In the "Reaping" scene in the new Hunger Games movie, Effie Trinket wears a pretty and interesting nail look while she's drawing out the tributes' names. It's a sort of dark rose with a gold metallic sponged halfway down. It's such a simple and cute look to try to replicate, but I decided I wanted something slightly more blingy, so I did a different variation using a couple China Glaze polishes.
Products used:
Essie Shine of the Times - $8 most drugstores
I have seen Essie Shine of the Times in just about every drugstore and big box store I've visited in the last month or so, so I know it's relatively easy to find at this point. I had been seeing it everywhere on the internet and decided I didn't need it because I have Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure, a bunch of Nfu-Ohs, the Finger Paints flakies, and more random flakies and honestly don't use them often, but SotT really impossible to resist in the end because when I finally gave up and just picked the polish up in my hands to examine it, I realized it was different than all the others I mentioned above. The shards of mylar are more finely milled, which does a couple things; 1) there is more variation in color because since these are light reactive to a point, the larger the shard, the less color in the area the shard takes up (therefore the smaller the shard, the more shards per area equaling more color!), 2) the surface appears, and is to a certain extent textured rather than just a bit of interesting color being randomly scattered over the surface making the finish look irregular and sort of gross. So overall, SotT is better than a lot of flakies. SH Hidden Treasure had, to this point, been my favorite overall in the mylar glitter category as it had somewhat small particles and was very dense on application. SotT is the new point to which the bar has been raised, y'all. woot! The only weird thing is that there are some random plummy purple colored specks in the polish. You'll see what I mean below.
I love mylar over dark colors, but because this is so dense and makes such a neat textured looking surface, I decided to use a light, delicate color under it for once; China Glaze White on White.
Nubar Polka Dot Collection - $20 at bynubar.com
The Polka Dots set actually contains Black Polka Dot, White Polka Dot and a Diamante Topcoat for that price. Not too shabby. I really liked both of these polishes. I applied WPD over black and BPD over white to give you as much contrast as possible.
Both polishes are nice, but I prefer Black Polka Dots. It's a lot more unique, and black glitter is just cool. Both have mostly small glitter with a dash of larger hex glitter. It's not hard to get the glitter to transfer but you'll have to maneuver the bottles around before applying to get the hex glitters near the top. Don't know why. The black one is pretty straight forward, but the white one... the glitter is this pearlescent white, first of all. It's pretty but it likes to suck up your base color and go all discolored. I let it stay on the black one for a while and the small glitter turned blue. Plus the white large hex glitter are prone to be broken when you get them on the nail so about 30% of them are shards instead of a hex. Either way, I like it. I actually liked when the glitter went blue, it looked cool, but if you want white, this might be inconvenient. The black makes anything look really cool and speckled and makes the purchase of the set worth it, in my opinion.
Side note: I just noticed Nubar has soak-off gel polishes... Has anyone tried them yet? I'm pretty much decided on buying the Orly GelFX kit but just wondering. I daydream constantly about China Glaze developing soak-off gels. That'll be the day.... *le sigh*
Venique - Deviant Little Sneaker - veniquenail.com
This is a brand that is new to CosmoProf, indeed I think it's new in general, but it's distribution as yet seems pretty limited. Armstrong McCall (whatever that is) and Beauty Systems carry it as well as per the website. Either way, Venique is something I had yet to try when I went into CosmoProf last time, so I scanned the impressively large display for something unique. There weren't a whole lot of shades that weren't reruns from other brands, but DLS really popped out. It's a rosy charcoal base with lots of silver and red glitter, and even a little hidden blue in there somewhere. The shade is interesting enough, but the most important information I have to impart about this polish is that it's incredibly opaque in one coat and it DRIES SMOOTH! Yup, crazy. I used two coats here, and you'll want to as well probably, but I was shocked at the coverage of this polish. The smooth finish is awesome, and it makes it easier to overlook that it seems to take forever and a day to dry. I'm going to have to pick up another Venique and see if this is a brand-wide thing, or if it's just this polish.
