Run To Home Base Fundraiser Raffle

This post is more of a personal nature, but I think it'll be of particular interest to my fellow polish lovers...

My friend Christine is running in the Run To Home Base 9K race. It's not just a race, it's a fundraiser for the Massachusetts General Hospital in order to provide clinical treatment to veterans with combat stress and traumatic brain injuries and also to provide assistance and support to their families.

So far, she's raised just under half of her $1,000 donation goal, and now I'm asking for a little of your help.

What's in it for you, you ask? Besides the warmth and satisfaction of knowing you've done something to help your fellow man? How about a chance to win a bottle of the discontinued and coveted holographic beauty, China Glaze Kaleidoscope Him Out?

China Glaze Kaleidoscope Him Out was part of the epic Kaleidoscope collection of hologram polishes that China Glaze released a few years back. All the shades are now discontinued and getting rather hard to find. This particular shade is a soft silvered blue with a strong chunky hologram effect. Pardon the ancient picture, but I haven't had enough natural light to take a new one.

And how about something to keep that Kaleidoscope Him Out company? Something like...

A bottle of Scrangie by Rescue Beauty Lounge, signed by me? You will be the only person on the planet with a signed bottle! Like the China Glaze polish, this shade is also sold out and becoming hard to find.



HOW TO ENTER:

1. For $2, you get one raffle entry. $4 for two entries, $6 for 3 entries, and so on.

2. To donate your $2 (or whichever amount you choose to donate) and enter the raffle, visit http://www.runtohomebase.org/runtohomebase/ChristineBatchelder and click "Make A Donation."

3. After you've made a donation to Run To Home Base, send an email to redsoxrun@gmail.com
that includes "kaleidoscope" in the subject line along with the name you donated under. Christine will keep a tally and assign you a number for each ticket/raffle entry based on the amount donated.

4. All donations must be in by 11:59pm, May 12th 2011 and a winner will be drawn at random on May 13th. The winner will receive one bottle of China Glaze Kaleidoscope Him Out and one signed bottle of Rescue Beauty Lounge Scrangie.

This raffle is open to everyone!

For more information on the Home Base program, please visit http://www.runtohomebase.org/

Thanks, everyone :)

My official Valentine's Day manicure

I had this idea in my head for a while, so I decided to finally try it as it was perfectly suited for Valentine's Day:


But it didn't turn out exactly as I had hoped! This is a base of Essie French Affair with the new Art Club Nail Glam full nail decal design Hearts of Gold on the ring finger. I originally wanted to put the designs on every finger, but I'm really glad I started with my ring finger. Now I know what you guys were saying about these. They're... not so great. They're extremely stiff and don't conform to the natural curve of the nail, so you end up with weird lumps and wrinkles like you see on mine. And they say to seal them with topcoat, but the decal covers the whole nail so it's really not sealing it to the nail, it's just coating it with topcoat, which means... it peels. Gah, what a disappointment. I loved the design so much, too. I wish I could have made it work.

The Essie polish was exactly the color I was thinking of for the base of the mani, so that worked out well!

But yeah, too bad about the Art Club Glam decals. I had really high hopes for them. *sigh*

So, how was your Valentine's day? So what if it's a Hallmark holiday! That does not negate the awesomeness of heart-shaped sugar cookies with pink frosting! And sprinkles! Any holiday that advocates the liberal use of sprinkles is a winner in my book.

First Valentine's Day Mani

This weekend I did my first Valentine's Day-inspired manicure. It's not quite the typical Valentine's theme, but I had the urge to use these colors together, and this is what happened!

I think I'll try to do a couple more. Maybe I'll re-do that Illamasqua Heart mani that looks like saddle shoes, but this time do a better job. I think for my actual Valentine's Day manicure I'm going to use the Art Club Glam decals with the gold hearts, maybe over light pink or white.

I tried a different technique for applying Black Shatter this time, thanks so much everyone for the tips! You guys rock.



This was: Two coats of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Night Lights over one coat of NYC Black (not a very good black polish, sadly) with OPI Black Shatter over two coats of Nicole OMB! on ring fingers and thumb. Night Lights is a nice chunky holo, sadly, this type of lighting is not good for capturing holo.

On this hand I tried a zig-zag diagonal pattern for applying the crackle polish and I think it turned out great!

I forgot to take a picture of the other hand until I'd already been wearing this for a couple days:

On this hand I did the random-blobs-of-crackle technique, but I don't think I did it right, it didn't crackle enough cause I made the blobs too thick. Very different look from the other two methods, though! I got bad shrinkage on my thumb because I did two coats of Seche Vite instead of regular topcoat and then Seche. Lesson learned!

