Color Club : Sugar Plum Yum

A festival of glitter for you today: Color Club Sugar Plum Yum, from the Scent-Suous holiday collection 2011. This collection is exclusive to Sally Beauty Supply and took a lot of people by surprise, mostly because it just kind of appeared one day with next to no fanfare and very little promotion at all. The whole collection is Christmas themed and scented, with three chunky glitters and three foils, and when I saw swatches online I knew I had to try and get them all!

Sugar Plum Yum is a fun combination of hexagon glitters: green (small pieces) and purple (various larger sizes) that smells like fruity candy (I assume it's meant to be sugar plums but I don't know what those actually smell like in real life!). It's also a tease: I took a million pictures of this polish and never quite managed to capture how insanely sparkly and pretty it is in real life. My camera was so overwhelmed by the glitter that it simply refused to focus properly!

Application is.... interesting (though with glitter this chunky, it was never going to be that straightforward!). You can apply it like a regular polish if all you want is a few decorative hexagons over the top of another colour, but if you want a full on glitter mani like this, you're going to have to adopt the 'blob' approach. Scoop out a blob of glitter, plonk it on the centre of the nail, then use the brush to  spread it around a little like you're icing a cake. Luckily, the glitter in this polish is very dense, so this approach is opaque in two coats if you're careful (though you might have to go back and fill in a couple of bare patches here and there).

You may well recoil in horror at the thought of two thick layers of goopy glitter on your nails, visions of an 8 hour drying time flashing before your eyes, but actually it's not that bad. Drying time was impressively fast and the whole thing was dry in about the same amount of time as you'd wait for three coats of regular polish (though not a fast drying variety). Once it's dry, you're left with a very rough surface; the larger hexagons tend to be rather curly and don't lie completely flat on the nail. This wouldn't bother me that much (I'm prepared to forgive a lack of smoothness for the awesome sparkle!) except the glitter kept catching on my hair, so I added two thick coats of Orly Sec 'N' Dry as top coat and the surface was significantly smoothed - still a little bumpy, but I think another coat of Sec 'N' Dry would actually have sorted that out and it'd have been almost as smooth as a non glitter manicure. Interestingly, the top coat seemed to make the glitter sparkle even more!

(Picture taken in different lighting to try and show the sparkle: you can see the purple much better here).

I was a little nervous about these being scented polishes: I've had ones in the past that you could smell three rooms away and which gave me a headache, but happily the scent on Sugar Plum Yum is much more subtle than that and you only really smell it if you put your nails near your face: not so weak that you wonder what the point in bothering with the scent was, but not so strong as to be invasive. Conversely, I could still smell it after those two layers of top coat and the strength was only slightly diminished. My son was most excited about the polish being scented and kept wanting to sniff my nails!

One last attempt to show the glitter, which shows up much better when the image is extremely blurred! This polish really is insanely sparkly and earned me a million compliments. I kept staring at my nails just to see them twinkling ^-^

Rimmel Crack Your Colour Crazy Top Coat : Silver Clash

This mani is a little different to my others: it doesn't have a proper bottle shot. There's a good reason for this: my sister in law took one look at my nails, hooted, then pounced on the bottle and carried it away triumphantly before I got chance to take a photograph. I guess that's a good advertisment for this polish: Rimmel Crack Your Colour Crazy Top Coat, in Silver Clash.

In lieu of a proper bottle shot, here's a promo image from Rimmel.

Now, I'm the first to admit I'm a little bored of crackle polishes: they were cool and exciting when they first popped up, then every brand and his dog brought out their own version, and they got a bit overexposed. However, this one is silver - actual, sparkly, light reflective silver, so it caught my attention anyway. What can I say... I'm a sucker for metallic/shiny/sparkly polishes!

On to the mani. I layered one coat of Silver Clash over one coat of 2True Shade 39, a basic black creme, and two coats of Nail Envy. I also added a top coat of Orly Sec'n Dry, because when crackle polishes dry, they have a slightly odd rough texture that sets my teeth on edge (I'm the same with terracotta). For the record, it already looked nice and shiny before the topcoat - I just prefer not to wince every time I touch my nails!

Application is a piece of cake. The brush is one of those wide ones so you can cover the whole nail in one or two swipes. If you want chunky crackles like these, you use a thick coat. A thin coat will give you dainty, spidery crackles. Either way, it dries super fast! The crackles take longer to appear than the Barry M polish I already reviewed, and the crack pattern is not quite the same, but it's still attractive (some crackles seem to give a very odd pattern that I don't find as appealing; more of a blobbed-on look).

You can see that Silver Clash is definitely sparkly - I've seen some silver crackles that were more like a slightly silvery grey, but not so here. It's not glitter though, it's just very shimmery silver that catches the light easily because of the uneven texture. I got a ton of compliments on this manicure!

