Vault 106: franken Hello, I Love You

full sun

Last summer, I ordered SpectraFlair from a certain eBay seller, and I've never looked back. This stuff is SO FREAKIN' AWESOME! For this one, I added 2 tiny scoops of SpectraFlair to Essence Ready For Action. I bought a half-dozen or so Essence Colour & Go polishes just for this purpose, and most of them worked perfectly! It did fade the red a tiny bit (it's a silvery-gray pigment), so I added a few drops of LA Colors Transformer (deep, vampy red) to bring it back to a true cherry red. You'll see the others I made as I wear them, just need more sun to fully appreciate all that delicious holo.

full sun

I couldn't resist stamping this with lips, cuz I'm seriously in love. ♥ I used the black holo franken I made with Essence Fabuless and BM02.
The namesake song:

Happy Valentine's Day!

lightbox

I really wanted to do something vampy and classy today, after doing sweet and cute hearts yesterday. So, I went vintage '40s style. My nails have really grown a lot lately, and are too long (for me), but I hate just chopping them off. Instead, I decided to try out a new nail shape while they were long enough to do it. I was going for almond, but clearly ended up more round. I really suck at shaping!
Anyway, if anyone remembers the 1940's, or has seen old ads and photos, they might recognize this look. I hear it was quite trendy back then! I did this using two coats Sally Hansen Without a Stitch (the nude, of course!), then added two coats China Glaze Phat Santa, masking off the half-moons with hole punch reinforcement stickers.

lightbox

This pic is just for fun. I used my editing software to make this black-and-white, then colorized it, to make it look a bit vintage. Actually, this is pretty close to the real color in low light. Phat Santa is a chameleon - in bright light, it's a nice bright red, but in lower light, it's more oxblood, but always clearly red. So both photos are color-accurate, even though the second is colorized!
Happy Valentine's Day! (aka Happy Half-price Chocolates Eve! )

Disclosure: China Glaze Phat Santa was provided for review. All other polishes in this post were purchased by me.

More Cherimoya Pebble Beach

Just wanted to show some options using my Pebble Beaches like 'normal' polish.

This is Fire Opal Step 2 on all except ring, which is Ruby Step 4, ONE coat of each! And, yes, the Fire Opal is *really* that yellow, do NOT adjust your monitors! These are beautiful colors, and I really love that they're one-coaters. Ruby especially really has some depth! The finish is sandy and matte, so this is with topcoat. They're like foils, but grittier than most foil polishes I've tried.
Friendly PSA: All that lovely pigment WILL bleed onto your topcoat brush, so make sure to wipe your brush on a paper towel between dips, or you'll color your bottle of topcoat! 

I sponged the tips in the opposite colors, but you can hardly see Fire Opal over Ruby, unfortunately. Thankfully, the reverse was gorgeous! I attempted to stamp the snakeskin pattern from BM215 using Nina UltraPro Mossy Britches, but it didn't show up even this well in real life, and just muddied the look.
I also tried stamping with the Pebble Beaches on paper, but they didn't stamp well for me, despite being so pigmented. I think they're just too gritty. I'll try again, sometime, though, and if I'm successful I'll definitely post about it.
Another friendly PSA: Use your most trusted anti-staining basecoat under these!
Both of these polishes stained right through my nail treatment + anti-stain basecoat!  Guess this ends my trial of that basecoat! I was really hoping to find a cheaper alternative to Orly Nail Armor, but apparently not this time. Luckily, after my denture cleaner soak/scrub and a couple of weeks with a buffing or two, the staining has faded completely. 

NotD: HOT Flakies!

Taken in lightbox

Taken in filtered winter sun

Last April, I saw this post on Alizarine Claws & Cammi, and knew that someday I would HAVE to try killing it with fire! (On a side note, I highly recommend their blog - they have some of the best swatches! ^_^) So, someday arrived this week! I used China Glaze Poinsettia for my red, because it's the hottest red jelly I own - seriously, folks, this one's HAWT (and beautiful and even well-behaved! lol). Anyway, I used two coats of that, then started about 1/3 down the nail with Finger Paints Flashy and finished the tips with some Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure. I tried to capture the duochrominess of the flakies, but I couldn't manage the green. Trust me, though, these flakies go from orange to golden yellow to green as the light shifts. Gorgeous!! ♥♥♥ Right now, you're probably wondering why I used two different flakies. Here's why: See that well-defined line of flakies? Yeah. Ugh. That's a single coat of Hidden Treasure, started at the same point on the nail. So, the more sparse Flashy worked perfectly to create the desired effect, but then I wanted a bit more flakie goodness at the tips and Hidden Treasure gave me the coverage I needed. Now, I could have done it the way Feline Flodin did, starting from the tips backwards with HT, but I'm difficult like that. :P Having Hidden Treasure, I wasn't sure I needed Flashy, but now I'm glad I got it. I did skip Essie Shine of the Times, but if you don't have HT, that would definitely be a better substitute. If you don't own any flakie polishes at all, what are you waiting for! O_O Get thee to a Sally Beauty! (Flashy is one of 5 new Finger Paints flakie topcoats, and they're only $4.99 each with a Beauty Club Card. I highly recommend checking out Twisted!) Disclosure: China Glaze Poinsettia was provided by China Glaze for promotional purposes. All other products mentioned in this post were purchased by me.

