Flakie-palooza, part 1

All photos can be clicked for a full-sized version.

Flakie-palooza part 2 can be found here.

One of the problems with testing polishes in Canada in winter is that the sun (when it's out) is out so briefly, you really have to rush to get your pictures taken! I wasn't expecting any sun today at all, but I got lucky and had about two hours over lunchtime to work with. I managed to swatch four of my 11 flakies, all over Deborah Lippmann's Edge of Glory black creme.

First, the creme. This is probably overlooked because it's just a black polish, and is overshadowed by the gorgeous holo it comes packaged with. But I have to say this is the nicest black creme I've ever applied. It flows onto the nail like ink, almost floating off the brush and onto the nail bed. With careful application, one coat is completely opaque and streak free.

This was the base for all my flakie swatches - one good coat of Edge of Glory. I'd love to see this offered on its own because the formula is just to die for!





I managed to get through all of the Picture Polish flakies and Essie's Shine of the Times before the sun disappeared.

Up first, Essie's Shine of the Times.

The bottle:





One coat:



Two coats:



This is the most bling-tastic of the bunch - almost fully flaked out with just two coats. It shimmers green, gold, red, and orange in the sun, bright and intense.

To be honest I found this a little TOO packed with flakes. It's difficult to control just how much you're getting. I'm going to try swatching it over a light colour at some point to see if it's less in your face.


Next up, Picture Polish Splendour.

The bottle:





One coat:



Two coats:



While this has the same colour composition as Essie's Shine of the Times, it's much sparser on the flakes. This gives you a little more control over just how flaky your polish gets, but I found this one a bit TOO light on the flakies. I do love the variety of shapes and sizes though, and what flakes are there are extremely vivid.


Next is Picture Polish Hypnotic

The bottle:





One coat:



Two coats:



Like Splendour, this one was fairly spare on the flakies. It built a little more nicely, and I really like the varied colour scheme. This one flashes blue, orange, and green, all in varied flakie sizes. In the sun, it reminded me of a paint spatter effect on the black polish.

Finally for today is Picture Polish Festival.

The bottle:





One coat:



Two coats:



The final Picture Polish is also my favourite of the bunch. This one flashes every colour of the rainbow, and is slightly heavier on the flakies than the other two. It built nicely with two coats, and the variety of shapes, sizes, and colours made it my favourite swatch of the day. I saw red, pink, yellow, orange, green, purple, and blue all mixed together even on the first coat.

Deborah Lippmann's Edge of Glory came from Gaga's Workshop at Barney's NY (a Christmas gift from my wonderful boyfriend). Picture Polish can be obtained from their site, or at Harlow & Co. Essie Shine of the Times is available in various shops, and on Amazon.

That's part one of flakies done for now. If the sun cooperates, I should be able to get through the rest tomorrow!

American Apparel - Army Jacket

A while ago, I signed up for an online coupon that got you 5 American Apparel polishes for $15. This was the only creme polish I chose out of the line up - Army Jacket.

This is a dusty olive green with a super shiny finish. Slightly streaky on the first coat, the second coat was completely opaque and lovely. The formula was nice to work with, smooth and not too thick. My one complaint would be the bottle shape - it's so thin that it felt like it was going to fall over every time I wiped the brush off.

This is two coats of Army Jacket over a base coat, no top coat applied.

2012: The Flakening

This is what will occupy me for a good part of the upcoming weekend.

All photos can be clicked for the full-sized version.

This is my basket o' flakies, eleven in total. I was waiting on the Deborah Lippmann to arrive before I started swatching, and I'm glad I did!




All polishes are layered over two coats of Deborah Lippmann Edge of Glory black creme polish. I realised after I downloaded all the pictures that I didn't have any pictures of Nubar 2010 in the single coat lot - I'll have to fix that this weekend when I do this on my nails!

A few general observations:

I was convinced before I started that there'd be at least one exact dupe in this mess, but surprisingly, there isn't! The colour, size, variety, or quantity of flakies differed in each polish.

Essie Shine of the Times was the single most packed with flakies colour out of the whole bunch! I'm sure a third coat would have reached full flakedom. Second up was Deborah Lippmann's Edge of Glory 3D Holo.

Picture Polish Hypnotic was the sparsest on flakies, but it should build easily enough. All the Picture Polish flakies were less generous on the flakies, but this could be a good thing if you wanted a less in your face look. It also gives you more options as it's easy to layer on more flakies, but tough to reduce them! Having said that, I think you'd have to use the whole bottle of Splendour to get the same effect I got with two coats of Essie Shine of the Times.

