Hits Speciallita Hula

This week I am wearing Hits Speciallita Hula, a Brazilian polish that I bought through the U.S. Stockist, llarowe.com.  I bought it on sale for $5, and then the price went even lower, to $4, and now they are sold out on llarowe.com, but ninjapolish.com has them for $6.50.

Hula is a very vivid red-orange polish with golden-orange flakies.  It reminded me of mercurochrome in the bottle, but once I applied it, it reminded me of my all-time favorite polish from something like 25 years ago:  Revlon Dragon Lady Red.  The Revlon was a creme, though, with no flakies.  Still, it's the closest I've come to Dragon Lady Red ever.  I wish I could find an old bottle of Dragon Lady Red.  I wish Revlon had not discontinued it or that they would bring it back, but for now I'm feeling a strong urge to buy a back-up bottle of Hula because it makes me so happy to look at it.  I tell myself that I don't finish bottles of polish anymore unless they're top coat or base coat, and I tell myself that there are at least six more manicures in the little bottle of Hula.  But, I may just succumb to the urge and buy a back-up bottle at some point anyway.

In the first pictures below, I have a coat of Sally Hansen Age Correct Growth (discontinued), three coats of Hula, and three coats of Seche Vite.  I took those pictures yesterday, on the third day of having the manicure.  In today's picture with the bottle (fourth day of the manicure), I have an additional coat of Seche Vite and a coat of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat on top of that.  I add top coat every day to my manicure.  I use a little extra Seche Vite when I use flakie polishes because I want a smooth texture.  Hula was smooth and shiny without top coat, though.  It was relatively easy to apply, and I like the long, thin brush.  There was no dragging, no bald spots, and no flooding.  However, cleanup was not easy.  Trying to clean up this polish with a brush and acetone is like trying to clean up water paints with a brush and water.  The polish just dilutes and goes everywhere.  There was no staining, though.  Just tricky cleanup.  The old cotton and orange stick are better removal tools here than the brush.  There were some flakies on my skin here and there after cleanup, but they went away after a day or so.  The polish dried pretty quickly.  The wear is O.K.  It's a thin paint, but it hasn't chipped.  I did have significant shrinkage on the first day, though, and some tip wear, too.  Today (fourth day), I patched up the tips with a little polish and added more top coat.  There is still visible nail line in some lighting.  I wonder what the polish would look like with a creme underneath in a similar color.  Dragon Lady Red would have been perfect.  ;-)  The flakies here are sandwiched nicely and add depth and interest to the manicure.

Sunlight, Day Three.  Significant tip wear and shrinkage on tips.  

Sunlight, Day Three.  Love the orange flash in the sun!

Indirect sunlight.  Day Three.

Sunlight.  Day Three.  You can see the orange flash beginning on the left edge of the nails.

Sunlight.  Day Three.  You can see the flakies that create the orange flash.

Sunlight.  Day Three.  Love that golden orange flash.

Sunlight.  Day Three.

Office Lighting.  Day Three.

Office Lighting.  Day Three.

Office, with flash.  Day Three.

Yesterday, late afternoon sun.  Day Three.  You can see how in direct sunlight you get the orange flash and it's redder in indirect sunlight.

Yesterday, late afternoon sun.

Yesterday, late afternoon sun.

Yesterday, late afternoon sun.

Today, indoor lighting.  Day Four.  I patched up the worn and shrunken tips.

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The Winner of My First Giveaway is Dulcie D.!

Dulcie D., I will be e-mailing you shortly to ask for your address so that I can mail the prizes to you!

Last Weekend's Shopping

Last weekend I bought some of the new skull-bottle Wicked brand nail polish sold by Hot Topic.  They had a large part of the collection out on display on the store in my local mall, and the store clerk said that they were getting more selection in the future.  The entire collection is available online at Hot Topic's website.

