China Glaze Magnetix Attraction

China Glaze is one of my favorite polish brands, and I like their magnetic polishes.  I have reviewed their blue magnetic polish, Pull Me Close, here.  I have also worn their magnetic polish in a gold/brown shade, but that was before I started taking pictures of my nails and blogging about them.  I have also reviewed some Nabi magnetic polishes, most recently their red and black polish called "Wine" here and earlier their gold and brown polish called "Dark Gold" here.  I think I like the formula on the China Glaze polishes more, but the color selection (60 different colors of magnetic polish, all in very vibrant colors) of Nabi is amazing, and they cost me less than the China Glaze magnetics.  Also, the Nabi polishes have their magnet built in, whereas with China Glaze you had to buy the magnet separately (and store it--storage is always something I think about).  But, the China Glaze magnets are stronger than the Nabi magnets.  And, the China Glaze doesn't have the strong smell that the Nabi polishes have.  I don't even notice the Nabi polish smell anymore.  I use Seche Vite as a top coat, and it has a stronger smell to me than the Nabi polishes.  But, there are people who are very sensitive to strong smells in nail polish.

I started trying to make the star pattern with the China Glaze magnet, but it is hard to get the star centered on your nail the very first time.  Eventually I had gloopy multiple layers of polish on the first few nails I did.  Inevitably, I smudged the polish on a nail on my right hand as I moved on to start painting my left hand.  When I went to use a brush instead of an orange stick with cotton to try to remove the polish on that nail without getting cotton fibers all over, the brush fell into the bottle of acetone.  It was a brand new 16 oz. bottle of acetone.  The brush was an E.L.F. concealer brush with the white paint on the handle.  I couldn't get the brush out quickly, so I had to move to the kitchen, pour out the acetone (now with white paint in it) into a glass, get the brush out (now with a rough and unpainted handle), and pour the acetone back into the bottle.  It was a brand new bottle, so I didn't have a backup bottle, so I had to use the paint-filled acetone later for cleanup.  I was *not* in a good mood.  And, I had been, as usual, trying to rush through the manicure because it's always the last thing I do on Sundays before dinner, and I always seem to take much longer than I expect.  So, there I was rushing, and now I had to start over on my right hand.  So, I switched to the diagonal stripe magnet pattern.  It is much more forgiving and takes much less time.  If you are too high or low on your nail, it doesn't make a difference.  You still get diagonal stripes all over your nail.  If you are too much to the right or to the left on the nail with the magnet, again, it makes no difference because the pattern doesn't have a center like the star magnet does.

I like the China Glaze brush.  It's thin like the Revlon brushes.  Those are the brushes I first used decades ago to polish my nails, so I'm attached to them and used to them.  Now I am slowly learning to like the slightly flat and slightly wider brushes, like the ones in the Hits polishes.  The polish was easy to apply and dried quickly but not so quickly that I couldn't go over strokes if needed.  I used two coats of the magnetic polish over a base coat.  Then I used a coat of Seche Vite top coat, and throughout the week on some days I added a coat of Revlon's Quick Dry Top Coat.  The wear was the same as with my other magnetics.  They last a week on me just like my other manicures, but they do start to wear away around the edges faster than non-magnetic polishes.  They didn't chip at all, though.

I really liked the look of Pull Me Close with hematite bracelets and dark bracelets with a gritty finish that I have.  My secretary even noticed the manicure!  The polish is a beautiful dark gray, and parts of it are like metallic silver or metallic charcoal but with a gritty and grainy look that is really pretty.

Here are some pictures:

In Sunlight

Sunlight

Sunlight

This is blurry, as the camera seemed to focus on my skirt rather than my nails,
but you can see the sparkle in the polish and how it reflects a rainbow of colors.

Indoors, office lighting.

Indoors, office lighting.

Indoors, using flash.  Look at that beautiful metallic-like shimmer!

This was after a few days of wear.  I was trying to get a picture of the polish in sunlight, and the sun came out for a moment while I was walking my dogs.  We have had several weeks of bad weather in South Florida and not much sunlight.  Normally I crop the photo to just show my nails, but in the upper right-hand corner of the picture you can see my little girl doggie out of focus.  Aw!

After a week of wear.

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China Glaze Magnetix Magnetic Polish in Pull Me Close

This polish has immediately made it into my top 10 favorite polishes.  It's a very pretty grayish light blue.  The application was very easy, the dry time was fast, the magnet worked well, and the brush--thin and long--was perfect for me.  The polish dried shiny and was crazy shiny with Seche Vite on top.  What I loved the most is that unlike a lot of my other polishes, this polish did not have any shrinkage from either the Seche Vite or my daily coat of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat.  The cleanup was very easy and minimal, too.  This was the first time I used the E.L.F. Concealer Brush I bought on vacation to clean up the stray nail polish with acetone.

They sell the polish at Sally Beauty, but I bought mine online through a discount e-tailer for a very low price before my local Sally Beauty stores started to stock the magnetic polish.

