Sinful Colors Nova-2 ways

Merry Christmas! I hope you're having a wonderful day. I am, except I thought I had hit "publish" on this post last night, but apparently not, LOL.

Sinful Colors Nova with China Glaze Make a Spectacle accent, natural light

I wore Sinful Colors Nova as a mani the other week. Nova is part of the Sinful Colors Holiday Shimmers collection.  It's a very pretty dark blue jelly with green and blue shimmer. I was a bit eccentric and wore it differently on both hands.  First, here it is on its own, with an accent nail of China Glaze Make a Spectacle.

Sinful Colors Nova with China Glaze Make a Spectacle accent, natural light

Then, I got fancy and used tape to make a tree with Essie Mojito Madness. I was going for this gorgeous look from Refined and Polished. Unfortunately, I don't have striping tape, so I just added the lines to the tree freehand with a striping brush. Then, I used a dab of Sinful Colors Pumpkin Spice to make the star on top of the tree. I should've used more, because you can barely see it in these pictures! I sponged the bottoms of my nails with Sinful Colors Call You later. 

Sinful Colors Nova with Sinful Colors Call You later glitter and Essie Mojito Madness tree, natural light

I have a couple more pictures, jump to see them!

Christmas (Salad) Days- green glitterbomb featuring Orly Mermaid Tale

Orly Mermaid Tale over China Glaze Glittering Garland and Sinful Colors Cal You Later, sun

Here's a fun combination I wore after I decided I better get into the Christmas spirit and start doing some Christmas themed manis before it's too late. Unfortunately, I couldn't actually find any actual holiday stamps in my tiny collection of plates. The closest I came is this poinsettia stamp. I didn't want to get too complicated so I just stamped my middle finger. On the other fingers, I decided glitter was the solution. I started with 2 coats of China Glaze Glittering Garland, then added 1 coat of Sinful Colors Call You Later and 1 coat of Orly Mermaid Tale. I think the resulting manicure is blingy enough for the holidays. It actually reminds me a lot of Lynderella's green glitterbombs, like I Can Afford It and Salad Days.  However, there was a specific layering look that inspired this. Join me after the jump to see the inspiration and for more pictures!

Orly Mermaid Tale over China Glaze Glittering Garland and Sinful Colors Cal You Later, shade

Coldhearted beauty? Sephora X Coldhearted

Sephora X Coldhearted, shade

I have some swatches from November for you today. Back when I found the Sephora X polish display around Thanksgiving, I gave myself a full manicure with one of the samples of Sephora X that was in the store.  I tried out Coldhearted, a dark purple jelly with hex and microglitters in the same color. Unfortunately, I only got a few pictures of it before it began to chip and I took it off, and of course I can't redo the manicure. Here are my pictures, for what they're worth.

Sephora X Coldhearted, natural light lamp

Like all purples, Coldhearted's color was a bit difficult to capture.  It's closer to picture in the shade, but you can find another perspective on the color by checking out this link at The Polish Jinx. Not only does the post have a bottle shot of Coldhearted, it has bottle pictures for all of the Sephora X polishes. 

Sephora Coldhearted, shade

Overall, I really like Sephora X Coldhearted. It's a beautiful shade of purple and the lovely jelly nature of the base really lets the purple glitter shine through. It's a lovely polish, and applied pretty well for a glittery polish. What do you think of it?

Gourds in the desert? Finger Paints Gourd or Bad? over Kalahari Kiss

Finger Paints Gourd or Bad over ver China Glaze Kalahari Kiss, sunlight

Here are my swatches of Finger Paints Gourd or Bad, a multi-colored bar glitter over China Glaze Kalahari Kiss. BTW, in case you're curious, "gourd" is a specific plant but it's also sometimes used to describe squash, which I'm sure is what the name is a reference to. Finger Paints Gourd or Bad? came out as part of the Finger Paints Fall '12 collection.  It's a collection of silver, light blue, light orange and lavender bar gitter in a clear base. Kalahari Kiss is from China Glaze's On Safari collection. It's an awesome neutral camel color, in my opinion. 

Finger Paints Gourd or Bad over ver China Glaze Kalahari Kiss, shade

Here's the same combination in the shade. Please excuse my uneven nails, I had just had a break and hadn't evened everything out when I wore this combo. 