I bought Deceit, a flakie polish similar to China Glaze's Luxe and Lush, except where Luxe and Lush has a clear base, Deceit has a very pretty light pink base with a little purple to the pink shade.  It's very dainty and girlie and delicate on its own; I don't know what it would look like layered over another polish.  The flakies are like shards of mylar, and the polish base is thick.  Sometimes a flakie will want to stick out, and you need to either push it flat or remove it or use cuticle nippers to nip off the part that is sticking out.

I also bought Royally Screwed which looks more dense and opaque in the bottle, but it's more of a top coat with royal blue small glitter and larger hex glitter.

Then I went to Claire's at the mall.  I bought Claire's Color Club Little Dipper, a beautiful orange shimmery polish with golden orange shimmer.  I also bought Claire's Candy Shop, a dupe for Deborah Lippmann's Candy Shop, a pink base with glitter in many sizes and colors.

And, you could get one Revlon polish of your choice for 99-cents at CVS last Saturday (after Extra Care Bucks and a $1 off manufacturer's coupon), so I got another bottle of quick dry top coat.

Most exciting of all, Sally Beauty Supply was having a large clearance sale, and I had a coupon for 15% off my entire purchase.  I didn't get any of the clearance polish, but I did find a bottle of Finger Paints Special Effects!  I found (and purchased, of course) Flecked!  I will offer this polish to my Finger Paints Special Effects giveaway winner if they don't already own it.  Then they can have 3 different ones of these hard to find flakie polishes.  Flecked has mostly green flakies and some blue flakies.  I also bought another set of nail wheels at Sally's.  It's what I intended to buy when I went there.  I can always use more nail wheels.

Here are some pictures of the bottles and some swatches of the polishes:

From left to right:
Finger Paints Special Effects Flecked, $4.24 + tax
Claire's Color Club Little Dipper, $5.09 + tax
Claire's Candy Shop, $3.91 + tax
Wicked Deceit, $5 + tax
Wicked Royally Screwed, $5 + tax
Revlon Quick-Dry Top Coat, $.99 + tax

Blurry picture of the package of nail wheels.  They're very inexpensive.  I paid  $4.58 + tax.

ONE COAT OF EACH:
#3 is Claire's Color Club Little Dipper
#4 is Claire's Candy Shop
#5 is Wicked Deceit
#6 is Wicked Royally Screwed

TWO COATS OF EACH, #3 through #6

THREE COATS OF EACH #3 through #5
TWO COATS OF #6

On the left #16 is Spoiled Vitamin C.
To the right is Claire's Color Club Little Dipper.
They are similar but I like the Color Club formula better, and it's more vibrant.

On the left, #3 is Revlon Orange Fizz.
To the right is Claire's Color Club Little Dipper.
They are slightly different shades with a very similar glass fleck or shimmer effect.
Also, the Revlon is more sheer and is scented.

On the top wheel, #17 is China Glaze Luxe and Lush which has the most similar flakies to Deceit on the bottom right.
On the bottom left at #18 is Luxe and Lush over black polish.
On the top wheel, #18 is Finger Paints Motley, and #16 is Finger Paints Twisted.
On the top wheel, #15 is Essie Shine of the Times.

Royally Screwed (#6 on the left) has similar sizes of glitter to Revlon Radiant (#10 on the right).

The glitter in Royally Screwed (#6 on the left) are most similar in color to  Sinful Colors Midnight Blue.

So hard to capture the sparkle in Deceit's flakies!

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Nail Mail: Ozotic 520

I received Ozotic 520 a week ago, just a few days after ordering it from llarowe.com.  It's part of the Ozotic polishes that are being discontinued.  It's a very pretty duo- or multi-chromatic polish.  It flashes gold and copper and a rusty red at times.

Here are some pictures:

Left: Ozotic 520 (#2) compared to Right: Hard Candy Beetle (#15) and Ludurana Aurora Boreal Fascinante (#14).

All three are similar but not dupes.  Ozotic's finish is smooth, while the finish on the other two seems grainy.