Last night while I was out grocery shopping, I picked up some really cool Kiss decals that I think would make a good gothy Valentine's day design... Now I just have to think of a creative way to use them. I'll try to post a picture of them later.

New Wet n Wild FastDry Nail Color Shades for 2011

Along with those awesome eyeshadow trios, Wet n Wild released some new shades of FastDry nail polish for the new year. Apparently, they re-used some names that they used for last fall's colors, but the shades aren't quite the same. I was mistaken in thinking that they were re-releases; I didn't buy any of the fall colors because they didn't look that interesting to me, but these shades are fantastic. These are the ones I chose (though they all looked great):


Blue Wants To Be A Millionaire? This is a really sheer blue holo. It's very pretty. It reminds me of the light blue Nubar holo Absolute. It's not a strong hologram finish, it's really delicate and light.


Buffy The Violet Slayer. Pretty much the best purple shimmer ever. My picture is nowhere near accurate; this is the craziest, prettiest, most vibrant violet-purple color. You really need to see it in real life, it's amazing. Look at the shadow on the bottom half of the bottle, that's much closer to the actual color. It's not blue toned like it looks here. It glows.



Gray's Anatomy. Practically an exact replica of Lippmann's Wicked Game. It's a multichromatic shade that flashes grey, green, purple, blue and silver. It's a little frosty, but since it's a duochrome, I can ignore that.


Hannah Pinktana. Really? That's the name they chose for this one?! There was no other television series title they could have worked the word pink into? Silly name aside, this is another sheer, delicate holographic finish but in a shade of mauve-pink. This one is a little too sheer for me, but it sure looks pretty in the bottle. Maybe I could franken it with something to make it less sheer.



Party Of Five Glitters over Buffy The Violet Slayer. This one was a little too sheer to wear alone. It's a combination of large and small hexagonal glitter in shades of silver, pink, red, green... wait... is there one more shade in there? That's only four! Maybe there's some blue, I can't tell. This one was rather hard to apply, the clear base is thick and the glitter is sparse, kind of a difficult combination.


SaGreena The Teenage Witch. Oh man, these names are killing me! But this is a rather nice shade of green. It's a medium emerald green shimmer, bordering on frost. It's a little more sheer than I prefer, but it's not bad at all.


The formula on these is just okay. It's a little inconsistent, a little runny/goopy in some shades and some of the colors are a little sheer. It's not terrible but it's not the best. The bad part is the brush- it's slanted! Very odd brush. Not my favorite. I think they might need to re-think the brush design on these. The drying time is good on all of these, so no problems there.

One of these days I might pick up the rest of the colors, but these were the ones that interested me the most. There was this gorgeous gold glass fleck that looked really nice.

I'm continually impressed with Wet n Wild's new products. Really happy about the prices, too!

Peace and Love Nail Kit from TJ Maxx!

Back in December, while I was out Christmas shopping, I stumbled across this little set at TJ Maxx:

Yeah... it looks pretty dorky. That's why I initially didn't grab it off the shelf. But then the light hit it just right and I noticed something sparkly inside...


Oooooh! A light purple toned holo glitter!

There's a few really nice colors in the set, and it was only $7, so not a bad deal.


All of the best colors are in the top row. A sheer green/gold/red duochrome that's the most amazing thing ever, a fine silver glitter, a sheer glass fleck blue/purple/grey duochrome sparkle and a black/silver sparkly color.


The bottom row has a sorta ugly warm brown shimmer, a purple holo glitter, a hot pink shimmer and a purple shimmer. There's also some purple press-on nails, purple toe separators with peace signs and some little stick on nail gems.

Man, look at these, they're so hot:


It's a little hard to tell in this picture, but it's a bit like OPI Fireflies. It's very sheer and it looks white, but at one angle it's a crazy strong green and gold and at another angle it's red and orange. I can't get over this. I love it SO MUCH.

Here's the periwinkle-slate-lavender-purple-grey whatever duochrome shimmer. Again, hard to tell how sparkly and pretty it is in the picture, but it's gorgeous in real life.

Plus, they're made in China and smell like crazy awesome chemicals, hooray!

I love stumbling across random unexpected inexpensive gems like this.

Nicole by OPI Justin Bieber One Less Lonely Girl Collection 2011

It's here. The much talked about nail polish collection inspired by Justin Bieber. I'm still not exactly sure how Justin Bieber and nail polish are related at all, hey, the colors ended up being really cool...


I took full advantage of the twenty seconds of sunlight we had this week...


Give Me The 1st Dance. Standard sparkly silver foil. Not unique, but not a bad color.



