My First Dotticure!

As my base manicure, I used Rainbow Honey's Kitsune from the new 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 only days ago on October 13, 2012.  The polishes are available on Rainbow Honey's website for $10 each.  These are good sized bottles at a half ounce each, and $10 is a very reasonable price for these indies that are so professionally produced and look like little mini works of art.  The first of the Yokai Collection that I wore was Kitsune.  I reviewed Kitsune here.  I wore Kitsune all of last week as my manicure, and then on the 7th day, on Saturday, I tried my first dotticure over Kitsune!

Kitsune is referred to as the Magical White Fox on Rainbow Honey's website.  The base is a gorgeous cream color, like the color of French vanilla ice cream or like eggnog.  With its golden microflakes and its small sparkling holo and red-orange glitter, this creation looks like a beautiful stone.  The polish has amazing depth and the microflakes and small glitters don't just sink into the polish but show right at the top of the manicure.  It's like someone cut a slab of perfect natural stone.

The colors in Kitsune made me think of fall and fall colors.  In my preview post on the Rainbow Honey Yokai Collection, I had tried Kitsune over different fall shades of nail polish, but then it occurred to me that instead of layering, I could add dots of my favorite fall colors of nail polish.  If I had practice with nail art, I might have tried to create leaves or other fall shapes instead of dots, but I ended up really liking the dots.  They were very whimsical, and I was happy every time I looked at them.  Even my husband liked them.  The lady behind the register at Walgreens complimented me on them.  Unfortunately, I took them off the next day.  I would have wanted to keep wearing them but the underlying manicure was not going to be able to last more days, and I had to go to court this Monday and felt I should wear something a little more serious.

I don't have dotting tools per se.  I tried the bottom of the handle on my one dotting tool, but it didn't make a dot as wide as the handle. On the other end is very tiny dotting tool, maybe for drawing small eyes or pupils on tiny faces on small nails.

A chopstick worked well for the larger dots I wanted. At first I was not getting enough paint on the chopstick so my dots were dimpled and not filled out. Then I had too much paint, and my dots were very thick, sticking out in 3D. No problem. For not enough paint on dots, I could go over the dots once I learned to add more paint to my "dotting tool."  For too much paint, I could dot over it with a wiped off chopstick again and again until enough paint was taken off.

On my first fingernail I did, I smeared the dots as I learned, but I had enough coats of top coat on there that I was able to use acetone to remove the dots and start over without removing the original manicure polish (Rainbow Honey Kitsune).

All kinds of nail art would look nice with Kitsune and these colors I used. I could see a funky French or half-moons or stripes or a tape mani looking nice.

It was so much fun to create this dotticure!

In the pictures below, I have:

Zoya Tamsen, dots created with a chopstick
China Glaze Papaya Punch, dots created with a chopstick
OPI Deutsch You Want Me Baby?, dots created with a hair pin
Sparitual Solstice, dots created with a hair pin
topped with 1 coat of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat.

That was over the original manicure of:  base coat, one coat of Sally Hansen Persistent Peony as "underwear," one coat of Rainbow Honey Kitsune, one coat of Seche Vite, one coat of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat, one coat of Gelous, and three coats (one each day) of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat.

Sunlight
Left Hand

Sunlight
Left Hand
My jeans in the background

Sunlight
Right Hand
I didn't intend for some dots to be touching on my pinkie finger, but my hands shake a little, so the dotting tool did not always "land" where I planned.  I liked the end result, though, and in the future I may deliberately make dots touch.

Sunlight
Left Hand

Indirect Sunlight
Left Hand

Sunlight
Left Hand

Sunlight
Right Hand

Left Thumb
Sunlight

Left Thumb
Sunlight
A little blurry, but you can see the underlying shimmer and holo glitter in Kitsune

Right Thumb
Indoor Lighting
Immediately after Dotticure, Pre-Cleanup and Pre-Moisturizing

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Rainbow Honey Kitsune 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.  I am really excited to be reviewing these polishes, and I'm honored that even with my blog being new, Rainbow Honey still sent me these polishes for review.

Rainbow Honey is an indie brand, relatively new but you would guess the opposite looking at their polishes and professional packaging.  These are my first Rainbow Honey polishes, although I have eyed many of them in the past.  After receiving the Yokai Collection, I went to the Rainbow Honey site and ordered minis of Hoof Wrassle, 20% Cooler and A Little Kindness.

The Yokai Collection polishes are limited edition for Autumn 2012 and were released only days ago on October 13, 2012.  The polishes are available on Rainbow Honey's website for $10 each.  These are good sized bottles at a half ounce each, and $10 is a very reasonable price for these indies that are so professionally produced and look like little mini works of art.

The first of the Yokai Collection that I wore was Kitsune.  I wore Kitsune all of last week as my manicure.

Kitsune is referred to as the Magical White Fox on Rainbow Honey's website.  The base is a gorgeous cream color, like the color of French vanilla ice cream or like eggnog.  With its golden microflakes and its small sparkling holo and red-orange glitter, this creation looks like a beautiful stone.  It is amazing to me that the polish has so much depth and that the microflakes and small glitters don't just sink into the polish but show right at the top of the manicure.  It's like someone cut a slab of perfect natural stone.

You can wear multiple coats of this polish, but I preferred the look of just one coat, so I wore "underwear" underneath it.

I have read other reviews where other bloggers describe the formula as thick and perhaps in need of a small amount of thinner.  I don't have really great manicure skills, though, and my hands shake a little, so I really *loved* this formula and didn't find that I wanted to add thinner to it.  I liked that it didn't pool or flood my cuticles, and I liked that where I put it, that's where it went and stayed.  I basically didn't need to do much cleanup, and I had no balding or dragging, even though I didn't wait between applying the underwear coat of polish and the coat of Kitsune.  The brush is great, round but a nice size and not too thin.  It was a very fast and easy mani, and I got so much payoff in terms of the beauty and complexity of the polish.  With a look that rich, you would think that I had put together layer after layer of this and that to make up the final look, but you get an amazing look in just one coat of Kitsune.

I found the formula top-coat hungry.  I like my manicures glassy smooth, and this mani didn't get that way until about Thursday.  I do my manicures on Sunday nights, so by Thursday I had the initial Seche Vite top coat plus another four coats (one per day) of Sally Hansen Quick Dry Top Coat.

The manicure wore extremely well for an entire week.

The polish reminds me of eggnog, and with the holo glitters and red-orange glitters and the very reflective gold mini flakes, it is very festive.  So, while it looks like shades of fall, I think it would also be a nice holiday polish.

You can count on Rainbow Honey polishes to be unique and unlike any other polishes out there.  I definitely don't have anything like Kitsune in my collection of polish.

In the pictures below, I have on a base coat, one coat of Sally Hansen Persistent Peony as "underwear," one coat of Kitsune, and one 1 coat of Seche Vite.

Sunlight

Indirect Sunlight

Sunlight
You can see the small and very reflective gold flakes in the polish.

See the holo glitters?

Indoors, not 100% color-accurate, but the color does look a little different in different lighting.

In this blurred picture you can see the golden shimmer effect.

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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.

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