I only wore this mani for 36 hours as I have work in the morning and have to go to a meeting where silver sparkle nails aren't the best idea - but in those 36 hours my nails went through three showers, hardcore housework, laundry and lots of typing as well as many hand washes and a ton of hand cream (the cuticle first aid mission continues!) Despite all this, there was no tip wear, chipping or any other sign of wear whatsoever. 

Another keeper!

SpaRitual Emerald City

Firstly, a warning. This swatch was done with my right hand... the Hand You Never See. Mainly because I broke a nail on my swatching hand, right down to the quick, and it's going to be a while before I can inflict the sight of it upon the world. It's beyond nubbin territory into 'wow, I didn't realise you bit your nails, Opalline'. So for now, it's Right Hand Swatching all the way. Now, I have a skin condition known as Psoriasis, which, as a side effect, makes my nails grow very fast, but with pitting. It doesn't really affect my swatching hand, but it does affect the other one. See the ring finger, there? See how it looks like I dented the polish about 20 times? And that dent in the middle finger? Ignore those. It's not the polish's fault :(

Also, I am still nursing my cuticles. You wouldn't think that these fingers have been lavished daily with all sorts of nourishing treatments, because they still don't look that great, but believe me this is a big improvement to two weeks ago. This hand was much worse than my swatching hand as it took the brunt of the chemical abuse I put my hands through. You can still see on my index finger where it was so bad it drew blood! My poor little cuticles!

Anyway, on to the swatching. Hopefully you won't be too traumatised!

I think I've said before that I love SpaRitual polishes in general, with their eco/vegan/natural vibe and their choice of beautiful colours (this is one of the first brands I reach for when I want something pretty yet muted).

This is one of the many shades I own, Emerald City.

I feel this polish is rather oddly named (I don't know about you, but 'Emerald' in a name makes me think of a darker, richer green, or at least something more jewel toned), but we'll let it off because it's a really pretty colour anyway. In some lights it looks a little teal, in others a little turquoise, but it's not really either - if I had to pin it right down, I'd say it was a slightly minty Spring Green, too vivid to be a pastel and too pale to be a jewel shade. It occupies a niche somewhere in between that's happily not too overpopulated by other brands - I haven't seen many others like this.

Although the bottle states that it's a creme, it's more like a jelly, and the first coat is disturbingly sheer (plus has the effect of giving you rather impressive zombie/swamp/alien nails). This sheerness makes it a three or even four coater: the pictures here show three coats over one of Nail Envy (no topcoat), it's pretty much opaque at three but there's still just enough visible nail line that it could really have done with a fourth. However, this aside, it applies nicely enough and dries reasonably quickly and is nice and glossy once dry.

Bottle shot: this was taken two days after the first. For some reason the VNL is more visible in this picture: it wasn't quite that obvious in real life). You can also see that there is a little tip wear but no real chipping.

Overall this is a lovely polish. The formula could be a little better (less sheer would be nice) but the colour is gorgeous, the finish is nice and the wear is good. Definitely a keeper!

2 True Crystal Nail Polish: Shade 3 Mysterious Turquoise

An update: Nail Envy seems pretty good. At least, after a week of using it, my nubs have 1) failed to completely break all the way back to the quick like they usually do without acrylic overlays, and 2) they seem to have grown. Just a little bit. Also, the new cuticle butter I've been using seems to be helping my poor long suffering cuticles. They're still not perfect but they're getting there!

I've been putting the Nail Envy on religiously but I have to say... I'm bored of looking at my naked nubbins :/
The Nail Envy instructions do hint at the possibility of using nail polish at the same time (it says 'remove along with any nail polish after a week') so I figured it couldn't hurt too much to restore some colour to my nails!

So without further ado I present to you: 2True Crystal Nail Polish, in shade 3.

Now before we start, I'd just like to say I wish companies would stop only using a number to describe their shades instead of a name. It's boring, uninspiring, and uninventive. A little poking around on the 2True website has revealed that this shade is actually called Mysterious Turquoise: still not that inventive, but at least they tried. I'm just not sure why they don't actually put the name on the bottle? It'd make it a lot easier to picture the colour when you don't have the bottle in front of you, for a start.

Anyway, mini rant aside, this polish is from a limited edition collection 2True have released in the run up to Christmas this year. There's 4 shades: a red, a purple, a blue and this turquoise, all are very pretty, vivid jewel toned metallic/shimmer shades, with more than a hint of sparkle and an attractive price tag of £1.99 for 7ml (I got 3 for £4.99 on a special offer deal).

