Orly Razzle and Nfu Oh 60 – swatches and layering

More polishes from the amazing haul from my facebook polish group of Full On Enablers 😀 (love you girls! You rock!) – here is Orly Razzle.

I… liked this polish more than it liked me. Its a lovely deep raspberry fuchsia colour, with heaps of pink and silver shimmer through it. Two coats here, I could have used a third according to the unforgiving Mr Macro, but in real life it looked fine with two.

Check out that amazing shimmer…Even in the shade the silver showed up to add visual interest – smooth, too. A large shimmer, not a glitter.

My skin tone doesn’t love fuchsia pinks – and so I thought I’d layer Nfu Oh 60 over it. In the bottle it’s a multi-hued flakie in a black jelly base, and I am used to black jelly bases being very sheer. “great” thinks Ami to herself “it will deepen the pink and add flakies! Win!”

um. This is a nice dense jelly. I’m pretty sure this would be opaque in 3 coats on its own. And yes, you could say it deepened the pink… all the way into auburn. This is one coat of Nfu Oh 60. ONE. Pretty though! I did like this, even though I’m not that good at making an even layer, apparently! Ah well…

These photos show a slightly different look on my pinky nail – it has a coat of Kolt Lunatic, but the duochrome doesn’t show up, it must need to be layered over black.

Sunlight…

Lots of shine from this combo! I had finished it off with one coat of Misa BREAKneck, which was getting kinda gluggy.

Showing the green shift of the flakes…

There you go! I can’t wait to try Nfu Oh on it’s own, and I think Razzle will make a great base colour for a LOT of glitter toppers I have.

Have a great day!

Ami 🙂

Revlon Royal plus Cult Nails Seduction

Remember how I said I bought some Revlon nail polish, against my better thoughts? Well… this is the main reason why. Revlon Royal. A polish I have had mad longings for since I first saw it, about a year ago now I guess. And while a large part of me is disgusted at my sell-out-ness, another part is cackling and holding this pretty to my bosom 😀

no top coat!

One thing I didn’t know  is that it dries satin. Plenty of neon pigment in here! It is my perfect blue. I love love love this colour. I did know the formula was going to be a pain, and good thing too, because it really is. Not very streaky; this is two coats and it’s even enough, but watery, and with random blobs of polish to come screaming down the brush at the last second and SURPRISE! SMURF FINGERS! 😀

As soon as I saw this on, I thought “Cult Nails Seduction.”

Pretty, pretty, pretty. This is the original two coats of Royal, with one layer of Seduction (boy are those flakies packed into that polish!) and a top coat – Kleancolor Fast Dry (lies, it doesn’t dry that fast at all, but it was all I had).

I did really like this, but I couldn’t capture the green shift in the flakes! Next time. I’ll try harder next time. These photos are all in the golden light – before twilight, but this looked lovely any time of the day.

Inside… and showing the red a bit more

Have a colourful day

Ami

Essie Sew Psyched – Swatches

This is Essie Sew Psyched, and my first experience with Essie. I bought this one at a big cosmetics sale for $8 – normally I wouldn’t buy Essie polishes because they are owned by L’Oreal who test on animals, but: a) the parent/child company and animal testing area is a bit of a grey one – PETA encourages us to spend money at the non-testing child company to prove a point to the parent company that testing is unecessary. See, I think that’s a touch naive, but…  then there’s: b) it was a really pretty colour. (shame.)

Sew Psyched has a really pretty silver microshimmer to it – which I can’t see AT ALL on my nail, but I think it does add a bit of depth to the colour.

These swatches are two coats, no top coat. This polish had a thinner formula than I was expecting, with the odd rampaging blob of polish – watch out for those. It self leveled well, and was nice and opaque in two coats. Good wear time, minimal tip wear the next day.  I’d describe the colour as a lovely blue based khaki green, and it was fairly flattering on me.

Sorry about the cuticles! Big day of swatching 🙂

Whole hand photo… it’s not a weak colour, but it is quite subtle.

Then for fun I used top coats of  Darling Diva Polish – Dreamy, Australis  – Speck-tacular, and Cover Band – Sticks and Stones over the Sew Psyched (little finger Speck-tacular, ring finger Sticks and Stones, middle and index fingers Dreamy). I really preferred Dreamy as the finish. The holographic top coats’ silver tone turned it into a very grey sage green, and Sew Psyched really amped up the holographic sparkle of Dreamy. ( I like it so much so that I’m wearing it as a pedicure…) Sticks and Stone looked nice, and would be great for a camoflage effect, and Speck-tacular just didn’t really impress me over this colour.

Shade photo

Shade – the flakies look so nice in the shade

Whole hand photo with the top coats.

Look how nice that holographic looks in the sunlight! And how invisible the flakies are… 🙂

After this first experience I’m pretty happy with Essie – it did dry fast, and removal was easy – it didn’t stain either. Unless its at a mega sale I won’t be racing out to buy more (apart from Smooth Sailing, maybe. I WANT that polish.)

I don’t think the big cheese parent companies give two figs about where they get their money from, as long as they get it. The concept of buying from the non testing child company would only work if we didn’t buy anything at all from the main company, and if they stopped selling in China (or China changed that animal testing pre-requisite).  I don’t know if that’s going to happen. But I do love this polish, yessir.

