A Week of Glitter: Flaming Glitter

Welcome to Day 5, the last and final post for 'A Week of Glitter'. There are many more ways to use glitter, but I have to end somewhere! So, I'll end with one of my favorite ways of using glitter. This post focuses on gradient glitter.

Both polishes I used are from the China Glaze Capitol Colours Collection. If you'll remember this was dubbed the China Glaze Hunger Games Collection. I used Stone Cold as my base color and created the gradient using the red and gold glitter, Electrify.

You can see in this picture that Stone Cold has it's own bit of sparkle to it with it's silver shimmer. Stone Cold is a matte polish, however I used a top coat with this mani. The color change of Stone Cold from matte to shine is almost startling. It goes from the dark silver/grey of stone to a deep almost black color. Different, but still gorgeous.

No matter how much I love the look of Electrify, I try to use it only occasionally. Why, you ask, if I love it so much? Electrify is one of the most stubborn glitters I've ever encountered. Even using the foil method recommended for stubborn glitters it still takes a few minutes of scrubbing to get this removed from my nails. That's saying nothing about how the bits of removed glitter cling to everything they meet.

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A Week of Glitter: A Pop of White

Welcome to day 2 of 'A Week of Glitter'. This one is A Pop of White.

Draw attention to yourself and your nails with a base of white. Then, wow them with glitter.

I don't think I managed to wow anyone with this glitter however. As you can see from the pictures the purple glitter is Glitter Addict by LA Girl in Eutopia. I also added a few flakes of Luxe and Lush from the China Glaze Capitol Colours Collection, nearly unseen in this mani and only then if you know what you're looking for.

I'm sure if I tried this mani again I would add much more glitter, probably using more than one shade of glitter as well. The theory is sound though. Attract attention with white nails and then hit them with glitter!

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Mattifying

Hello, lovelies! How do my nails look? These are the first pictures since I broke the index nail of this hand and did an emergency teabag fix. It's holding up great!!

As for this post, I bring you a new product today. Or rather, New York Color (NYC) brings you a new product. It's a mattifying top coat (yep, they called it mattifying) they've named Matte Me Crazy.

I was stunned to find this on the shelf. The only matte top coat to be found around here is Hard Candy's, Matte-ly in Love, found exclusively in Walmart. Hard Candy will cost you about $4 for a .35 fl oz bottle. It will even get you a cute little cardboard topper that fits over the cap. This makes finding it in a polish drawer very easy!

But, the reason I was so excited to find this new matte top coat is that NYC costs under $2 for a .33 fl oz bottle and can be bought in a multitude of locations. Sadly, it doesn't come with a cardboard topper and is not so easy to find in a polish drawer. :(

Now for the nitty gritty. Hard Candy has a much thicker formula. Hard Candy passed the drip test with flying colors. NYC ... not so much. It gave two very quick drips and a slower third before leveling out on the brush.

While on the subject of brushes. Hard Candy has a short, rounded brush with a slightly short and round cap. It fits in my hand okay but its short length may not be comfortable for everyone. NYC has a longer and wider brush that's attached to a round cone like cap. My preference in brushes have always leaned towards the wider and flatter. I adore the Sally Hansen flat brush and the new Wet n Wild megalast Pro brush so I prefer the NYC brush.

I don't think Riveting was the polish to go for when testing out a new matte top coat. I know it turned matte but I'm not sure just how matte. I can however tell you that NYC mattified slower than Hard Candy. I was actually kind of pleased about this though. I've had trouble with one part of my nails turning more matte than another with Hard Candy because it dried and turned matte too quickly. I don't know about anyone else, but I paint backwards so my pinkie nail was just settling into fully matte by the time I started my thumb with NYC. I had no streaking or blobs of darker matte with NYC.

I will definitely give you a more thorough answer on just how matte is matte when talking about these two in another post with another mani. NYC may just be a good substitute for the more expensive Hard Candy. We'll see ... probably sometime next week.

