Halloween-y Heli-Yummy

Today's NOTD is Heli-Yum by China Glaze from their 'Up and Away' Spring 2010 collection.  I was in the mood for something summery now that the nights are dark and the temperature has dropped.  This is a lovely bright pink crème with an almost neon jelly quality to it that made it very hard to photograph!

China Glaze Heli-Yum - Artificial Light

Shown here I'm wearing two coats, with a coat of Seche on top.  I'm also trying out a new nail shape on my nubbins and I'm still a bit mystified how to make a round thing square armed only with a nail file.  We'll see how this goes.

Tomorrow is Halloween and, even though this isn't a really Halloween-y shade I decided to have a go with some Born Pretty store water decals to make this mani a bit more festive.  I was really impressed with the decals, they're super easy to use and awesome fun.  I'll definitely be buying a bunch more of these.  The pack contains dozens of decals and at just $4 with free postage, that's a lot of bang for your buck...

Halloween water decals

The only negative I have on these is that the instructions on the packet are pretty hard to understand, but a quick google search revealed several YouTube videos that told me all I need to know.  They take seconds to apply, and are sealed in place with another layer of Seche.

Spooky fun

I bought the CG polish from Radiant-Babe Beauty on Amazon UK  for £4.95 with free postage (because I bought 3 polishes in total) and the decals from Born Pretty Store.  Born Pretty is awesome - they sell nail art supplies at bargain basement prices and with free P&P.  The only downside is that they are based in Asia and it takes  3-4 weeks to arrive.  But as long as you're not in a hurry its ideal.

Happy Halloween mani-maniacs :)

China Glaze Autumn Nights - Red-Y and Willing

Today I have an incredible polish to share with you, which my terrible pictures do absolutely no justice.  For some reason my camera really failed to take a true colour picture of this shade.  This is from the China Glaze Autumn Nights collection 2013 - Red-Y and Willing.

China Glaze Red-Y and Willing - Artificial Light

Red-Y and Willing is an absolutely gorgeous deep blackened red metallic shimmer, with such a lush depth of colour that I was constantly distracted by my fingers the whole time I wore it.  For some reason in my pictures it has come out much pinker than it looked to me IRL.  The picture at the top of this post is the truest to colour, although there is much more 'inner fire' to the polish than this picture would suggest.  This is exactly my kind of colour, which means that I have a whole host of similar shades so this will definitely feature in a comparison post at some point!

China Glaze Red-Y and Willing - Artificial Light

The formula on this was fantastic - super opaque and not at all streaky as something this metallic can tend to be.  Pictured here are two coats plus Seche.  Apologies for the poor swatches, this was on about day 4 of the mani so you can at least see that wearability is excellent on this one.  It's also winter in Scotland so sadly most of my swatches from now on are going to be by artificial light only!

I can't recommend this highly enough.  If you want a gorgeous metallic red shimmer that's perfect for the Christmas season then look no further.  I picked mine up for £6.95 at a Sally Salon Supplies store, but I can also recommend Radiant-Babe Beauty as a good online UK supplier of discounted CG polishes (typically £5.95).  I would recommend though that you use her Amazon UK store, for some reason she sells the same polishes on Amazon for £1 less than her online shop,  and if you buy 3 polishes you get free postage.

Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with any of the online retailers or shops that I mention in my posts.  My comments are based purely on my own shopping experiences.

CrowsToes Shoot the Butterfly

Dipping my toes (and fingers) into the pool of great Indie polishes out there with Crowstoes "Shoot the Butterfly" - this is just the second Indie I've tried and I'm impressed! I was unsure what to expect really, in comparison to the big brands, but so far I'm very pleased!

First a quick apology on the swatches - I had significant tip shrinkage here and it's due to my elderly bottle of Seche top coat and nothing to do with the Crowstoes.

