This is a mani I did last week and liked a lot. The base colour is Zoya Kieko, a red-toned medium purple creme from last year’s Summertime collection. I used two coats of Kieko, which had a very nice formula, no complaints. I used a dotting tool to make the flowers – the centres are Zoya Reagan, and the petals are Zoya Lara, both from the Beach collection, and finished with Poshe top coat.
Today I have another of the China Glaze New Bohemian polishes to show you. This is Want My Bawdy – groan-worthy name that looks like something OPI would come up with, but beautiful indigo blue shimmer with slight purple duochrome!
The duochrome on this one is very mild; it’s the least duochrome in the collection, but there is a bit of a purple flash at an angle in the right light, as seen in the above photo.
The formula was thin and sheer, and I got some bald spots in my application from not waiting long enough between coats (as often happens, I was rushing to get my swatching done before the sunset!). These swatches show three coats of the polish, no top coat.
In the next two photos I swatched it over black as I usually do with duochromes (one coat of Want My Bawdy over one coat of Kleancolor Black), but it didn’t really change the look of this one much. It mostly just makes it appear more blackened around the edges. This next photo is with flash (all the others are in sunlight).
Despite the very subtle nature of the duochrome in this polish, I’m personally not disappointed with it! It’s a beautiful glowy blue, and that hint of purple flash that comes out occasionally is just an added bonus. 🙂
I’m very excited today to be able to show you two brand new polishes from Soulstice! Santa Monica and Nevis are two of four shades that have just been released. This half of the set isn’t your traditional fall colours, but they are gorgeous!
On the left we have Santa Monica, a light lavender with blue/pink duochrome glass flecks, and on the right, Nevis, a leafy green creme. The following photo shows the shimmer in Santa Monica that the previous one didn’t catch!
Santa Monica is really, really pretty. It’s sheer at first, since it has a jellyish base to allow the shimmer to sparkle through. The formula was good, slightly thin but not runny. I used three coats here.
Disclaimer: please note that I took these photos as the sun had just begun to set, so they appear a bit warmer than in real life! (Also, my index finger is still growing out the last of the break I had a while back, so any irregularities you might see there at the tip are not the fault of the polishes!)
These next two photos at an angle show the colour shift in the shimmer better. As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it and get a better look at the details.
Blue duochrome glass flecks, of course, mean instant love to me. 😉
And here is what Santa Monica looks like in the shade:
And now for Nevis! I definitely have a soft spot for this sort of green, bright and leafy and bold!
I found the formula thin on this one, and the first coat went on streaky as a result. However, a second slightly thicker coat evened it all out!
This shade of green looks like it’s close to Misa Good to Be Green, which I loved, and I love this! As a side note, just after I did my comparison post for Good to Be Green, I ended up with two other polishes that are a lot closer to it than the ones in my comparison photos! With this one, that makes three similar ones I have, so I’ll have to revisit that comparison in a new post!
Here is Nevis in the shade:
The other two shades in this release are Napa, a shimmery deep red, and St. Barts, a shimmery deep teal, that also look like they’re going to be great! I’m definitely looking forward to picking those up when Nail Polish Canada gets them in stock… For those of you in the US, the four new shades are already available from Soulstice’s web store!
Disclosure: The polishes in this post were provided to me by the company for my honest review. The opinions expressed are entirely my own.
Beauty Without Cruelty was one of the first brands to produce entirely vegan cosmetics and today I have swatches of my Beauty Without Cruelty polishes to show you. I only have four of them, and it just so happens that three of them are pink. For each of them, I have two photos in the sun followed by one in the shade. I didn’t use any topcoat for these photos.
Sweet Pea is a light/medium pink creme, not bright but not too dusty. The formula was thin and a bit runny; this is two coats (three on my index because I messed it up).
Next, Pink Crush. This is a bright fuchsia squishy-looking semi-jelly polish. The formula was not as runny as Sweet Pea, and this was two coats.
Rich Plum is a rich shimmery purple. This one made me realize that these polishes don’t have mixing balls, as the shimmer was uneven in my bottle and I had to shake it quite a bit to get it distributed. Shown are two coats; this one can show very slightly visible brushstrokes and I recommend waiting a few minutes between coats to prevent dragging.
The last one I have is Geranium, a magenta-pink creme. The formula was thin but not runny, and this is two coats.
These polishes have a flat brush that is less wide than the OPI pro-wide brush. The BWC nail polish line is pretty basic; there are only about 15 colours, but the polishes, brushes and bottles are pretty nice overall! I have two more of the shades on the way to me that I purchased from a blog sale, so I should have a couple more swatches to show once they arrive!
