Rainbow Honey Oni from the Yokai Collection

I had a preview post here on the Rainbow Honey Yokai Collection with pictures of the package I received and of the three polishes swatched on nail wheels by themselves and in combination with other colors and matted.  The Yokai Collection polishes are limited edition for Autumn 2012 and were released a month ago on October 13, 2012.  The polishes were available on Rainbow Honey's website for $10 each but are completely sold out on the website right now.  Did any of you manage to buy any of the Yokai Collection polishes before they sold out?

The first of the Yokai Collection that I wore was Kitsune.  I reviewed Kitsune here.  Then I tried my first dotticure over Kitsune!

After Kitsune, I tried Oni and wore it as a manicure for a full week in mid-October.  Oni is The Malevolent Wild Demon according to Rainbow Honey's website and is described there as having a myriad of glass flecks and multi-chromatic shimmer.  I agree with the statement on Rainbow Honey's website that "the consensus [from nail polish blogger reviews] seems to be that it is one of the most beautiful and intense polishes out there this fall."

Oni's base is a smoky black.  It's got small flakes or glass flecks of many different colors with the rare purple specks that were my favorite in the mix.  The overall effect is almost like a dark olive green.  Like the other Rainbow Honey Yokai collection polishes, this shade also looks like a beautiful stone and has amazing depth because the glass flecks don't just sink into the polish but show right at the top of the manicure. It glints and sparkles in almost any light and is full of life.  I think it's a really great Halloween color, as are all the Yokai Collection polishes.

It was an easy polish to apply, and the brush was good.  It was quick-drying.  The first coat went on streaky, but after a second coat, the polish was even.  I don't have great nail polishing skills, and I think that for someone more expert in nail polish application, the first coat would not be streaky.  The polish was a little top coat hungry.  Cleanup was not difficult except that I have trouble removing every single last smudge on my fingers when I use a black-based polish.  The polish wore pretty well for an entire week.  Removal was not difficult.

Here are some pictures:

Sunlight
You can see how smooth the manicure is after applying top coat.

Blurred so you can see the "special effects."

Indirect Sunlight
Against my olive-toned suit in the background

Sunlight
Do you see what I mean about how it looks like a natural stone with a lot of depth?

  

Sunlight
Look at all the colors of glass flecks in there!

Sunlight
This picture is after only one coat of top coat, but here you can see how the polish glistens.

Sunlight
Mattified

I also really recommend that you click through to the review of Oni on the No Holos blog and look at the pictures of her beautiful nail art with Oni as the base.

Thank you for reading my blog!

Girly Bits Shift Happens

After wearing China Glaze's Stone Cold, a matte silver-infused charcoal polish, for a couple of days, I added Girly Bits Shift Happens, a multi-chromatic top coat.  I figured it's not often that I wear black nail polish, and with the base already done, a manicure with Shift Happens could not be easier.  I reviewed China Glaze Stone Cold here.

This top coat was very easy to apply.  At just one coat, it looked like fiery red sparks.  At two coats, the full multichromatic red-orange, gold, and green colors showed up.  It made me really happy to look at it . . . again and again.  It dried quickly, and the second coat didn't mess the first one up, even though for the first time, I didn't wait in between coats like I usually do with manicures.  The polish has a good brush, thin and round.  And, basically there was no cleanup needed.  It wasn't shiny enough for me, though, so I added Seche Vite.

This top coat is one of many dupes for Clarins 230 a/k/a "Unicorn Pee."  I don't have the Clarins, so I can't compare them, but I'm very, very happy with my "dupe."  I only spend crazy amounts of money on polish when there are no dupes out there, like with OPI Black Spotted.  I just paid $39 (plus $2 shipping) for that on eBay.

Here are lots and lots and lots of pictures, because I took many more than I usually do and even narrowing the choices a lot still left a lot of photos:

Indoors

Indoors

Sunlight

Sunlight
It can get really green at some angles!

Sunlight

Sunlight

Sunlight

Indirect Sunlight

Sunlight

Sunlight

Indoors
It looks like it has little embers in this picture.