It was difficult to capture the color in my photos, so I'm including lots of photos.  In the photos the polish looks a lot more blue, even in the bottle, and less gray than it is IRL.  In the pictures below, I'm originally wearing one coat of Sally Hansen Age Correct Growth (discontinued), two or so coats of China Glaze Magnetix Pull Me Close, and a coat of Seche Vite.  Each day I added a coat of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat.  I have pictures below with one to four days' wear.  Thanks to the lack of top coat shrinkage, I didn't have to do any patch jobs with the polish like I do with so many other of my manicures.  I've been typing a lot and cleaning, and the polish is wearing really well.

These first pictures are just one coat of the polish, no magnetic effect applied yet, no cleanup, and I wasn't able to capture how pretty the color is on its own, but I tried!

The next few pictures were taken in my office the next day.  The one with the dark background is under my desk using flash.  The blue is much bluer than IRL in these pictures.

These next few pictures were taken in my car after a day of wear:

I took the next few pictures in the car on Tuesday, after two days' worth of wear.  I did a little more cleanup practice with a brush and acetone that morning, too.

I took the next few pictures yesterday, after three days of wear.

These last pictures with the bottle I took a few minutes ago, so after four days of wear.  The color is actually lighter or more gray IRL.  I feel like the daily extra top coats may have blurred the magnetic effect a little, but I'm not sure.

UPDATE:  the picture below is after a week's worth of wear on the manicure, just before I was about to take it off and paint my nails a new color.  There is barely any tip wear, and it's still shiny and looks O.K.  Sorry about the bathroom lighting; it's not the best lighting, that's for sure, right?

To see more pictures and read another review of this polish, go here to a recent post on Elfleidy's blog.  She is another nail polish blogger here in Florida.  I read her review just a few days before I did my own manicure with the polish.  Her pictures are so nice!

On a different topic, I've gotten some awards from other bloggers and saw a very cool A-Z post that a lot of the bloggers I follow are doing, and I am working on my own post about the awards and with my A-Z information and will have that for you soon!  This first week back at work after coming back from vacation has gone by very quickly, and I've been busier, so I haven't had as much time to blog.

Thank you for reading my blog!

My First Rite Aid

Hello!

This morning I checked online to see if there were any Rite Aid stores in Georgia that I could visit while on vacation.  Why this didn't occur to me before my last day on vacation, I don't know!  But, at least I thought of it before I left.

Savannah does have Rite Aid stores, and I went to my first one.  I was totally unprepared, without coupons of any kind, because there are no Rite Aid stores in Florida, so I didn't pay attention to blog posts about deals at Rite Aid.

First I saw the Magnetix line of magnetic polish that you can only get at Rite Aid, as far as I know.  I had seen swatches of them online, but I didn't want to order them online without seeing them, and I have a lot of magnetic polish as it is, so again, I had put the Magnetix out of my mind.  Today I bought my first pink magnetic polish.  I don't see an actual name on these polishes.  The pink magnetic polish is FH7751.  It shimmers and glitters even without the magnet.  I like to see magnetic polishes because then I can test the magnet on the bottle and see the pattern on the side of the bottle.  I loved the pattern on the pink magnetic polish.  I also got a light brown magnetic polish.  I had my nail wheels with swatches of all my polishes with me, and I didn't have any other magnetic polishes in the same shades.  The light brown polish is FH7750.  They were $7.99 each including two magnets each (wavy & straight lines).

I also saw a regular bottle of Revlon polish called Sunshine Sparkle.  Actually, my husband noticed it and brought it to me.  It's a lovely pale yellow shade that made me think of Easter at first, but later on I realized the polish is the color of banana-flavored candy, like Now and Laters, although the polish also has irridescent shimmer, and the Now and Laters don't.  The polish cost $4.99.  Could probably have gotten it cheaper somehow somewhere, but it was not certain that I would be able to find it somewhere else, so I bought it today.

They had bottles of Revlon, like Whimsical, that they no longer sell at Walgreens in South Florida.  But, my husband didn't understand why I would want to buy a bottle when I already owned one.  Giveaways, swaps, I told him!  But, ultimately he convinced me not to take the bottle of Whimsical with me.

In a display of polishes from a brand I had never heard of, "petites COLOR FEVER," I picked up a wine-colored polish with lots of sparkle in it called galaxy.  The display listed the polishes at $2.99 each, but after I checked out, I got the welcome surprise that the polish had been on sale.  Guess how much it was?  No really, guess!  It was $.74!!!  Can you believe it!!!!

In the clearance bin I found a Sally Hansen 10 Day Nail Color for $1.17 (down from $4.69).  It's a beige color but has a pinkish flash/shimmer.  I don't have anything like that . . . except maybe a new Finger Paints polish I bought earlier this week.  We'll see when I get home and swatch the colors on my nail wheels.  The name of the polish is Persistent Peony.

The total for the five bottles was $22.88 before tax and $24.48 including tax.  I couldn't put out of my mind how earlier in the week I had bought 17 polishes and a cleanup brush for about the same cost.  Darn magnetic polish!  I cannot resist its magnetic pull on me!!!  And, the regular price Revlon polish shares some blame, too.

Sorry about the picture being sideways.  It was the only shot where I was able to capture a bit more of the sparkle from the pink polish.

Mmmmm!  Banana-flavored candy!

Sparkles!  They appear to be one color to me, though, while this picture makes it seem like there are more colors.

Picture taken with flash to try to capture the sparkle!

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