Playing with China Glaze Crackle Glaze again...

I did this mani that I really hated, but I didn't feel like taking it off and starting over. No matter what I layered over it, I still hated it... So I figured, why not add one more layer just to see what it looks like? I didn't necessarily love what I ended up with, but it was at least better. I photographed the evidence:


Here's me playing with China Glaze Fault Line and Broken Hearted. I don't remember everything it's layered over, but it included Milani Magenta Metal as the base and Sally Hansen HD in Byte on top of everything. I liked the subtle crackle effect of Fault Line with little glints of duochrome sparkle from Byte peeking through. Fault Line still doesn't crack as well as the other shades, but I did get it to crackle more this time by applying it over completely dry polish and waiting 5 minutes before applying topcoat.



This one I actually liked. It's China Glaze Lightning Bolt over the random pink polish mess. I love the way the glass fleck sparkles in Byte shine through the cracks of the white polish. White crackle is really neat. I want to do it over neon yellow... think I'll try that soon.


So, there's that. Just thought I'd share a few more layering combinations with the crackles. I'm still a bit obsessed with crackle. I don't think I've done more than one or two manis in the past month that haven't had crackle on them...

New Drugstore Nail Appliques- Broadway, Art Club and Sally Hansen

I was out scouring the drugstores this week looking for new 2011 beauty products and came across a bunch of nail art items that seem really awesome.

You might be familiar with nail appliques like Incoco or Inque (I'll be reviewing Inque appliques soon), and these are pretty much the same idea. I haven't tried any of them on yet- I have a lot of polish to swatch and I don't want to waste them because they're so cool! I'm so excited about these. I have a feeling we'll be seeing even more designs this year, too.

Here are the ones I grabbed:

Art Club Glam

Art Club Glam in Diamond Studded, Hearts of Gold and Vivid Zebra. These ones seem more like plastic full-nail sized decals more than stretchy vinyl-like or polish-like strips like the others. These had the best designs out of all of them- there were a bunch but I only grabbed these for now.

Diamond Studded. A clear base with black diagonal and chevron french tips and black leopard spots accented by pink hologram foil.

Hearts of Gold. A clear base with gold hologram foil in concentric rings, dots and hearts.


Vivid Zebra. Clear base with black and rainbow foil zebra stripes.

Gotta love Art Club!


Broadway Nail Dress

The Broadway Nail Dress ones were a little more expensive and came in only four designs. Two animal print styles and a silver fishnet style, nothing you couldn't do with Konad. These are the most intricate ones. They don't seem to have a name, just a number. This is what's inside the box:

Two sheets of stickers and a little emery board.


There's also a booklet of $1.00 off coupons on the display, so make sure to grab one!



Sally Hansen Salon Effects

The Sally Hansen Salon Effects had the biggest display but the least intricate designs. Half of them were just plain creme finish polish colors, a few were some decent glitters and the rest were nail art designs like this, but some of them could be duplicated with Konad. I almost got the Denim-print ones, but at $8.50 the Salon Effects appliques the least cost effective of the three brands. I don't understand why I'd pay $8.50- the price of a bottle of OPI at retail- for one manicure with a normal pink or blue polish like some of these Salon Effects... I would consider paying that much for the nail art ones as long as they were complicated enough designs. Anyway, this Laced Up style stood out to me, very sexy.

It comes just like the Incoco sets do; an emery board/buffer, a manicure stick, instruction sheer and sealed foil packets with nail polish strips.

Isn't this design pretty?

I can't wait to try these out on my nails. I think the Art Club Hearts of Gold might end up as my Valentine's Day mani this year.

Sally Hansen Rockstar Pink and NARS Midnight Express

I was in a layering mood recently and this combination happened:

One coat of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Rockstar Pink over NARS Midnight Express. I loved this combination. I'm holding the bottle of Gelous basecoat to remind me of the trick I learned. I put a coat of Gelous over the glitter and then used quick dry topcoat to make the glitter more smooth. Sometimes with really chunky glitters I use two coats of topcoat, but if you use the Gelous underneath instead it seems to be a lot smoother and shinier than plain quick-dry
topcoat.


This is what the Sally Hansen glitter looks like alone:

It's a really dense multi-color glitter (great coverage) that consists of light pink, purple, blue, red and a little silver.

Some of the new Fall 2010 Sally Hansen Xtreme Wears and Complete Salon Manicures

I finally found them... Why must Sally Hansen make her polishes so hard to find? Why can't they just release them everywhere at the same time?! Drives me crazy.

