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

Posts tagged ‘orange’

Misa Epiphany, Taking Chances, and a comparison

Today I have my two picks from Misa’s Wanderlust collection for fall 2012 to show you.

First is Misa Epiphany, a light beigey mustard shade with gold shimmer. The finish is kind of like a creme with shimmer flecks in it. I used two thick coats; I found the formula to be thick but not a problem to work with if you use thick coats and don’t manipulate it too much.

Misa Epiphany

I love this shade! It makes me think of a shimmery version of China Glaze’s Kalahari Kiss. The large version of this next photo gives a good view of the finish.

Misa Epiphany

The second polish I got from this collection is Taking Chances, which has the same finish as Epiphany but in a coppery, dusty light orange with gold shimmer. Very appropriate for fall!

Misa Taking Chances

Formula was also similar to Epiphany, maybe a bit less thick. This was also two thick coats.

Misa Taking Chances

I really like this shade as well, but when I opened the package, I thought, “this looks familiar!”

Misa Taking Chances and Sephora by OPI It's all About the Fringe

Here is Taking Chances next to Sephora by OPI’s That’s What Fringe is For, from their spring 2012 collection.

Misa Taking Chances and Sephora by OPI It's all About the Fringe (Misa, SOPI, Misa, SOPI)

Left to right: Misa, SOPI, Misa, SOPI

They aren’t *exact* dupes, but, well, for all intents and purposes they are dupes. It’s really hard to see the differences, so I’m including several photos of the comparison. From index to ring are the Misa, SOPI, Misa, SOPI, two coats of each.

Misa Taking Chances and Sephora by OPI It's all About the Fringe (Misa, SOPI, Misa, SOPI)

Left to right: Misa, SOPI, Misa, SOPI

The biggest difference is in the formula, since the OPI is much thinner (not runny though). It also seems that the Misa has slightly bigger shimmer particles, making it appear a tiny bit lighter at times with the added reflectivity. Just barely.

Misa Taking Chances and Sephora by OPI It's all About the Fringe (Misa, SOPI, Misa, SOPI)

Left to right: Misa, SOPI, Misa, SOPI

Great colour, but if you have one of these two you probably don’t need the other! Unless you have the mini bottle of the Sephora version, like I do, and want the Misa as a backup!

Category:

Misa, Sephora by OPI

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Illamasqua Whack with Nubar Orange Glitter and Fingerpaints Twisted

Some quick pics of a manicure I did last week! This is Illamasqua Whack, a red-toned orange creme with a really nice formula. It’s almost a one-coater; I ended up doing two coats here. I dabbed on Nubar Orange Glitter at the tips and then a layer of Fingerpaints Twisted over everything!

Illamasqua Whack with Nubar Orange Glitter and Fingerpaints Twisted

Illamasqua Whack with Nubar Orange Glitter and Fingerpaints Twisted

Illamasqua Whack with Nubar Orange Glitter and Fingerpaints Twisted

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FingerPaints, Illamasqua, Nubar

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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.

China Glaze Kalahari Kiss

China Glaze Kalahari Kiss

China Glaze Kalahari Kiss

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.

China Glaze Kalahari Kiss and I Herd That

China Glaze Kalahari Kiss and I Herd That

Under my Ott Lite:

China Glaze Kalahari Kiss and I Herd That

This next photo features my beautiful girl Azrael!

China Glaze Kalahari Kiss and I Herd That with 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.

China Glaze I Herd 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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China Glaze Desert Sun and Comparisons

Desert Sun is one of three shades I picked up from China Glaze’s new On Safari collection. I’ve got another post in the works featuring the other two polishes but I’ll start with this one!

China Glaze Desert Sun

This is one of those “ugly-pretty” shades I love so much. It’s a medium orangey-brown creme. It actually turned out to be a bit more orange than I expected.

China Glaze Desert Sun

I found the formula a little thin, but no big application issues. This is two coats. In the background of this next photo is Azrael; she’s standing on top of a covered litterbox that’s next to the solarium window where I take my pics…

China Glaze Desert Sun

I compared this shade to some similar ones I have. From index to pinkie, we have OPI Ginger Bells, China Glaze Desert Sun, OPI & Apple Pie, and Joe Fresh Pumpkin. Each swatch is two coats of polish, no top coat.

OPI Ginger Bells, China Glaze Desert Sun, OPI & Apple Pie, Joe Fresh Pumpkin

Desert Sun is very similar to OPI & Apple Pie, but Apple Pie is slightly more brown. I found the formula to be better on Desert Sun, as OPI & Apple Pie was thinner & seemed more prone to bald spots. Apple Pie is also an older OPI from before they went “big 3 free” so it has DBP, toluene, etc in it as well as the old skinny brush.

OPI Ginger Bells, China Glaze Desert Sun, OPI & Apple Pie, Joe Fresh Pumpkin

As you can see Ginger Bells is darker and has more of a red tone than the others, and Pumpkin is the least brown of these shades.