Indoors

Indoors, office lighting.

Indoors, flash.
Blurry, but looked neat.

Indoors, office lighting.

Thank you for reading my blog!

China Glaze Stone Cold

Thank you so much for your patience while I was sick and then while I completed a very long continuing legal education course in my "free" time.  I should be back to blogging more now, and I will start exercising and keeping a food log again on Tuesday.  I explained why Tuesday on the blog's Facebook page.  If anyone uses the iPhone's Lose It! app or uses Lose It! online, please send me a private message if you would be my Lose It! buddy.

At the end of September, I will have been blogging for six months.  I am planning a giveaway, and I will probably have some indie minis as the prize.  If I reach 50 fans on Facebook (I'm at 48), I will start the giveaway then rather than at the end of September.  I was also keeping an eye on my number of published posts to start the giveaway if I reached 100 published posts before the end of September, but I'm at 80 published posts--this one will be #81--so the Facebook fans will probably reach 50 before I can reach 100 published posts.  Finally, I'm watching my number of followers through GFC (Google Friend Connect), and if those were to reach 75 before the end of the month, I will start the giveaway then; I'm at 67 GFC followers.  At the latest, though, the giveaway will start at the end of September, for my blogging demi-versary.  Yay!

On to the polish review:

I am pretty sure that this was the first time I had ever worn black nail polish.  I would not have thought I would like black polish, and I had no idea how much I would love China Glaze Stone Cold.  When I first swatched it on a nail wheel after I bought it recently on clearance, I was surprised to see it dried matte!  I thought I had bought the other dark Hunger Games collection polish that did not dry matte.  I was very excited about having the matte polish, though.  I like it so much!

It's an amazing formula, opaque in one coat!  It dried quickly.

Cleanup took a while, but it was easier than cleanup of black creme polish.  Using acetone for the cleanup around the edges of my nails took a bit of the black off on the edges, revealing silver underneath.

I was very worried it would not last without top coat, though.  I did do a "funky French" with top coat free-handed on the tips, and I even tried to wrap my tips (maybe for the second time ever, I just can't seem to do it without ruining the manicure with clumps over the edge), but I worried the matte parts of the manicure would chip.  It wasn't long before my OCD self insisted on topcoat somehow.  I wore the funky French for a couple of days, though.  And, for those two days, each morning I touched up the tips with a new layer of top coat.

Here are some pictures:

Sunlight.

Indoors, office lighting.

Indoors, flash.

Indoors.

Indoors, flash.

Indoors.
My poor little thumb nubbin has completely grown out now!  It's been a month since I took these pictures.

Thank you for reading my blog!

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.

Thank you for reading my blog!

Cover Band Sticks and Stones Comparison to Candeo Colors Sprouse and Lush Lacquer Salt N Peppa

On Saturday I put a coat of Cover Band's Sticks 'n Stones as an accent on each ring finger nail on top of the Revlon Top Speed Chili that I had been wearing for a week.  On Sunday, before removing the polish, I added Candeo Colors' Sprouse to two different fingernails and Lush Lacquer's Salt N Peppa to another fingernail to compare them to Sticks and Stones.

Sticks 'n Stones is a copy (of sorts) of Lynnderella's Connect the Dots.  Sticks 'n Stones comes in a clear base, which I like.  It doesn't affect the underlying color, and the pattern comes across as very crisp.  The matte glitter is larger in Sticks 'n Stones than in the other two polishes.  Lush Lacquer's Salt N Peppa has a lot of colorful holo glitter large enough to show through and obscure the base color.  Sprouse has very tiny holo glitter that shimmers a little, and it has larger blue glitter.

I didn't have a problem with application, and the glitters dried relatively flat and were even smoother after a coat of Seche Vite.  I didn't have to fish for glitters.

My husband's favorite was the Salt N Peppa because it didn't "have all those 80's" bars and hexes.  My favorites were the other two, of course, *because* they have all those 80s-look bars and hexes.  In terms of getting the look of paint splatters that I like, I think the Sticks 'n Stones does it best with a little more white to it.  I do like the little blue hexes in Sprouse, though.

