gold | Vegan Claws

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

Posts tagged ‘gold’

Black Dahlia Lacquer Austin City Limits

The next Black Dahlia Lacquer I have to show you is Austin City Limits, a light periwinkle/cornflower leaning blue holo with added gold holo microglitters and pink-purple shimmer flecks.

There was no sun unfortunately so these first photos are all with flash and/or Ott Lite.

Two coats plus top coat, no issues with the formula.

This photo is under halogen lighting:

Shaded natural light:

The pink-purple shimmer flecks were hard to capture in photos, but I think this photo I took at work does the best job of it (hey, fluorescent office lighting is good for something after all!):

The second day I added stamping with my new Messy Mansion XL rectangular stamper, which I love and highly recommend! It’s squishier than the Konad stampers, plus the rectangular shape helps to get patterns on straighter.

This is basically the first time that I’ve done a full-nail pattern on all ten nails, since I used to have so much trouble with patchy spots and getting them on straight.

I stamped using China Glaze Gold Fusion (one of the magnetics, they’re great for stamping!) and the plate is Messy Mansion MM13. I’m excited to do lots more stamping with this new Messy Mansion stamper! 😀

Category:

Black Dahlia Lacquer, China Glaze, Messy Mansion (stamping)

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Black Dahlia Lacquer Dandelion Fields

This beauty is Black Dahlia Lacquer Dandelion Fields. I think it’s my favourite of the six BDL polishes I have so far! It’s a muted coral-leaning orange holo with pinkish-copper flecks.

This is two coats plus top coat, shown under Ott Lite. I found the formula slightly thick but not difficult to apply.

Under warm halogen light it looks a bit more yellow than it really is:

With flash:

In the shade:

There was no sun when I swatched it, but there was the following day when I was wearing it as a mani. Here it is in the sun. The accent nail has a layer of Indigo Bananas Hay Ride, one of the new multichrome flakies (which are amazing!)

This last photo was taken on the bus, sorry for the weird reflections! But it shows off the accent nail better than the full sun shot. 🙂

Category:

Black Dahlia Lacquer, Indigo Bananas

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Kunimitsu Nail Potions Russian Blue

Today I have a cat-themed polish for you: Russian Blue by Kunimitsu Nail Potions on Etsy.

It’s a shimmery greyish-blue with light blue microglitter and gold dot glitter to represent the cats’ eyes.

Shown in three coats plus topcoat.

I did have to work a little to get the gold dots out of the bottle and placed onto the nail, but it wasn’t too problematic.

I really like this fun, pretty polish!

And here is my little blue boy, Julius! Isn’t he handsome? 😀 He is also just about the friendliest little guy imaginable; he loves everyone, including a dog named Fluffy who lives in an apartment down the hall from us.

Julius was adopted from a local shelter where he had been brought as a stray kitten. He has a chronic upper respiratory infection (I had to clean some crusts off one of his eyes to prep him for his photo shoot, in fact). He’s been on every antibiotic in the book over the years but the infection always comes back. On a serious note, it’s really lucky for him that he was adopted by people who would never return him to the shelter for sneezing globs all over their furniture and stuff year after year, because that “shelter” isn’t a no-kill and I don’t know if cats returned for that kind of issue might then be deemed “unadoptable”… 😦

Love you, Julius! ❤

Category:

Kunimitsu Nail Potions

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Black Dahlia Lacquer Beach Jasmine and Comparison

I recently learned of Black Dahlia Lacquer, an indie brand based in Texas that just launched last fall, who make vegan polishes. The polishes looked great, so I had to place an order to check them out! 😉

From left to right, Dandelion Fields, Beach Jasmine, My Butter Half, 90 in November (this one wasn’t part of my order but was sent as an extra!), Daffodil Petals, Austin City Limits. The polishes come in an 8ml ‘petite’ size, which is what I ordered, as well as regular 14ml full size. Today I’ve got swatches and a comparison for Beach Jasmine but I hope to also photograph the rest of them soon!

I love the bottles, the 8ml bottles have the same unique shape as the full size ones, which is a really nice touch! The brush, again even in the mini size bottles, is a flat wide brush, my favourite type.

Beach Jasmine is a light taupey-beige creme with lots of gold flecks. A beautiful nude colour!

I used two coats here. (My coats seem to have been a bit thinner on my index finger than the other nails and I think maybe it shows a bit in the photos…) The formula was smooth and easy to apply. Very happy with this polish!

In the shade:

Since I love nudes with gold shimmer, I had a few in mind that this one reminded me of: Cult Nails Mazo, China Glaze Fast Track, and Essence Irreplaceable.