China Glaze Glitter All the Way over holiday skittles

China Glaze Glitter All the Way over various colors, shade

I knew I wanted to try China Glaze Glitter All the Way over a few other colors. It's an interesting polish, it's fairly dense but you can still see the underlying polish if you do just one coat. I wanted to do glitter tips with it and decided to try it over the colors in the polish: gold, red, purple and green. I think it looks really pretty over all of the colors, and makes for a festive look in this skittle form! To find out what polishes I used, and see more pictures, join me after the jump!

China Glaze Glitter All the Way over various colors, sunlight

China Glaze Whirled Away over a bright purple

China Glaze Whirled Away over Island Girl Aloha Luau,
 sunlight

It appears China Glaze has been paying attention to the surge in popularity of indie polishes in the last year. The proof: its new glitter from the Cirque Du Soleil collection. Whirled Away is a combination of large black hex glitter, black bar glitter and huge white hex glitters in a clear base. It should sound familiar, since a series of black and white glitters has been around for months from different indie vendors. For a comparison of a bunch of these type of black and white glitters, check out this incredibly thorough post at Chalkboard Nails.

I knew I wanted to layer Whirled Away over a bright color, and I ended up going with one of my favorite new polishes of late. Island Girl Aloha Luau is a bright, nearly neon purple with a silver shimmer. It’s super vivid and saturated, the perfect backdrop for the simple colors of Whirled Away. Join me after the jump to find out what I thought of the glitter, plus a few more pictures.

China Glaze It's a Trapeze over a pastel blue

China Glaze It's a Trapeze over Kinetic Candy, sunlight

Here is China Glaze It's a Trapeze over 2 coats of China Glaze Kinetic Candy. I got the idea to layer the milky glitter over blue after seeing some of the awesome combinations my friend Lisa over at Swatches and Whatnot has posted.  I decided to layer the milky polish over a light blue in order to achieve a look similar to Nails, Inc. Pudding Lane.  My overall look is lighter than the Nails Inc version, but I still really like it. I just did 1 layer of It's a Trapeze over 2 coats of Kinetic Candy.

China Glaze It's a Trapeze over Kinetic Candy, shade

China Glaze It's a Trapeze over Kinetic Candy, sunlight

Sephora X Chaotic over Sally Hansen Pacific Blue

Sephora X Chaotic over Sally Hansen Pacific Blue, sunlight

Here are my swatches of Chaotic, the new black and white topcoat from the Sephora X polish line.  I just picked this up on Wednesday, and have discussed its limited availability in my previous post. I layered it over 2 coats of Sally Hansen Pacific Blue, an awesome bright cobalt blue that's quickly become a favorite. I think you can easily see why this blue is an attention-getter. It's also easy to see why these kinds of black and white glitters have long been on the radar of other polish lovers.  The black and white matte glitters create quite a contrast over almost any color, and it's a really beautiful effect. I heard more than one person call the effect "paint splatter"-like.

Sephora Chaotic over Sally Hansen Pacific Blue, shade

New Sephora X polishes on their way, including a Sticks and Stones type of polish!

I happened to stop by my local Sephora yesterday, where I was thrilled to find that they are carrying a whole new line of nail polish.  The most shocking in the bunch for me was definitely Chaotic, a black and white gitter along the same lines as Sticks and Stones/Connect the Dots. Expect a full swatch soon, but for now, here's a picture of it on my thumb.

Edited to add: I now have a swatch of Chaotic here.

The sales associates at Sephora were very excited about this new line of polishes, and they are how I learned more about the polishes. Apparently, there are 50 flagship Sephora stores in the US that got the displays for this weekend, but it should be rolled out nationwide by summer of 2013.  Here's a link to the Sephora website where you can check them out for yourself. Unfortunately, the bottles are only .33 oz and retail for $9.50, so they're a bit on the pricey side.

There was an innovation in this display that I really liked-  their clear plastic tester sheet. You can test out the polish on the plastic sheet instead of your nails to see how it applies. In addition, you can put your nail under the clear plastic with the polish on in order to see how the color will look on you! Isn't that cool? I wish other stores woud follow Sephora's lead on this, it is such an awesome and helpful tool!

Too lazy for 15 Day Lazy Challenge

Hi, guys! Just posting to let you know that I am dropping out of the 15 day challenge. My heart just hasn't been in it, and  I've been rushing to post almost every time because of not having the internet at home. I had thought I'd have it soon after joining in, but that didn't end up working out. I have a lot of cool posts planned that I've been putting off because of the challenge, so watch out for some  upcoming stuff about some great new polishes.

