Pretty and Polished Dolli-Pop Color-Changing Polish

Apologies for being away so long.  I was ill the first part of February, then my husband was ill the second part of February, then I was busier at work the first part of March, and most recently one of my dogs injured himself and needed extra time and attention from me, the other dog is always on and off sick to her tummy, and I'm still busy at work.

I haven't read the new government guidelines on disclosures yet, but from summaries on other bloggers' posts, I gather that the main concern is that readers know whether I am reviewing something that I bought or something that was sent to me for free by a company for me to review.  My Official Disclosure:  I purchased the polish I am writing about in this post.

Pretty and Polished's Dolli-Pop is a gorgeous temperature-reactive color-changing polish that is purple at room temperature or cold temperatures and then progresses from dark blue to light blue as the temperature gets warmer.

I had actually been a little run down and almost burnt out from illness and such, and when I feel that way, I have less inspiration nail polish-wise.  But on Sunday I read a post on the Holographic Hussy blog reviewing Dolli-Pop, and I instantly knew that I wanted to use Dolli-Pop for my weekly manicure.

The polish formula was a dream come true for me!  It was the perfect consistency, and it didn't pool or pond or drag.  The brush was long and made it easy to apply the polish.  I used three coats, although two might have been fine.  I barely had any cleanup to do, and what little cleanup I had was easy.  I did get some shrinkage from Seche Vite which I think I'm going to start calling Shrink Vite.   I still can't give it up, though.  It dries even thick layers of polish very quickly, and I can go to bed right away and never, ever have sheet marks on my mani after using Shrink Vite.  Anyway, Dolli-Pop dries with a matte-like finish, and I prefer it with a shiny finish.  I can say that no matter how many coats of top coat you add (I add another coat every day or every other day), it does not affect the color-changing effect.   I have been wearing the polish for two days now, and it has worn well without any chips; I just have the shrinkage from my quick-dry top coat.

This is a really fun polish that really cheers me up every time I look at it.  It's like having different several different manicures in one, so for those of you who feel the need to change your polish every day, you can actually keep this polish on for a while and still have a different mani every few minutes!  The blue shades run through the entire range of denim blue colors, from the lightest blue to the darkest.  The polish also has some gorgeous little blue gem-like flakes that catch the light beautifully.  Most of the time my nail beds were a sky blue with the tips of my nails a deep purple and the two colors blended into each other like a perfect gradient creating the look of a funky French manicure.

Here are some pictures:

Left hand, indirect sunlight, in air-conditioned car.

Left hand.

Left hand.

Left hand.

Left hand.

Left hand.

Right hand, temperature cooling.

Right hand, temperature cooling further.

Left hand, temperature cooling.

Left hand, temperature cooling.

Left hand, cool temperature.

Right hand, most purple color at coolest temperature.

Left ring finger and pinkie, cool temperature.

Thumbnail, cool temperature.
You can see the reflection of my iPhone that I used to take the photo.

Right hand, sunlight.

Thank you for reading my blog!

Rainbow Honey Sweet Talk Collection Preview

Happy New Year!  This is my first post in 2013!  I haven't been on the computer much.  I am waiting for my eye glasses to be ready.  I was without them for over a week in December, but when I got them, I was even worse off and couldn't see.  My right eye is very nearsighted, my left eye has astigmatism and presbyopia, and I wear progressive lenses, but my brain couldn't reconcile the huge difference between the right and left lenses, so my vision was not aligning vertically, and I had to go back last week to the eye doctor.  They are trying one last tweak to the glasses, and even this may not work completely, but hopefully it will be an improvement.  Right now, without the glasses, the computer screen is blurry, so I have avoided doing anything on the computer other than when absolutely necessary for work.

I'm very excited about this post, though, so it's worth the eye strain.  This morning I received an e-mail from Rainbow Honey announcing their new Sweet Talk Collection that will be out just in time for Valentine's Day.  I love Rainbow Honey polishes, so that e-mail was already great to me, and then I read that they were sending me samples to review!!!!  Even more exciting, they said they had already sent them, and they were on their way to me as a surprise!  I clicked on the tracking number and found that the polishes were going to arrive today!  I'm off from work today, and I was going to change my manicure, so it's perfect timing!  In the e-mail, Rainbow Honey also shared a promo code for $5.00 off a purchase on their website.  PROMO CODE = SWEETTALK$5 (promo code expires 2/28/2013). I don't receive anything for you using that promo code, so it's not like one of those referral links on other websites. All the bloggers who are reviewing samples of the Sweet Talk Collection received that code to share with their readers. Please feel free to share it with anyone you know who might be interested.

