May Day!
Kleancolor Black with red stars that I picked out of Kleancolor Blind Date, in honour of International Workers’ Day.
Posts tagged ‘layering’
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! 😀
Zoya Perrie with black and white glitter
I recently made this frankenpolish (nail polish that you mix together yourself!) top coat of black and white hex glitter. As far as frankens go, this one isn’t particularly original or complicated; it’s basically just LA Girls Glitter Addict in Uninhibited, thinned out with some clear polish and with some loose white hex glitter added. I still haven’t decided on a name for this creation… I love making frankens; it’s so much fun!
The base shown here is Zoya Perrie, a warm toned, light yet bright purple. This polish is a one-coater with a great formula! The sun was setting when I took these photos, so apologies that the colour is a bit off – Perrie looks redder than she should. If you click on the large versions of the photos you can see where the glitter sort of sinks into the polish a bit leaving slight pock-marks… I’m not sure if this is just from not letting the base colour dry enough before adding the glitter coat, but a second layer of top coat would take care of it!
NYX Girls Pure Green and LA Girls Purge
A little late, but this was my requisite green manicure last Saturday for St. Patrick’s Day! This is NYX Girls Pure Green with accent nails in Purge from the LA Girl Glitter Addict line.
Shown are two coats of Pure Green, a jellyish kelly green, layered with two coats of Purge on the accent nails, with top coat. Pure Green has a nice smooth formula and these were two medium-thick coats. I got a few tiny bubbles from slopping on a bit too much top coat, but they weren’t very noticeable. Overcast natural light.
Nubar Wildlife and LA Girl Crowd Surfing
Wildlife is one of Nubar’s amazing duochrome polishes. It was released with their Going Green collection, and it’s a green that is olive but that shifts to leafy green at one angle and to gold through to copper complete with pinkish tone at another angle. It’s a great shade and quite unique!
I layered it on my ring finger with LA Girl Crowdsurfing from the Rockstar line since these two polishes seem to go well together. Crowdsurfing is a very very sheer green jelly base (definitely best for layering rather than on its own) with red-gold flakies and tiny green iridescent glitter. It actually reminds me of Cult Nails’ Toxic Seaweed, which I recently reviewed, except it’s like its very, very watered down cousin with much less colour and glitter. I have the same “hmmm” uncertain feeling about Crowdsurfing’s colour scheme as I do with Toxic Seaweed (in that it kind of has a red-green Christmasy thing going on), but it really does go quite well with Wildlife! Just adds a subtle sparkle to it, and a slightly more green tint.
Shown are two coats of Wildlife. Wildlife has a great formula, like all the Nubar duochromes I’ve tried, and applying it is a breeze. On my ring finger are two coats of Crowdsurfing overtop of Wildlife. No complaints with Crowdsurfing’s formula either; it’s your typical flakie consistency and easy to apply.
More photos to show off all the different angles! As usual, you can click on any photo to see more detail of the lovely duochrome.
Nicole by OPI Iceberg Lotus
This is another one of my very favourite polishes! I believe Nicole by OPI Iceberg Lotus was first released last spring. I still see it at some stores that sell Nicole polish, but not others, here in Canada. It’s an amazing teal duochrome with a near-foil glass-fleck shimmer finish that flashes from blue through to purple. I photographed it over black since it really brings out the duochrome that way. The formula is great; no complaints there. Two coats over one coat of Kleancolor Black, shown in natural overcast light.
Cult Nails Let’s Get Nekkid Collection
Today I have swatches of the latest Cult Nails collection to show you! The collection is called Let’s Get Nekkid and consists of four nude shades for a wide variety of skin tones as well as a green glittery flakie polish. The nudes are all named after nude beaches. As usual, you can click on any of the photos to see more detail.
I’ll go from lightest to darkest for the nudes, so first up is Mazo. This one works best as a nude on my pale self. It’s a sheer beige base with lots of golden shimmer. The shimmer is the large flake-type shimmer particle. Shown is three coats, but it was already smooth and even at only one coat (this one has the best formula in the collection in my opinion), so the choice of how many coats to use is strictly based on how sheer you want it to be.
Next is Baker, a deeper and more opaque tan beige with orange tones in it and with similar golden shimmer. The formula seemed a little thicker than Mazo but was still fairly smooth and even and could probably be used at one coat for a sheer wash of colour. I used three coats for the photos (it’s more opaque than Mazo, still a relatively sheer polish though, so I used three coats since my nails are a bit stained).
Tulum is a dusty chocolately medium taupe-brown with golden shimmer that doesn’t show up as much as it does in the first two polishes; I’m not sure if that’s just because the base is more opaque or if the particles themselves are different. This one was a little streaky on the first coat, and the formula was a little thin and threatened to run down the brush stem and flood the nail if I wasn’t careful. Adjusting to that, a second thicker coat on top of the first evened out the polish.
I did a comparison to Power Thief from Cult Nails’ previous collection (which I reviewed here), and as you can see, Power Thief (on the left) has more of a reddish-pink undertone and has denser shimmer that shows up more on the nail. The shimmer in Power Thief is silvery and flashes little sparkles of blue and pink in the light.
Cult Nails Power Thief (left) and Tulum (right)
Cult Nails Power Thief (left) and Tulum (right)
The final nude shade is Swanbourne, a very deep neutral brown, again with golden shimmer. Like Tulum, this shade is opaque and the shimmers don’t show up as much as they do in the first two shades. Shown are two coats.
Last but not least we have the green flakie, Toxic Seaweed. This is a blue-toned green jelly with lots of small glitter and flakies that shift from red to yellow to green. This one has the same ingredient issue as Clairvoyant does, so unless they can find a new supplier or substitute for that ingredient, it will be limited edition. So, if you like this one, get it while you can; it’s still available on Cult Nails’ website as of the time I’m publishing this post!
The formula on this one was thinner than I expected, but only because I imagined it would be super-thick and it wasn’t. It applied just fine and this was two coats. I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about this one; I love it at an angle when the flakes are reflecting yellow, but straight on it can have a red-and-green kind of Christmasy look to it that isn’t really my favourite.
Since I usually show the glitter or flakie polish over the others when I review Cult Nails collections, I did it again here although it’s not really as appropriate in this case – Mazo is too light to change its look, Baker just kind of makes the colour more muted by removing the blue tone, over Tulum it becomes sort of a swampy looking thing (kind of interesting, actually) – layering it over Swanbourne makes the most sense! This photo shows one coat of Toxic Seaweed layered over Mazo, Baker, Tulum and Swanbourne (left to right).
My overall impression of this collection is great; I love nudes and these ones have golden shimmer which makes me love them even more! Those with cool, pink-toned skin may not be quite as thrilled with this collection as I am, but I can see Mazo becoming a go-to nude polish for me since it matches my skin tone quite well and looks good at one coat (or at least it would without the stained nails!!) as well as at two or three! Baker is another favourite; I love the golden orangey-peachy tan tone. All of these shades are pretty unique in my collection. I do recommend waiting a couple minutes between coats when applying the darker among these polishes to prevent dragging and bald spots.
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.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
I wasn’t originally planning to do anything special with my nails for Valentine’s Day, but then I put on Zoya’s Cho right before bed last night, didn’t use quick-dry topcoat, and woke up with my own fingerprints on several of the nails, haha!
So, this morning I decided to add some glitter to cover up the fingerprints – LA Girls Glitter Addict polishes in Inspire (light pink) and Animate (red). I topped it off with a layer of Zoya Lucy, a sheer jellyish off-white, for a somewhat subtle-looking jelly sandwich. Pics are in artificial light with flash.
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!
Vegan Claws 
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