SinfulShine I'm Blushing & Amazonian

*Press Sample*

As you know, I'm a big fan of SinfulColors - they have a wide range of shades, tons of new collections, and a wallet friendly price.  This year, SinfulColors launched their new SinfulShine line, which is being exclusively sold at Walgreen's.

I wanted to try out two SinfulShine shades that were completely different from each other, so I went with a work appropriate creme and a vampy, fall-ready shimmer.

SinfulColors describes I'm Blushing as a light pink. Their description is straightforward and accurate. I'm Blushing is the lightest of ballet pinks with a creme finish. I wasn't expecting this shade to be so opaque! I'm Blushing was on the thicker side, but went on smoothly and was nearly opaque in one coat. I used two coats for this mani.

Sunlight

Indirect Light

Not only did I'm Blushing go on smoothly, I swear it self-leveled itself even more as it dried. The pictures above were taken without top coat. This is definitely a shiny polish. Due to its opacity, I'm Blushing might be a tad stark on me to be work appropriate if I was in a conservative office, but I think it would be perfectly fine in a more casual office setting or a paler skin tone.

I also tried out Amazonian, a sparkly jungle green.  This shade's formula was even easier to work with, but I still used two coats. Here's Amazonian with no top coat.

 

Amazonian is ridiculously pretty! It's dark, it's green, it's so shimmery!! Since Pantone made Emerald the color of 2013, I've been working on trying out more green polishes. I'm ok with them, but only a few truly make me stop and go whoa - like Nars Zulu, China Glaze Emerald Sparkle, and Zoya Ivanka. Amazonian has made that short list with its shimmer's depth and sparkle.

While these SinfulShine polishes dry on the faster side of average and they do have glossy finishes, I don't recommend skipping a top coat. I'm rough on my nails with typing and dishes, and I got tipwear on the first day with these manis. I suggest putting a top coat on to seal and protect if you want to wear these polishes for more than a day - which you're definitely going to want to do with Amazonian!

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.

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!

Revlon Orchid

Inspired by Kat's snowed-in dotting manis (which she might put up in a later post), I decided to give my heart accent nail another try using dots this time.  I wanted to stick to drugstore polishes that are still available - unlike the older ones I was wearing this week - so I went back into my Revlon drawer for some Top Speeds.

I used two coats of the very opaque Revlon Top Speed Orchid. I probably could have gotten away with one coat, but applied two to smooth over initial brush strokes. This is a mauve-pink foil-like shade. It has some silver microglitter and pink microshimmer in it, but it acts like a foil in application and removal. This polish dries fast to the touch, but stayed dentable on me for awhile, even with a Seche Vite top coat. I'm not sure if it was the Revlon, the Seche Vite, or the two of them together that was to blame, but it was definitely odd given both are fast dry.

I used a dotting tool to dot on my accent hearts. I used two otherTop Speeds - Cloud and Modern Grace.

Cloud, Orchid, Modern Grace

Orchid is still completely available wherever Revlon polishes are sold. Cloud, a light purple creme, might be a little harder to find, but you can still find it online like Amazon.

Modern Grace, a purple-periwinkle creme, was a limited edition release in Spring/Summer 2011, but there are other similar shades out there if you like this color. If you want to stay drugstore, try out Wet 'n Wild Megalast's On A Trip. If you want to go a little "higher end," Zoya Caitlin is a greyed out cousin.

My little dotted hearts were a lot more appreciated than my previous glitter hearts, but now I'm in the mood for more glitter. What would be a good glitterful Valentine's mani?...

SinfulColors - Morning Star, Soul Mate, Greek Isles

I picked up some SinfulColors polishes during last week's 99 cent sale at Walgreens.  They've had so many limited edition seasonal collections recently that I went to town buying all the new shades I could find.  Here are the three I've worn so far this week...

