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

Posts tagged ‘coral’

Barry M Peach Melba

Today for your viewing pleasure, I’ve got more photos than necessary of a plain peach creme! Heh. I like the photos and don’t feel like choosing. This is Barry M Peach Melba, a very nice creme peach shade.

Barry M Peach Melba

Shown are three coats, and my index has a layer of Poshe topcoat overtop to cover up a big smudge that I got from removing a cat hair that got into the wet polish before I could take the pictures!

Barry M Peach Melba

It’s a pastel shade of coral-toned peach, not too pale and not too bright. Disclaimer: these photos were taken in sunlight as the sun was beginning to set, so they are more orange-toned than in other lighting situations.

Barry M Peach Melba

I found the formula a little thick and hard to level, hence the need for three coats. I added a few drops of thinner to the polish. All that may have had something to do with the hot and humid weather. (I suspect this might be a frequent theme in my posts for the next few months… “It was thick and I had to add thinner, but…”)

Barry M Peach Melba

I found that it dried very quickly, but again the weather might have been a factor…

Barry M Peach Melba

I really like peaches and corals lately; I’ll have to do some more comparison posts for these shades! Especially since these ones turned out a little too orange!

Barry M Peach Melba

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Barry M

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Soulstice Spa Harbour Island and Cape Cod

Soulstice Spa has released four new polish shades into their collection for spring 2012, and today I have two of them to show you, complete with comparisons to a couple other polishes I have.

The two polishes I got are Cape Cod, a light, slightly muted blue with pearly shimmer, and Harbour Island, a pale, sheer peachy-pink-nude jelly with holographic glitter in it! As a bonus, a couple of adorable kitties will be making an appearance in today’s photos! 😉 All photos are taken in direct sunlight.

These next photos are three coats of Cape Cod. At first I found the formula to be thick so I was having trouble evening out my coats but I added a little Beauty Secrets thinner and that helped a lot.

I really like this shade of blue and the fine pearly shimmer!

The shimmer has a sort of blueish glow to it in the sunlight, very cool!

This polish reminded me of Milani Antique, another light blue with the same type of finish, so I did a little comparison. Index and ring are Antique, middle and pinkie are Cape Cod, three coats each. As you can see the Milani is a couple shades darker than Cape Cod.

And here is my boy Thor checking out the comparison, haha!

Next up, Harbour Island. These photos are also three coats.

The formula was really smooth and easy to apply but it’s a sheer and the third coat adds more sparkle and reflectivity.

The base colour of this polish is pale peach with a bit of a pinkish tone.

The holo glitter does dry slightly rough, but top coat easily takes care of that (these photos include top coat).

As always you can click on any of these photos to see the sparkly holo glitter in better detail!

I can’t say that I have any other peach/nude jellies with holo glitter! But here is a comparison to the closest thing I have, LA Splash Sparkling Jellyfish. Sparkling Jellyfish, in the middle in the following photo, is significantly deeper, brighter and more pink.

And finally, Harbour Island makes a great layering polish; here it is over China Glaze V, a light orange-coral creme. Hanging out in the photo is my boy Wade! (Wade lost an eye to a severe upper respiratory infection as a kitten when he first arrived at the shelter, but it doesn’t slow him down in the slightest! Nor does it prevent him from being the alpha male in our little feline “colony”!)

The other two polishes in this release, which I don’t have (yet, at least!), are St. Tropez, a beige nude that looks to have pearly shimmer similar to Cape Cod, and Kauai, a berry pink with golden shimmer. If you’re curious about them, blogger Glazed Talons reviewed them both here. These shades are available directly through Soulstice Spa on their website; Nail Polish Canada also sells Soulstice but they don’t have these new shades in stock yet as of the time I’m posting this.

Disclosure: the Soulstice Spa polishes in this post were provided to me for review. All opinions are my own honest opinions. (The other polishes in this post were purchased by me. The cats were rescued from the street and adopted from a shelter, respectively. :P)

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China Glaze, LA Splash, Milani, Soulstice Spa

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Comparison: FingerPaints Circus Peanuts and China Glaze Peachy Keen

I recently got four polishes from the FingerPaints spring 2012 collection, Gumdrops and Lollipops, and today I have Circus Peanuts to show you. I love the colour; it’s a pinky, pastel coral peach creme shade. The formula isn’t the greatest but not the worst either. It’s quite thick and very pigmented like most FingerPaints cremes are, but it’s also a little streaky like a lot of pastels are. I ended up using three coats to even out a few slightly patchy spots I could still see after two coats. I’m thinking that adding some thinner to this polish will help with the application.

FingerPaints Circus Peanuts

When this first came out I wondered how it compared to China Glaze Peachy Keen. Turns out they’re in the same colour family but not really all that close.

FingerPaints Circus Peanuts and China Glaze Peachy Keen

Circus Peanuts is a bit lighter and definitely pinker; Peachy Keen is more of an orangey peach. This photo shows three coats of each.

FingerPaints Circus Peanuts and China Glaze Peachy Keen

FingerPaints Circus Peanuts (index and ring) and China Glaze Peachy Keen (middle and pinky)

The formula on Peachy Keen is streaky and significantly more difficult than Circus Peanuts’ in my opinion. While I used three coats for each, the third was definitely necessary on Peachy Keen whereas I felt that I could have gotten away with two for Circus Peanuts if I had been a bit more careful. Shown below is the result after three streaky coats (with top coat but after about a day and a half of wear). This polish, while not quite as thick as Circus Peanuts, definitely could benefit from a good dose of thinner just to attempt to make it less streaky. I really love the colour though, so I think it’s worth the hassle of its application!

China Glaze Peachy Keen

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China Glaze, FingerPaints

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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:
Kleancolor Holo Pink and Holo Orange over Milani Retro

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

In the shade:
Kleancolor Holo Pink and Holo Orange over Milani Retro

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!

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Kleancolor, Milani

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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…? 😀

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Soulstice Spa

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