China Glaze New Bohemian Luster

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China Glaze Swanky Silk. Two coats, with topcoat. This is from the Fall 2012 duochrome collection, and hopefully you can see here that it goes from a neutral, greenish-gold to a dusty rose gold, in a lovely chrome finish. This was quite pretty, but I think three coats would've been better. Formula was great, if a little thin and sheer, but application was a breeze. It was so delicate and ethereal!

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This really reminded me of Black Hills Gold - they make beautiful gold jewelry with combinations of green, yellow and rose gold. I'm pretty sure there's at least one dupe floating around, but I don't own any, so no comps this time.

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And because I can never leave a mani alone, I stamped over it! I used Swanky Silk's collection mate, China Glaze Deviantly Daring, and BM315 for the paisley pattern. Not my best work, but it's pretty all the same.

Exotic Snow-Flakes

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China Glaze Exotic Encounters. 2 coats, no topcoat. This is a medium, very-green-leaning teal crème that can look kelly green in certain light. It's beautiful, shiny, nicely opaque and application was fuss-free. If your collection is missing a teal, I would recommend this one.

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Color Club Snow-Flakes. One coat (over ChG EE) with topcoat. Snow-Flakes is your classic rich-orange-to-emerald-green flakie, just like Essie Shine of the Times or Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure. Gorgeous, as always, but sadly not scented, even if you buy it at Sally Beauty. Darn it, I was so hoping for a scented flakie! And, yes, there is a dash in the name - see what they did there? Anybody else buy any Color Club holiday polishes? 

Some products mentioned in this post were provided by a representative of the company for consideration. All opinions are mine.

China Glaze On Safari Fall 2012

So, late to the party again, but this time I have an almost legitimate reason. My swatches came out carp. I tried to do everything right, like using cuticle oil to help my manky cuticles and applying extra-carefully. The sun even cooperated! Everything was great, but when I went to edit the photos, almost every one was completely inaccurate to my eye. Clearly I need to play with my camera settings some more, because most of the colors were distorted and washed out in direct sunlight.

I was too lazy disheartened by my fail to take fresh swatches, so I'm substituting my less-exciting-but-more-color-accurate nail wheel swatches this time. Don't worry, I'm sure these will make an on-nail appearance at some point, because they're great colors.

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From left to right: Adventure Red-y, Prey Tell, Man Hunt, Exotic Encounters, Elephant Walk, I'm Not Lion. All two coats, no topcoat and no application issues that I recall. My favorite by far and away is I'm Not Lion (naturally). Remember to click the pic to see it larger.

Two full sun swatches did come out all right, so I'll include them to make myself feel better for posterity.

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Prey Tell. Two coats here, no topcoat. Lovely, vampy burgundy jelly with great opacity.

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I'm Not Lion. Two coats with topcoat to maximize sparkle. Angling my hand like this allowed some of my nails to be out-of-focus, showing off that gorgeous rainbow sparkle! Honestly, out in the sun this polish was like having little champagne-colored disco balls on my nails. ♥♥♥

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Bonus stamping pic of I'm Not Lion. This reached whole new levels of awesome! I loved that the stamp was just transparent enough to still sparkle through. I stamped with Pure Ice All Night Long and BM319.
PS: Pardon my playing around with my watermark, just trying to figure out the best placement. Kinda liking the 'hide the hideous cuticles' positioning. 

The China Glaze products mentioned in this post were provided by a representative of the company for consideration. All opinions are mine.

Vault 106: Life of a Manicure, Deconstructed

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It's not uncommon for me to get bored with a mani quickly, but I'm too lazy to remove it and it still looks okay, so I just add something. Yes, I confess to polish ADD. This time it turned out alright, if a bit thick. Here's the final manicure after about 5 days. This shows the stamping, using plates BM03 and fauxnad M96. The blue is Sally Hansen Navy Baby and the white is Love My Nails White.

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Sans stamping, this layer shows one coat OPI Big Hair... Big Nails. Mmm, jelly sandwich, anyone?

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Here we have three coats Sinful Deep Red Ocean. Starting to look a bit thick already. But SO sparkly!

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Back to the beginning, this is two coats China Glaze Flip Flop Fantasy alone. It's a typical neon, so it dries matte, and I liked it that way. It's so bright! Love this one.
Whew, that's a lot of layers! Did you follow all that? Are you polish ADD, too?

Happy Valentine's Day!

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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.

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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.

NotD: ♥ Purple Valentine ♥

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This is 2 coats Hot Topic Bright Lavender + 1 coat China Glaze Electric Lilac + stamping in white, using BM09 for "LOVE" and Konad m73 for the heart tips. I'm really loving this right now, it's so bright, sparkly and PURPLE!

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Pre-stamping. I'm really happy to have this Hot Topic color - it's SO vibrant and saturated. Plus it's the perfect base for Electric Lilac - check out how well it matches the bottle in this pic! This is probably my favorite shade of purple - any darker and it would have to be called indigo!