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Twinkling Hot Tamales

First off ... whoa, what is up with the new posting feature?? Was anyone else horribly confused and panicking a bit? I thought I pressed the wrong button or something!!


Right, onto the post. I'm not sure how long I can keep this daily posting up. Maybe another day or so if I'm not too lazy to paint my nails today, so enjoy it while you can! Today, I bring you Twinkle and Hot Tamale both from Pure Ice.

This alternating mani is two coats of Hot Tamale, the darker polish, and two coats of Twinkle, the lighter polish. I'm just noticing now the slightly visible nail line on some of them. They could probably use another coat or three. I guess this means they're more sheer than I thought.

Twinkle showed up fairly dark in most of the pictures I took. I managed to find a handful of true to color. Twinkle is a simply lovely shade of coral pink or maybe a salmon. It contains a slight hint of orange but I'm not sure if that's just the gold shimmer playing tricks on my eyes or not.

Hot Tamale is a darker color that I think nearly overwhelms the delicate Twinkle. The closest I can come to describing Hot Tamale is an off shade of vermilion, sometimes known as cinnabar. I think this shade works best because vermilion is described as being similar to scarlet but with more orange and less red. Hot Tamale certainly has it's fair share of orange and mixes nicely with the gold shimmer the polish contains.

 Twinkle and Hot Tamale close-up shots.

You really get to see the true shades of these colors up-close in direct sunlight.

Hot Tamale shows it's gold shimmer much less than Twinkle. The gold shimmer blends too well with Hot Tamale's metallic finish to really pop. That certainly doesn't mean Hot Tamale doesn't pop all on its own. While pink is my favorite color I don't think I can wear a shade as delicate as Twinkle ... at least not without Hot Tamale to carry it along.


What I didn't know while buying this polish was how closely Hot Tamale resembles Riveting from the China Glaze Hunger Games collection. Riveting has slightly more depth to its color; the metallic finish of Riveting shifts subtly darker than Hot Tamale. However, Riveting leaves Hot Talame in its gold shimmering dust. Riveting has a much, much more present shimmer. The gold flecks are also bigger and brighter; they really shine out of the polish. As you can see from the picture below, Hot Tamale is not an exact match to Riveting but you might be able to make a fairly passable fraken dupe out of it by adding a thicker shimmer.

Will any of you be trying Hot Tamale in place of Riveting? What about Twinkle? Will it work better with your skin tone than it does mine?

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The Luxe and Lush of Pink

Finally, we come to the end of the polishes I own from the Hunger Games collection. This last one was the hardest to find. I scoured the local shops and finally had to give in and order it online, paying the extra for shipping. Thankfully, I had a loyalty card and got an extra discount in conjunction with the already low price. In all, even with the discounts and sale prices, I paid the full price for this polish but it is so worth it.

This glitter does not picture to its full potential. I tried everything! Direct sunlight, indirect sunlight, shade, artificial light. My eyes saw the awesomeness of this flakie but my camera lens saw something completely different. It frustrates me to no end when this happens.


However, if you want to see at least some of the true potential of Luxe and Lush I recommend heading over to The PolishAholic's post: China Glaze Luxe and Lush

The flakies are in a very thick base. This makes it slightly hard to control where and how thick the glitter goes on. This is my first flakie polish so I'm not sure how this measures up to other flakie polishes. The flakes themselves flash many colors. I've seen green, blue, gold, pink, and a purple color at some angles. My favorite is the way the pink and gold flashes sometimes mix and create a perfect creamy peach or even a light salmon color. It makes this polish look expensive and ethereal. I can definitely see how Luxe and Lush relates to District 1, the district of luxury.


It was these peach/salmon flashes that made me choose to layer Luxe and Lush over a pink base color. And though the pictures don't show it too well, I think it was a really good choice.

I also want to mention how well Luxe and Lush removed. It was so easy to get this glitter off my nails. It took a bit longer than removing a few layers of simple nail polish but was nowhere near the ultimate hassle of removing glitter. Most of the flakies just sloughed right off and those that didn't came off with a few extra swipes. After that, my pink base polish was super easy to remove.