Nubar has a new collection slated for Spring 2012 called Jellybeans. The name, I'm assuming, is an allusion to the fact that these are pretty much all jellies. The jury is still out on these, I'm a little ticked off at the application of a few of these, but there are a couple that are just drop-dead gorgeous. Some will will be great for "jelly sandwiches," the name for glitter sandwiched between a few coats of a jelly polish. Some of these won't work for that, but will still look gorgeous alone, and a couple are plain weird, one just plain hideous, but all are shiny as hell.
This Hollywood-themed manicure was the product of weekend boredom. Using China Glaze Concrete Catwalk, Seche Porcelain, and Wet n Wild Believe Me, It's Real, along with assorted striping polishes. a somewhat kitschy manicure emerges. I didn't really think this one through before I did it, so really it's more of a rough draft, as you could probably tell by the half-assed skyline. The hills should have had a "Hollywood" sign, but I didn't really think of that till I waws done and had hit saturation point in "I don't give a crap, it's a lazy Sunday." The yellow Art Deco striper I used for the spotlights really ended up working better than I'd thought. I'd originally thought maybe I'd need to lay down a coat of white under those lights, but the striper directly over black made it look like actual light instead of acid yellow laser beams. Yay for happy accidents born of laziness! The film is all black striper on a white background, the pinky all black on top of some kickass nearly opaque blue glitter with an nth of purple. love this Wet n Wild polish, must go back for more!
One of the two glitter shades from OPI's new 6-piece specialty Nicki Minaj collection, Metallic 4 Life is a sheer black jelly with both small round and large hexagonal silver glitter. It's somewhat sheer, so I'd recommend layering it over a plain black polish so that you can apply and maneuver the glitter around to get the right look without leaving bald spots in your base. These photos are three coats on top of a clear basecoat and you can see that some of my little bald spots didn't stand up to the flash of my camera.
Below, I've also compared M4L to China Glaze Tinsel Town, which from M4L's promo photos I assumed to be similar. That's the not the case, though; happily it's different but just as awesome. Black polishes with shiny glitter, yeah they're awesome.
The China Glaze Eye Candy collection for Winter '11 is a group of gorgeous and interesting "3D" glitters. The 3D refers to how the glitters vary in size and type making the surface of the polish look like it's several layers of glitter, one on top of the next. Some use varying sizes of similarly colored glitter and others use glitter of different finishes, effects and colors to accomplish the complex look of these polishes. Each polish individually can look very different depending on the light source and strength you view the polish in, so really they're very interesting to wear.
From the China Glaze Halloween 2011 Haunting set comes It's Alive, a gorgeous glittery deep mossy green. I was afraid at first when I saw promo photos for this set that maybe it would be a rehash of Zombie Zest from last year, but as usual China Glaze has delivered big time and brought us something even better. The base color on this is a jelly, so the glitter shines through beautifully, but it's very pigmented and even so it only takes two coats for full coverage. The glitter is half small, half large and they all appear to be round and all the glitter is silver. It's just gorgeous, in this girl's opinion. The only thing that could make Halloween better this year is if China Glaze had re-released Spellbound, as I totally could not find it ANYWHERE last year. I am sobbing... Anyway, make sure to click the photos for full-size!
The China Glaze Holiday collection for 2010 is available online now at transdesign.com for $2.99 each and at head2toebeauty.com for $2.99 also. It should start to be available at Sally Beauty later in the year, but I'm not sure at what price. I imagine around $6 as usual.
The "Tis the Season to be Naughty AND Nice" collection is a whopping 16-piece collection consisting of a lot of the Christmas-y shades you'd expect, and a few you wouldn't, in a wide range of finishes. There are only a couple "predictable" shades in the whole collection, which is awesome. My overall impression of this collection is that this is typical China Glaze overachieving; a solid grouping of shades that makes you say "this couldn't get any better" then gives you even more. We all know I'm a big China Glaze fan, and collections like this are why I love them so much. Among other things I find that no one does glitter like China Glaze, and there are a couple great ones in this lot.
I've put all 16 shades in one post so you can have them all together in one place for comparison and shopping purposes. Below I'll show you each shade in one to two photos then give you a quick review; hope you enjoy!
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