My Lifesaver. Wow. This one was not in the promo pictures I originally saw of this collection, so it was a complete surprise. It's awesome. It's not as sky blue as it looks here, it's actually a turquoise creme. The shade is somewhere between MAC Peppermint Patti and China Glaze For Audrey, closer to the Peppermint Patti side. Super creamy finish, easy, non-streaky application, very pigmented. All around great shade.



OMB! Another pleasant surprise. Very different from the promo pics. This is an amazing fiery, duochromey glass fleck red. My pictures don't do it justice. The main duochrome colors are orange and pink, weird contrast between cool and warm in this polish. See this one in real life if you get a chance.


Me + Blue. A blue shimmer base absolutely packed with holographic microglitter. There's just a ton of glitter in this. It's not your traditional holo that's made from little flat sheet-like particles. This is like some of the Nubar Gems that are a shimmer base color with chunky holo glitter, but so much of it that it looks like a true holo under sunlight. It is a little lumpy, but because there's so much glitter you almost don't notice.

Just for fun I put OPI's Black Shatter on top:




One Less Lonely Glitter. What a name. Great color, though! Light lavender glitter in a clear base. It has tiny little glitter particles mixed with bigger round pieces. Very sparkly. Delicate. Nice opacity, too.




Prized Possession Purple. A medium purple shimmer. Very pretty color, but the formula was quite unruly. It was very watery and the brush was defective so I found it rather frustrating to apply. I wish I had something better to say about the formula because the color is so nice, but it reminded me of trying to apply NYX Wild.



Step To The Beat Of My ♥. One of Nicole's signature heart polishes. This one is tiny opal glitter in a very faintly purple tinted base and it has purple and red holo metallic hearts. This is meant for layering but if you like a more subtle look you can wear it alone.

The formula on these was good with the exception of Prized Possession Purple. I did two coats of all but Prized Possession Purple which was three coats. The formula feels like normal Nicole formula, no surprises formula-wise. The big surprise is the new brush. They have switched to a short, wide, curved brush a little bit like the Sally Hansen Insta-Dri brush. Half of the brushes in my set were defective and made application difficult. They're supposed to be gently rounded at the bottom but some of mine were more like Vs or even Ws... When the brushes are the way they're supposed to be, they're great. Hopefully the faulty brushes will be fixed soon. Brings me back to the OPI India collection :)


Overall, the colors are quite nice. I love My Lifesaver, One Less Lonely Glitter and OMB! the most. They're nothing at all like the promo pictures would have lead me to believe, but they're still very pretty. Some of the shades can be easily duplicated, but I'm sure Bieber fans would love to have these either way.

There's some info cards attached to these bottles and they say, "In support of Pencils of Promise. Join Justin and PoP to build 100 schools around the world." It doesn't specify that any proceeds go to Pencils of Promise or anything about a charitable contribution or anything like that... So I'm unclear on whether or not any money from these goes to support a cause, but I'll see what I can find out.

These are available now at Wal-Mart.

(These were sent to me for review.)

OPI Katy Perry and Serena Williams Grand Slam Collections (with Black Shatter Crackle Polish!) Spring 2011

These are technically two separate collections, but they really seem to go together and combined they make six polishes which is about the size of the average polish collection.

I don't know anything about Katy Perry besides the fact that she's cute, has really cool nail designs and blue hair. I do know Serena Williams, though; champion tennis star and brand new nail tech. That's one of the most interesting celebrity collaborations I've seen!

Katy Perry has four brand new colors plus Black Shatter crackle topcoat and Serena Williams has one color plus Black Shatter to go along with it. Black Shatter really is the star here, but all the colors are fantastic:

Katy Perry for OPI Collection

Last Friday Night. This is opalescent glitter with some tiny iridescent electric blue sparkles in a sheer blue tinted base. I know I have at least one other polish that's similar to this- it's either Sally Hansen or Confetti, possibly both even... But this one has that extra something to it. The tiny blue sparkles. They're amazing. They glow and shimmer and light up the whole polish. This is a very sheer shade. It's perfect for layering but you can also wear it alone and I think the end result is magical. Since it's so sheer it doesn't have the same depth as bottle color, but I think it still looks fantastic.


Not Like The Movies. I took a million pictures of this one because it's too awesome for just one shot! It's a purple/green duochrome with some really delicate shiny flaky shimmer in it. It's a little sheer and frosty but it totally works. This is one of the few metallic duochromes to incorporate glitter and actually have it work. Normally a metallic frost formula like this creates a lumpy, bumpy, bubbly look when combined with glitter, but OPI totally nailed it. No lumps. All the glitter shows up and it's absolutely perfect. It seems like a lot more care went into creating this frost/glitter shade than some of the ones from other brands I've tried lately. It's not too frosty, the duochrome is really strong and the glitter adds a really nice touch to it. This might be my favorite of the collection (aside from Black Shatter). I love the name, too.


