50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong

Did I ever talk about the Milani One-Coat Glitters?
I got them on Christmas at the only open store that day: CVS.
I had to go for the whole collection because they were aaaahhhhh-MAZE-ing!!!

One of my favourites is Gold. Yes, just Gold. No clever names. Gold.
Ya know why? Cuz it's gold. Very very gold.

I wanted this one to last and BLING for days so I got:
1 coat Orly Bonder
2 coats Milani Gold (Honestly, none of them are "one-coat glitters")
1 coat OPI Gold Glitter Top Coat (part of the holiday collection a few years ago)
1 coat Out The Door
1 coat OPI Rapid Dry

It lasted through 3 days of work. A record!

I can't wait to put this back on. It reminds me of this album cover:

Kleancolor Holo Chrome

I first came across the Kleancolor brand at my local independent beauty store while on the search for makeup to go along with my 1940's living history persona. I found a daring red lipstick that went on smoothly, smelled beautiful, and wore almost all day!
So when I found their nail polish at another local store, I wasn't too hesitant about buying it.

Kleancolor Holo Chrome in the bottle... Featuring blur-o-vision to show the HOLO!!!

After reading this post by Emerald Sparkled, I am in a holo mood. I want everything sparkly and glitter and I WANT IT NOW!

Kleancolor Holo Chrome isn't quite like OPI Designer Series or what I imagine those Turkish lovelies to be like. It is a purple jelly (if my understanding of "jelly" is correct) with holo glitter in it.

Once on the nail, it has a slight grittyness, but nothing that wasn't cured with one coat of Out The Door's Northern Lights. What can I say, I just needed more sparkle!

I find I also really like the current Kleancolor bottle. It has a really chic look. Unfortunately, I discovered as I was shaking the bottle up at the store, the cap stem is not glued on. If you're a shaker, hold the bottle by the bottle instead of the cap. Thank God it didn't shatter all over the tile floor it landed on!!

The polish is very fumey and when dry (this one) has a grapey scent.
The ingredients are listed as: Butyl Acetate, Ethyl Acetate, Nitrocellulose, Formaldehyde Resin, Acrylates Copolymer, Steralkonium Hectorite, N-Butyl Alcohol, and Ethyl Alcohol.
So - long list short - NOT 3-free.

China Glaze Party Hearty!

I picked this up at Sally Beauty Supply a few days before Thanksgiving, but I'm pretty hardcore on keeping Christmas in the Christmas Season - which, in my mind, will never overlap Thanksgiving.

I played with it and have worn it a few times since Thanksgiving, but forgot to post about it. There's not that long until Christmas, so I should get on it!

The set includes:
Phat Santa, a rich red
Holly Jolly, a deep holly green (I used this for the Zombie experiments too)
and Party Hearty, a festive glitter in green, red, gold, and silver.

Party Hearty looks really great layered or on its own.

Here is 4 coats of glitter, 2 of glitter, each of the colours with 2 coats of glitter and bare, and OPI Alpine Snow with 2 coats of glitter.
So far, I've had the best feedback with the white.
2 coats of glitter may seem excessive, but I REALLY like glitter. Christmas seems like the only time of the year where something this glittery is seen as festive rather than childish.

OPI Tuxedo Collection

A recent post on Body and Soul, a blog I follow, reminded me of the beauty that is was is the Tuxedo Collection by OPI.
She titled it "Old School!", to which I replied "oh come now, it's not THAT old..."

Then I found it in a 2005 advertisement in a nail magazine.
For the fashion world, that's ANCIENT!!!

Even so, it capitalised on one classic rule of fashion - black never goes out of style.
Which to me is kind of funny because this was one of the first times that black was IN style for nails. Previously, black nails had pretty much been reserved for goths, punks, and all the other rockin' counterculture kiddies.  We had to stock up during Halloween and put up with the sheer, spotty coverage of what Markwins gave us. (And I do have to say now, Markwins is putting out some quality stuff - just look at everyone's reviews of the Wet N' Wild holiday palettes.)

Not only did OPI give us deep opaque coverage in a lush black creme - they gave us 3 different finishes!

Midnight Blue Glitter, Black Satin, Black Onyx, Alpine Snow

This pic is junk. I'm sorry. I swear I went to photography school. Really.
Anyway, OPI offered in the Tuxedo Collection:
Midnight Blue Glitter, a charcoal gray glitter with deep blue specks (needs 3 coats, but I give it 4).
Black Satin, almost a precursor to the Suede Collection - it is black with silver/gray shimmer and a gloss finish. It really looks like when you put a gloss topcoat over the Suede polishes.
Black Onyx, a beautiful pure black creme that is opaque in 2 coats and hard wearing.
Alpine Snow, a standard white shade. It had always been our beauty school standard for french tips but on the whole nail I find it needs a minimum of 3 coats, sometime 4, for complete opacity.

The ads all showed different ways to give yourself a tuxedo manicure like doing the tips black or even drawing a little bowtie on the nail. I actually find the suggestions to be clever and it would be really fun to go to a black tie event with that kind of whimsy (and that thought may be the reason I've only been invited to one black tie event).