 



Crows Toes Shoot the Butterfly - Sunlight

Shoot the Butterfly is a charcoal black jelly base with shiny orange hex glitters, teeny tiny matt white hex particles and microscopic round holo glitters.  Shown here are two coats atop black undies (No7 "Just Black") with NE base and Seche topcoat.  From swatches I've seen online (and even these pics actually) I was expecting that in real life it would have more of a jelly look than it seemed to have.  I think that next time I'll use a paler undie - perhaps a charcoal grey for a smoky look...

Crows Toes Shoot the Butterfly - Artificial Light

This polish is just so so pretty, and perfect for Autumn.  I know that it's meant to be inspired by monarch butterflies, but for me the orange and black reminds me of Halloween, of pumpkins and bonfires and fancy dress.  It's enchanting, and this is officially the polish that I have received the most compliments on.  I have fancy nails all the time, but this polish really caught everyone's attention and even garnered compliments from MEN! Can you imagine? Boys that notice nail polish? Miraculous!

Crows Toes Shoot the Butterfly - Artificial Light - Macro

I bought this lovely from Rainbow Connection for £10.25.   It won't be my last Crowstoes polish that's for sure (now I want Boat Drinks, My Favourite Amazon.....sigh, how long till payday?)

Flakie Comparisons: New Barry M 'Crystal Glaze' and others

Today I have a picture heavy flakie comparison post for you.  In recent weeks I've picked up three new flakies and was keen to see how these compare to polishes I already have.  My new polishes include brand new shades from Barry M ("Crystal Glaze"),  Color Club ("The Uptown") and No.7 ("In the Stars").  The No.7 is a polish I've seen described as a 'microflakie', sporting ultra fine iridescent particles that I think you could also consider to be a soft duochrome glitter.  I have divided this comparison into traditional sized flakies (the 'macroflakies') and the fine glitter sized particle polishes (the 'microflakies').

So, onto the comparison, here is the line-up:

The 'Macroflakies'
(L-R) Barry M "Crystal Glaze, Essie "Shine of the Times", Color Club "The Uptown", Layla "The Butterfly Effect (52)"

The 'Microflakies'
(L-R) No. 7 "In the Stars", Color Club "Pearl-spective"

The first observation to make with all of these, is that the colour in the bottle is completely different to the colour on the nail! For these swatches I've layered each macroflakie atop No.7 "Just Black".  With the exception of the Barry M polish (two coats) these are a single coat of the flakie to give you an idea of the density of flakie bits...


L-R: Crystal Glaze, SOTT, The Uptown, Butterfly Effect - Natural light

(L) Barry M Crystal Glaze (R) Essie SOTT - macro shot

Immediately we can see that the tone of the colour shift on the Barry M offering is completely different to the other three, which are all similar to each other.  Despite looking positively pink in the bottle, the Barry M flakie comes through in shades of blue, aqua and almost clear pieces.  One thing I wasn't keen on was the clear/pale flakie particles on first appearance look like missed patches on the nail so at first I thought I'd smudged the polish.  The density of particles in the Barry M polish is also much less than the others - roughly half. 

Comparing the 'red toned' macroflakies - of these it seems that on a black base, Essie SOTT and Color Club The Uptown are close enough to be dupes.  The Layla "Butterfly Effect" is very similar, just a little more red toned.  This can be seen more clearly in the photo below, which was taken in direct sunlight...



L-R: Crystal Glaze, SOTT, The Uptown, Butterfly Effect - Sun light

In bottle, the Color Club and Layla polishes look like dupes.  So I also compared these on their own, with no base colour.  Shown here are three coats of each:



L-R: Color Club "The Uptown" and Layla "Butterfly Effect" - Sun light

Despite the intense in-bottle indigo colour, both of these are really watery and thin on their own.  There is still considerable VNL with three coats, so it would take a hell of a lot to become fully opaque.  It's less obvious in this picture, but the Layla polish is slightly darker toned, and slightly more opaque than the Color Club.

Now onto the microflakies! For comparison I have the new No.7 shade "In the Stars" and Color Club's "Pearl-spective" from their recent Kaleidoscope collection.



