pastel | Vegan Claws

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

Posts tagged ‘pastel’

OPI My Pointe Exactly

This polish is OPI My Pointe Exactly, from their new NYC Ballet collection of sheer pastel jellies. It’s a lovely light grey jelly shade with a fairly smooth formula. I did still have some issues with streakiness, but the ridge filler I used was giving me some trouble so that was likely a contributing factor. It was a bottle of Milani Smoothe that is getting close to empty and seems to be causing bubbles. I probably need to add more thinner and wait longer for it to dry before applying polish… I honestly can’t remember now if this ended up being three or four coats of My Pointe Exactly, but I really like the result.

I recently heard a tip for applying these types of polishes without streaks; It consists of applying a quick dry top coat over the first coat of colour, waiting for it to dry completely, then adding a second coat of colour and top coat as usual. It apparently lets you apply sheers and pastels using only two coats rather than 3 or 4 to even out streaks. I’ll have to try this next time. It should be especially helpful in keeping it looking like a translucent jelly (personally, I really like the translucent jelly look, although I know some people hate being able to see their nail line through the polish). This is the only shade I have from this collection so far, it’s the most unique of them and the one that initially spoke to me, but that might change sooner or later…

Category:

OPI

Tagged with:

FingerPaints Lemon Sour

Lemon Sour is another polish from Finger Paints’ spring collection, Gumdrops and Lollipops. It’s a pretty pastel yellow creme.

Shown here are three coats in full sunlight. Most pastel yellows are quite streaky; this one is better than average on that front. I would have been happy with it at two coats for everyday wear, but since I was photographing it I added the third just to make sure there were no thin spots showing through. The polish was well-pigmented like Finger Paints cremes tend to be, and it also felt a little bit too thick – I think it will benefit from some polish thinner next time I use it.

I’ve accumulated a little collection of very similar pastels yellow shades in the search for the ones with the best formulas; I’ll have to do a pastel yellow comparison post soon!

Category:

FingerPaints

Tagged with:

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.

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.

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!

Category:

China Glaze, FingerPaints

Tagged with:

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.

Category:

FingerPaints

Tagged with:

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

Tagged with:

Sally Girl TTFN and comparisons

If you’ve been to a Sally Beauty Supply store lately you may have noticed that they have five new shades in their Sally Girl line of mini nail polishes. I got a couple of the new ones, including this one called TTFN. And guess what, these new ones actually show the names on the bottles! At the top right of the little sticker along the side. No more cross-referencing the 6-digit number on the sally.com site to try to figure out what the polish’s name is, haha!

Two coats of TTFN. It was a little streaky on the first coat, but a second thicker coat evened everything out. Colour-wise, this slightly dusty, minty sage green is in between Orly Ancient Jade (which is a tiny bit deeper and brighter), and Misa Catch a Flick (which is a little lighter), as the following photo shows (top to bottom, Catch a Flick, TTFN, Ancient Jade).

In terms of formula, Ancient Jade had a formula that was thinner than TTFN but was also more pigmented and opaque. Catch a Flick had a formula similar to TTFN, a little streaky on the first coat but evening up at the second.

I also compared a couple of other colours for reference. Thumb to pinky, NYX Girls Algae, much darker and bluer, Orly Ancient Jade, Sally Girl TTFN, Misa Catch a Flick, and Nubar Vogue Vert, lighter and more of a dusty yellow-based sage.

Category:

Misa, Nubar, NYX, Orly, Sally Girl

Tagged with:

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:

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

In the shade:

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!

Category:

Kleancolor, Milani

Tagged with:

New Soulstice Spa polishes

I recently received these three new Soulstice Spa polishes, including their two new greens, for review: Telluride, LA, and Dublin. You can click on any of the photos below to see more detail in the full sized versions.

This bottle shot unfortunately didn’t pick up the golden shimmer in Telluride, but here it is below.

A mint green with golden shimmer, this one is unique in my collection of minty polishes – I’m sure others must exist, but I don’t have any! This one had a fairly thick formula that did give me some trouble – at one and two coats it was a bit streaky over the ridges on my nails, so I ended up using four coats to even everything out for these pictures. Next time I’ll be adding a little thinner and using an opaque base coat, so I’m sure 2 or 3 coats will do. Either way, the colour is great!

Next up is LA, a multicoloured hex glitter layering polish. Here it is by itself, three coats (please ignore the stained nails!).

There are three sizes of hex glitter in this polish, very small, small, and medium, in the colours silver, yellow, green, orange-toned red, blue, and magenta. I love that there is a noticeable amount of yellow glitter, it really makes the polish for me! The formula was good, no trouble with this one. I had to “place” the glitter a little bit to get it evenly distributed, and as with any polish of this type, I held the brush against the inside of the bottle neck for a few seconds to let some of the transparent base drain off to maximize the concentration of glitter on the nail.

Of course, there are a fair number of similar rainbow glitter polishes floating around, including the newly released one by OPI, so I’ll be doing a comparison post with a couple of those later.