In each of the pictures below, I have base coat, three coats of Chili, a coat of Seche Vite, about four coats of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat, a coat of each of the glitter top coats, and a coat of Seche Vite, and I had been wearing Chili for a week with no chips and just a little tip wear and shrinkage (from the original Seche Vite but not so much shrinkage from the Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat).

Outdoors in the sunlight (holding my husband's phone)

Top to bottom:  Sprouse, Salt N Peppa, Sticks and Stones, Sprouse.
I asked my husband if he could tell which two were the same, and he figured it out!

Top to bottom:  Sticks and Stones, Salt N Peppa, Sprouse.

Sprouse, Sticks 'N Stones, Salt N Peppa

Sprouse, Sticks 'N Stones, Salt N Peppa

In these last few pictures, you can see that the glitter lies flat.  There's a little piece of black bar glitter on one nail that was outside the polish area (near my cuticle, ring finger, last finger on the right in the photos), and I clipped it off easily later on.

Thank you for reading my blog!

Nabi Magnetic Wine

I have many untried polishes in my collection, and there are so many gorgeous colors that it's hard to choose. But, one of my Facebook fans, Emma Brown, saw a bottle of Nabi Wine in an old picture of my stash and mentioned not having seen it on my blog yet, so here it is!

The color is gorgeous.  It seemed more of a pure red to me, like red with black magnetic stripes, when I saw it swatched on other blogs, but it is definitely a shade of wine, a very vivid shade.  It was pretty even without the magnetic effect, but I didn't take pictures of it by itself.  I think it would make a very nice holiday color, maybe Christmas or Valentine's Day.

Application and the brush were O.K., but there seems to be a learning curve with magnetic polishes, and each polish is different from the last, even within the same brand.  I normally have to use thin coats for the magnetic effect to be clear, and blowing on the pattern as I hold the magnet over my nail normally produces the best effect.  However, with Nabi Wine, it was a much thicker coat that gave the best effect, and blowing on it while holding the magnet over my nail made the effect very weak, so I stopped doing that.

I did get some bubbling with my top coat.  I've been getting some bubbling lately with my top coats.  I don't know if it's the heat and humidity here in South Florida, although I do keep the air-conditioning on indoors. The top coat didn't weaken or blur the magnetic effect, but there was SIGNIFICANT shrinkage from both Seche Vite and Revlon's Quick Dry Top Coat.  It not only shrank at the tips, but there was a strange effect near my cuticles that left a rim of blurred paint outside my top coat as the top coat seemed to recede from the paint while shrinking.

I learned about the Nabi magnetic polishes from a post on another blog, and the blogger had found them in a large display of many, many, many magnetic colors in a Walgreens store.  My local Walgreens never carried the Nabi magnetics, though.  I ordered mine online and for about $20 got about 5 different colors.  The magnets are on the top of the brush cap, but I have enough bottles that I use the magnet from another bottle and not the one from the bottle I'm using to paint my nails.  It's just much easier that way.

Cleanup took a little effort.  I don't use an orange stick around the edges as I paint my nails with magnetic polish because by the time I'm done with holding the magnet over my nail, the polish is too dry, and I would drag it and ruin it.  So, there's more work at cleanup time.

The wear was O.K.  I did wear the polish an entire week--it's still on now as I type--but it doesn't look so great after a couple of days with all the shrinkage.  There were only teeny, tiny chips, though, and they weren't very noticeable.

Here are some pictures:

Cloudy day -- we have had a lot of cloudy and rainy days lately in Florida.

Indirect sunlight on a cloudy day

Indoors, office lighting.

Indoors with flash.

Using flash.

With flash -- blurry, but the colors are so pretty!

In some sunlight on a cloudy day.

I was walking the dogs, and the sun came out suddenly and briefly, so out came my iPhone.  I had been wearing the polish several days by then, and you can see the weird shrinkage near my cuticles that seemed to leave smudges of polish behind.  

My right hand, also while out walking the dogs.  I don't usually photograph my right hand because it's my dominant hand, and I use it to take pictures.

Thank you for reading my blog!