Red Creme Comparison

I have a problem (well, more than one, but who's counting? ). Anyway, today's problem is that I rarely wear red cremes, but I have enough of them to do a comp, and then some!  Good grief. I guess I'm always on the hunt for the perfect red, and keep finding it! LOL

Here's the cast of characters. From L to R: CQ Rouge, Sally Hansen Sacred Scarlet, Essie Lollipop, Essie Turning Heads Red and Essie Tiny Wine-ey.

Same order, from thumb to pinkie. This is 2 coats each, no topcoat. First pic is in my lightbox, the second is in full sun. All hot, bright red cremes, with clear similarities. The lightest, and warmest is Lollipop. The darkest is Tiny Wine-ey. None, except Lollipop, lean more orange or blue - they're mostly pretty neutral, to my eye. All of the Essies could use another coat, but the SH and CQ are both fine at two. Application for all was unremarkable, with the Essies a little more jellyish.
For those who do stamping, my favorite for a true, opaque red is CQ Rouge. Unfortunately, this bottle is untold years old, and I have no idea if it's still sold, or still the same quality.
The upside of the story is that I didn't spend more than $2 on any one bottle, even the Essies! I guess I just can't pass up an Essie red on clearance. 
Bottom line: Do you need all of these reds? I highly doubt it.  They're all way too similar to be in any sane person's stash. ...now to decide which ones to swap away...

Ruby Slippers and Valentine FAIL

This was my Valentine's Day mani, sorry if it's a little old and stale. I wasn't sure I would even post it, because the water marble I did was a big, fat FAIL. Anyway, here's the pics of the base color first, because it rocked!

Savvy Ruby Slippers. 3 coats. 2 coats was enough, but I thought an extra coat would add a little more depth. Really pretty burgundy-leaning red jelly base with two sizes of red glitter. Gorgeous! I don't own China Glaze Ruby Pumps yet (I know, sacrilege!), but I think this will keep me happy until I have it. I actually prefer the deeper base this has, I think it suits my skintone very well. All pics are clickable, and I definitely recommend it for these! HAWTNESS!

Here is a shot with flash, so you can see the base color better - it's far from black, which also makes me happy! ☺

FYI, the tip pull/shrinkage you see in these is from Seche Vite - I still haven't mastered how to use this without severe shrinkage. Oh, and for everyone who raves about this topcoat, why hasn't anyone ever mentioned the overpowering reek of this stuff? My husband can smell it from over 10 feet away when I use it, and it almost makes my eyes water! I'm not sure I would have bought it had I known about that. So, you can see I'm not a fan of the legendary Seche Vite, but I have yet to find another thick topcoat that works better for smoothing out even the most gritty glitter polishes, so I may just put up with it for now.

Anyway, on to the fail. (:P) It turned out nothing like I pictured in my head, and I'd like to think some of the blame can go to the polishes I used. At least one of them wasn't behaving, so we'll pretend that's the problem. LOL.

I marbled with the 3 on the left. Then, it looked so bad that I covered it up with Orly Prisma Gloss Gold. I know, I know - I should have just left it alone, right? It just made things worse. Oh, well, here's 2 pics. ugh. Don't say I didn't warn you.

My thumb almost turned out, see? *insert maniacal laughter* This lasted all of a day. I just couldn't stand it! Way to ruin a perfectly good red glitter polish, huh?

Thanks for reading!

Silver Bells

Woohoo! I'm so excited because I actually won something! JP at nails of the day had a contest to give away the six Zoya polishes from their Green Friday sale, and I WON!! I'm so excited to see these colors in person! The six colors will be Tangy, Envy, Midori, Irene, Suvi and Veruschka. Thanks so much, JP, for a fantastic contest! :) *little happy dance*

Ahem. Enough gushing for now. :) On to the pics!

Sinful Sugar Sugar. This is a gorgeous true red that just glows. If it weren't for the ever-present Sinful bubbles, I think this would be a favorite red. But of course, I couldn't leave it alone - I just had to rev it up for Christmas!

Pure Ice Heart Breaker with silver bells stamped onto ring fingers. I have to agree with those bloggers who rave about Heart Breaker - it really does just make everything better! I was amazed at how true the green glitter stays, even in a blue base. It gave the red the Christmas kick it needed!
The silver bells I added are from a fauxnad kit I got from an eBay seller, in Pure Ice Silver Mercedes. I've never done stamping before, and I think this design may have been too ambitious - I just could not get the little narrow line under the bell clapper to stamp completely. The first pic above (my right hand) was the closest I could get. I ended up filling in a little with a striping brush on my left, and it looks really sloppy.
Anyway, I really like this mani, even if it wasn't perfect. :P My family was really impressed, though, so maybe it wasn't as bad as I think. Great idea, less than stellar execution, as usual. I'll just have to keep practicing!
Thanks for reading!