Glitter Fail

After buying a promising coupler at Icing, I thought this weekend would be the perfect time to try them out. I give you Sinful Color's Midnight Blue and Icing's Magnetic Attraction.

Yeah, pretty boring. I was hoping for a full coverage glitter and used the sinful as a "just in case" background. This is after 3 coats of the Magnetic Attraction ladies and gents.

So I guess I learned not to buy off brand polish from fashion store chains. Ta Da!

Next time I'll show you another off brand polish from a fashion store chain, this time with good results!

What's your name?

Hello everybody! Sorry for the delay in posting, but I've been having a lovely bout of kidney stones! You would think all this time off work would give me lots of oppurtunities to paint and re-paint my nails, but sadly sitting hunched over my desk is the last thing I want to do at the moment. That being said, this manicure is actually about 3 days old.

Sinful's "What's Your Name" is a near-black polish packed with teal micro-glitter. These pictures just don't do it justice. Everyone thinks I've been loopy on my pain pills because I just keep staring at my hands (that and the fact that I am loopy on my pain pills...).

It went on like a dream, so smooth and glossy. The only issue I had was a little inconsistancy in the opacity, some nails took two coats, some needed three.

I'm also a little dissapointed by the amount of shrinkage and chippage for not-even a week of wear. Sinful usually leads the pack in chip-free polishes, especially their glitters, so this was a suprise. In this image, you can clearly see the shrinkage on all of my tips, as well as a good-sized chip on my pinky. I have 3 medium-sized chips overall. This is also as close as I could get to capturing the gorgeous teal micro-glitter.

 

Ratings:

Application: 8 out of 10. Close to perfect, but it had inconsistent coverage.
Color: 9 out of 10. Awesome, awesome teal glitter in near-black base.
Clean-up: 8 out of 10. Easily removed, but left a slight stain on the rough parts of my cuticles, as all dark colors are prone to do.
Appearance: 7 out of 10. Color and shine are great, chipping and shrinkage bring the score down. 

Still, the sheer-awesomeness of this color makes up for it's low durability. I think you'll be seeing this color on me again soon! Wouldn't this look great as a marble with a light base? That would really make the teal pop!

I know I've promised you half-moon manicures with the burnt oranges from OPI's Burlesque line (terrible movie, great polishes!), but that will have to wait until I can stand sitting up for long periods of time. Here's hoping!

Frrrrrench Manicure

Let me begin today's blog by saying that I am not a french manicure type person. I cringe whenever I see the standard issue acrylics with stark white tips, and automatically think "Soccer Mom".

I can, however, appreciate how nice a french manicure can look when it's not on 2" plastic nail beds. I'm in a play this weekend, in which I am required to appear somewhat "innocent" for the better part of the show. I toyed with the idea of frosty pinks and lavenders, but nothing says "school girl" better than a french manicure with OMGGLITTER!

While I wanted to give the scotch tape method a try, I simply don't have the time to let the base color dry completely. So I free-handed the tip to varying degrees of success.

I began with a base of Nailtiens (because Thursday's application of Sinful's "Hottie" kicked my ass!), folowed by two coats of Sinful's sheer pink shimmer "Social Ladder", and the tip was two coats of Sinful's "Snow Me White".

I had some problems with "Social ladder streaking over the Nailtien, which I think can be blamed on the Nailtein and not the color, as it's usually very smooth when used without a base coat. This is also the first time I've tried any amount of detailed work with one of Sinful's brushes, and I was less than enthused. It seemed to have a way of grabbing clumps and strings that clung to the brush, no matter how often I scraped it against the lip of the bottle.

After about 10 minutes of dry-time, I applied 2 coats of Wet n' Wild's "Kaledoscope", which is a holo silver glitter in a clear base.

I had some serious problems with glitter clumpage.

It was nearly impossible to get an even coating of the glitter, and I couldn't play with it too much for fear of the white streaking. Some of my nails came out quite streaky:

Overall I give this manicure a 7 out of 10. While I was really pleased with the french tips themselves, and pleasantly surprised at my ability to free-hand, the holo glitter pissed me off enough to be bitter about the time spent on this look. Next time I'll choose a better brand, or skip the glitter entirely.

Frosty Claws!

 I think I accidentially jumped straight over fall shades and into winter. I was hoping Hottie by Sinful Colors would have the same bold, almost neon-blue color as it is in the bottle. Alas, it came out less Californial Gurls and more Cinderella. Though the bright flash in the photos shows a bright-blue, it's more of a light, powder blue in real life.

If Jack Frost had an illagitamate love child with the Little Mirmaid, this is what the baby's nails would look like.

There are other problems with this polish. First, it took 5 coats to get full coverage. FIVE! Second, while I understand that removing octogon-shaped glitter is always going to be a challange, these glittery bastards refused to let go of my cuticals, despite using straight acetone and an orange stick. Seriously, my skin is red from all the chemicals and scraping. (I'm hoping that some of the glitter on my skin will come off with wear). There is also a serious shrinkage issue, even before I layed a top-coat of MegaShine. So much so that I had to file the nail after application to reduce the amount of white peeking over the tip. The worst part was that the shrinkage was not exactly uniform due to the octogon glitter from hell, so I bassically wound up tearing the tip of the manicure every time my file caught on a piece of titanium glitter. Oh yeah, Did I mention the clumpy formula?

I guess the finished product looks nice if you dig the sparkely-pastel thing. Otherwise, I would only reccomend this product used as an over-coat, and then very sparingly.

Ratings:


Application: 3 out of 10, very clumpy and streaky
Color: 4 out of 10. Nice color on it's own merit, but noting like the bottle.
Clean-up: 3 out of 10 Evil, evil glitter.
Appearance: 6 out of 10 It has a nice depth, and the glitter, though a total pain in the ass, does shine like the dickens. It also has a much smoother finish than most glitters, and took the top coat very well. The overall appearance rating took a big hit because of the unusual amount of shrinkage from the tip.

Next time I'll be taking a stab at a scotch-tape french tip in pinks and whites.

Teal and Purple Water Marble

Hurray for marble! Is it time consuming? Yes! Is it messy? Yes! Does it waste perfectly good nail polish? Yes! Is it frustrating? Hell yes! Does it look OMGAWESOME?! YES IT DOES!

My local walgreens is having a sale on Sinful Colors nail polish, 99cents per bottle. I had pretty much exhausted my options for polishes that spread well duing water marbeling (and they were mostly pink, blech!), so I set out speciffically to find colors that would look nice together. I came out with Let's Talk, a deep purple shimmer, and Rise and Shine, a teal cream. I also picked up Snow Me White (which is a very dirty name, in my opinion), to use as the base.

This time, I made my own video to help others looking to duplicate the pattern. Here is the most important part: distilled water. Using tap water is simply an excercise in frustration.

The finished product, including Sally Hansen's Mega Shine topcoat:

And up-close!

Not too shabby! I'm especially pleased with how vibrant the white base made the marbled colors.

I picked up a few other things while I was out, including Sinful's Hottie, a blue holo glitter, and Kaleidoscope by Wet n' Wild. I know, I know...Wet n' Wild is the cheap stuff right? This might be true, but their Gray's Anatomy lasted a hell of a lot longer, and in my opinion, even looked better than OPI's Not Like the Movies. And hey, it's always 99cents!