multi glitter | Vegan Claws

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

Posts tagged ‘multi glitter’

China Glaze Kalahari Kiss and I Herd That

Here are the other two On Safari polishes that I recently purchased. First up is Kalahari Kiss, a very yellow-toned beige creme (I love this colour!). Shown are two coats and I had no issues with the formula; it went on quite smoothly. Photos are in partially sunny and shady conditions.

I did a glitter-tipped gradient using I Herd That over Kalahari Kiss. I Herd That is an orange-toned bronzy glitter with holo glitter in it. It was quite easy to apply, I just brushed and dabbed it on to make the gradient. I did two coats of the glitter at the tips, receding to one coat further back on the nail, then added top coat. The glitter dries a bit rough (and matte) so a layer or two of topcoat is needed if you want to smooth out the texture and get it nice and shiny.

Under my Ott Lite:

This next photo features my beautiful girl Azrael!

Next I have two coats of I Herd That over bare nails (plus one coat of Poshe topcoat) to show how it looks on its own. As before, it was easy to apply, no need to “place” the glitter or anything like that.

Since a few people had expressed curiosity about how this one compares to last winter’s Ulta-exclusive China Glaze glitter polish, Fireside Glow, I decided to do a comparison. I compared it to Fireside Glow and Ulta-mate Holiday, the other Ulta-exclusive glitter in that same release, both of which I was able to obtain thanks to a helpful US-based nail polish enthusiast! 🙂

Left to right, Fireside Glow, I Herd That, Ulta-mate Holiday:

The swatches show two coats of each polish. I found the formula thinner on the Ulta exclusive shades; they were not quite as easy as I Herd That to get opaque in two coats without getting bald spots, but no big issues. Index to pinkie, Fireside Glow, I Herd That, Ulta-mate Holiday, I Herd That.

As you can see, Fireside Glow is not all that close to I Herd That after all; it’s much more of a pinkish copper shade. Ulta-mate Holiday is obviously much more yellow than the others and seems to have a higher concentration of holo glitter whereas the others also have copper and orange glitters mixed in respectively. I Herd That seems to have a little less holo glitter than Fireside Glow.

On the other hand I found I Herd That to be sparklier than the others in lower lighting situations, probably because of the greater amount of non-holo glitter, if I had to guess why!

Slightly blurred to show the holo sparkle in the sun:

Category:

China Glaze

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Zoya Beach Skittles

Today I have a skittle mani to show you, using the polishes from Zoya’s Beach collection for summer 2012.

Thumb to pinkie are Zoya Reagan, Wednesday, Shelby, Arizona, and Lara. The bottle I’m holding is Zoya Tracie, the only non-creme polish from Beach.

I plan on doing comparison posts for all of these polishes later, so I’m not going to talk much about the formulas right now. These swatches were all two coats, though.

Some shade photos:

Later on, I added a coat of Sally Girl Way2Disco, a blue-teal iridescent glitter (shown here in the shade, since the sun was not cooperating):

Stay tuned for comparisons of the Beach (and Surf, the other half of the collection!) polishes to other similar polishes in my stash! I hope to get those posts started in the near future.

Category:

Sally Girl, Zoya

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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!

Category:

Frankenpolish, LA Girl, Zoya

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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.

Category:

LA Girl, Zoya

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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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Multi-Coloured Glitter Comparison

When I reviewed Soulstice Spa’s LA in October, I mentioned that I would do a comparison with several other multi-coloured glitter polishes I have. It’s been a while but here is that comparison. I don’t own the famous “original” glitter of this type, Deborah Lippmann’s Happy Birthday, but here are the ones I do have.

From left, OPI Rainbow Connection, Soulstice Spa LA, Essence Circus Confetti, NYX Girls Carnival, Wet n Wild Party of 5 Glitters. Click on any of these photos to see more detail in the larger versions. And please excuse the pink-stained nails! All of these polishes have clear bases and any pink or orangey colour you see is just the evidence of my most recent manicures.

Here they are at one coat, thumb to pinky in the same order as above: thumb OPI Rainbow Conncetion, index Soulstice Spa LA, middle Essence Circus Confetti, ring NYX Girls Carnival, pinky Wet n Wild Party of 5 Glitters. OPI and Essence are clearly the densest of the bunch, followed by the Soulstice.

At two coats:

And at three coats:

As mentioned above the OPI and NYX are denser than the others, and the Essence and Wet n Wild are least dense. The OPI is different in that it has larger hex glitters in addition to the small and medium.

Colour-wise, the Wet n Wild is the most different among them since it has fewer colours and lacks any yellow or warm-toned orangey red glitter. It’s also my least favourite of these polishes for that reason. The Essence polish has more pink glitter than any of the others, including some lighter pink, and has some darker blue as well. NYX Girls Carnival is missing the light pink and dark blue of the Essence, but also has small cool-toned cherry-red glitter that the others aside from Wet n Wild don’t. OPI Rainbow Connection and Soulstice Spa LA are similar colour-wise to the NYX Girls but without the cool-toned cherry red. I’d say the NYX also has a higher concentration of yellow glitter, and the Soulstice has a lower concentration of pink glitter. The yellow glitter in Essence is a paler than the yellows in all the others, more of a gold.

