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!

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!