OPI Ginger Bells, China Glaze Desert Sun, OPI & Apple Pie, Joe Fresh Pumpkin

If I had realized that Apple Pie was going to be a bit browner than Desert Sun, I would have switched their places and turned this comparison swatch into an ombre mani!

Category:

China Glaze, Joe Fresh, OPI

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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: Zoya Reagan, Wednesday, Shelby, Arizona, Lara. Bottle: Zoya Tracie

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.

Thumb to pinkie: Zoya Reagan, Wednesday, Shelby, Arizona, Lara. Bottle: Zoya Tracie

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.

Thumb to pinkie: Zoya Reagan, Wednesday, Shelby, Arizona, Lara. Bottle: Zoya Tracie

Some shade photos:

Thumb to pinkie: Zoya Reagan, Wednesday, Shelby, Arizona, Lara. Bottle: Zoya Tracie

Thumb to pinkie: Zoya Reagan, Wednesday, Shelby, Arizona, Lara. Bottle: Zoya Tracie

Thumb to pinkie: Zoya Reagan, Wednesday, Shelby, Arizona, Lara. Bottle: Zoya Tracie

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):

Index to pinkie: Zoya Wednesday, Shelby, Arizona, Lara, topped with Sally Girl Way2Disco

Thumb to pinkie: Zoya Reagan, Wednesday, Shelby, Arizona, Lara, topped with Sally Girl Way2Disco

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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Orange/Coral Holo Birthday Mani!

Today is my birthday and here is the polish I wore! It started out yesterday when my partner took me out go-karting and mini golfing as a surprise for my birthday! So much fun, but when I was taking off my seatbelt to get out of the go-kart, I messed up the nail polish I had put on that afternoon (of course, it was totally worth it! haha)

So later on at home, I took off the smudged polish and decided to put on an old OPI, “Nice Hand… Great Nails” just to see what it was like… Well, it’s very very sheer, and not really in a good way in my opinion. And this is coming from someone who likes sheer polishes that show visible nail line… Anyway, this one was a very sheer orange coral shimmer that looked about the same colour as the stains on my nails from the neon coral I was wearing the other day, so I wasn’t too impressed! (I guess I should have taken a photo of it anyway to show it, but I didn’t…)

I had only put on two coats, so normally I would have added a few more but I didn’t feel like staying up any later to let them dry and see if I liked the result any better. I was about to take it off and start over with something that I knew would dry quickly, but then I decided to try adding a layer of Ozotic 522, a coral holo. Magic! It turned out wonderfully.

Ozotic 522 over OPI Nice Hand... Great Nails

Two coats of OPI Nice Hand Great Nails followed by one coat of Ozotic 522, topped with OPI Designer Series top coat.

Ozotic 522 over OPI Nice Hand... Great Nails

It was recently announced that the entire Ozotic 500-series is being discontinued. The 500-series includes a lot of great holographic and multichrome polishes… the good news is that they’re all on sale right now until they’re sold out! So I just “had” to get a bunch of them while I still could, and 522 is one of the ones I got.

Ozotic 522 over OPI Nice Hand... Great Nails

They’re sold online from Picture Polish in Australia, Harlow & Co., Overall Beauty and Llarowe in North America, as well as some other sellers in other countries. If you want some, best to get them now while they’re still around!

Ozotic 522 over OPI Nice Hand... Great Nails

Hopefully Ozotic is only discontinuing them because they’ve come up with something even more awesome that they’ll release soon! We’ll have to wait and see…

Ozotic 522 over OPI Nice Hand... Great Nails

Anyway, I really love how this mani turned out; orangey coral holo seems like a great birthday celebration colour to me! And it’s been a really nice birthday weekend with great weather and plenty of fun and relaxation. 🙂

Ozotic 522 over OPI Nice Hand... Great Nails

Bonus photo of Jasmine who has claimed the nail polish storage area lately! (Well, she takes turns with Fred.) Here she is lying on top of the Ikea Helmers! I think they like them because the metal surface is nice and cool in this hot weather…

Jasmine on Helmers

Category:

OPI, Ozotic

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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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OPI The Show Must Go On

Today’s post will be short on words but heavy on pictures. This is another example of my favourite type of polish – duochrome glass fleck!

OPI The Show Must Go On is from their Burlesque collection which was a holiday 2010 collection. It’s red but shifts colours from fuchsia through to orange, copper and even some golden yellow at extreme angles. I love it! It has a great formula too. Shown are three coats, but the third one I just put on before photographing because I’d had the polish on a while and somehow got some hairline cracks, not chips, in it while doing dishes! Two coats is enough for opacity. Shown in various lighting situations as listed.

Ott Light:

OPI The Show Must Go On

OPI The Show Must Go On

Sun:

OPI The Show Must Go On

OPI The Show Must Go On

Natural light, various degrees of overcast/partly sunny:

OPI The Show Must Go On

OPI The Show Must Go On

OPI The Show Must Go On

OPI The Show Must Go On

OPI The Show Must Go On

OPI The Show Must Go On

OPI The Show Must Go On

OPI The Show Must Go On

OPI The Show Must Go On

Category:

OPI

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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)

Category:

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

Category:

China Glaze, FingerPaints

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