There are three polishes in the Sweet Talk Collection.  These are Rainbow Honey's descriptions of the polishes:
Be Mine: A lovely kiss of pink on your nails with a dusting of microshimmer and gold flecks
Sweet Talk: A decadently sweet collection of pastel glitters in a white jelly with hidden shimmer
XOXO: A ravishing blend of glitters and flakes in a clear base for easy use over any manicure
Be Mine and Sweet Talk are wearable on their own. XOXO can be used as a glitter top coat over an accent nail or over an entire manicure.

Here is a photo with bottle shots from the press release I received for the Sweet Talk Collection:

Rainbow Honey sent each blogger two out of the three polishes. I received Sweet Talk and XOXO. I had thought I would choose Sweet Talk for my manicure thinking it might be more work appropriate because it's less blingy. It's hard to say which is more appropriate for work because pastel glitter doesn't convey that aggressive image you sometimes want to convey as an attorney, but blingy glitter is more likely to stand out and get noticed, and conservative clients may not appreciate glitter. I try to avoid glitter during the work week, but when I swatched Sweet Talk and XOXO, I loved XOXO too much to wait to wear it! I have pictures below of the adorable package I received from Rainbow Honey and pictures of both Sweet Talk and XOXO swatched by themselves and in combination with other polishes. All my photos were taken using indoor lighting.

This adorable little card was enclosed with my polishes!
The dates for the release of the polish have been revised.
The revised Fab.com release dates are in the text of my post above.

How adorable is this packaging?
And, it added to the suspense of not knowing which two of the three polishes I had received!

I received Sweet Talk (on the left) and XOXO (on the right).
Full size bottles!

In this photo you can see the milky white base of Sweet Talk.
The pastel glitters remind me of Valentine's Day candies.

There are pinkish red glitters, purple glitters, and light blue or silverish glitters.

The glitters look matte in some lighting, but they are definitely shiny and reflective if they catch the light.

There are gorgeous pinkish red glitters in XOXO, and there are small gold glitters and/or shimmer flakes.
Some of the microglitter has a holographic effect.

XOXO

From left to right:
#18:  one coat of Sweet Talk
#17:  two coats of Sweet Talk
#16:  one coat of XOXO
#15:  one coat of XOXO over Revlon Electric Pink
#14:  one coat of Sweet Talk over Revlon Electric Pink
#13:  one coat of XOXO over China Glaze Poinsettia
#12:  one coat of XOXO over Sally Hansen Persistent Peony
#11:  one coat of Sweet Talk over Sally Hansen Persistent Peony
#10:  one coat of Sweet Talk with a matte top coat
#9:  one coat of XOXO with a matte top coat

XOXO over Sally Hansen Satin (from the Smooth and Perfect Color and Care line)

XOXO over Sally Hansen Satin (from the Smooth and Perfect Color and Care line)

The Sweet Talk Collection will be sold in a private sale at fab.com from January 16, 2013 through January 19, 2013. The Collection will be officially released on January 25, 2013 at 12:01 AM EST at rainbowhoney.com and participating Retail Partners around the world.

I'm off to go do my new manicure with XOXO! I was going to layer XOXO over Sally Hansen Persistent Peony, like in #12 in the picture of the swatches on the nail wheel above, but then I thought to try it over a very pale pink, Sally Hansen's Satin, from the Smooth and Perfect Color and Care line, like in the last two photos above. I think the pink background is perfect with the Valentine's Day theme of the collection, and it's my favorite combination, so that will be what I use for my manicure. I may be able to have a review post up with pictures of my XOXO manicure as soon as in two days.

Thank you for reading my blog!