Morning Star - a new shade from their Girls in Pearls Sheer Shimmers collection

This is a light blue shade with silver shimmer flecks.  It's a soft sky blue that doesn't lean purple on me - I've seen it get more periwinkle with lavender tones on people with other skin tones. Nice and delicate and very spring-like.

Soul Mate - I think this one's from the core collection

This dusty rose pink was thick. I tried to use two coats with all of these polishes, but Soul Mate could've worked with one coat. This shade is getting some thinner added before I wear it again. It still went on pretty smooth for a $1 creme. This is a conservative color, but it was a nice spring-y pink to wear before we jump into summer neons.

Greek Isles - a new shade from the Spring 2012 Cast Away collection

Indirect Light - my poor hands needed moisture and a little touching up

Under the Ott light after shaping & clean up

This is Tiffany blue cousin that leans green with a touch of gray. I decided that even at half off prices, the Zoya Earth Day sale still exceeded my low buy budget when I factored in S&H. Greek Isles is the shade I bought to console me from missing out on Bevin.

SinfulColors go on sale pretty often, but some of these new shades might be limited edition.  They have decent opacity, a slightly thick but workable formula, and wear great with my Cult Nails Get Even base coat and Poshe Fast Dry top coat.  If you find some of the seasonal shades that jump out at you, don't wait for a sale. Go ahead and spend those $2 so you don't end up with buyer's remorse like I almost had with the Cast Away and Girls in Pearls collections.  I walked away and almost didn't find them again.

Not sure if the shade's new or just a misplaced core polish placed in the display?  Check the bottom of the bottle - if it has a number in the thousands (i.e. 1107, 1116), it's a new shade.

MAC Dirty Martini + Comparison

 It's almost Halloween and it's time for a murky, swampy olive color!

I used to think light blue polishes were too crazy for me to wear - so stark, so bright, so blue!  I even gave my bottle of Barielle Swizzle Stix away because I just wasn't ready for it in 2009.  I also wasn't ready for the ugly-pretty camouflage colors that were starting to show up.  For its name alone, I bought Dry Martini from the MAC Fall 2009 by Jin Soon collection.  After two years of taupe, mushroom, and greige, I've slowly grown to enjoy these types of shades and I'm finally ready to love this polish!

Dry Martini is a dark, brown-leaning olive green creme.  On me, this polish looks green indoors and brown outdoors.  My bottle had been untouched for so long that it needed some really good mixing.  I don't think I mixed it enough, so it took me three coats to get this polish on opaque and even.

I was so happy with the look of Dirty Martini that I tried to put on an ombre mani with some of my other drab green cremes (I know the OPI has a faint shimmer, but it's only visible 2% of the time so it barely counts as shimmer!). 

Rescue Beauty Lounge No More War (index), Zoya Shawn (middle),
Dry Martini (ring), and OPI Here Today... Aragon Tomorrow (pinkie)

Shawn is a bit dingy looking in the bottle, but it looks so vibrant when it's in the middle of all these brown-tinged greens. I don't have Zoya Dree (still on a low-buy), but I think that green would've fit in much better with the other olive shades. I used two coats on No More War and Shawn and three coats on Dry Martini and Here Today Aragon Tomorrow.

Since the greens looked so different on the hand than they did in their bottles, this mani turned out just to be a comparison swatch.  It's still a useful look at these popular polishes, even if it isn't a real ombre mani!

Cult Nails Get It On & Wicked Fast!

I was lucky enough to be one of the few people chosen to test drive the new base and top coat from Cult Nails!  Are you ready to see what Maria's come up with this time?

I've never done this before, but... here are my bare nails (eep)!!  

I had some funky staining awhile back so I lightly buffed my nails.  As you can see, there's now a clear line straight through the middle between buffed and unbuffed nail.  I've been using a ridgefiller base coat while the buffed part grows out to make the surface even again.

Here are my nails with one coat of Cult Nails Get It On Perfecting Base Coat.

