SinfulColors Savage + Orly Sparkling Garbage

Matte polishes are sneaky. Some times they're labeled, some times they're expected because they're in a matte collection, other times it's a complete surprise. It happens most often with bright colors that don't look neon in the bottle, but must have neon pigment in their formula because they dry matte.

And then you have SinfulColors Savage. Looks like a blue on the darker, greener side of teal in the bottle. Then you start applying it and something about the application seems off. It's really opaque but a little thin, a little streaky. It dries and bam! It's a matte?! Yep, even though Savage is an older shade from the core collection, I didn't know this when I bought it.

With a top coat, it's beautifully glossy and shiny. Unfortunately, I hadn't prepped myself or my nails for matte application which requires slightly more effort. I ended up with a few thin spots and ripples where I didn't pay enough attention.

Two coats of Savage + Shiny Top Coat - mani's not bad, but it's not great

I picked up a pretty holographic topper for about two bucks at the most recent Sally's Clearance sale, so I put it on to hide the flaws.

This is Orly Sparkling Garbage from their 2013 Summer Mash Up collection.  This is a very sheer holographic glitter in a dark seafoam green base. I put two coats on over Savage to pump up the rainbow effect. Sparkling Garbage had a very fine grit to it, so I used two coats of top coat for extra glossiness and smoothness.

Here it is all blurry, so you can see the sparkly rainbow effect. This is much closer to this mani sparkled in real life than the pictures above. 

I'm really happy with this layering, which is good because I was low on time to do polish changes this week and this mani wore like iron! I didn't get tip wear until Day 5! I'm not sure if it was the base coat, Savage, Sparkling Garbage, the top coat, or the combination of them all that made it so magically long lasting, but it was incredible.

Only downside was the terrible staining from Savage during removal. Even letting the remover soak on the nail for a few seconds and pulling it all down in one swipe to minimize cuticle staining, I was still left with blue cuticles and nails. I haven't had any staining like this from any of my recent SinfulColors blues, so I don't know what made this shade so stain-crazy.

Color Club Otherworldly

As our weather gets warmer, I'm in the mood for colors that are brighter but not quite neon. Today I pulled out an oldie but goodie collection - the Color Club Starry Temptress from Summer 2011. This was a set of neon glitters, but some of the colors were more intensely neon than the others. I pulled out Otherworldly, a bright blue with silver, slightly holographic glitter.

This dried matte so this definitely has neon qualities, but this is not an eye-searingly intense neon. I used two thin coats for this mani, which was opaque for the casual eye but I can see some translucency in this close up shot.

This polish is packed with glitter that stays on top of the blue base, but this glitter doesn't sparkle.  A shiny top coat takes Otherworldly from matte to shiny, but not sparkly. The matte glitter gives this polish a speckled look on the nail - this shade reminded me of the mosaic floor on the bottom of a pool. This is also a very smooth glitter.  Being ultra smooth with the matte glitter made this mani look like it was done with nail polish strips.

Otherworldly was nice and long-wearing, which made the removal extra sad because it was such a hassle!! All the glitter that you can see in the bottle is there on the nail when you're trying to take this polish off.  Once the top layer of blue came off, there was nothing but tons and tons of silver holographic glitter stuck on underneath.  It took patience and acetone to get all the glitter off - lots of patience and acetone.

I still love Otherworldly because it's so cool looking on the nail, but I'll probably be smarter next time I'm wearing a polish from the Starry Temptress collection and use a glue base coat to make the removal easier.

OPI Strawberry Margarita + I Lily Love You

Ever get a manicure idea in your head and then you just can't decide which polishes to use?  I wanted to wear a layered glitter look using two OPI colors, and I ended up pulling out 4 base colors and 4 glitters. I couldn't figure out which combination I wanted to use and I had absolutely no preference, so my husband suggested I let our baby son pick my polishes.

I used to set my polishes in front of our toy poodle and wear whichever bottle she pawed first.  This is a cute technique, but not very effective because our little Suzie gets easily distracted and would walk away before she picked my polish. Our 6-1/2 month old son, on the other hand, is in a very grabby phase (go fine motor skill development!!) so we set up my polishes in two groups and he picked out today's mani in under 10 seconds.

Here's two coats of Strawberry Margarita and one coat of I Lily Love You.

Strawberry Margarita is a bright warm pink creme from the OPI Mexico Spring 2006 collection. As I mentioned in my I'm Indi-a Mood For Love post, this is one of my most favorite pinks. The Mexico collection was the first OPI collection that I really got into - I proudly displayed the adorable minis box, I couldn't buy the whole collection so I encouraged all my friends to buy at least one bottle so they would have nearby homes. This shade is now a part of the core collection so you can still get it wherever OPI's sold with the 3-free formula.