Fascinante is closest to 520, but it's more burgundy.  I like orange and copper colors more.

#18 on the right is Fascinante with a coat of a no-name Icing red and gold glitter and a coat of China Glaze Golden Enchantment holographic micro-glitter top coat that I added because I wanted more of the golden and orange shades and not the burgundy shade in Fascinante.

I tried to get every color that these multi-chromes flash, but there were still some color flashes that I was not able to photograph.

#2 is Ozotic 520.

So pretty!

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Revlon Whimsical

I finally wore Revlon Whimsical!  I won this polish in the first giveaway I ever won, on Jamie's Nails Adored blog, in February of this year.  I remember it had to have been February because I had a really bad cold that kept me home from work almost a week, but while I was coming down with the cold, I went all over town looking for the polishes from the giveaway, including Whimsical, because I was sure that I wouldn't win the giveaway.  I couldn't find Whimsical and was getting very sick, so I just ordered it online from the Ulta website.  Then I found out that I won the giveaway!  The first and only giveaway I've won so far.

Whimsical has a pale blue base with rose gold and blue hex glitter and smaller blue glitter.

I looked in my nail polish stash for a polish to wear under Whimsical.  You can wear Whimsical by itself, but it's sheer, and to build up the base color to the grayish blue in the bottle would take so many coats that the glitter would be really packed on my nails.  I prefer a little less glitter.  So, I used Sally Hansen Age Correct Growth (discontinued) as my base coat, and then I added two coats of an Icing polish that didn't have a name when I bought it.  I bought it early this year during a clearance sale after the holidays.  It was in a four-pack of blue shimmer polishes in different shades.  This one that I used was the second lightest in the package.

Here is a picture of the Icing shimmer polish, without clean-up because I took the picture as I was doing my manicure, and I wasn't going to wear the Icing polish as a manicure but as a base for Whimsical.

without flash

with flash

The blue shimmer in this Icing polish is like glitter crushed to a powder, and it flashes in the same color as the blue glitter in Whimsical.  I watermarked the two pictures above using an iPhone app, so after editing it was saved at less than half the original file size, so the resolution is lower, and it's not as sharp.  You can still click on it to make it larger and see more detail, though.  The rest of the pictures in this post were edited on my desktop computer using Paint.NET (a free program), and they were not made blurry by editing.

Below is a picture showing the bottle of Icing polish, and there are two coats of the polish on my fingernails (no cleanup, manicure in progress).

Here is a picture with the two coats of the Icing polish but holding the bottle of Revlon Whimsical so you can compare the two shades of blue.  They're very close!

The Revlon Whimsical polish had a very good formula.  It was very easy to apply, and cleanup was minimal and easy.  I didn't have any staining.  The polish dries shiny.  The Revlon brush is thin and long, which I like. The wear time was good.  I am still wearing the polish today, so I have had it on for 8 days.  I'm taking it off tonight to do a new manicure.  There was very little shrinkage from the Seche Vite I used on top of Whimsical, but there was significant shrinkage from the Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat that I add every morning.  The manicure did not chip, though.  It's a very pretty and delicate manicure.  I really liked looking at it throughout the week and did not get tired of wearing it.  It would be a very nice color for a manicure to wear to a baby shower.

In the picture below, I have the Sally Hansen Age Correct Growth (discontinued), two coats of the Icing polish, and a coat of Whimsical (no clean-up yet, manicure in progress):

In the picture below, I have a second coat of Whimsical (still no cleanup, no top coat yet, manicure in progress):

The pictures below were taken a day later:

Under office lighting.

Indoors, with flash.

Indirect sunlight.

Sunlight.  I promise I don't take pictures while driving!  I take pictures while parked or at red lights.

Sunlight.

And, in the picture below, you can see swatches of Revlon Whimsical and of Nostalgic Lacquer Duckie:

#12 on the left is Nostalgic Lacquer Duckie, and #16 on the right is Revlon Whimsical.
#17 on the right is Sinful Colors Cinderella.

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