Lazy 15 Day 7- Feminine Nails, with Orly Decades of Dysfunction

Orly Decades of Dysfunction with stamping and Nina Holographic Topcoat

Blogger fails again! This was supposedly published last night on my smartphone.  This is the 2nd time in the 7 days of challenges that Blogger has malfunctioned on me. :(

I haven't had a lot of time to dedicate to my nails or blog recently, and these nails are no exception. The stamping is less than perfect, but I'm hoping the glitter makes up for it. For this look, I started with 2 coats of Orly Decades of Dysfunction, a neutral nearly white pink. Next, I stamped it with LA Girls Magnetized and a Bundle Monster 224 stamping plate. Finally, I added a coat of Nina Holographic Topcoat, a good dupe for Butter London Tart With a Heart. I wish it had shown up a bit better, I guess the base color is a bit too pale for this glitter.

Orly Decades of Dysfunction with LA Girl Magnetized stamping

Lazy 15 Day 6- Favorite color, with Orly Spazmatic

Orly Spazmatic over Revlon Royal with flakies

I don't think I'm going to be alone in stating "favorite color- Huh?" As in, favorite color ever, of polish, our favorite polish name-the possibilities are endless. Since my favorite color is turquoise, I went with a look featuring Orly Spazmatic,a turquoise glitter in a clear base. I also decided to include a few of my other favorites in this manicure, so I decided to use a jelly type of polish and to include some flakies, which I also love! I created a jelly sandwich featuring 1 coat of Spazmatic between 2 coats of Revlon Royal, which I recently picked up for $2 at Big Lots. I added a coat of Essie Shine of the times on top. Once all that was done, I wanted the beautiful blue color of turquoise glitter to be showcased a bit more, so I added some glitter tips to the top of my nails with more of Orly Spazmatic. Sorry these sundown pictures are a bit weird looking, I'll be adding some natural light ones later on.

Orly Spazmatic and Essie Shine of the Times over Revlon Royal

Lazy 15 Day 5- Galaxy nails featuring Finger Paints Plum Startled

Finger Paints Plum Startled galaxy nails, sunlight

Here is my version of galaxy nails, which started with a Finger Paints Plum Startled jelly sandwich with China Glaze Make a Spectacle.  It's largely inspired by Rebecca's purple nails at Rebecca Likes Nails, but it has a lot to do with laziness. I could not find my black nail polish and since I remembered how pretty Rebecca's purple galaxy nails had been, I just pulled out my Finger Paints Plum Startled instead.

Finger Paints Plum Startled galaxy nails,natural light lamp

Lazy 15 Day 4 - Water Marbled Fast Track

More later, but here is my water marbled mani for tonight. It features China Glaze Fast Track, a shimmery neutral and Kleancolor Teal Marble, ironically enough.

Lazy 15 Day 3-Dotted Dia de los Muertos

Sugar skull nails on Finger Paints Paper Mache, sun

PSA: The Blogger application for droids sucks. Hard. Last night I typed up and ¨posted¨ this manicure on my phone really late in the day. I hadn´t had access to a computer until now, only to realize that it never got posted. :(  The Blogger application is so terrible, this is only the latest of my bad experiences with it!

I originally intended to do sugar skull nails for the actual Dia de los Muertos on November 2. Unfortunately, I  ended up being too busy to do a skull mani for that day like I intended. However, when I saw that the prompt for the 3rd day of the Lazy Challenge was dots, I immediately knew I could do dotted sugar skulls.  I started with a base of Finger Paints Paper Mache and then used various dotting tools to create all the dots in the look. I also used the skinniest of the dotting tools to make all of the lines involved.

If you´d like more details on the polishes I used or to see more pictures, join me after the jump!

Lazy 15 Day 2- Half Moon gradient with Pacific Blue

Half moon gradient featuring Sally Hansen Pacific Blue and Island Girl Aloha Luau

Calling all nail detectives! If you know the originator of this design, I'd love more information about it. All I know is that someone on the Makeup Alley nail board posted a picture of a mani like this, and I loved it so much that I knew I had to recreate it. Here's the original picture that I saw, it's from Pinkie G on Beautylish.  (Thank you to Jennifer Q for helping me find the original post. This is what I get for using the image search option on Google Images instead of entering key descriptive words.)