My bottle's from the original collection so I have a chemical-laden black label, but I'm not complaining. This goes on easily in 2 coats with only slightly visible nail line in the brightest of sunlight. 

I Lily Love You is from the Nice Stems! Summer 2011 collection is a big flake glitter in a sheer pink base. There's also smaller circle and square glitters in the mix. The pink base tints Strawberry Margarita, making the shade a bit cooler. I left it unlayered on my thumb, so you could see the slight difference it made.

I loved this mani - maybe because it was so pink and festive, maybe because it was picked out by the cutest baby boy ever. Either way, I didn't want to take this off but I have to so I can get ready for our 5 day NY/NJ trip. I've already had this on for the last three days, and I don't want it to peel or chip off before we get back. I won't be packing polish this time so it's time for a new look for our vacation!

Rescue Beauty Lounge Locavore

I've been trying to make a peel-off glue base coat work for me, so that means glitter, glitter, glitter!

It was supposed to be really easy - take some glue like Elmer's, swish it around with a little water in an empty polish bottle, use as base coat, peel off mani when done. Easier said than done because my first few tries didn't work at all! First, I used too much water and the base coat wouldn't dry. Then, I tried again without thinning the glue but I polished my nails before waiting a full 10 minutes for the base coat to dry.  My polish stuck to my nails like cement! Normally, that's good, but not when you want your polish to peel off in one piece. My third try was a charm and my polish peeled off like it was supposed to! What I've learned - glue as a base coat is great if you have 10-15 minutes to let it fully dry, so it looks like I'm going back to regular base coat and Zoya Remove+ for my glitter manis.

For New Year's and my peel-off success, I wore Rescue Beauty Lounge Locavore. This is my bottle from the original Spring/Summer 2009 collection. This shade's been re-released through Ji's Bring It Back voting. I'm not sure if the new version is identical to this one, but I still recommend getting your own bottle while it's still around!

RBL's site says that Locavore is a "melange of gold, silver, green and blue glitter," but it's obvious in my bottle and on the nail that this version also has pink glitter.  The base of Locavore is thin and clear so I'm wearing three coats for opacity and it only takes one coat of Seche Vite to make this mani smooth.

After wearing so many glitter polishes with different shapes and sizes in their mix, Locavore is a nice glitter palate cleanser. All the glitter is tiny and round, the color combination is perfectly celebratory, it's opaque enough to be worn without layering over a base color, it's smooth on the nail, and sparkles for days. I love hex and square glitter and colored jelly bases, but I had forgotten how nice it is to wear a straightforward glitter polish like this.

Happy New Year to everyone!! I hope we all have a great 2013!!!

World Diabetes Day - Cult Nails Let Me Fly

Today I'm wearing blue nails in honor of World Diabetes Day.  An American Indian is 2.2 times more likely to have diabetes compared to a non-Hispanic white and 95% of American Indians with diabetes have Type 2.  This is the highest rate of diabetes among all U.S. racial and ethnic groups.

As a member of the Pascua Yaqui tribe, I've seen many of my relatives afflicted with Type 2 diabetes in their later years.  My closest family members have all had brushes with pre-diabetes diagnoses.  With greater knowledge and improved education about diabetes, prevention through healthy lifestyle changes is now a priority and daily goal for my family.

This day isn't just about my family or this country - it's about how diabetes affects us all on a global scale.  Not all forms of diabetes are preventable, but lifestyle changes may help prevent cases of Type 2 diabetes.  I recommend checking out the International Diabetes Federation site and the American Diabetes Association sites for more information. 

Here's Let Me Fly is from the Cult Nails Spring/Summer 2011 Day At The Races collection.

This dusty teal is filled with silver fleck shimmer.  At some angles, it looks like there's pink and blue shimmer, too.  This polish is opaque and goes on smoothly in two thin coats.  There's something very calming about this muted blue.  Fortunately, Let Me Fly isn't one of the limited edition Cult Nails shades so everyone still has an opportunity to get their own bottle.

L'Oreal Silver Sparkle

Oh, so... shiny!

Now, I know not everyone likes wild colors, but I'm pretty sure every polish princess (definitely the ones that I know) loves GLITTER! A hot new trend this spring has been the prismatic effect. Wet n Wild and China Glaze hopped on this trend; however, these colors went fast. I was fortunate enough to snag the reasonably priced/elusive Wet n Wild versions for Andi and myself and skipped over buying the pricier (although VERY pretty) China Glaze versions. I would highly recommend both.