Alpine Snow and Black Onyx are now part of OPI's standard line. I've seen Black Satin pop up from time to time at the nail supply shop but I don't know if it is old stock or if OPI releases small amounts. Midnight Blue Glitter, to my knowledge, has not been produced since 2005. It can be found on eBay usually without the HUGE markup of other discontinued shade.
With storage in an outside garage for a year, my bottles did not suffer a bit (they were inside in a closet the rest of the years). Some of my polishes show separation from having frozen then been subjected to heat so bad all my LPs warped, but the entire Tuxedo Collection applied just as the day I bought it.

Glitter and Gel Part 2!

I've talked a few times already, I think, about how much I love the OPI Designer Series. Somehow, I missed out on China Glaze OMG (found some at the supply shop today, though) so I'm diggin' the holo sparkle of DS.

After the success of the iPod glitterizing with Spitfire, I decided to take my Divine manicure into a more permanant arena...



I didn't get a "blur-o-vision" of this one, but the holo on this is pretty amazing too! Divine sparkles with blues and silvers. Very lovely and multi-dimensional.

I used the same method as before but did both the front and back this time. On the back, the brushstrokes didn't level out all the way. I'm not sure if I should be using more or less gel, a wider brush, or thinner product. Time will tell.

Til then, here's some rad pics of the project...

Matching nails. This is just too good of a shade. I may need more bottles!

I wish this captured the many colours of the sparkle better.

I see blue, and I see silver, and I see gold, and I see....

Glitters and Gels

Last week, I got my order from Premier Nail Source. I love them as a distributor so, so much. Their shipping is quick, orders are packed safely and personally, and they give you a FedEx tracking number as soon as it gets picked up - I didn't even have to ask for one!

One of the things I decided to invest in is a UV Gel system. I have had brief tutorials on using a few gels from Young Nails at trade shows, but have never used them myself so I went with an inexpensive kit that came with a lamp and sample sizes of products.

The Nouveau Nails UV Gel Starter Kit

I don't wear false nails, though, so I don't really have anyone to practice on right now. I wanted to get the hang of working with the brush and lamp, so an old habit and a new colour inspired me...



Pure Ice's Spitfire really drew my eye. Even under the crap light at the WalMart, I could see the intense sparkle (check out the blur-o-vision!!) and as soon as I saw the name, I knew I NEEDED IT!!!
(Trivia: I'm a HUGE aviation nerd and one of my favourite memories is driving down the Dan Ryan as a formation of Spitfires flew overhead on their way home from Oshkosh.)

This colour was more than just a nail laquer - it was a lifestyle and I had to properly capture it!

One of my old hobbies was to cover most everything with nail polish for a customized look. I would do my sunglasses, my electronic organizer, my Tamagochi, my cellphone (in SRO Silver! WOOT!)... If it was paintable, it got painted.
The only problem was that it chipped easily and glitters left a bumpy surface.

The solution? Gel overlay!

After covering the face of a hard plastic Belkin iPod case with Spitfire, I used 2 coats of Nouveau Nails UV Gel (each cured under the light), and was able to skip any topcoats.
The gel came out a little bumpy and would probably benefit from a buffing, but I think it's pretty great for a first attempt!

I can't wait to use the gel more - hopefully on NAILS soon!

China Glaze Zombie Zest

I don't know how behind the times it is to take a look at Halloween polishes, but I love Halloween and wear Halloween clothing and keep up my decorations year-round.
I found Zombie Zest, part of the Awakening Collection, at Cosmoprof for $1.99 on clearance. They had the whole boxed Awakening Collection for $7.99 but they also had the VooDoo box for $3.99 so I got just my favourite colour.

Wow! Looking to see if China Glaze still had a link to the collection, I discovered this polish was reviewed by some other bloggers as early as July this year. Now, my mantra is "Halloween is every day" but releasing a collection in July seems a bit early. Ah, that's the fashion world for you. I *AM* pretty behind...

When I first got the polish, I was wearing OPI Who the Shrek are You? and just put it on over. It looked siiick. It really looked like glistening, rotting flesh or the skin of a salamander. I got to thinking about using it as a layer glitter rather than on its own.

So I tested different greens!

The new colour balance makes everything look kinda blue.

CND's Hot Pop Yellow, OPI Who the Shrek are You, Sally Hansen Lickety-Split Lime, Some Neon, China Glaze 4 Leaf Clover, China Glaze Holly Jolly, Finger Paints Expressionist Red, and Zombie Zest.

I thought it would be neat to throw in a few odd ones. Zombie Zest over Shrek looked really sick, so I wanted to see if a red base would mystically transport me to Silent Hill or something.

Hot Pop Yellow, Shrek, Lime, Random Neon Green

4 Leaf Clover, Holly Jolly, Expressionist Red, 4 coats of Zombie Zest

Each colour got 2 coats of Zombie Zest and I also did just some Zest to see what it is like on its own.

On the Yellow, it really reminds me of a salamander and on the red it came out very gold. It was quite surprising to see the variations on Zombie Zest when placed on different bases. I almost want to take this nail wheel into my Colour Theory class for extra credit.
And as soon as I typed that, it sounded like a good idea.

*packs up schoolbag for tomorrow*,