Closest dupes: Essie Shine of the Times, Picture Polish Splendour, and Nubar 2010. You'd have to layer the last two to get the effect of the Essie though!

Most unique: Picture Polish Festival and Deborah Lippmann Edge of Glory 3D Holo

One coat, no flash. From left to right:

Deborah Lippmann Edge of Glory 3D Holo
Picture Polish Festival
Picture Polish Hypnotic
Picture Polish Splendour
Essie Shine of the Times





One coat, flash. From left to right:

Deborah Lippmann Edge of Glory 3D Holo
Picture Polish Festival
Picture Polish Hypnotic
Picture Polish Splendour
Essie Shine of the Times





One coat, no flash. From left to right:

Finger Paints Flashy
Finger Paints Asylum
Finger Paints Twisted
Finger Paints Motley
Finger Paints Flecked





One coat, flash. From left to right:

Finger Paints Flashy
Finger Paints Asylum
Finger Paints Twisted
Finger Paints Motley
Finger Paints Flecked







Two coats, no flash. From left to right:

Deborah Lippmann Edge of Glory 3D Holo
Picture Polish Festival
Picture Polish Hypnotic
Picture Polish Splendour






Two coats, flash. From left to right:

Deborah Lippmann Edge of Glory 3D Holo
Picture Polish Festival
Picture Polish Hypnotic
Picture Polish Splendour





Two coats, no flash. From left to right:

Finger Paints Asylum
Finger Paints Twisted
Finger Paints Motley
Finger Paints Flecked






Two coats, flash. From left to right:

Finger Paints Asylum
Finger Paints Twisted
Finger Paints Motley
Finger Paints Flecked





Two coats, no flash. From left to right:

Picture Polish Hypnotic
Picture Polish Splendour
Essie Shine of the Times
Nubar 2010
Finger Paints Flashy






Two coats, no flash. From left to right:

Picture Polish Hypnotic
Picture Polish Splendour
Essie Shine of the Times
Nubar 2010
Finger Paints Flashy





I like all of these for different reasons. Essie Shine of the Times just blew me away with how packed with glitter it was. Deborah Lippmann's Edge of Glory 3D Holo stands out for the unique colour profile - cooler with more purple and blue flashes than the others. Picture Polish Festival is a stunner for the sheer number of colours packed into it and how varied the sizes are.

I can't wait for this weekend so I can swatch these properly and get some sunlight on them!


I had extra nails left on the wheel when I finished with the flakies, so I swatched some other random polishes because hey, why not?

One coat, no flash. From left to right:

American Apparel Meteor Shower
American Apparel Constellation
American Apparel Light Year
Essie Pure Pearlfection
Essie A Cut Above





One coat, flash. From left to right:

American Apparel Meteor Shower
American Apparel Constellation
American Apparel Light Year
Essie Pure Pearlfection
Essie A Cut Above





Two coats, no flash. From left to right:

American Apparel Meteor Shower
American Apparel Constellation
American Apparel Light Year
Essie Pure Pearlfection
Essie A Cut Above




Two coats, flash. From left to right:

American Apparel Meteor Shower
American Apparel Constellation
American Apparel Light Year
Essie Pure Pearlfection
Essie A Cut Above



American Apparel Meteor Shower is funky and different. Glad I grabbed this one!

I can't think of any reason I'd want to wear American Apparel's Constellation polish. What a mess! I'm glad it only cost me $3!

American Apparel Light Year is neat, though a bit tough to work with on the wheel.

Essie Pure Pearlfection will be fun to play with. I need to swatch this over light colours!

Essie A Cut Above - I really like this one! I bet I could get it opaque in another coat or two. I don't have a lot of polishes yet so even though it's not that unique, I don't personally own anything like it.

Polish Storage

I hit up IKEA the other day on a hunt for cheap polish storage, and I struck gold!

The Samla series is absolutely perfect - not too tall, with lids for easy stacking. There are optional clips and dividers too! I ended up grabbing four of each of the smallest and the medium sized bins with matching lids.

Small bin

This is my new, unswatched polish holding bin.

Side:


Top:


There's 27 bottles in that bin right now, and it would easily hold a few more.

Medium bin

Once polishes are swatched, I put them into the larger bins arranged by type.