My picks from these are, well, the denser ones/ones with the most yellow glitter – NYX Girls Carnival and OPI Rainbow Connection, followed by Soulstice LA!

Category:

Essence, NYX, OPI, Soulstice Spa, Wet n Wild

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A couple of recent OPI glitters

A few weeks ago I did this alternating manicure with two of OPI’s recent glitter polishes. Excuse Moi? is from the Muppets holiday collection, and Nicole by OPI Disco Dolls is from the Kardashian collection. They have a lot in common so I thought they would go well together.

The two polishes are very similar in that they have the same kind of multi-coloured medium hex glitter in them, but obviously the bases are different. Disco Dolls is an orangey-gold fine glitter in a clear base, while Excuse Moi has a pink-tinted base packed full of fine glitter. I think the glitter itself is mainly silver, but it looks pink with the base colour.

These swatches were 3 coats, although both of these are pretty dense and you could probably get away with two coats. Both were easy to apply without having the glitter clump together or anything. This is with top coat; both are kind of gritty and need a layer or two of a good top coat.

Category:

Nicole by OPI, OPI

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Orly Androgynie

Orly Androgynie is from their Holiday 2011 collection. It’s a black jelly with holographic and gold microglitter and larger hex iridescent glitter that combines with the black base to reflect colours that are light but not pastel. It’s kind of similar to Sephora by OPI’s 212-Sephora, but with multicoloured hex glitter instead of flakies.

I love the look of this polish. Its formula wasn’t the greatest though; there’s not enough suspension base in it so the glitter sinks to the bottom. I found that standing the bottle upside down overnight before I used it, as well as standing it upside down between coats of polish, helped a lot with that and I was able to get a proper amount of glitter onto the nail. The formula also seemed a bit thick-yet-runny at the same time. I can’t remember if this was 2 or 3 coats, but whichever it was it’s with topcoat. The end effect was worth the hassles! These first two photos are in natural overcast light.

Blurred to show the sparkle:

Androgynie's sparkle

And finally, the full mani in the sun:

Category:

Orly

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Orly Bus Stop Crimson

I have a couple of longer fall-collection-related posts I’ve been meaning to get around to, but have been so busy lately it doesn’t seem to be happening, so I thought I’d go ahead with some shorter posts in the meantime. This is Orly Bus Stop Crimson, a really great red! Not too bright but not too dark, warm toned, with a semi-jelly creme finish. It’s part of Orly’s core collection, I believe. This is two coats with top coat. Please excuse the small scratches on the surface and the tip wear; I had already been wearing this for a day when I took the photos. On the ring finger is one coat of Bus Stop Crimson topped with two coats of Nicole by OPI Glitter in my Stocking from their new holiday glitters (and again, with top coat). Also a great polish, sparkly warm gold glitter with sparse red glitter and I think even some silver glitter in there. It dries a little rough but an extra layer of top coat would fix that. Love both of these polishes!

Category:

Nicole by OPI, Orly

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China Glaze CG in the City

Today I have for you China Glaze’s CG in the City from the fall 2011 Metro collection. This is a really interesting and unique glitter with lavender, silver, copper and opaque black very fine glitter.

These photos show 4 coats with Poshe top coat. Since the glitter is fine, one coat of top coat is enough to make it pretty smooth. The first two photos are taken directly under my Ott light, look cooler than in real life, and if you click on the full-size versions, the second one also seems to show more colours in the flashes of glitter than are generally seen in real life.

The next two photos are not the greatest pics but are taken under warm indoor light and I think they give a better representation of how the polish looks in everyday life.

Although this polish is fascinating and has a nice formula, for some reason it just doesn’t do much for me. I guess I just don’t really care for the lavender/silver on my skintone. I like how it looks in the first two photos better than how it really looks. Actually, I like how it looks in all these photos better than I liked it as a mani. Maybe the glitter is just too fine for my tastes and I’d prefer it if there were bigger pieces of the individual colours to distinguish them better at a glance. I’ll have to try it again using only a couple of coats layered over top of another polish (I’m thinking something bronze or coppery) to see if I can make it work for me…

Category:

China Glaze

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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 ‘multi glitter’

China Glaze Kalahari Kiss and I Herd That

Zoya Beach Skittles

Zoya Perrie with black and white glitter

Happy Valentine’s Day!

China Glaze Optical Illusion

Multi-Coloured Glitter Comparison

A couple of recent OPI glitters

Orly Androgynie

Orly Bus Stop Crimson

China Glaze CG in the City

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