Where's the uneven line between buffed/unbuffed?  Where are my minimal ridges? Perfected! One coat and everything was smoothed over.

Get Even has a shiny finish, but not in a slick way. The dried texture is slightly rubbery so it's ready to grab on to the polish.  It also dries quickly - I can't stand base coats that take forever to set. Get Even is one of those base coats where Finger 1 is dry by the time you're done putting it on Finger 10.

It was Friday, so I was ready for fun weekend nails.  I decided to try out Get Even and Wicked Fast with Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Blue Me Away.  This shade was released in Spring/Summer 2009, but I didn't buy it until it recently made it back on to drugstore displays as a featured shade of the season.  It's very pigmented, so some people can get away with just one coat.

I wore it here with two coats and one coat of Wicked Fast.

Here are my tips with Blue Me Away after four full days of wear.

I can't emphasize enough the importance of wrapping the tip of the fingernail with polish and top coat to my friends who want to make their manicures last longer. It really works! Don't leave the edge of the nail bare - seal that color on!

Normally, tip wear is minimized but the combo of Get Even and Wicked Fast cemented Blue Me Away on. Even after days of cleaning, typing, dish washing without gloves, there's still polish on the nail edge.

Here are my bare nails right after I took Blue Me Away off.

Four days of wearing a bright blue shade over only one coat of base coat and there was no significant staining on my nails themselves.  I even got crazy smurf fingers when I was taking Blue Me Away off - there's still a touch of blue staining on the right side of my cuticles visible - but my nails were fine!

I think one of the best tests of base/top coats is how they act with cremes because it's a very unforgiving finish.  Jellies would have to be the next hardest finish because of its tendency to bubble and pull away from the tips.  Next up was my manicure to celebrate "the end of summer" over the long Labor Day weekend.

Here are my nails with two coats of New York Summer Hot Orange, one coat of Cult Nails Captivated, and one coat of Get Even and Wicked Fast each.

Here are my nails after five full days of wear.

My nails grew out but the polish didn't go anywhere!  I wore Get Even and Wicked Fast for a day or two with other polish brands and finishes.  The results were consistently the same - once the polish dried, it stayed put nice, shiny and smooth.

I loved Get Even Perfecting Base Coat from the second it dried on my first nail.  I had to get to know the Wicked Fast! Quick Drying Top Coat before I grew to love it.  Why?  Because it's not a thick quick drying top coat, so it shouldn't be treated like one!  That seems like a logical no-brainer, but I've been using thick top coats like Seche Vite and Poshe for a few years and old habits die hard.

Wicked Fast is a thin top coat. You don't need a large bead to be slathered and oozed on the nail for it to work.  The more you put on, the slower it'll dry and the more likely it'll bubble. You don't need a thick layer or multiple coats of Wicked Fast.  One thin coat.  That's it.  Really.  That's all you'll need to make this work!  Put it on thinly and it'll dry quickly to a hard glass-like finish.

After trying Get Even and Wicked Fast for the last few weeks, I know that I'm in love. So far, they get along with all of my polishes, they make them last forever, and they're so easy to work with.  I love the Cult Nails bottle and brush and I love their formulas. Once again, Maria has blown my mind with her creations.

Get Even and Wicked Fast are expected to go on sale at the end of the month, so keep your eye on the Cult Nails shop and definitely plan on getting your own!

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 - Color Club Raspberry Rush

I have put the comparisons aside for another week so I can show off my latest find. After months of stalking Ross, I have finally found Wicked Sweet!!!

Wicked Sweet is one of the two Color Club Summer 2011 collections - this is the candy scented one! I found this set looking nice and shiny (which is surprising given how polish sets normally look in my local Ross) and put on Raspberry Rush as soon as I got home.

Raspberry Rush is a vibrant raspberry creme - a cool leaning hot fuchsia that is so bright that it must be part neon. I say "part" because the first coat dries matte, but the second and third coats dry shiny so this polish can't be entirely neon.