Anyway, these are the ones I picked up:

Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear Fireberry Red. What a mouthful. Is this the longest brand/product name on the market? I think it might be! And the 'Xtreme' always cracks me up. Remember back in the 90s and early 200os when everything had to be "extreme" and brands would start adding random Xs to words to make them more extreme? And everything had a picture of like a skateboarder or bmx rider or something like that on it? Xtreme Wear fits right in. I know, that has nothing to do with the color. This color is hot, you should get it. There, that wasn't entirely an off topic tangent now.

Sally Hansen Hard As Nails Xtreme Wear Mystic Lilac. This color looks so bad on me but I had to get it for that gorgeous green shimmer. Pale greyed lilac with pastel green shimmer on top!

Sally Hansen blah blah Purple Gala. So gorgeous. It's a foil made of purple and steel and gold pieces. Kinda like Hard Candy Mr. Wrong from the new Wal-Mart line of polishes. Love this one.

Sally Hansen Purple Fiesta. This was the only one of the glitters I grabbed and it's really not so bad. I think it works, but just barely. The others are all dense frosts with sparse holo bar glitter and some silver and holo round glitter. Chunky frosty nightmares. But this one... this one is a little chunky and frosty too but it's such a pretty color combination!


And then there's the Complete Salon Manicure new shades. Can I just say again how much I hate the new bottle? It's so cheap and hideous looking. The gaudy silver cap with the black plastic ring? Why would you do that, Sally Hansen? The cheap, crooked labels? The weird rounded edge bubble bottle shape? Just... whyyyyyyy? The old Salon Manicure bottles- the square ones with the rubber handles- were so nice! Why did you do this?!

Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Downtown Rubies. Hm. This picture makes it look good. It's really ugly to me. It's the dullest red glitter ever and the formula was a nightmare and a half. It's so... dusty? Dirty? It's dull and grimy looking and it doesn't sparkle! What it makes me think of is a frankenpolish with the wrong kind of glitter- know what I'm talking about? When you use the wrong type of glitter and it melts and fades and the color bleeds? That's totally what this reminds me of.




Golden Ticket. Nice and sparkly, unlike Downtown Rubies. Still bad formula and application, though. Oh, and someone USED this. This is why I hate not ordering polish online. Some jerkface always uses the bottles of polish at the store and I end up with a crusty gloopy bottle of polish! Stop 'testing' the polish in the stores, people! If it's not labelled TESTER, don't use it, you're ruining it for everyone else! Have some respect!


Sally Hansen Sequin Scandal. Now this one is perfect in every way. It's a black base with gold shimmer like China Glaze Wagon Trail, but it has some little multicolor flakes of sparkle and little red shimmery things mixed in. Really pretty. You'll have to see this one in person to appreciate it.

I had a really hard time with the Salon Manicure brushes this time. My bottles of glitter were so thick and impossible to apply with those freaky paddles. They were really crooked on the edge- not round or flat, kinda zig-zag, made it impossible to get an even application. I don't remember the other Salon Manicure new-style brushes being that funky.

Comparison: Nubar 2010 Versus Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure

Index: One coat of Nubar 2010
Middle: One Coat of Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure
Ring: Two coats of Nubar 2010
Pinkie: Two coats of Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure
(All over one coat of Wet n Wild Black, no topcoat, no basecoat.)


Both of these are red/orange/gold/green duochrome flakies a la Nfu Oh suspended in a clear base.

As you can see, they're quite similar. They're not 100% the same, though. The flakes in Nubar 2010 are smaller and less densely packed and don't show as much green duochrome compared to Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure.

Here's a gigantor pic of the bottles to further illustrate the differences:


Sally on the left, Nubar on the right.

I think the Nubar looks much prettier in the bottle. The Sally shows more duochrome effect in the bottle, but the Nubar looks like magic. It's swirly and sparkly and flickering... I could just stare at it forever. You can see the difference in flake size this way as well. Nubar's are more irregular, some are bigger, some are smaller but overall they're smaller than Sally Hansen's flakes.

Formula is similar. Dry time is similar. Overall effect over black is similar. Price is similar. Unless you're like me, you probably don't need both. They're not 100% identical, but obviously they're on the same wavelength.

New-ish Sally Hansen Hard As Nails Xtreme Wears

I'm on a Sally Hansen kick lately. Still hunting for old glitters... but some of the new stuff hasn't been bad! I really like the new brush. I've seen a lot of people say they hate it, but it seriously works for me. I love wide brushes. I used to hate them, too! Now I need them.