I chose 2 of my favorite polishes for the look, Island Girl Aloha Luau and Sally Hansen Pacific Blue.  Island Girl Aloha Luau in an amazing purple, it's almost a purple neon with a bit of a shimmer. I first learned about it when I saw this beautiful gradient with it from Canvas Nails.  I actually put in a special request to Esmeralda Pearlfinish for her to pick it up when she visited Hawaii recently.  Sally Hansen Pacific Blue is another amazing color, one that is much more readily available than the Island Girl. Pacific Blue is available at drugstores everywhere as part of the Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear line. Pacific Blue is a gorgeous bright periwinkle blue, I can't express how much I adore it! In combination with the amazing Aloha Luau, it's one stunning manicure!

Join me after the jump for more pictures and a quick description of the technique involved.

Belated Halloween skittle manis

Halloween skittle nails, featuring "candy" accent nail

I did not really do much this Halloween, and basically only celebrated with my nails. I did two different kinds of skittles on my two hands.

I broke out my mom's baking stuff for the left hand. Long before I ever heard of caviar manicures, I saw this post on All Lacquered Up about a candy look Katy Perry had sported on her nails. When I saw my mom's Halloween themed nonpareils, I knew I wanted to try it. As it turns out, these little guys aren't ideal for manicures. You can't expose them to water or the color will wash out. And they pop off even more easily than caviar microbeads do.  Despite this, it was fun to wear them for a little bit and it totally made me feel like I was in the Halloween spirit!

China Glaze glass fleck Halloween nails, featuring Riveting and Smoke and Ashes

I kept things simple on my right hand. I wore two glass fleck polishes, China Glaze Smoke and Ashes and China Glaze Riveting.  They both have such a cool shimmer to them in the sun that they were very fun to look at. 

If you're curious to know exactly what polishes I wore on my left hand, join me after the jump.

Lazy 15 Day 1-Tape mani featuring Jordana LA City Nights

Tape manicure with Jordana LA City Nights glitter over Boy Oh Boy

Gah! Today is the first day of the Lazy Bloggers challenge and it's also the perfect example of why I don't participate in these kind of things. Anytime I try to do nail art for a particular occasion, I tend to fail spectacularly. This experience was unfortunately not an exception. I tried 2 failed manis that I had to take off before finally succeeding with this one. It's a bit more simple than what I originally planned, which is why I decided to kick it up a notch with a coat of Jordana LA City Nights.  LA City Nights is a really pretty mix of purple microglitter with turquoise glitter. I thought it fit really well with the purple of the square and the bluish color of the base. For this manicure, I started with Jordana Boy Oh Boy as teal base color and added Finger Paints Plum Startled after I taped off the squares. I topped it all off with Jordana LA City Nights. I love the colors in LA City Nights, I can't believe I haven't worn it before this. I definitely plan to change that very soon! I will definitely see you guys on Monday for the gradient mani in the challenge. I've learned from my mistakes and will start way ahead of time for that one. I may even head home and start it now, LOL!

Tape manicure with Jordana Boy Oh Boy and Finger Paints Plum Startled square

 Join me after the jump for a couple more pictures.

Color Club brings us flakies for the holidays with Snow-Flakes!

Color Club Snow-Flakes over Sinful Colors Inkwell, shade

All the hype for Color Club right now is for their holo collection. No one seems to even know about the flakie topcoat that they are releasing in their holiday collection.  I'm here to change that. :) Color Club Snow-Flakes is a flakie topcoat that shifts from orange to to yellow to green.

Snow-Flakes is definitely not a new color to those of us who own Essie Shine of the Times, which has recently been discontinued. Here's my comparison mani with SotT on the pinky and middle and Color Club Snow Flakes on the index and ring.

Color Club Snow-Flakes on the index and ring fingers, Essie Shine of the Times on the middle and pinky 

When I compared Snow-Flakes and Shine of the Times on the nail, the only difference between them was that SotT seemed a *bit* more dense than Snow-Flake. Other than that, the color shift seemed identical between the two.

Check out a few more pictures after the jump!

China Glaze Pizzazz: a ¨new¨ holiday glitter?

China Glaze Pizzazz over various purples, sunlight

China Glaze Pizzazz is from the Holiday 2012 collection, so it´s definitely new in the sense of being recently released. Whether it´s a polish we have seen before is arguable, though.

Pizzazz really reminded me of Deborah Lippmann's Happy Birthday, since they are both multi-colored glitters in a clear base. I would have pulled out my bottle of HB to do a comparison, but then I found this post from Berry T over at the Happyberrynaiad blog.  She's done a side by side comparison of Happy Birthday and Pizzazz, as well as having some beautiful swatches of Pizzazz over black and white. You can read the post for a very thorough comparison, but basically, she thinks the two are different enough for a fan of rainbow glitters to justify owning both.