Application is surprisingly good for such a cheapie polish: the first coat is disturbingly sheer and you catch yourself thinking 'oh no... it's going to be an 8-coater'. But appearances are deceptive and it's actually opaque after two coats; I did three for the extra depth of colour. The brush is long and thin and quite narrow, nicely flexible without being floppy, and holds just the right amount of polish for a neat and tidy cuticle line - handy for me at the moment, since whilst my cuticles are recovering from their recent trauma, clean up, and any more acetone than absolutely necessary to remove the mani once I'm done wearing it, are banned!

Drying time is average, though it's touch dry pretty quickly, it's a while longer before you can risk poking it any harder without expecting it to leave a mark. Wear is good; considering my nails are so short now and chip much faster than they did when long, I only got a little wear and no chips after 24 hours even though I didn't use a topcoat. The finish is really good: heaps of really fine grade glitter that catches the light well and gives an eyecatching shimmery metallic effect. There's no hint of brush strokes or patchiness either (once you get past that uber-sheer first coat: brace yourself, it's all going to turn out fine!).

Overall, I really like this polish. It's cheap and cheerful yet with a decent formula: a colour that hasn't been too done to death by the other brands yet, and is pleasantly sparkly, yet with fine enough glitter that removal isn't a big deal. I suspect that the sheerness seen when you only use one coat might make it a good polish for layering, too... some experimentation needed, methinks! It looks pretty festive, without screaming 'Christmas Manicure', and with the trend this season for jewel toned clothes and accessories, you'll get use out of it for more than just the office Xmas do.

The Horror!

They're so short :( and it feels weird! And look how sad my cuticles are! Poor neglected things... They're not enjoying all the work I've been doing .(or the harsh disinfectant foam I'm using at work, evil stuff, ugh). I need to break out the cuticle treatments STAT!

Change is afoot (or should that be a-nail?)

Some nail news for y'all... I'm going to have to cut my nails short! -sob- Life issues at the moment have left me having to do lots of manual work of the kind that makes long nails impractical... and I'd rather cut them short now than rip them off by accident.

Rather than wailing too much about my impending nubbins, I figured it might be a good opportunity to try something new. I have a medical condition that causes my nails to grow very fast, but also ridiculously thin and weak. In their natural state they tear and peel and break off below the quick (yes, that does hurt, a LOT) and I can barely maintain a 1mm free edge, let alone the length they are at now. At the moment, to stop them turning into bloody stumps I have to protect them with a layer of acrylic gel, but quite frankly it's a pain to maintain and it makes swatching difficult, slow and annoying :(

SO... whilst they're short, I'm going to try out an alternative solution that I've heard many other bloggers raving about: OPI Nail Envy. Hopefully this will succeed where many other nail strengtheners have failed me (Mavala, Sally Hansen, I'm looking at you) and I can quit the gel overlays in favour of all natural nails.

The Nail Envy has been ordered... watch this space! (though you may want to avert your gaze for a while if nubbins aren't your thing...)

Wish me luck... I'm a little scared!! Haven't had nubs for over a year!

China Glaze : Secret Peri-wink-le

Good morning! Life's got in the way recently and forced a short break from blogging... sorry for the silence, everyone! I'm back now, and hopefully things will stay quiet(ish) this time!

I thought for my next mani it would be nice to use a polish I've worn a few times before now : Secret Peri-wink-le, from the Operation Color collection by China Glaze.

A gorgeous dusty periwinkle blue creme, this polish differs from my other periwinkle shades (I have several, mostly because it's a colour I can't seem to resist buying) because it leans quite noticeably towards a lilac tone. Of course my camera completely refuses to capture this hint of lilac and would rather make me look like I'm imagining it, but I promise it's there in real life!

The formula is a little odd. It's quite thick and creamy, so you'd think it would have good coverage, but it tends to dry a bit patchy. Two coats can be opaque if you're careful but I had to do three because of patches on a couple of nails. Drying time could be better, probably because of the thickness, but it's not terrible (just don't do it if you're in a rush). On the other hand, application is pretty tidy, the brush is nice (no bells or whistles or funny shapes, but the length and flexibility are good and together with the thicker polish, it allows for good control). I didn't have to clean up this mani at all.

 

The slightly blah formula is more than made up for by the wear. Three coats with no topcoat - three days later and a lot of typing and hand washing have had NO EFFECT on this polish - I kid you not, I have no chips, my cuticle line is intact and there is no tip wear at all! It also dries pretty glossy - this is definitely a polish you can skip the topcoat on, if you want!

Whilst I have you, check out my new shape! I'm testing out a shorter length on my thumb nails - since squares and squovals don't really look right on me, I played around and came up with this kind of almond shape. What do you think looks better? Long and pointy or short almonds?