I went to Walgreens and saw they were having a promotion on L'Oreal nail colors, buy one get one 50% off. This would allow you to get TWO of the new L'Oreal polishes for under $8. Nothing really tickled my fancy, until I saw this silver/pearl prism in the back... all on its lonesome. This is L'Oreal Silver Sparkle and it is truly cute and sparkly!

As we silly chicks would say, "Totally adorbs!"

The first thing I noticed about this polish was that it's not really "silver". It has rainbow-reflecting, holgraphic mini-hex chunks, micro silver and micro iridescent glitter floating around in a pearl-ish base. Although it will reflect some glitter in outdoor lighting, it reminds me very much of Mother of Pearl chips. Under indoor lighting, it seems more opaque and this "pearl" look is more noticeable. In outdoor or bright lighting, the base seems more clear and the glitter chunks are more prevalent.

The formula was fairly nice on the consistency scale. The glitter didn't give it a chunky feeling at all and I didn't have to play around with the brush to get the glitter to evenly distribute. Both pictures reflect two coats on top of Nail Tek Foundation II, then I layered two coats of top coat to give it a smooth finish.

I would highly recommend this polish... if you can find a lonely or hiding bottle at your local drug store. It would look FABULOUS layered on top of a fun blue, black or coral... anything really! It's sheer when you apply only one coat, but will leave you with well dispersed amount of glitter. It looks very cute worn alone and for my pals out there that LOVE the glitter/prism look, but don't necessarily like "unicorny" or "adventurous" colors... buy L'Oreal Silver Sparkle and accessorize ANY outfit with a simple, but striking mani!

Silver Sparkle is from the L'Oreal Summer 2012 It's Gold or Nothing At All collection.  This is a limited edition seasonal collection, so go look for that display!

Zoya Paz

I had my nails done at a salon for my friend's wedding this past weekend. It was a Girls Day Out and I wanted to join in the fun even if that meant giving my nails to someone else to polish... well, I loved the awesome cuticle pushing but I'm still in the process of reshaping my nails back to a more matching length and shape. What's up with salons filing my nails diagonally? This is the third time this has happened to me - are my finger tips crooked or something??

After a few days of wearing a sheer shade for the wedding, I couldn't wait to wear one of my favorite neons.  Zoya Paz is from the Summer 2009 La-Di-Da collection - this was the bright cremes counterpart to the Ooh-La-La metallics. La-Di-Da has been spotted at Ulta recently, so keep an eye out for it if you want the polish but don't want to pay the online S&H.

Paz is an ultra bright fluorescent safety neon orange - aka new traffic cone bright! I used three coats of Paz because the formula felt thin for a creme, but that thinness helped make application completely foolproof. No chance of dragging, uneven patches, or pooling with this polish.

Paz dries quickly to a semi-matte finish, which reminded me of a glowing ember. I prefer Paz with a shiny top coat because it really amps up the shade to full traffic cone brightness. Of course, the neon intensity is hard to capture in a picture - I think the bottle in the bottom pic would be closest to color accurate if the orange was just a bit brighter.

This polish glows in all lighting - it is truly intense and not for the timid polish wearer. Paz is one polish that definitely makes me happy - its brightness, unique color, super easy application, even its name! I wholeheartedly recommend it for a daring pedicure if the glowing highlighter brightness is too much for your hands.

OWWWP - Zoya Lindsay

I prefer Zoya's shimmers and glitters. Something about the pieces and particles they use make these finishes look extra unique. Most of their shimmers glide on relatively easy and opaque in two coats. That has not always been the case, though.

In the summer of 2006, they released their Glitterati collection - 6 shades that were translucent and packed with shimmer. Most of the Glitterati colors were pink and today's Wednesday, so I'm wearing one of those pink shades today.

Zoya describes Lindsay as a "translucent medium pink with sparkling silvery shimmer." On some people, this medium pink is bright enough to be a hot pink. Since I have some summer color and this is a cool pink, Lindsay looks more like a vibrant fuchsia on me. The Glitteratis are on the sheer side, so it took three full coats and some spot touch-ups to get Lindsay close to opaque.

Zoya and Seche Vite don't always get along, but I decided to use SV anyway to get all these coats of polish to dry. Lindsay was still dentable almost an hour later and I dinged my index finger. I slapped on a second coat of SV and it seemed to harden it up really quickly, so maybe I should've put two coats of topcoat on in the first place. Although Lindsay was dentable for awhile, once this polish actually dried, it wore like iron for days - we're talking no tipwear.

I like the brightness and femininity of Lindsay, but I'm not sure how I feel about it in comparison to some of my other sheer, shimmer-packed pinks - like BB Couture's Hermosa Surfer Girl.  I think next Wednesday will be a comparison week to show Devious Nature and Hermosa Surfer Girl against these other OWWWP shades.