Comparison of China Glaze Pizzazz with various rainbow glitters, from The Polishaholic blog

Meanwhile, over at the Polishaholic, Jen did this post where she compared Pizzazz to a few other rainbow glitters. You can see her comparison photo above. I think this is a good post to look to determine just how close Pizzazz actually is the other multi-colored glitters out in the polish world. If you're like me, you may already own more than one of them. Besides that, the post is an incredibly thorough comparison of a lot of this season's holiday polishes, so be sure to read it to avoid accidentally buying a dupe.

Regardless of its originality, or lack thereof, I picked up Pizzazz because I love glitters. I decided to swatch Pizzazz over 2 holiday colors, red and green. I also randomly swatched it over a purple skittle mani I had on the day I got it. Join me after the link to see more pictures.

Nubar Gem: Double Rainbow all across the nail!

Nubar Gem, sunlight

Whoa! It's a full rainbow all the way. Double rainbow, oh my god! Double Rainbow, oh my god!  What does this mean? It's so bright, so vivid. Double rainbow, double rainbow, it's so intense. What does this mean? It's starting to look like a triple rainbow! That's a whole rainbow, man! Double rainbow all the way across the sky! Look at that rainbow! Too much!

Ok, I just used Nubar Gem as an excuse to relive one of my favorite viral videos, the Double Rainbow guy and then his song:

Check out more pictures of Nubar Gem after the jump. (Sorry, there won't be any double rainbows.)

Quick nail wheel comparison: Sinful Colors Dazzle vs. OPI You Only Live Twice

OPI You Only Live Twice on left, Sinful Colors Dazzle on right

Just putting up this quick post to confirm my suspicions about Sinful Colors Dazzle. As I first described in my original post about the Sinful Colors Winter collection, I think this color will turn out to be a dupe of OPI The One That Got Away or OPI Congeniality Is My Middle Name. Here's a bottle comparison between OPI TOTGA and Sinful Colors Dazzle:

Bottle comparison-OPI The One That Got Away on left, Sinful Colors Dazzle on right

As you can see in my first picture, SC Dazzle is NOT a dupe of OPI You Only Live Twice. Dazzle is definitely darker and more purple than the new OPI Bond color. Here's another picture of the two on nail wheels:

OPI You Only Live Twice on left, Sinful Colors Dazzle on right

and here's a bottle comparison between OPI You Only Live Twice on left, Sinful Colors Dazzle on right. Even though it's not ideal lighting, I think you can see that YOLT is redder than Dazzle.

bottle comparison between Sinful Colors Dazzle on left, OPI You Only Live Twice on right

Zoya FeiFei gets all striped up!

Zoya Fei Fei with gold, blue and purple stripes

One of the things that makes Zoya FeiFei a standout polish is that its shimmer is so complex. There seems to be a whole rainbow of colors in that shimmer, and this makes FeiFei a great polish for nail art. I've seen some beautiful nail art with this polish, and decided to some nail art with it for myself. I tried a technique I had admired in the past with FeiFei, but things did not go quite as planned.  The original look I wanted is based on this tutorial:

I originally saw it on The Polished Momma's blog, and she did an outstanding job of recreating the manicure in this post.  As you can tell, I didn't get nearly as complex in my version, for reasons I'll explain later. Find out what they are, and what polishes I used, after the jump.

Quick comparison-Sinful Colors Winter Wonder vs. Zoya FeiFei

Sinful Colors Winter Wonder on index and ring, Zoya FeiFei on middle and pinky, sunlight

Sinful Colors Winter Wonder on indes and ring, Zoya FeiFei on middle and pinky, shade

Here's my comparison of Sinful Colors Winter Wonder and Zoya FeiFei. I had some smudging and lost my FeiFei for a bit, so I switched out the pictures in this comparison with some better ones. You can see that the the two polishes are about the same. Depending on the light, one or the other can seem brighter than the other, but I think that's just a byproduct of the shimmery nature of the polish. Zoya FeiFei is also a dupe of OPI On Her Majesty's Secret Service. My friend Lisa over at Swatches and Whatnot did her own comparison where she discusses the two polishes extensively, check out the full post here. In the meantime, here's one of Lisa's pictures featuring OHMSS and FeiFei:

OPI On Her Majesty's Secret Service with Zoya FeiFie, from the Swatches and Whatnot blog

A few more pictures after the jump!