OPI Color So Hot It Berns – Swatch

This is an OPI mini from the Swiss Collection Mini Set – my sister V (yay! Sister V is getting into nail polishes! WHOOOOP! Come on, Sister C, it’s yoouuurrr turn!) bought the set and realised she won’t wear red, so she gifted this cute little bottle to me.  Twisted my rubber arm to take it. hehe

OPI Color So Hot It Berns

This is.. well, I’d call it a standard red creme polish. Nice shiny finish, self levels, easy to apply and this is two coats – no top coat. Only used a smidgeon out of the bottle for a full manicure too, so even the teensy bottle will last awhile.

Super cute teeny bottle!

Pretty colour! More to the primary/slightly blue toned red spectrum – not orange/pink/coral toned. Cool red. (oxymoronical, I know, but there you are).

So I put Dreamy (the holographic top coat from Darling Diva Polish – check them out on Etsy) and Australis Speck-tacular (the flakie top coat) on top, too see what that looked like. Now the nails with Dream on top are pink. Indoors, they are REALLY pink. Dreamy has a silver tone to it, because of all the different holographic particles, so be aware that it will affect the colour of the polish. Out in the sunlight it was a pretty red holographic, still pinker than before, but inside – very pink. Quite a cool effect, but I’m not sure how in love with it I was.

little finger and middle finger has Australis Speck-tacular, ring and index fingers have Dreamy – please forgive the too-much-swatching cuticles!

Shade – I love it how the Speck-tacular (terrible name!) flakies show up better in the shade – the opposite of most cool top coats. Adds interest in the lower light, which is a nice change. The flakies are also multi-coloured, so you’ve got the pops of orange or blue or green – the red obviously doesn’t show up as well against a red base, but the shimmer still shows.

Whole hand photo…

Invisible flakies in the sun, pretty holo sparkle! I might layer them up next time, see if I can get a all-light-level effect 😀

And there you have it! OPI So Hot It Berns from the Swiss Collection, with spinkles on top. Thanks, Sister V!

Coral Colours Magnetic Nail: Brass Pole

This is Coral Colours Magnetic Nail in Brass Pole – bought from a Unichem Pharmacy in Feilding for $8.99. Pretty goldish green colour with large gold shimmer. The magnet is set into a removable band, which is a giant PITA. The best way it worked for me is to leave it done up with the little butterfly flaps and use that to hold the magnet over the polish. Really close to the polish.

I found  this very hard to get to work properly the first time around, the instructions say use one thick coat, but that often didn’t work, and one coat wasn’t enough to cover. I tried the one coat, then one THICK coat, and it seemed every second nail needed a third coat before the magnet would grab. I even tried to put a bigger magnet behind that one to increase the pull, but that didn’t work. This time around it worked better, little finger nail and ring fingernails had one thick coat; middle and pointer have two.

Shade…

However, it was all worth it in the end, the magnet gave a really pretty effect and had quite a few nice comments on this manicure. I didnt put on top coat and this was ROUGH. Glitter rough.

sun…

Timing – I held the magnet over my little fingernail for 15 seconds, and its not defined enough yet. The others I tried 20 seconds, and that seemed to work well. On my first attempt the magnet pulled the polish right off my nail after 30 seconds, but I couldn’t get it to happen again this time. 😀

Then in town I bought a Australis multi-coloured flakie top coat (yay!) called Speck-tacular and I put that on. Gave a subtle flakie flash when the light hits it, and smoothed out most of the gritty feeling. However, the gloss also made the nail polish look quite flat, so now I feel like I have tiny grilled paninis on my fingers 😀 I’ll try it with a clear top coat, and see if it retains the corrogated effect.

Brass pole with flakie top coat

Brass Pole dried quickly -as did the Australis top coat, which I bought from Farmers for $14.

 

Australis Speck-tacular

 

These polishes also lasted really well, with no tip wear at all the next day. I love the colour of Brass Pole, and how close the diagonal stripes are together are from the magnet: they do help elongate my stumpy nails. I wish the magnet was stronger, so it could do more than just the center of my nails, but overall I am  very happy with this polish.

Ember Effect Mani – China Glaze and Maybelline layering.

I wore this a little while ago, and really liked it! I was looking for a ember/dying fire effect, and I really felt this worked.

I started with 2 coats of China Glaze Drive In (from their Retro collection) – which is a gorgeous almost-ripe tomato red, it’s another one like Thunderbird that is a shimmer which looks really metallic in lower light. Super easy to apply (a bit runny) dries quickly and just looks gorgeous.

Heres a photo in really bad lighting, but I think you should get the general idea!

The polishes I used

Then I added one coat of China Glaze Orange Marmalade – this is SHEER. Very, very sheer. Super gorgeous orange with gold shimmer, but so very sheer! Layered over another colour its gorgeous, and dries fast because it’s thin. Adds the firey look to the red of Drive In.

Theres a chip on my index fingernail. I tried to hide it. Please ignore it! I'm hard on my hands 🙂

And then over that I layered one coat of Maybelline Colorama 709 – mini flakey polish. I love this look! The flakies have a blue flash in the bottle, but flick between gold/orange on my nail. Its a lot easier to remove than a glitter, too – but has a lovely 3D effect on top of another polish.  I don’t buy Maybelline (they test on animals), but this was part of a huge awesome amazing bulk lot Mr Husband Man bought for me at the IPC garage sale, and I do love it. Easy to use, not thick or thin, dries quickly (especially with a quick dry top coat, which I have on in these photos). I need more flakies! Ok, I need food, water, shelter and then the rest of Maslows Heirarchy of Needs – on which nail polish doesn’t actually feature. But I think its up there with Self Actualisation… 😀

Here’s an angle shot to show some of the green flash to the flakies…

And a close up shot, just because.