This first photo shows two coats of each polish. As you can see, Mazo is much more sheer than the others.

Left to right, 2 coats each: Cult Nails Mazo, Black Dahlia Lacquer Beach Jasmine, China Glaze Fast Track, Essence Irreplaceable

Next photos show 3 coats of Cult Nails Mazo on the index and 3 coats of China Glaze Fast Track on the ring (the third wasn’t really necessary but I wanted to better cover my ridges on that nail).

Left to right: Cult Nails Mazo, Black Dahlia Lacquer Beach Jasmine, China Glaze Fast Track, Essence Irreplaceable

Mazo is more yellow-toned, Fast Track is browner, and Irreplaceable is just slightly more grey.

Left to right: Cult Nails Mazo, Black Dahlia Lacquer Beach Jasmine, China Glaze Fast Track, Essence Irreplaceable

Irreplaceable is definitely the closest to Beach Jasmine though. Irreplaceable’s shimmer is slightly more dense and has a very slight green shift to it that doesn’t show on the nail, but the two are close. I believe Irreplaceable is hard to find now, so this polish is a good replacement (har, har!) for anyone looking for it.

Top to bottom: Cult Nails Mazo, Black Dahlia Lacquer Beach Jasmine, China Glaze Fast Track, Essence Irreplaceable

Now, I can’t show a polish with Jasmine in the name without showing my beautiful Jasmine. 😉

Jasmine is the most feral of our cats; she’s almost 9 years old now and has been with me since the age of 6 months, but it’s just in the past two years that she’s really allowed me to pet her at all (and then, just in her ‘safe’ situations – but in those situations, she’s learned that she really likes it!).

She’s much more comfortable with other cats than with humans. Here she is on the bed with Oliver (one of her littermates, who adapted much more easily to us humans), Seymour who is licking Oliver, and the baby of the family, Wu, on the right!

Category:

Black Dahlia Lacquer

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Zoya Autumn and Comparison

Zoya Autumn is from last fall’s Ignite collection. It’s a great metallic orange-copper base with sparkly gold shimmer flecks. Two coats plus top coat.

Little Wu kept photobombing me. ❤

Indirect light:

I compared Autumn to four other shades: OPI Bronzed to Perfection (2 coats), which has more of a creme base with added shimmer, Deborah Lippmann Phoenix Rising (3 coats), which has small bronze, pink, and greenish-gold glass flecks in a (I think) clear base, Sparitual Rusted Lux (3 coats), a rusty red jelly base with heavy gold glass fleck, and Sparitual Conduit (3 coats), a brownish jelly base with the same gold glass flecks. The differences show best in the shade and artificial light photos.

Thumb to pinkie: OPI Bronzed to Perfection, Deborah Lippmann Phoenix Rising, Zoya Autumn, Sparitual Rusted Lux, Sparitual Conduit

Shade/indirect light:

Thumb to pinkie: OPI Bronzed to Perfection, Deborah Lippmann Phoenix Rising, Zoya Autumn, Sparitual Rusted Lux, Sparitual Conduit

Ott Lite:

Thumb to pinkie: OPI Bronzed to Perfection, Deborah Lippmann Phoenix Rising, Zoya Autumn, Sparitual Rusted Lux, Sparitual Conduit

I love all of these!

Category:

Deborah Lippmann, OPI, SpaRitual, Zoya

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P2 Before Sunrise and The Lady Varnishes Orodruin

P2 Before Sunrise is a metallic burgundy red polish with duochrome that shifts to a plum-purple with a hint of blue at extreme angles. I got this polish in a swap with a lovely woman from the Netherlands. Two coats, although the second was hardly needed.

On the accent nail is Orodruin from indie polish maker The Lady Varnishes. It’s a shimmery copper-orange duochrome with a tiny bit of holo sparkle in it, that shifts to a golden yellow and then greenish yellow. It dries to a satin-matte finish; here I’ve used two coats plus top coat.

Shade:

Ott light:

Category:

P2, The Lady Varnishes

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OPI Zom-body to Love and LA Girl Synergy

Haven’t had much time to edit photos and posts lately… How about another green?

This is a manicure I did a couple weeks ago using the glow-in-the-dark OPI Zom-body to Love, which was released for Halloween 2011, and LA Girl Glitter Addict in Synergy sandwiched on the accent nail.

Three coats of the OPI (which dries super fast due to all the glow-in-the-dark pigment, by the way), and the LA Girl glitter is sandwiched between coats two and three on my ring finger. Plus top coat, as the glow-in-the-dark also dries quite matte and slightly gritty.

Category:

LA Girl, OPI

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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!

Category:

Indigo Bananas

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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.