OWWWP - OPI A Sparkle Yule Love

Can you believe it's February already?  I'm in the mood for lots of pinks and reds, so let's get started with a pink. This is A Sparkle Yule Love from the OPI Ulta Exclusive Holiday 2011 Deck Your Nails mini-collection.  I don't have Excuse Moi from the Muppets collection, but this may be a dupe of that shade. 

A Sparkle Yule Love is a pink jelly with tons of glitter - silver and pink microglitter and larger multicolor glitter in tons of colors like blue, yellow, and green.  Here it is with two coats and two layers of top coat.  It's not a gritty glitter, but it does need a little bit of extra smoothing.

I think I like this shade so much because it's like a remix of China Glaze Carnival Lights, one of my favorite glitters from their Specialty collection.  It's the same kind of idea - colors, multicolor glitter, jelly base - but with a few tweaks to make it feel updated.

This is a very sparkly polish, so be sure to wear it when you need something extra twinkly on your nails.

Party of Five Glitters vs. Gems

The universe knows when you're happily wearing a new polish that you don't want to change. That's when you find the new displays of polishes that everyone has been talking about. And those displays are full. How does the universe know?!

While I skipped around Walgreens looking for some new conditioner wearing My Kind of Cool Aid, I found the new Wet N Wild Fast Dry polishes. I picked up a few, including Party of Five Glitters, which is another potential drugstore dupe for Lippmann Happy Birthday. I left MKoCA on a few more days and finally have some comparison shots of Party of Five to share.

Party of Five Glitters is a clear-based polish filled with large silver hex glitter, medium light blue and fuschia hex glitter, and smaller red, green, and gold hex glitter. Isn't that 6 glitters? Maybe the tiny gold glitter is really a reflective silver? Back to the real question - This $2 option is better for your wallet than a $16 polish, but is it worth the savings against the $5 Milani Gems? Comparison Time!

 

Party of Five looks significantly more pink than Gems 

when the bottles are side by side.

I used one coat of Wet N Wild Black Creme as the base 

to make the glitter nice and visible.

1 Coat, 2 Coats, 3 Coats, 1 Coat of Party of Five Glitters

Party of Five has a thick clear base and it makes getting the glitter on the nail challenging. I thought the first coat of this "fast dry" polish was sufficiently set so I put on a second and third coat to get more glitter on the nail. What happens when you pile coats of thick polish on top of wet polish? Bubbles. And I didn't get enough glitter on the nail to cover these major bubbles up.

2 Coats Gems, 2 Coats Party, 1 Coat Gems, 1 Coat Party

Gems has a slightly different color combination of large and small hex glitter - no fuchsia, more green - but the difference is definitely less visible on the nail than it was in the bottle. Gems has a thinner base and it feels like there's significantly more glitter landing on the nail in every brushstroke. It seems that Gems also dried faster, smoother, and shinier than Party of Five.

I think with a little thinner and some more drying time between coats, Party of Five Glitters could be a fun glitter polish to use again. If I wanted to save some money, I would buy Party of Five instead of Happy Birthday. If I could only walk out of a drugstore with one glitter polish, though, I'd definitely pick Gems over Party of Five. I don't need an odd fuchsia hex here and there as much as I need the sheer density of the glitter bomb fiesta that Gems provides in two coats. Pow!

Color Club Magic Attraction

More sparkly snow-inspired polish because we're supposed to get stuff that sticks to the ground tonight!  I'm trying to also get myself mentally psyched up for tomorrow's expected high of 24 degrees.  Heh... 24.  That's about 55 degrees lower than the expected high in Phoenix... on to that sparkly polish!

Color Club Magic Attraction is from the Fall 2008 Glitter Vixen Collection - one day I will have the entire set! Magic Attraction does have a couple of relatives out there in the polish world. According to Scrangie, it's an available option for the hard-to-find OPI Paris Couture for Sure. It's also related to Hocus Pocus from this year's Color Club Halloween minis. If you're not a frequent glitter wearer and you'd prefer a smaller bottle, this would be a good time to look for that set on clearance.

The chunky holographic glitter throughout Magic Attraction makes this clear-base, silver glitter look sparkly and multicolored. This polish has dense glitter like the other Glitter Vixens so it covers the nail in one coat.  With two coats, it gets as close to opaque as you can get with a clear base glitter. This isn't a fine-grit glitter so double up on the thick top coat.

Despite looking very silver in the bottle, I think this has a pinkish tint in some angles when I wear it.

Indirect Sunlight

Direct Sunlight - Different Angle
but look! I caught some of the rainbow holo sparkle effect in the photo!

Bundle up & stay warm! More glitter to get me through this winter to come *wink*

Holiday Season! - Milani Gems

I know it's late and tomorrow's a Monday, but I had to fit in this post because... I loved our four day Thanksgiving weekend, I love the holiday season (counting down the days to Christmas in AZ), and I love my husband for going out of his way to find Milani Gems for me.

I've been looking for Gems - it's a Milani Jewel FX off their Rockstar Heavy Glitter display - and the one display that I've found had all of the other polishes and two empty spaces where Gems was supposed to go. So close, so far!!  That was the only display I even found after looking in many other Duane Reades, CVS, and Rite Aides.  It's becoming a pattern with drugstore collections that the polish gets found once I stop looking for it.  And that happened again this time.

My husband goes out in the windy cold weather to get us some Dunkin Donuts breakfast - I'm addicted to their coffee - and comes back with the last bottle of Gems from the last CVS in Staten Island that I hadn't checked.  He's too sweet... awww.... so I put Gems on as soon as I could to show my appreciation.

My goal is to wear festive holiday polish looks through New Year's and here's my first post-Thanksgiving Jolly manicure - Orly Enchanted Forest layered with Milani Gems.

The Bottle Buddies Pic - aww, they like each other!

1 coat of Milani Gems over 2 coats of Orly Enchanted Forest

I love this festive glitter! Gems is supposed to be the $5 sibling to a Lippmann Polish that's more than three times that price. It's true that when macro shots of the two polishes are compared there are slight differences. Gems has large and small hex glitter and the color combination is slightly different. Lippmann's Happy Birthday has large hex glitter and small *square* glitter with a little more pink in the mix. I think Gems is definitely a good dupe-ish substitute and I'm so happy to have it!! 

Good luck to everyone else who may be on their own drugstore searches - you can find those polishes!