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Here's Hot Topic Bright Lavender by itself, 2 coats. As you can see, it dries matte (most of my Hot Topic crèmes do, and I suspect there's some neon pigment involved), and the color is a bit off here. It's a hard-to-describe color as it is, and it's even more difficult to capture in photos! Reality is probably somewhere between this and the full sun pics, with the full sun pics being closer.
'Bright Lavender' is such an understatement - the China Glaze name (Electric Lilac) would be much more accurate. Or how about 'Violently Violet'? 'Violet Beauregarde'? But, alas, Hot Topic is not known for naming creativity. The only way to know what they call their polishes in the first place is reading the receipt. Bleh. Oh well, I can't complain too loudly when they sell colors like this! Seriously, folks, SO VIOLET!!

China Glaze Sunshine Pop

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China Glaze Sunshine Pop, 2 coats. Nice, sunny yellow pearl. Formula was a bit thick, but not horrible, and it's probably the most opaque yellow I own. When I need bright yellow underwear, this is surely the one I will reach for. Appears to work well for stamping, on paper over both dark blue and plain white. Fantastic to have a yellow for nail art and stamping that actually looks yellow (without shelling out for Konad special polish)!

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Looks great under glitter. This is one coat Jordana Gemstones. Very carnival-esque.

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Some comps, showing off how opaque it is next to other yellows. No dupes here! Less raw egg-yolk than Let's Meet, but not quite as bright as Unzip Me. Similar in hue to Mellow Yellow, but that pearl finish and opacity set it apart.
What do you think? Do you wear a lot of yellow polish? Will you get this for nail art and stamping?

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

China Glaze Dance Baby

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China Glaze Dance Baby, 2 coats. Cheerful bubblegum pink, with just enough blue to keep it cool. I love pinks that have a touch of blue, making them a bit different from your standard Barbie pink. Formula is China Glaze's usual for crèmes: thick but not too thick, relatively well-behaved and very opaque. Appears to work well for stamping, on paper over both dark blue and plain white.

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And my favorite, the glitter option. This is Dance Baby with one coat of Jordana Fairy Dust. Love that bling!

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The comps, two coats each. As you can see, Dance Baby is lighter with more blue than Bubblegum Pink. It's also lighter, but less purple than Splash of Grenadine. French Affair is a true pastel pink, showing that Dance Baby is much brighter.

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

China Glaze Aquadelic Review

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China Glaze Aquadelic, 2 coats. Gorgeous bright, clear pastel aqua. I had to color-correct these photos a bit, because my camera saw robin's egg blue, when there is plenty of green in real life. So, my fingers weren't really so red, but the polish is much closer to color-accurate. Nice formula and opacity, and a bright, cheerful color that makes me happy. Appears to work well for stamping, on paper over both dark blue and plain white.

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Look at how prettily Jordana Celestial layers over Aquadelic, almost a perfect match! This is one coat of Celestial over 2 coats of Aquadelic.

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Now for some comps. I did three coats of each, to be consistent, but the two China Glazes really didn't need a third. Essie Turquoise & Caicos needed ALL three, and maybe a fourth, or underwear. As you can see, Aquadelic is the brightest of these, and actually very close to Tiffany blue (the prop I'm holding here is a Tiffany box). Aquadelic is my favorite of the bunch, and what I had hoped T&C would be.

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One more comp, because I found Ulta Mint Condition, and I wanted to try Essie T&C over a stark white base. Again, three coats of each, with Essie T&C over two coats Sally Hansen White On. The Ulta and Essie are very close to each other - both have a slightly dusty quality, and remind me of green sea glass. I'm really curious to know if they are close to Zoya Bevin or OPI Thanks a Windmillion. Anybody who owns either of those care to confirm or deny?

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

Vault 106: Last Valentine's Day Mani

I was going through my photos (I have too many just waiting for editing and posting), and found last year's Valentine's Day mani. I broke out the fake nails, because my real ones were horrible stubs, and I wanted something GLAM for a change. First, the finished product:

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What you see here is 2 coats of China Glaze Sugar High, topped with one coat of LA Splash Be Mine, stamped in white with the rose from BM14, and OPI Black Shatter diagonally across the tips. (Remember those days when crackle only came in black? And only OPI? Yeah, WAY back then! XD)

These are the Broadway nails I used. They were on super-ultra clearance at Ulta last year, so I doubt you could still get the exact same ones. I'm still a n00b with press-ons, only using them maybe 2-3 times a year since my nail fetish started a few years ago. These came out pretty well, and lasted much longer than I expected (about a week, I think).

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Here is just the China Glaze and LA Splash layering, pre-art and pre-chopped. I had planned on cutting/filing them down immediately, but Hubby liked them this long, so I painted and wore them for a day. Hey, it WAS Valentine's Day, after all! LOL
Anyway, I really loved the hearts, even if I only got a couple, but the sparkle was definitely the main attraction. It may not look it from my photos, but the bling factor was out of this world! And it actually flashed green as much as gold. If you passed on this LA Splash collection last year, but now NEED this polish (everyone does!), they're still available at Cherry Culture.

China Glaze Colours from the Capitol

Are you excited about The Hunger Games? I'm a big fan of the books by Suzanne Collins, and  I plan to see the movie in March. These colors look gorgeous, too, and I can't wait to see them in person!

From Alice's Restaurant

NotD: HOT Flakies!

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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.