo, and Montreal.

From left: Kona, Montreal, Tokyo, Milan, Rio.

On to the swatches! These swatches are all without base or top coat. Any ridges you see are my nails, not the fault of the polish! Photos are taken in my solarium in direct sun, except where noted.

Tokyo, indirect sunlight.

Tokyo. This is a burgundy-wine with purple undertones and golden-bronze shimmer particles. The formula is excellent, thin, smooth and easy to control. This is three thin coats. After two coats there were a few slightly balder patches (again, these were thin coats though) but three coats was perfect.

The first photo was taken in the evening just as the sun had dipped below the building across the park (argh! was hoping to get the swatch done while the sun was still shining!), so, indirect sunlight. The next day the sun was cooperating so I took the second photo while I still had Tokyo on before moving on to the other swatches.

Milan. Similar to Tokyo except a little lighter and without the purple undertone; this is more of a burgundy with a slight dark rose tone to it. The golden shimmer is also finer than Tokyo’s shimmer. This is also three thin coats.

Rio. A very bright frosty coral red. This one is more sheer than the others. This is three coats, the last coat being fairly thick. My nails aren’t in the greatest shape these days so I wanted to hide the unevenness and places where there were some peeling spots that had absorbed the darker burgundy polishes. This had a similar formula to the other non-cremes and didn’t really give me any trouble with brush strokes. Hanging out in the background of these shots is our kitty Wu being cute; I didn’t have the heart to crop him out!!

Montreal. Ahh, my favourite city. I lived there four years and sometimes I really miss it. This is a gorgeous medium purple shimmer, a slightly red-toned purple. Love this one. Maybe not the most unique shade, but it’s beautiful. This is two coats; the first coat was just slightly streaky but the second evened everything out. As with a lot of purples, the photos make it look more blue than it is. The last photo is taken inside in the light of my light-therapy lamp in an attempt to get a shot truer to colour.

Kona, indirect sunlight.

Kona. The only creme that I picked up, a light sky blue that leans slightly toward turquoise. Again, maybe not the most unique shade, but speaking for myself I can’t seem to get enough shades like this. The formula on this one was thicker than the others, and gave me a little more difficulty to apply. This is two coats, the second quite thick. It did do a good job of leveling itself out with the second thick coat. I got a few tiny bubbles so next time I’ll be sure to roll, not shake this polish like I did this time. Overall I do really like this shade a lot, it’s opaque and it dries very nice and glossy!

As a whole I was quite impressed with the polishes I picked up. As mentioned, the formula on the shimmers was excellent and easy to work with even on my currently peeling and uneven bare nails. I’ve tried Kona again since taking these photos (they were taken during the summer) and didn’t have the same issues with application, so it may just have been the heat and humidity when I swatched these. Drying time on these was pretty good; no complaints there. I’d say my favourites out of these were Montreal and Tokyo.

All in all these were great and I’ve bought a few more Soulstice polishes in the time since I took these photos. …maybe someday they’ll come out with some greens…? 😀

Category:

Soulstice Spa

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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.

Posts tagged ‘blue’

Layering with FingerPaints flakies

China Glaze Optical Illusion

Cult Nails Super Powers Collection

Orly Au Champagne

OPI Fly and comparisons

Dark teal comparison featuring Nicole by OPI

NYX Jungle

Cult Nails Fall 2011

Soulstice Spa swatches

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