L-R: Color Club "Pearl-spective" and No. 7 "In the Stars"

Both microflakie shades are gorgeous layered on black. Shown here is one coat of each.  Again the in-bottle colour is nothing like the on-nail colour and these two shades are far from dupes - in fact they are sort of mirror-images of each other.  The No.7 appears predominantly blue and has a subtle shift through aqua to pink.  The Color Club looks predominantly pink, with a subtle shift through purple to blue.  Both very pretty and worth owning both I think.  I found some excellent pics of the No.7 layered over blue and on its own here.  There is also an excellent review of Pearl-spective here, which again shows swatches over different base colours.  It looks as though the shift is highly dependent on base colour, so this is something I'll play with at some point. These microflakies remind me of the Ozotic 'Sugar' polishes from the 900 series (great review here), although I don't have any of those for comparison.

Phew! So the final comparison is price...Macroflakies: I bought the Barry M with my Boots points (hurrah!) and the RRP is £3.99.  The Essie and Layla polishes I bought from Amazon sellers for £8.04 and £5.94 respectively with free P&P.  The Colour Club was part of a duo-set in TK Maxx for £3.99, so effectively £2.  The Microflakies: I bought the No.7 with one of those handy £3 off vouchers Boots sometimes hand out, RRP is £6 so I got it for £3.  The Colour Club was part of a 4-polish mini-set in TK Maxx for £3.99 so effectively cost £1.  Full size Color Club polishes are available for about £8 if you can find them, and occasionally TK Maxx has 8 polish sets for £8-£10 which is a frickin steal.

Recommendations: If you own none of these, and want to, then I would recommend the No.7 micro-flakie "In the Stars" since this is easy to find, super pretty, and potentially the cheapest if you get one of those voucher offers.  For the macroflakies I'd recommend the Layla polish "The Butterfly Effect" (Ceramic Effects No. 52).  It's the cheapest, and so similar to the other shades that it makes no difference really which you pick. 



Polka Dot Heaven

Today's NOTD is the utterly fabulous Polka Dot Heaven by Liquid Sky Lacquer.  This is my first experience of circle glitter and it's love at first sight.  This polish is like having a birthday party on my nails.

Polka Dot Heaven by Liquid Sky Lacquer - Artificial Light

Even for me this is a lot of layers - I'm wearing Nail Envy base, two coats of black ("Just Black" by No.7) , two coats of PDH, and two coats of Seche Vite to seal in all that goodness.  It's impossible to tell if its the layers, the No7, the PDH, or my awesome technique but this mani is Rock. Solid. I've been wearing it for a week and there is only the teensiest bit of tip wear.

Polka Dot Heaven by Liquid Sky Lacquer - Natural Light

PDH is chock full of circle glitters, in every colour, and a range of sizes from teensy (about 1mm diameter) to large (approx. 5mm).   What I wasn't expecting was the mirror like finish on these glitters, they are MASSIVELY shiny (and the bigger ones have a holo finish too). In the sunlight pic below you can see a green spot projected onto my ring finger by a sparkly glitter on my middle finger - in bright light this polish makes your nails into a multi-coloured disco ball.  What's not to love?

Polka Dot Heaven by Liquid Sky Lacquer - Sun Light

I need to work on my fishing and placement technique.  As the macro shot shows this is so dense with glitter that it's really easy to get a large amount of glitter on the nail and I think it would have looked better if I'd managed to make it a little sparser.  I did find it trickier to fish out the largest of the glitters, since these seem to enjoy sticking to the sides of the bottle, but with some shoogling and scraping they can be grabbed well enough.  The suspension base is a thick clear polish that spreads easily and dries nice and glossy, but I'd still use top coat to seal the glitters in securely.

Polka Dot Heaven by Liquid Sky Lacquer - Macro

I picked up this beauty from new UK Indie polish supplier Rainbow Connection for £8.80, and it came wrapped in the cutest little ribbon-tied voil bag.  It's all kinds of awesome, and it definitely won't be my last circle glitter or last Liquid Sky Lacquer.