Going Green. Sweeeeeeeeeet! A really unique green! From the drugstore! Easily obtained and usually on sale! This is a lighter shade of green but luckily it's not mint (which I like to look at but it looks horrible on me, lobster hands, you know.). I'd call it grass green perhaps, medium, with soft subtle silvery shimmer. The only downside is it stains like a mofo. Seriously. I had green nails for a week. Totally worth it though.



In The Spotlight over Wet Cement. In The Spotlight is a hologram stringy/bar glitter topcoat. Not much on its own, but looks great over this grey. I'm one of the rare people who actually loves stringy glitter... It looks like a party on your nails! They're not common, which is sad. I guess I could always make my own, but... yeah. This one is not really super unique and it can be a little tricky to get the placement right but I still love it.

Pacific Blue. I am sad. I can not get this color to come out right in pictures. It always turns into this bright neon looking blue. It's not neon blue. It's a soft blue creme, perhaps cornflower blue? A little muted, very unique. Totally gorgeous. And I just noticed that it looks like there are runes carved into the side of my bottle... Huh?! I didn't notice that before.


Purple Pizazz. It was hard for me to pick a favorite from these, but this has to be it. It was love at first sight. It's a jelly purple with large flecks of iridescent gold-red shimmer. It's like Claire's Magic or Milani Totally Cool but the shimmer is bigger. The purple shade is so vibrant and in-your-face that it just makes me want to wear nothing but this polish for weeks on end. I love looking down at my nails and seeing exactly the color I've been wanting from a purple polish! It is sheer though, this is three coats. It looks okay with two coats but I always like my polish on the more opaque side.

Wet Cement. Nice alone too! Very flattering not too blue light grey creme. Not too much to say about it other than I really like it.


I hope Sally Hansen keeps doing stuff like this, but I also hope they don't keep raising their already ridiculous prices. At least this line is inexpensive. Those Complete Salon whatever ones are almost $8! For drugstore polish! Are they trying to become a salon brand or just convince people that what's in the $8 Sally Hansen bottle is somehow higher quality than what's in the $4 Sally Hansen bottle? I don't get it.

So... on a different note... I have a question for you guys. Are there any new polish collections that you're dying to see swatches of? Lately I'd rather post more random stuff than new collections all the time, but I have lots of the new spring/summer stuff swatched already. Like... four or five BB Couture collections, two Jessica collections, the Nubar reds, Color Club neons, Nicole, OPI Shrek and Soft Shades, Milani neons, Eyeko, Orly, Diamond... I feel like I need to just marathon post all the new collections to get them out of the way so I can go back to posting whatever random thing inspires me at the moment. Let me know what you would rather see first / what's most interesting.

Loose Ends and fun stuff.

After I swatched those new Sally Hansens that seemed very familiar, I had to go looking for what they reminded me of and I thought that I had posted the Sephora by OPIs already but I guess I hadn't! I never ended up getting all of them, but I did get these two:

Just A Fairy-Tail.

and

Mermaid To Order.

And yes, now that I'm seeing them again and not basing it only on memory, they totally are matches to the new Sally Hansens. Thank you to Krisprimps for refreshing my memory as well!

This is OPI Pink Me I'm Good from Valentine's day at Ulta. Not the best picture of it because it only shows the gold side of the glitter. It does a little green duochrome too, but it's subtle. One of the very few pinks I like to wear.

OPI Bling Dynasty from the Hong Kong collection. I didn't have a bottle of this at the time I did my post and I was going to go back and post this picture with the review, but it took me longer than I hoped it would take to get an acceptable picture of this.

That was a bit of a drag, now I want to post something fun.


This is an awesome Bourjois polish that my buddy Helen gave me. I don't think it has a name.... I've looked all over the bottle and I'm pretty sure there isn't a name. It's hard to capture in a picture, but it's a dark smoky teal/green with tons of shimmer and a purple-dark mauve duochrome. It's really freakin' sweet. It reminds me of black bird feathers, how they look black in one light and then they're iridescent in another? It has a really odd brush, a lot like the new Sally Hansen brushes- big and wide and flat! I actually really like that style of brush because it covers my whole nail in one stroke. I'm so in love with this polish. Thank you Helen :)

I got this Cargo Wet/Dry eyelining palette on clearance at Sephora a little while ago and I love it! I was very shocked by the size of it- it's as small as a credit card!- but apparently it doesn't need to be any bigger cause I've used it a ton and haven't even put a dent in it yet. I've only used the black, sparkly black and sparkly grey ones so far, but I think they're really nice. I use a drop of MAC water based mixing medium and a very short bristled stiff angled brush and the line comes out perfect. I used to use a cake eyeliner years and years ago and this reminds me of the one I used to use. I haven't tried them as eyeshadows. I don't know how well that light purple (yeah... two of those are purple, blame my camera!) would work as a liner though.... I haven't done a look yet that needed a light purple eyeliner so it remains untried.