Zoya Ivanka & Charla

If you haven't heard, Zoya is offering a free bottle of Ivanka AND Charla with any online purchase (US Only) while supplies last or until Thursday, June 16 at 11:59 EST.

Both of these polishes are from the Zoya Summer 2010 Sparkle collection. I've worn both these colors so far this summer because the warm weather has put me in the mood for bright shades. I want sparkle and iridescence until the hotter triple digit days of July when it looks like everything is radiating heatwaves - that's when I'll wear my neons. These polishes are definitely bright and sparkly!

According to Zoya, Ivanka is a "mermaid green sparkling metallic." The gold-with-hints-of-blue duochrome are very visible in the bottle. On the nail, this translates to a green that is bright and cool with tons of gold shimmer.

Charla is a "tropical blue sparkling metallic." I love turquoise polishes and this is one of my favorites. It's not a neon but it's still so bright and sparkly that my camera thought it was radioactive in the sunlight. Charla is packed with gold and green glitter that doesn't disappoint in any lighting.

Both of these polishes ran on the sheer side, probably due to the thin formula that lets the glitter swim through and set at different levels in the base. With three coats, you get sparkly depth and almost-full opacity. Zoya is not known for being a fast drying polish, but these polishes dry extremely quickly - even with three coats. They also dry smooth and grit-free.

If you don't have these two polishes or any of Charla's known dupes, don't wait to take advantage of Zoya's deal. They almost sold out today, but kept the deal going because their VP had them fill more bottles. Rush, rush, rush and go get some awesome free polishes!

OWWWP - Color Club Space Case

Time for my first Pink Wednesdays Pink!! If you haven't heard of Pink Wednesdays yet, check out the On Wednesdays We Wear Pink site for all the details on this latest polish community movement.

Now that I'm surrounded by Ross stores, my friends are getting used to the "let me run in real quick" request whenever we pass one. I've been finding great stuff for my hair, but no polish luck. Persistence paid off and I finally found two Color Club sets that I really wanted - Catwalk Queen and Starry Temptress!

Space Case is a neon pink glitter from the Color Club Summer 2011 Starry Temptress collection. The base is a medium pink with a silvery green shimmer. This polish is filled with small silver holographic glitter.

The base is heavy and covers most of the holographic sparkle, but the glitter that reaches the topmost layer does show some of its rainbow in the sunlight. The layers of glitter throughout the pink shimmer help give the polish a starry sky-like effect. It dries matte, so it needs top coat for a shiny finish.

The bright colors of the Starry Temptress collection are reminiscent of the neon shimmers in the Color Club Summer 2009 Electro Candy collection. Starry Temptress has glitter, but are the base color dupes? Nope!

Here are bottle comparisons of the two pinks from Starry Temptress 

with the pink from Electro Candy:

Space Case, Electro Candy, Ultra-Astral

Space Case is definitely lighter and cooler than Electro Candy. Ulta-Astral is a much darker fuchsia-like pink. Whew! It's always good when new polishes don't look like our old polishes ;D

Revlon Bubble Gum

I finally found a display of the Summer 2010 Scents of Summer Collection! I did it! I did it!!

Drug stores are so small around here so I rarely find cool polish displays, even when I'm actively looking for them. I found this display at the same Rite Aid I found my Maybelline Pie in the Sky. Their cosmetic section tends to look like a tornado hit it, but under all the mess and understocked shelves, this store is now 2-for-2 in my search for seasonal drug store polishes.

After a few happy days of sunshine, the rain rolled in. To counter the drizzles and brighten my day, I decided to try out Bubble Gum.

I tried to capture a really quick picture of Bubble Gum in the sunlight when the clouds briefly parted. Definitely not the best picture, but I wanted to show how how hot pink this polish can look.

In the sunlight, it's definitely a bright girly fuschia.

Inside, it's a bit mellower, but still bright pink:

(ooh, look how the CND Solar Oil soothes the cuticles, aah)

Bubble Gum is a bright medium pink creme. A slightly standard color, but these shades look good with my skintone and the color itself makes me feel happy. The formula was easy to use - slightly on the thin side. There was slight VNL at two coats, so I used three coats for my mani. For scent purposes, I decided to skip a top coat. This polish dried so glossy!  

You can smell the scent once the polish dries. This polish's bubble gum scent lasted about 2-1/2 days for me. I thought the scent was like Bazooka bubble gum. My husband thought it was like the bubble gum fluoride from his childhood dentist.

Since it's on my nails and not overwhelmingly strong, I'm really enjoying my scented nails. To be honest, I even tried talking with my hands more while I was wearing it to see how often I could smell the bubble gum. Ok, maybe I'm enjoying my scented nails a little too much!