Rainbow Honey Yokai Collection Preview

I am very excited to write this preview blog post on Rainbow Honey's Yokai Collection.  It's a preview because the polishes themselves go on sale on October 13th, and it's a preview because it's not my usual manicure blog post.  I am also excited because I was very lucky to be given all the polishes in the Yokai Collection to review!  I got my package from Rainbow Honey in the mail yesterday, and I expected the package to have one polish to review, maybe a mini polish, but I received all three of the Yokai Collection polishes, and all the bottles are full size!  That package really made my day yesterday.  My husband is away on a trip (he's flying back home right now), and I was a little mopey yesterday at home.  Please forgive me military spouses because I know that you have to endure much longer separations from your significant others, but I am just a wuss and really miss my husband when he's gone.  Rainbow Honey's package changed my mood and got me to "do something."  I immediately swatched the polishes on nail wheels.

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 like Hoof Wrassle, 20% Cooler, Koi Pond, A Little Kindness, Pinkie Promise, Celestia, Mare of the Moon, Lunairetic, Siren Song, Snake Eyes, and Frozen Flame.  I think I will be ordering some minis of those tonight before I go to sleep!  I'm really itching for them now even more than before! Rainbow Honey polishes have a distinctive look to me which is hard for me to describe, but it's a kind of look that reminds you of texture and natural grains in stones, even though it's not really grainy polish.

The Yokai Collection polishes are limited edition for Autumn 2012.  There are three polishes in the Yokai Collection.  In alphabetical order, they are Kawako, Kitsune, and Oni.  Kawako is dark blue and makes me think of the night sky; it has tiny silver flakies that sparkle, and it has blue flakies, some of them large.  Kitsune is a camel/nude base with gorgeous tiny gold shimmer and/or flakies and brown microglitter and my favorite part, small orange glitter hexes.  Kitsune looks like "fall" to me.  Oni is a blackened brown base with irregular gold and purple flakies; the combination looks olive or flashes olive and is spectacularly pretty!  All the polishes have cream bases as far as I can tell.  In my opinion Kawako and Oni look best with two coats, but I like using just one coat of Kitsune.  I will be using Kitsune for my manicure tonight, and I will put up a blog post about it hopefully on Tuesday.

There are already a lot of review posts of the Yokai Collection up on blogs.  Two posts really stood out to me.  Sheila has a comparison post on her blog, Pointless Cafe, where she compares Kawako to Essie's Starry Starry Night.  In a post on the No Holos! blog there are pictures of Rainbow Honey Oni with gold nail art swirls.  So gorgeous!  Click through and take a look!

Even though I only just swatched these on nail wheels, I was a little obsessed and tried the polishes mattified and tried Kitsune over lots of different polishes, so there are a lot of pictures coming up.  In the nail wheels below:
#8 is one coat of Kawako,
#9 is one coat of Oni,
#10 is one coat of Kitsune,
#11 is one coat of Kitsune over one coat of China Glaze Papaya Punch,
#12 is one coat of Kitsune over one coat of a burnt orange polish,
#13 is one coat of Kitsune over one coat of a different burnt orange polish,
#14 is one coat of Kitsune over Wet N Wild Black Creme,
#15 is one coat of Oni over Wet N Wild Black Creme,
#16 is one coat of Kawako over Wet N Wild Black Creme,
#17 is one coat of Kawako with a coat of mattifying polish on top,
#18 is one coat of Oni with a coat of mattifying polish on top,
#1 is one coat of Kitsune over one coat of Essie Blanc,
#2 is one coat of Kitsune over one coat of Finger Paints Gossamer White (a light pinkish nude cream),
#3 is one coat of Kitsune over one coat of Sally Hansen Persistent Peony (iridescent nude very similar to Kitsune's base), and
#4 is one coat of Kitsune with a coat of mattifying polish on top.

This beautiful card came with the polishes.

Rainbow Honey does a great job with packaging.
The paper is more eco-friendly than extra bubble wrap or styrofoam.
Under the paper the three polishes were in a bubble wrap bag.
Inside the bag, the three polishes were each in their individual boxes which kept them safe and meant not using more bubble wrap instead.

I like Kitsune at one coat (#10 above).

Kitsune over Papaya Punch was pretty (#11 above).
I think some nail art with Papaya Punch on part of the nail and Kitsune on another part would look nice.

 

Look at how beautiful the polishes are mattified (#17 & #18 above)!

I love the golden shimmer from the mini flakies in Kitsune.

#3 is how I'll be doing my manicure tonight:
one coat of Kitsune over a coat of Sally Hansen Persistent Peony.