Teenage Dream. This reminds me of the pictures I've seen of some of those really rare Japanese and UK exclusive OPI glitters I've seen, but I don't have any of them to compare! This is a light pink fine glitter mixed with some holo-opal medium sized glitter in a clear base. It's an opaque glitter and might be a little too dense for layering. It's so pretty and fairy-like. Am I getting sick? That's two pinks in a row that I've fallen for this year!


The One That Got Away. My pictures of this aren't the best- it's one of those crazy luminous shades that make my camera do that weird glowy radioactive looking thing... But if you'll take a look at the bottle color you'll get a better idea of how it looks in real life. It's a red-toned wine purple with some really shiny metallic flaky shimmer in it. You have to see this in person, it just glows!

This collection comes with the brand new Black Shatter topcoat. If you've been into nail polish for a while, you may recall some of the older crackle polishes- namely the Cover Girl Crackles. You apply them over a base color and as they dry they crack and give a neat two-toned cracked/shattered look. This is basically the same thing but with a much improved formula.

It is recommended to apply this over completely dry polish and I agree with that recommendation. You get the best shatter effect that way. When the polish is still slightly wet, the topcoat doesn't crack as much and you end up with larger pieces and not as much of the under color showing through. And, if the polish is too wet, the crackling action and fragmentation of the topcoat takes the wet polish with it, leaving bald spots in between the cracked pieces.

Black Shatter does dry a bit matte and it has texture to it, so I'd recommend a good coat of topcoat after it's done doing its thing. This smooths the texture but also helps keep the cracked pieces on- they can actually fall off when they're fully dry!

Here it is over the Katy Perry shades:

OPI Black Shatter over Last Friday Night.


OPI Black Shatter over Not Like The Movies.

OPI Black Shatter over Teenage Dream.


OPI Black Shatter over The One That Got Away.


Serena Williams Grand Slam Collection

Simply Smashing. This is a yellow-green "lemon lime" type of shade. It might just be the power of suggestion, but it reminds me of a tennis ball. Am I that impressionable? But it really does make me think of a tennis ball, especially one that's been used for playing fetch for a couple weeks. It's a little bit dirty, not quite neon green like a brand new tennis ball. It has a glass fleck type of shimmer- really bright shiny particles of shimmer. Slightly duochrome, too, there's a bit of orange reflect on this shade.

And here it is paired with Black Shatter:

OPI Black Shatter over Simply Smashing.

Isn't Black Shatter great? I'm a bit obsessed with it already. It applies so easily and shatters so quickly. With the old ones you used to have to wait a while and it would take forever to dry. The old generations of crackle polish were also a huge pain to remove. They stuck to your nails like cement and took forever to dissolve with acetone. OPI's Black Shatter crackle polish removes as easily as any normal polish and dries really quickly. It's really, really great and I kinda want to use it for every manicure now.

Just for fun, here's what it looks like over yellow:

I had China Glaze Lighthouse on when Black Shatter arrived and I had to play with it immediately. In my opinion, it's quite a stunning combination. I love the contrast between the creme black shards and the glimmery yellow brightness. I think Black Shatter looks amazing over sparkly shades.


This is one has a coat of OPI Last Friday Night over China Glaze Lighthouse and then a final coat of OPI Black Shatter. The pretty opal glitter might be a little hard to see in these pictures, but it added a really nice subtle something that made it just that much more interesting.

The formula on these was good. All of the shades were on the sheer side and needed at least three coats. I did three coats in all these pictures. Last Friday Night was unusually thick and I'm not sure if that's normal. It applied just fine, but it was almost jelly-like, I'm wondering if mine was a little dried out when I got it because it didn't look completely full, either. Anyway, application was good aside from the sheerness of the shades. Dry time was very good and removal was painless.

I love all the colors in this set. Nothing boring, nothing plain, it's 100% fun. I love the edgy and fun look of Black Shatter and it does look rather nice over all these shades. I think OPI did an excellent job on these. It's bright and shiny, glitter-heavy, sparkly, playful and includes an improved formula Crackle topcoat to make it even more fun. I'm absurdly happy to see that crackle polish, too. It's such a fun look and it really makes people stop and ask you how you did it!

My only complaint is that I wish there were more colors! But I am quite satisfied with the collections as they are. There's duochrome, glitter, a little holo, and an awesome crackle polish. Not finding any flaws at all. They didn't play it safe this time and I'm thankful for that!


(These were sent to me for review.)