China Glaze Medallion

I really love the glitters from the China Glaze Specialty Collection.  I saw them on Scrangie, got some to try for myself and I've really been hooked ever since. Honestly, NYC weather can make me feel pretty gloomy.  I don't like gray clouds and drizzle for days and days. I like putting on glitter polishes when I'm feeling kind of down and China Glaze Medallion helped me make it through the dreary, cold winter.

Since it has been a pretty dry summer in the city, I haven't worn it in a few months, so I decided to wear it for a very happy weekend just to celebrate. What was I celebrating? A roadtrip to DC to see Idina Menzel and Marvin Hamlisch in concert for my birthday!!

This is a clear-base cool gold glitter. There is a ton of holographic and larger hexagonal glitter thrown in among smaller gold and silver glitter. It's a rainbow of glitter. Blue, pink, green - you see something different sparkle up at you every time the sun hits it.

This swatch is taken with two thick coats. That's it. And check out the coverage! China Glaze didn't promise full coverage in two coats and I definitely wasn't expecting it since this has a clear base, so I was surprised and very pleased when I put on the first coat, let it set for a minute, put on the second coat, and... hey, it's time for a thick top coat - already?! - incredible.

The first time I wore this, I kept looking at my nails and thinking BLING-TASTIC!!! That's why I wore it for New Year's, my birthday, and every other time I wanted to feel extra sparkly.

Orly Country Club Khaki

Talk about Nail of the WEEK! Country Club Khaki is from the Spring 2009 Orly Prepster Collection, which was only one of three collections they released that season.

My husband has been encouraging me to invest in some more Orly polishes because of their wonderful rubberized top.  He tends to be my polish opener because I can never get bottles, jars, anything open. Before Country Club Khaki, I had one Orly polish that my mom had bought me randomly because it was on clearance at Sally's. 

This was such a nice polish to put on - easy to open, easy to apply, opaque and smooth in two coats, wonderful!  My cuticles have been such a wreck from the new soap at work.  I use lotion afterwards but nothing can defeat the dryness of that awful soap!  This polish made my hands feel elegant but edgy. It's a light brownish taupe creme that worked on my skin tone like a Nude But Not shade.

I liked this shade so much I put it on in Tuesday and didn't take it off till Friday night.  I wore this polish for almost an entire work week!  Go Orly!!

Never Again!!

I've used the Incoco Dry Nail Applique polish strips before and I really like them. I stock up when they're on sale at Walgreens because they're easy to use, last forever, have a nice finish, and they come with everything you need in the kit from a polish remover pad to a little orange stick. Only reason why I don't use them more is because I like to change my polish way too often.

Since I like the Incoco polish strips so much, I figured why not try out the Avon polish strips. They can't be that different, right? WRONG!

I got the Avon Instant Manicure Dry Nail Enamel Strips in a few colors when they were on clearance. Do you know why they were on clearance? Because they suck! I picked Bayberry because it looked like a light watermelon. Turns out it was a dull, matronly mauve mess on me - and when I say mess, I mean MESS!

The Horror!

I am pretty good at applying dry polish strips and these strips would not stay in place, they would not stop wrinkling, and look at that tip wear! This is what happened after wearing after wearing the strips a few hours. The tips lifted and tore right off like I was doing yardwork when all I was really doing was flipping through a magazine while we drove out to visit some relatives.

Awful color, awful application, awful wear - these Avon dry polish strips are hereby banned and will never be worn again.

Color Club Tru Passion

I've been so under the weather lately that I've barely been able to sit upright, much less polish and post.  We're supposed to be in the middle of the worst allergy season ever and, since I already have bad allergies, I've been knocked out.  So I picked a polish that I would love to see on my nails for awhile - of course, I picked a glitter *tee hee*

This is Tru Passion from the Fall 2008 Color Club Glitter Vixen collection. Flinty from Polish or Perish noticed this polish resembles Nubar Hyacinth from their recent Sparkles collection. 

I think of this polish as a lavender glitter. This glitter is a medium grit lighter purple, leaning more towards pink than blue, in a clear base. It's very sparkly, very opaque, very long lasting. I took this picture on Sunday and I've been wearing this mani since Wednesday. I only used two coats, but I think I should have used 3 on the fingers I used really thin coats, like my pinkie. To be honest, I was timid with application because I've read so many horror stories with this collection's removal. I put two coats of Redi Quick Dry topcoat on and I swear this polish got more shiny and sparkly as I wore it.

I love good glitters :)

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!

China Glaze Blue Island Iced Tea

Some of my favorite blues are from the China Glaze Bahama Blues collection, so I decided to wear some of my others ones this week.  Here is Blue Island Iced Tea!

I like this polish in the sunlight... 

 but it's pretty cool in the shade, too.

Is this a bluish silver or a silvery blue?  Is this a metallic, a microglitter, a shimmer, or a foil? 

Blue Island Iced Tea is hard to describe because it changes in almost every lighting. This is my interpretation of its description: a silver-based light blue foil.  It's got the sparkle and bling of a glitter with the smooth finish of a fol.  It's on the sheer, thin side, so it needs 3 coats.

What I really like about this polish is that it's a great polish to wear all year.  It feels icy when there's snow outside, it feels like sun off the waves in when it's summer time, it brightens up a cloudy day, it blings out on a sunny day. It looks different whenever you look at it.  Is that a jelly base? Is that a hint of turquoise glitter? It just keeps on sparkling.

Zoya Gwin

Gwin is from the Zoya Spring 2010 Reverie Collection.  Zoya describes Gwin as a "sunny melon metallic." I describe Gwin as pink-toned orange with a strong gold shimmer.

This polish really has a lot of iridescent shimmer. There are flashes of gold, yellow, and even green shimmer running through it. This is a lot more apparent in sunlight. Here's a blurred picture to show off some of sheen. It's like you think you're looking at a bright juicy orange shade and... it's glowing! from inside!! the shimmer!!!

My husband bought me the Reverie set a few months ago and today he picked up Maybelline Sunset Prisms for me. Yay for bright colors with a shimmer flash! (By the way - Lacquer Laine has a full swatch of Maybelline Sunset Prisms and it looks like this is one of those polishes that has a different color batch out there. One is orange with a green flash. One is pink with a gold flash.)

Side by side in their bottles, I thought Sunset Prisms might be a possible dupe for Gwin. On the actual nail, Sunset Prisms is a lighter melon orange shade. It's the early spring cousin to Gwin.

Gwin's on my index and ring finger.
Sunset Prisms is on my middle and pinkie finger.

Gwin is a darker orange with a gold flash and pretty much opaque in two coats. Sunset Prisms took four coats to get opaque but the gold shimmer and green flash is more obvious in most lighting. They both had decent formulas. Even though, Sunset Prisms took twice as many coats to get rid of VNL, it actually dried faster than Gwin. Not bad! Sunset Prisms even had a good brush - and it's a Maybelline Express Finish!

Soooo... since both of these polishes were nice to work with and they are related but different colors, both are staying put in the stash. No dupes this time!