Side:


Top:


This particular bin is holding 61 bottles of polish with plenty of room for growth.

I'm not entirely sold on the medium bins yet - I may go back and pick up half a dozen more small bins instead. But at $1.49 per bin, I'm not exactly worried about it.

Butter London - The Black Knight & Tart with a Heart

My first ever order from Butter London arrived this week, and I wasn't sure how to choose between the two. So I wore both!

This is The Black Knight with an accent nail in Tart with a Heart. The original plan was to do some konad stamping on top of it, but honestly it doesn't need it.

The Black Knight is a gorgeous charcoal jelly base packed with blue, red, pink, and silver glitter. Probably other colours too if I look! The overall effect is a purplish glitter in a deep charcoal base. Quite sheer with one coat, it was opaque in two! I figured for sure I'd be going for three to four coats for full opacity, but no.

Tart with a Heart is beautiful. I expected this to be more of a Black Knight glitter done in a cream base, but it's completely different. Small holographic, pink, and gold glitter combined with holographic larger glitter, this one's much more sheer and completely different. It took four coats to get the picture below, but three would really have been fine.




Side note: this stuff just drinks topcoat. I put two coats of Seche Vite on top and it's STILL not glass smooth. But I'll forgive because it's absolutely beautiful.

Both colours were very easy to apply with nice consistencies, not too goopy like some glitter polishes, and the glitter spread easily on its own. Definitely a good buy!

Comparison: Sally Hansen XTreme Wear Disco Ball vs China Glaze Snow Globe

Just because :) Someone mentioned these might be similar, so I thought I'd swatch them together. It's a slow evening.

The bottles:




Alone (SH on left, CG on right):



Over black creme polish (SH on left, CG on right):



Side by side (from top to bottom, SH, CG, SH, CG):

 

The main difference between these two is the size of the glitter. Disco Ball is tiny, tiny flecks, while Snow Globe is big shiny bits. The colours are pretty much identical, flashing all colours of the rainbow. Both are neat, but I think I prefer Disco Ball as Snow Globe seems to sink into my nail and make it look pitted.

Nerd Lacquer - Entirely Unlike Tea

This is my first time trying Nerd Lacquer. I picked up a few from Harlow & Co just before New Years and I was sooo excited to try them! I had about 15 new polishes to try, but this one stood out for its subtly gorgeous colour.

This is Entirely Unlike Tea - a semi sheer pinky nude with tiny silver glitter, and just a touch of larger round glitter. It has a bit of a pearlescent quality in the finish, but it's super subtle.

The texture was a bit watery and extremely sheer on the first coat, but covered nicely on the second. At three it became almost opaque, but it had just the slightest visible nail line in bright light, not enough for a fourth coat though.

This picture was just taken at my office, hence the Sharpie as opposed to a polish bottle. Three coats, topped with Seche Vite. It was a bit less shiny on its own so a topcoat is recommended if you want that glassy finish. The glitter itself lays very flat and was completely covered with one coat of Seche Vite - a thinner top coat would probably get the same result.



I kind of wish there was a bit more of the larger glitter, just enough to see a few more pieces on each nail like I have here on my little finger, but that's about all the negative I can say about this beautiful polish.

I love how delicate and lovely this is, but still with a glitter kick to it so it's not your bog-standard pinky nude polish. I couldn't capture this on film no matter how hard I tried, but I did notice it looks pinker if I tipped my nails almost flat in one direction, and more nude in the opposite direction, almost a duochrome effect, but barely there.

Deborah Lippmann - Wicked Game

Nothing beats a good duochrome, and this is one of the best! Deborah Lippmann's Wicked Game shimmers from green to lavender to gold and everything in between. The formula was so nice to work with after my attempts with Glamorous Life - a sheer, buildable colour that doesn't bubble.

The formula definitely shows a bit of brush stroking, but it's not that bad. The main issue is how sheer it is - this is four coats, and I half debated a fifth!

OPI Classics - I'm Not Really a Waitress

There's a reason that red is a classic, and a reason that THIS red is one of OPI's best sellers.

I'm Not Really a Waitress is almost over the top gorgeous. I felt like my nails had been enameled rather than polished with this intense, metallic red. It has a coppery quality to it that's just so different from the traditional - it's a bit sexy, a bit vampy, but still classic and beautifully RED.

The formula was perfect - two coats achieved full opacity and it applied like butter.

With flash:




Without flash: