Adventures in sparkly *and* Rainbow polishes . . . including my first attempt at water-marbled nails
Sadly, the sparkles and rainbows didn't happen in the same manicures
So, since it's the holiday season, new nail polishes are coming out like you wouldn't believe, and an ungodly amount of them are sparkly . . . and since I joined the sparkly rainbow boyband train, I generally fail at resisting sparkles.
My wallet hates me right now.
First off, I recently bought Sephora by OPI's Sugar Plum Fairies Gone Wild ($8.50 >_<) and wanted to compare it to two other lilac and pink glitter polishes from recent holiday collections, Wet n Wild All In the Cut from the Ice Baby collection, and Sally Hansen Be-Jeweled, from the Gem Crush holiday collection.
The results?
Forefinger and pinkie finger are Wet n Wild, ring finger is Sally Hansen, center finger is $OPI.
(for fun, on the thumb, I tried to get something close to $OPI SPFGW by layering cheaper polishes, namely Sinful Colors I Miss You over Milani 3d Hi-Res, a purple linear holo--sadly the lighting in my apt isn't good enough to show off the holo, but here are some swatches of the collection.)
As you can see, my attempt didn't really get all that close--in fact, it was much closer to the other two polishes, instead ^^;
Thoughts: neither Sally Hansen or Wet n Wild compete for sheer bling value with the $OPI. Sally Hansen and Wet n Wild are near dupes, lilac small glitter with slightly larger round pink glitters interspersed. Wet n Wild is just barely darker and more blue in tone, but seriously just barely. Both cover pretty well in two coats, but three is best. REALLY THIRSTY--2-3 thick topcoats to get them smooth.
As for the $OPI, much bigger glitter leads to much more aggressive sparkle--the base glitter is another lilac, nowhere near as blue-toned as this picture suggests, but it also has intermittent blue-ish-lilac glitters which are also holographic and super-sparkly. This polish is SO INCREDIBLY SPARKLY. Full coverage in about 2 1/2 coats.
Doing my thumb reminded me how awesome the Milani 3d polishes were--$4 holos! The gold isn't really holo, but the rest are and awesome--easy to put on, two coats, and perfect! I can still find them at CVS, but you can also find them at BeautyJoint.
At the same time that I bought the lilac/pink glitters, I noticed a striking similarity between charcoal glitters from the same collections by Wet n Wild and Sally Hansen, so I decided to compare them, too, adding in Orly's Rock Solid as another charcoal with suspended glitter, and Androgynie, a black jelly with large multicolor hex glitter, just for fun, on the nail.
The results? Another pretty close resemblance:
Index and Pinky: Wet n Wild Diamond in the Rough, Middle finger: Orly Rock Solid, Ring Finger: Sally Hansen Gem Crush Glitz Gal
Both Diamond in the Rough and Glitz Gal are charcoal glitter with silver holo hex glitter. They're pretty much direct dupes, and I hear that they're very close dupes for the British company Nails Inc.'s Sloane Square.
Rock Solid (middle finger) has a charcoal shimmer base with small holo glitter. The shimmer makes the color seem more . . . metallic, I guess, than the two glitter polishes.
And here's Androgynie--there are some real issues with this polish, like the way the base obscures some of the glitter, and the fact you have to shake the bottle for several minutes to get the glitter where the brush can get to it, but I don't care. I like it!
I think maybe this post might explain what's going on with the Sally Hansen/Wet n Wild/Nails Inc. duping, but I guess in the end, it's sort of a win for the consumer--If you buy the Wet n Wild version, it's $2.99, but can be hard to find. The Sally Hansen is $7, but maybe a bit easier to find, as long as you're close to a CVS. And if you bought one of the Wet n Wilds but can't find them anymore and want a backup, the $7 might be worth it to you to get the Sally Hansen. The entire lines aren't dupes, though. Just a few.
In the case of the Nails Inc. polish, it's $10 as opposed to the $3 dupe. No difficult choices there. But I bet their marketers are not thrilled when that happens--though the fact that Nails, Inc. is primarily a British company and Wet n Wild isn't sold there (at least, I don't think it is?) probably softens the annoyance.
Another fun polish I tried for the first time this week: a magnetic polish: Nails Inc. Houses of Parliament, carried at Sephora along with its charcoal gray sister, Trafalgar Square.
You put down a base coat of the polish and wait 5 minutes:
After 5 min, you put on a second coat, and immediately position your finger above the magnet embedded in the cap to get a 3D pattern of light and dark which shifts in the light, most closely resembling the way light works on Tiger's Eye.
Pictures really don't do this polish justice--it's kind of a one-trick pony, but it's an awesome trick! Pricy, though, at $16/bottle O__o
The really ambitious thing I finally tried out was water marbling.
I'm not going to give a real tutorial, because there are much better ones on youtube. But basically, you take a cup of room temperature water, drip polish into it and quickly make designs in the polish then dip your nail into it.
Tools!
Obviously, this attempt called for Arashi colors!
Above are the water, polishes, Q-tips, scotch tape, and finishing nails (needles or toothpicks would work just as well--any very thin sharp tool you can make designs in the polish with will be fine.)
I had to end up switching out some polishes, because they didn't spread right in the water, so these were the final polishes:
Red: Sally Hansen Right Said Red, Yellow: China Glaze Lemon Fizz, Green: Orly Lucky Duck, Blue: Sinful Colors Paradise, Purple: unnamed Suki polish #175.
Step 1: Put water, preferably filtered water, into cup or bowl and allow it to warm/cool to room temperature.
Step 2: Paint nails with base coat and then white or beige polish to great a neutral backdrop for the polishes. Light colors are best, so they don't distort the marbling colors.
Step 3: Tape around nails with scotch or masking tape to protect them from free-floating polish--I forgot my thumbnail, and it wasn't pretty or easy to clean up. I think masking tape would have worked better because it covers more of the nail.
zomboid has since suggested that Vaseline (or another petroleum jelly) around the nail site/fingers also protects the skin, and you just wipe it (and the clingy polish) off after you take the finger out of the water. I'm going to try this next time!
Step 4: Drip polishes in quick succession into the water:
You have to do this really quickly, because the very thin sheets of polish dry really quickly, and if you're slow, you can't pull lines/designs in it or get it to smoothly attach to the nail.
Make sure the polish caps are unscrewed and resting in the neck, so you can grab them and drip into the water very quickly--time is of the essence here.
If you're too slow, just run a Q-Tip around in the water, and the polish will collect to it, so you can clean the water and start again.
Step 5: When you've added all the colors/layers of polish, very quickly take a pin or thin object--like a needle--and drag it through the polish to make designs--basically, much like the cappuccino artists did on Shiyagare when Oguri Shun was a guest.
Step 6: Dip your finger, nail down, parallel to the water's surface, and then below, keeping it still, and trying not to disturb the surface and cause air bubbles, which will mar the nail's design.
Step 7: Lightly blow on the surface to cool and dry the polish not on the nail.
Step 8: Drag the Q-tip through the water's surface to pick up the unused polish before you remove the nail, so it won't interfere with the design on the nail. Then remove the hand from the water and marvel at the mess you made.
No, seriously.
Step 9: Remove the tape (or petroleum jelly) and clean off any polish that is in unwanted places on the finger.
Step 10: (if you're me) Mock yourself for forgetting to tape your thumb, thus making clean-up more of a pain.
On the other hand, this was totally my favorite nail in the bunch:
Step 11--when the polish is very dry, put on a topcoat to add shine and even out the texture, if there are ridges in the polish.
This obviously was a bit of a mixed bag, but I think I'll definitely try it again, and if the rainbow boybandery looks acceptable enough to actually keep as a manicure, I'll likely add a layer of superfine holo/iridescent glitter to sparkle it up!
Since that mani wasn't really good for teaching in, that night, I switched to a subdued champagne glitter from the same Sally Hansen Gem Crush series as the polishes above--Big Money.
It's a muted gold glitter with sparse larger lavender glitter in it.
It was pretty damn sparkly, so I used Essie's Matte about you to matte-fy and tone it down.
Total Mother of the Bride nails. Might actually be too boring ^^; I'm apparently having a problem striking a good balance bwtween fun and professional with the nails ^^;
Today, I switched to a no-name blue polish I found in what was clearly supposed to be a little girl's stocking stuffer pack of 5 muted milky jelly polishes that was at a Ross Dress For Less, a TJ-MAXX-esque chain I've only seen in the Southern US.
Another pic of today's nails, this time with my beloved Alot mug!
I love these polishes, and they're TINY--I think you can maybe get 3 manis out of a bottle. I may have to stock up on these, but they're only $3 for a pack of 5 colors, so no biggie.
So, there it is: One week of my nails--though I didn't keep the sample hands or the water marbling past the night, since they weren't really work-friendly manicures ^^;
Hey there, f-list! How's it going? Do you paint your nails? What colors/finishes/brands to you love/hate?
So, since it's the holiday season, new nail polishes are coming out like you wouldn't believe, and an ungodly amount of them are sparkly . . . and since I joined the sparkly rainbow boyband train, I generally fail at resisting sparkles.
My wallet hates me right now.
First off, I recently bought Sephora by OPI's Sugar Plum Fairies Gone Wild ($8.50 >_<) and wanted to compare it to two other lilac and pink glitter polishes from recent holiday collections, Wet n Wild All In the Cut from the Ice Baby collection, and Sally Hansen Be-Jeweled, from the Gem Crush holiday collection.
The results?
Forefinger and pinkie finger are Wet n Wild, ring finger is Sally Hansen, center finger is $OPI.
(for fun, on the thumb, I tried to get something close to $OPI SPFGW by layering cheaper polishes, namely Sinful Colors I Miss You over Milani 3d Hi-Res, a purple linear holo--sadly the lighting in my apt isn't good enough to show off the holo, but here are some swatches of the collection.)
As you can see, my attempt didn't really get all that close--in fact, it was much closer to the other two polishes, instead ^^;
Thoughts: neither Sally Hansen or Wet n Wild compete for sheer bling value with the $OPI. Sally Hansen and Wet n Wild are near dupes, lilac small glitter with slightly larger round pink glitters interspersed. Wet n Wild is just barely darker and more blue in tone, but seriously just barely. Both cover pretty well in two coats, but three is best. REALLY THIRSTY--2-3 thick topcoats to get them smooth.
As for the $OPI, much bigger glitter leads to much more aggressive sparkle--the base glitter is another lilac, nowhere near as blue-toned as this picture suggests, but it also has intermittent blue-ish-lilac glitters which are also holographic and super-sparkly. This polish is SO INCREDIBLY SPARKLY. Full coverage in about 2 1/2 coats.
Doing my thumb reminded me how awesome the Milani 3d polishes were--$4 holos! The gold isn't really holo, but the rest are and awesome--easy to put on, two coats, and perfect! I can still find them at CVS, but you can also find them at BeautyJoint.
At the same time that I bought the lilac/pink glitters, I noticed a striking similarity between charcoal glitters from the same collections by Wet n Wild and Sally Hansen, so I decided to compare them, too, adding in Orly's Rock Solid as another charcoal with suspended glitter, and Androgynie, a black jelly with large multicolor hex glitter, just for fun, on the nail.
The results? Another pretty close resemblance:
Index and Pinky: Wet n Wild Diamond in the Rough, Middle finger: Orly Rock Solid, Ring Finger: Sally Hansen Gem Crush Glitz Gal
Both Diamond in the Rough and Glitz Gal are charcoal glitter with silver holo hex glitter. They're pretty much direct dupes, and I hear that they're very close dupes for the British company Nails Inc.'s Sloane Square.
Rock Solid (middle finger) has a charcoal shimmer base with small holo glitter. The shimmer makes the color seem more . . . metallic, I guess, than the two glitter polishes.
And here's Androgynie--there are some real issues with this polish, like the way the base obscures some of the glitter, and the fact you have to shake the bottle for several minutes to get the glitter where the brush can get to it, but I don't care. I like it!
I think maybe this post might explain what's going on with the Sally Hansen/Wet n Wild/Nails Inc. duping, but I guess in the end, it's sort of a win for the consumer--If you buy the Wet n Wild version, it's $2.99, but can be hard to find. The Sally Hansen is $7, but maybe a bit easier to find, as long as you're close to a CVS. And if you bought one of the Wet n Wilds but can't find them anymore and want a backup, the $7 might be worth it to you to get the Sally Hansen. The entire lines aren't dupes, though. Just a few.
In the case of the Nails Inc. polish, it's $10 as opposed to the $3 dupe. No difficult choices there. But I bet their marketers are not thrilled when that happens--though the fact that Nails, Inc. is primarily a British company and Wet n Wild isn't sold there (at least, I don't think it is?) probably softens the annoyance.
Another fun polish I tried for the first time this week: a magnetic polish: Nails Inc. Houses of Parliament, carried at Sephora along with its charcoal gray sister, Trafalgar Square.
You put down a base coat of the polish and wait 5 minutes:
After 5 min, you put on a second coat, and immediately position your finger above the magnet embedded in the cap to get a 3D pattern of light and dark which shifts in the light, most closely resembling the way light works on Tiger's Eye.
Pictures really don't do this polish justice--it's kind of a one-trick pony, but it's an awesome trick! Pricy, though, at $16/bottle O__o
The really ambitious thing I finally tried out was water marbling.
I'm not going to give a real tutorial, because there are much better ones on youtube. But basically, you take a cup of room temperature water, drip polish into it and quickly make designs in the polish then dip your nail into it.
Tools!
Obviously, this attempt called for Arashi colors!
Above are the water, polishes, Q-tips, scotch tape, and finishing nails (needles or toothpicks would work just as well--any very thin sharp tool you can make designs in the polish with will be fine.)
I had to end up switching out some polishes, because they didn't spread right in the water, so these were the final polishes:
Red: Sally Hansen Right Said Red, Yellow: China Glaze Lemon Fizz, Green: Orly Lucky Duck, Blue: Sinful Colors Paradise, Purple: unnamed Suki polish #175.
Step 1: Put water, preferably filtered water, into cup or bowl and allow it to warm/cool to room temperature.
Step 2: Paint nails with base coat and then white or beige polish to great a neutral backdrop for the polishes. Light colors are best, so they don't distort the marbling colors.
Step 3: Tape around nails with scotch or masking tape to protect them from free-floating polish--I forgot my thumbnail, and it wasn't pretty or easy to clean up. I think masking tape would have worked better because it covers more of the nail.
zomboid has since suggested that Vaseline (or another petroleum jelly) around the nail site/fingers also protects the skin, and you just wipe it (and the clingy polish) off after you take the finger out of the water. I'm going to try this next time!
Step 4: Drip polishes in quick succession into the water:
You have to do this really quickly, because the very thin sheets of polish dry really quickly, and if you're slow, you can't pull lines/designs in it or get it to smoothly attach to the nail.
Make sure the polish caps are unscrewed and resting in the neck, so you can grab them and drip into the water very quickly--time is of the essence here.
If you're too slow, just run a Q-Tip around in the water, and the polish will collect to it, so you can clean the water and start again.
Step 5: When you've added all the colors/layers of polish, very quickly take a pin or thin object--like a needle--and drag it through the polish to make designs--basically, much like the cappuccino artists did on Shiyagare when Oguri Shun was a guest.
Step 6: Dip your finger, nail down, parallel to the water's surface, and then below, keeping it still, and trying not to disturb the surface and cause air bubbles, which will mar the nail's design.
Step 7: Lightly blow on the surface to cool and dry the polish not on the nail.
Step 8: Drag the Q-tip through the water's surface to pick up the unused polish before you remove the nail, so it won't interfere with the design on the nail. Then remove the hand from the water and marvel at the mess you made.
No, seriously.
Step 9: Remove the tape (or petroleum jelly) and clean off any polish that is in unwanted places on the finger.
Step 10: (if you're me) Mock yourself for forgetting to tape your thumb, thus making clean-up more of a pain.
On the other hand, this was totally my favorite nail in the bunch:
Step 11--when the polish is very dry, put on a topcoat to add shine and even out the texture, if there are ridges in the polish.
This obviously was a bit of a mixed bag, but I think I'll definitely try it again, and if the rainbow boybandery looks acceptable enough to actually keep as a manicure, I'll likely add a layer of superfine holo/iridescent glitter to sparkle it up!
Since that mani wasn't really good for teaching in, that night, I switched to a subdued champagne glitter from the same Sally Hansen Gem Crush series as the polishes above--Big Money.
It's a muted gold glitter with sparse larger lavender glitter in it.
It was pretty damn sparkly, so I used Essie's Matte about you to matte-fy and tone it down.
Total Mother of the Bride nails. Might actually be too boring ^^; I'm apparently having a problem striking a good balance bwtween fun and professional with the nails ^^;
Today, I switched to a no-name blue polish I found in what was clearly supposed to be a little girl's stocking stuffer pack of 5 muted milky jelly polishes that was at a Ross Dress For Less, a TJ-MAXX-esque chain I've only seen in the Southern US.
Another pic of today's nails, this time with my beloved Alot mug!
I love these polishes, and they're TINY--I think you can maybe get 3 manis out of a bottle. I may have to stock up on these, but they're only $3 for a pack of 5 colors, so no biggie.
So, there it is: One week of my nails--though I didn't keep the sample hands or the water marbling past the night, since they weren't really work-friendly manicures ^^;
Hey there, f-list! How's it going? Do you paint your nails? What colors/finishes/brands to you love/hate?