I think these pictures begin to convey the juicy raspberry vibrancy of this polish, but neons throw the camera off. Imagine the polish a brighter, cooler shade with a bit more purple that makes my hands look more tan.

And the scent - it is fruity candy to the extreme! I thought the scented Revlon shades were decent because they kept their scent for a few days. This polish put that scent strength to shame! Usually, I have to bring my hands past my face to catch a whiff of the scent. After Raspberry Rush dried, I could smell the candy scent even when my hands were far away, like in my lap. The scent is pleasant, but it is strong - you have been warned :)

 I can't wait to try all the other Wicked Sweet shades. I'm so happy I finally found this set - eeeee!!

OPI Stranger Tides

We were out shopping with friends in Tucson when I spotted a nail supply place named "Andy's." That's kinda my name and it's a nail supply place, so I dragged my friends. What did I find? Affordable OPI!! I recently sold some polish in my blog sale, so I took my new funds and picked up some new shades.

They had all the shades from the OPI Pirates of the Carribean On Stranger Tides Spring 2011 collection. Since I'm on a limited polish budget and could only get one bottle from that collection, I went with the shade that would be the most unique in my beloved set of OPI polishes.

Stranger Tides is a light green creme with touches of gray to give it a murky feeling. I felt the formula was a bit watery so this is three thin coats to get full opacity. It set quickly, dried shiny, and wore like iron, so it was well worth all three coats.

On my hand, this green definitely leans yellow - most likely due to my olive skin tone.  I like the quiet oddness of this shade, but the heat has hit AZ hard in the last week. This pastel shade doesn't fit my "summer's here" mood so I'll be putting this away while we're in our triple digit days.

OWWWP - OPI I'm Indi-a Mood For Love

Happy June to all!! I just ordered Devious Nature from Cult Nails during their fantastic Memorial Day sale. While I wait for my perfect hot-pink-with-a-touch-of-berry polish to arrive, I decided to wear another bright, cool leaning pink - I'm Indi-a Mood for Love from the OPI Spring 2008 India collection.

One of my favorite pinks of all time is OPI Strawberry Margarita from their Spring 2006 Mexico collection. It's a great bright warm pink, so I didn't pay attention to any of the cool pinks in the later spring/summer collections. Warm pinks made me feel tan and summery golden - until I moved to New York and looked for a cooler color that seemed more appropriate for their milder seasons.

I'm Indi-a Mood for Love is a bright, cool pink creme that goes on smoothly and dries shiny. I prefer three thin coats for full opacity. This polish is opaque enough to be worn with only two, but that does leave some nail line visible in brighter lighting.

 

There's enough blue in I'm Indi-a Mood for Love for this shade to look more purple-magenta on me. That tames this bright pink down enough to make it sophisticated enough to be work appropriate for me in the summer months.

I wonder how Devious Nature will measure up against this shade? Given the extremely fast shipping from Cult Nails, I'll probably have it my hands in time to share for next week's On Wednesdays We Wear Pink post.

OPI San Tan-tonio

As I mentioned last month, I haven't been able to get any of the OPI Spring 2011 Texas polishes because OPI isn't in the "unemployed" budget. However, I now have three shades from the collection due to the generosity and awesomeness of my wonderful friends. Surprisingly, the first one I tried wasn't a "sorbet."

According to OPI, San Tan-tonio is "a “honey” of a ten-gallon tan!" This is definitely a light tan creme, but the exact shade will vary depending on your skin tone. This shade looks like a grayed-out caramel on me. The first coat showed a rosy brown base that continued to deepen in color with each subsequent coat. Here it is at three coats - very shiny and level before I even got the top coat on.

Everyone's monitor shows colors differently, but I had to show a more accurate shot of the bottle itself. For some reason, it kept coming out really light in all the color accurate nail shots. It's not the color of coffee with too much cream - it's more tan than that.