Last but not least, Dublin! This is a deep, shimmery velvety green, just gorgeous. The formula was good and this one is nearly a one-coater. I used 2 coats for good measure but you could probably get away with one if you’re careful. I got a few bubbles in it, which you may be able to see in the first picture; I think that was mainly because I used Nubar Nu Nail as a base coat under it since I was planning to keep it on as my manicure after taking the photos, and didn’t let things dry long enough between coats.

I then added two layers of LA on the ring finger as an accent, and finished with Poshe top coat which completely eliminated the bubbles (love that stuff – so smooth and glassy!).

Just for fun, another photo since a piece of glitter caught the light so well!

These polishes dried fairly quickly. I really like all three shades. I asked for greens, and I’m sure not disappointed! I love minty greens, and polishes with golden shimmer, and dark greens too, so these are great. I’m really enjoying my Dublin mani so far, it’s beautiful to look at!

Disclosure: the polishes in this post were provided to me by Soulstice Spa for review. Opinions expressed are my own.

Category:

Soulstice Spa

Tagged with:

New Glitter Gal holos

Today I have the three recently released Glitter Gal holos for you. Glitter Gal is an Australian brand known for their line of holographic polishes. These came out in August and I first swatched them then, but wasn’t very happy with some of the photos so I recently redid the ones for Light as a Feather and Frappé. For these photos I used either Nubar Foundation or Zoya Get Even for base coat, as noted on the individual shades, and no top coat. I found that they dried fairly glossy even without top coat. The photos are all taken in sunlight in my solarium. You can click on any of the photos to see more detail in the larger versions.

Lizard Belly

This one is really awesome! A blackened green with a strong holo effect. I only needed two coats for this one. Love it!!! Formula was a bit little bit thick, but not hard to work with. For these photos I had a base coat of Nubar Foundation. It is quite a blackened green, and in some lighting pretty much looks black. I’m thinking of trying it over a kelly-green creme next time…

Light as a Feather

A very pale grey holo. I had the hardest time photographing this one, so I’m including several pictures to give a better idea of the polish, including a couple of blurry ones that show off the holo in the bottle.

Glitter Gal Light as a Feather

Out of the three, the holo effect is least strong on this one. This one also gave me the most trouble with application. I swatched it here with Zoya Get Even as base coat, since my nails are a bit stained and Get Even has a white tint to help prevent that from showing through. This is three coats (it’s a little sheer, and a bit streaky on the first coat). I found the formula thick and hard to work with. I added several (about 6 or 8?) drops of thinner (Zoya Renew) and that helped. I got some bubbling, but I think that was mainly due to not waiting long enough between coats and the interaction between the basecoat and the polish. I think my Zoya Get Even could use a little more thinner in it too…

Frappé

Pink-toned lavender with a noticeable linear holo effect. This one was also fairly sheer (and so, I used Zoya Get Even as basecoat here) and needed three coats. The formula was also slightly thick but much better than Light as a Feather. I added 2 drops of thinner when I swatched this for these photos. Very pretty and feminine colour.

Some general notes on the bottles. The bottles are small as anyone who’s seen GG holos in person knows; they hold 9ml. The brush itself isn’t mini though, it’s a normal length brush (actually longer than some brands like Zoya or Color Club) attached to the small brush handle.

Since the lighter coloured ones were pretty sheer, I also swatched the three polishes over cremes. Here are the base colour I used: Zoya Perrie, Milani One of a Kind, and a grey franken I made from Color Club French Tip and SOPI What’s a tire jack? As you can see in the photo my franken is kind of thick and chalky (due to Color Club French Tip which is one of those whites that is kind of chalky) which doesn’t give the greatest effect when combined with the ridges on that nail, but anyway… The base colours were all two coats except Perrie which was one.

"Underwear" for the holos

One coat over bases

These photos show one coat of the Glitter Gal holos over their corresponding base colour(s). I like how they turned out, definitely a good way to extend the life of the small GG bottles.

Bottom line: despite the thick formula, these new holos are pretty awesome (especially Lizard Belly!!). Light as a Feather is quite subtle as a holo, but is pretty in its own right. You’ll definitely want some thinner on hand with that one, though! Needing to add thinner to these isn’t such a bad thing in my opinion, that along with using them over a creme will help extend the life of the small 9ml bottles!

Category:

Glitter Gal

Tagged with:

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…? 😀

Category:

Soulstice Spa

Tagged with:

Vegan Claws

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

Posts tagged ‘pastel’

OPI My Pointe Exactly

FingerPaints Lemon Sour

Comparison: FingerPaints Circus Peanuts and China Glaze Peachy Keen

Layering with FingerPaints flakies

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Sally Girl TTFN and comparisons

Kleancolor Holo Pink and Holo Orange over Milani Retro

New Soulstice Spa polishes

New Glitter Gal holos

Soulstice Spa swatches

Follow Blog via Email

RSS Feed

Recent Posts

Archives

Categories

Meta