The Yokai Collection will be available starting October 13th 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.  I see adorable squat little mini bottles on the site for other collections, and those are $5 each, but I don't know if the Yokai Collection will include any mini bottles.  Again, this is a limited edition collection, so when they run out, they're gone!

Thank you for reading my blog!

Layla Metal Sense #7

I *love* this polish!!!  I have learned that if my husband shows me a polish in a store, it's going to turn out to be an amazing polish that I love once I put it on my fingernails.  In the bottle I never see the full beauty of polishes my husband notices in stores.  He has a special eye for them.  So, one Saturday we were at a Walgreens drugstore, and my husband brought me two Layla duochrome-looking polishes and then showed me the Layla display.  Layla is a brand from Italy that I had only ever seen at Ulta.  I definitely have never seen it at any other Walgreens location.  The display even had the Layla magnetic polishes.  They are not inexpensive like some other drugstore polishes, though, so I narrowed my choice down to one to try Layla's Metal Sense line.  My choice was Layla Metal Sense #7, that I think is a duochrome with gold and with a shade of light violet or lavender or purple pink.  It's difficult for me to describe that second color.  It could be just iridescent  but it looks duochrome to me.  It's got a metallic finish that is almost chrome-like or mirror-like from afar.

The formula was good, and application was easy. The brush is slightly widened and flattened.  The polish dried quickly.  Cleanup took some time because I had shimmer everywhere on my fingers.  I had to use a cotton-tipped orange stick for cleanup after my usual brush cleanup.

I applied two coats of the polish, and I had visible nail line, but I didn't mind it.  The formula seemed to show brush strokes at times, but they don't look bad.  Some metallic polishes are just grainy or show brush strokes at times.

I did have a problem, though.  One hour after I finished the manicure, I dented a nail so badly that I had to redo that nail the next morning.  I think the problem was not with the Layla polish, though, but with my Seche Vite.  I had added some Seche Vite Restore thinner to a half-used bottle of Seche Vite, and maybe I added too much of the thinner to the Seche Vite.  I have since switched to a new bottle of Seche Vite and put the half-used bottle aside as emergency Seche Vite.  I did get some shrinkage caused by quick dry top coats.

The polish wore very well.  The only issue I had, and again this may be due to the Seche Vite, is that the polish didn't seem "flexible."  I had a nail bend back, and the polish cracked at the bend.

Here are some pictures:

Indoors, flash.  Day Two.

Indoors, office lighting.  Day Two.

Indoors, office lighting.  Day Two.

Indoors, office lighting.  Day Two.

Sunlight.  Day Two.

Indirect sunlight.  Day Two.

Sunlight.  Day Two.

Sunlight.  Day Two.

Sunlight.  Day Two.

Sunlight.  Day Two.

Indoors, bathroom lighting.  Day Three.
Shows the pink/purple shade in the bottle.

Indoors, bathroom lighting.  Day Three.
Slightly different angle shows the gold shade in the bottle and also the pink at the edges.

Indoors, bathroom lighting.  Day Three.

I thought the polish was unique, and I couldn't find blog posts about it online.  In fact, I couldn't even find a place to buy it online, not even at the Ulta website.  So, I looked online to see if I could find polishes with similar colors.  At first my searches came up with Zoya Reece and Happi and Zara and Faye, but the shade of pink in those is different from Metal Sense #7.  I also saw pictures of Sally Hansen's Golden Cinnabar which looked similar.  Here are some links to posts on other blogs about similar polishes:

• China Glaze New Bohemian Luster Chrome in Swanky Silk (different pink shade, not as strong, nor is the gold as strong)
• Deborah Lippmann Mirrored Chrome in Sugar Daddy (same as above)
• Revlon Tangy Zing (same as above)
• Color Club's Wild and Willing (looks a little darker)
• Accessorize Nail Polish in Bronze (same as above)
• Artform 731 Pink Gold (same as above)
• OPI Rally Pretty Pink (pink/purple shade is very similar, but the finish is different with more of a gold shimmer or glitter rather than the strong gold flash in Layla Metal Sense #7)
• Nails, Inc. Special Effects Mirror in Stratford (shade of pink is closer, but the gold is not as bold)
• Ozotic Pro 745 (similar color, but lighter, and the effect isn't as strong)
• Hard Candy Pulp (the gold looks similar, and so does the pink)
• OPI MerryBerry Mauve (looks similar)

Thank you for reading my blog!