The shade looks different once it's on the hand, but here's how San Tan-Tonio actually looks by itself in the bottle.

I really liked San Tan-tonio - something about the shade made me think of the 70s. If I did "How I Wore It" posts like Varnish Vixen, I'd wear this color with a flowy peasant blouse and flares outfit.

OWWWP - Zoya Lo

I love the elongated and feminine shape of tapered oval nails, but my nails felt so delicate and breakable. And I was scared to put in my contacts. My nails grow fast and I put my dailies in before coffee - I was freaked out about the possibility of scratching a cornea!! I've gone back to a shorter squoval and my eyes feel safe again.

On to Pink Wednesdays! Lo is from the Zoya Summer 2008 Gossip collection - the creme companion to the metallic shimmer Chit Chat collection. This polish looks a little bit lighter in the bottle. Even the bottle shot on the Zoya website makes it looks like a gentler pink, but trust the swatch shots you find online or order a spoon to get a more realistic idea of what this shade looks like on the hand.

Looks kinda neon, but absolutely isn't! Dries very bright & shiny

Shade

Lo flows on so easily - Zoya's creme formula has never let me down. The shade is fully opaque in two coats, but I get the best wear from Lo with three. Like most Zoya polishes, this shade fights with my quick-dry top coats. To avoid shrinkage, denting and scratches, it's important to seal the tips and give Lo just a few extra minutes to set.

This pink looks a lot like the warm bright medium pink creme shade that OPI tends to release with their summer collections. OPI Strawberry Margarita happens to be very near and dear to my heart, but my black label bottle has gotten older, emptier, and more sheer (is that possible??) so I'm happy to have Lo on hand as a close substitute.

More Revlon Top Speeds

I definitely judge a shade of polish based on what I see in the bottle. This is not a good strategy because there are so many ways for a polish to surprise you once it's actually on that nail. Look - it's a darker shade, there's a hidden shimmer, the incredible opacity gives this so much depth, happy wows like that. Of course, a polish could also end up being a sheer, watery, streaky mess that won't dry but let's be optimistic!

Here are some of the Revlon Top Speeds that I was just gifted - and each one of them was a very pleasant surprise for me. After my binge on spring pastels, I had to wear a shade that was edgier and earthier. Time for taupe!!

Stormy is a taupe creme that looks kinda drab in the bottle, but loves to change colors on the hand. This shade leans gray, brown, or purple depending on lighting and skin tone. Based on other reviews, it seems like Stormy has a hit or miss formula. It's streaky, thin and hard to work with for some people. I was lucky and my bottle had an excellent formula - smooth and creamy in two easy coats.

Stormy Can Lean Brown

Stormy Can Also Lean Gray

I couldn't stay away from spring pastels for too long and I tried Jaded next. In the store, I thought this was the Top Speed dupe for their non-Top Speed shade Minted, but I was wrong. Jaded is a little bit lighter, a little bit more yellow, and it has a subtle silver shimmer! This wasn't as easy to apply as Stormy, but I still only needed two coats for a sufficiently smooth finish.

And the biggest, trippiest surprise of all was Cloud. I've seen swatches of Cloud and sometimes it looks a bit blue or a bit gray or a bit dusty, but it pretty much always looks light purple. Not On Me!!! Cloud looks periwinkle! In real life, in every lighting, in every picture - it looks like a light blue that leans purple.

Shade - Looking Soft and Bit More Lavender

Sunlight - Looking Stark & Blue
which is how it looks on me about 95% of the time

I actually Cloud a lot more like this because it's completely unique in my collection. The ease of application was right in the middle of Stormy and Jaded and I still only used two coats. I got the most compliments on this shade and I kept asking what shade they thought this polish was - no one said light purple. It was pastel blue or periwinkle or light robin's egg, so it's confirmed that I wasn't seeing things. Crazy colors!