I’ve got the first two of six new China Glaze polishes from their New Bohemian collection today! These shades have duochrome to varying degrees, and a metallic finish that’s slightly brushstrokey but not in a bad way, in my humble opinion – I wouldn’t quite call them frost, and I didn’t have trouble getting the brush stokes straight.
I’ll start with No Plain Jane, the purple shade; I was actually a little disappointed with this one since the duochrome didn’t seem as orange as I expected; more of a pinkish-goldenish-copper shade, and the purple can look paler and almost lavender in some lighting. This swatch is three coats, and I found the formula a bit thick and sticky for this kind of polish. First photos are in sunlight:
These next photos are under my Ott Lite:
Next I layered one coat of No Plain Jane over Kleancolor Black. Layered this way, it photographed bluer than it is – it’s definitely more of a red-leaning purple like the first photos showed. Sunlight:
This one is a bit more colour accurate:
In indirect natural light:
Next is Deviantly Daring; I love this rich teal-blue-green shade! Two coats shown here, and this one had a great formula. Sunlight:
In the shade, if you click to enlarge this photo you can kind of see the fine gold shimmer that gives this polish extra depth; it’s more visible in the bottle than on the nail but is really pretty:
This next photo is under the Ott Lite – I think that bright green flash that you can see near the bottom right of each nail is actually a reflection from the wall with its bright lime-green paint job, so I’m a little hesitant to post this, but I guess I’ll just say that this one isn’t totally accurate of what the polish looks like in real life!
Now, here is one coat of Deviantly Daring over one coat Kleancolor Black, in sunlight:
In shade:
So, one of these two polishes was nice but mainly just “okay” in my opinion, and the other is a definite winner! The other four shades from this collection are on my ever-expanding “to swatch” list!
I’ve got a gorgeous duochrome from Glitter Gal to show you today! This is one of six new duochromes they recently released, and the lovely Kerry from Glitter Gal gave me the opportunity to review it (thanks, Kerry!). This one is called Buckled Bronze and it’s got a great plum-burgundy-bronze-copper colour shift!
Here it is with the box it comes in. I really like these new Glitter Gal bottles, square and solid and stylish looking – they’ve really done a nice job on their new packaging.
These photos are of one generous coat of Buckled Bronze over one coat of Kleancolor Black; these are sheer duochromes that show their full effect over black (or another very dark colour).
No topcoat here; it dries quite glossy on its own. The formula was thin and smooth, perfect for this sort of layering polish.
As always you can click on any of these photos to get a better view.
These next two photos are with flash in addition to sunlight. Head-on, the flash shows just how nearly purple this polish appears in some lights!
And at more of an angle, the bronze tone becomes prominent:
At extreme angles, the polish even shifts to gold and green. If you click on the full size version of this next photo, you can see all the little multicoloured sparkles along with the gold-green shift – love it!
These next few photos are in indoor light.
Indirect natural light, sorry for the weird lumpy-looking reflections:
Under my Ott Lite:
Ott Lite plus flash:
And here is what the polish looks like on its own – as you can see it’s definitely sheer! Left to right, one, two, three, and four coats of Buckled Bronze. The pinkie with four coats shows how the base of the polish is kind of a smokey taupe colour.
Anyway, as you may have guessed by now, this is a great polish and I love it! The colour scheme is right up my alley. This and the other five new Glitter Gal duochromes, shown in the following company promo image, are available here on their website, or from one of their international distributors listed here.
Disclosure: This polish was provided to me by the company for my honest review. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own.
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.
Just a quick post today to share a recent pastel skittles (each nail a different colour, for those who aren’t familiar with nail-polish-addict-speak ;)) manicure I did. I felt like doing something spring-like and cool-toned, and here are the polishes I decided on: Essence You Belong To Me, Milani Original, Essence A Lovely Secret, Milani Dressmaker, and Milani Antique.
Essence You Belong To Me is a pastel turquoise creme with some fine pearly secret shimmer; Milani Original is a mint green creme; Essence A Lovely Secret is a lavender creme with fine warmer-toned and slightly darker magenta-purple glitter; Milani Dressmaker is a pale minty jade with turquoise shimmer; Milani Antique is a slightly muted/dusty light blue creme with fine pearly secret shimmer. Three coats of each polish (actually I think I added a fourth of Dressmaker, since it’s a pretty sheer polish).
Unfortunately there was no sun when I wore this, so the shimmer of the polishes doesn’t show up very well in the photos, although if you click to enlarge them you can see some, especially in the first photo. These pics include topcoat; I had been wearing the mani a while when I took them. Overcast natural light:
Artificial light (Ott light) – the colours are truer in this photo, as the previous ones make them seem a little darker than they are:
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! 😀
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!
Vegan Claws 
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