Polish Used

• Borghese - Brilliante
• Sinful Colors - Beautiful Girl
• China Glaze - Luxe and Lush
• Sally Hansen - Insta-Dri

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The Hunger Games

In honor of my finishing The Hunger Games trilogy and in anticipation of the first movie, I decided to do Hunger Games nail art. I think this is one of the only books I've ever read where I didn't prefer any one character over any other; I just plain liked them all: in various different ways, yes, but still ... I tip my imaginary hat to Suzanne Collins.

The first nail, the thumb, is the mockingjay of course. I mean, what else could possibly say Hunger Games better than the mockingjay? Not my best work, I admit. I'm guessing it looks more like a blob than a bird with an arrow if you don't know what you're looking for.

The index finger is to honor Katniss Everdeen, The Girl on Fire, one light shining gloriously in the dark of District 12 (and all of Panem). The flame, the dark surrounding it, and a little bit of coal using black crackle to show where she comes from.

Next is the one nail I desperately wanted to do but debated endlessly on just how to accomplish it. Even with my love and sorrow over Rue, I was left agonizing over what to do for her. I already had the mockingjay, but that was for the overall series. I could do an orchard tree but that didn't feel right either. Finally, I decided to follow Katniss and honor Rue with flowers. So, I tried covering the entire nail in nothing but flowers. I reworked this multiple times. I can't tell you how many times I had to use nail polish remover. Finally, I used a combination of stamping and a brush to fill the flowers in with different colors. The flowers cover the peephole into another world; one where Rue leaps through the trees like a bird with the whistles of her mockingjays singing that she's safe. Yeah, I'm a big ol' sap!

After that is the forest, stream, and the cave from the Arena. Again, it's not my best work, but I lost a good deal of canvas space. I haven't done a nail art design this intricate since I cut off a lot of my nail length. Still, I'm very pleased. Blue Year's Eve makes an absolutely stunning stream! All that bright blue glitter gleaming from the darker polish just speaks of hidden depths, and whether what lurks in those depths is good or bad will only be found out when you dip in a toe. I tried to add a muddy-ish, sandy bank and some odd rocks before it leads into the greanery of the forest. I'm pretty sure it was the other way around in the books: the forest leads into the barren stream riddled with a mess of rocks and the cave, but I couldn't see filling a whole nail with rocks.

Last but not least, I wanted to do something to encompass the violence of the Hunger Games. I knew I wanted blood, but wasn't sure in what way until I happened upon the trailer while searching out ideas. I saw the reaping of District 12, and when I saw the drab gray blues of their clothes (Katniss's horrific dress especially) I knew what I had to do. The blood spatter is done by straw as per a tutorial I found on Youtube. However, the original idea goes to thepolishaholic.com.


Not sure if anyone wants know this but I thought I would include it just in case. You can totally skip over this. :)



Polish Used
Thumb

• Wet n Wild - Goldmine
• Funky Fingers - Platinum Record
• Petites - Bronze Baby

Index

• L.A. Colors - Black Velvet
• Pure Ice - Siren
• Sally Hansen - Sun Kissed
• Sally Hansen - Mellow Yellow
• Funky Fingers - Black Scales

Middle

• Sally Hansen - White On
• Revlon - Tangerine
• Sally Hansen- Sun Kissed
• Sally Hansen - Mellow Yellow
• Pure Ice - Siren
• Borghese - Buon Viaggio Mauve
• Sinful Colors - Beautiful Girl
• Sinful Colors - Feeling Great
• Bon Bons - Blue

Ring

• Sally Hansen - Green with Envy
• Sally Hansen - Emerald City
• Pure Ice - Free Spirit
• Funky Fingers - Platinum Record
• Wet n Wild - Metallica
• Sally Hansen - Wet Cement
• L.A. Colors - Black Velvet
• China Glaze - Blue Year's Eve

Pinky

• Revlon - Cloud
• Pure Ice - Siren

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