Sally Hansen Hard As Nails Malachite Pearl. I don't think I even need to say anything about this. I think words would ruin it. Shhhh. Just gaze upon the beauty and let it speak to you.

Revlon Street Wear Burnt. This is the grey-green version. This is one of those Streetwears that has multiple versions all under the same name. I don't know why companies don't just use different names. I was at Sally last week getting some new Finger Paints and noticed that China Glaze Flying Dragon is a totally different color than it was when I first bought mine... Bizarre.... why not just name it... uh... Walking Dragon? Swimming Dragon. Cause it's not the same color anymore. Oh well. I love this polish. Why did Revlon ever stop making these?! Now their polish line is super boring. I wish they'd bring these back, or at least re-create some of the colors.

Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure blah blah 2010

The funny thing is, I wasn't even looking for these when I found them. I had decided that I wasn't going to find them so I should just forget about them and I was looking for those scented Revlons when all of a sudden there's this Sally Hansen display in my face! Woot!

I don't know the name of this collection or if it even is a collection or anything. I only grabbed the ones that looked interesting to me. These are my first new Sally Hansen Salons since they changed the bottle (BOO!!!). I must say... these new bottles look kinda cheap.... I thought the square bottles with the nice full length labels looked much more 'salon' than these.

Anyway. Here's what I picked.


Hidden Treasure, of course. I'm crazy about flakies. This is what two coats looks like alone. Kinda interesting, actually. Looks like an opal on my nails! But the personality of the polish really comes out more layered (I just used black cause it was next to me):


Look at that green! Ahh, that's so cool. Love it.

Lagoon... Which does weird things to my camera in sunlight. This was the only spot on the display that was empty but the picture of this bottle on the back of the display looked SO amazing.... I needed it... Had to go to another store to find it... but now I'm not that crazy about it. It's pretty, of course, it's a duochromey metallic blue/green, of course I like it! But I swear I must have six other polishes just like this. In fact, that Revlon Ocean Breeze (the scented one) that I was looking for when I found these is practically identical to this. Except it smells nice. This one doesn't.




Ring My Shell. This one stole my heart. It look like mother of pearl. My pictures didn't really capture all the iridescent goodness of this one. The base is a pearly white with a slight lavender tint, then there's some pink flash, some blue-green flash and a tiny amount of what looks like orange flash right before the pink shows up. And to make it even better, it's flecked with little shimmery speckles that look like crushed shell. It's so light and airy looking... it's totally a fairy polish. I thought it would look good over black like OPI Pearl Of Wisdom does, but it doesn't:

It just turns green. Almost all of the duochrome gets lost over black.


Sea and Be Seen. This one was hard to photograph and of course I had to smudge it right before taking the picture. Ugh. Anyway. It's kinda half purple half cornflower blue. Mostly blue. Little bit purple. It's a shimmer and it's made of little chunky particles which show pretty well in the indoor picture. Some of them flash blue and green, pretty cool looking.

Silver Lining. Ooooh sparkly. I swear I have a Sephora by OPI polish that looks just like this but I can't remember what it's called or where I put it... *sigh* So, this one is also made of little shimmer particles and the base is a very pale blue. The particles are all very shiny and very iridescent, so you end up with this sparkling blue-silver-white-yellow-pink-pastel ball of sparkle on each nail. The only downside to this one is that it's pretty sheer and the big stiff brush makes it hard to apply evenly.


I liked the formula on these. It wasn't particularly bad or particularly amazing, nothing stood out to me. That's a good thing for the most part. It was just... regular? Not thick, not thin, not buttery smooth but not chunky garbage either. The brush was pretty huge, though. I like the large 'one stroke' style brushes usually, but this one was a little too stiff which results in streaky/patchy application if you're not careful. Since the brush is so stiff, it tends to wipe off the previous coat when applying a second coat, so I'd simply recommend letting the previous coat dry for a little while before applying another. Also, these were pretty sheer, I did three coats of all but probably could have used a fourth on Sea and Be Seen and Silver Lining.

Pretty sweet, Sally Hansen. Do more like this.