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!