Layering fun with Ozotics 532

I've been in the mood to try layering lately, and today's the first day all week I've had the time and the sunlight to properly show it!

This is China Glaze Frostbite, a lovely blue I picked up a while ago and have never used, topped with Ozotics 532, and then Finger Paints Motley.

First, Frostbite on its own. This is such a beautiful, clean deep blue! I absolutely love it. The formula is perfect, not too runny, not too thick, and applies nicely in two coats, though it's still got visible nail line. This wasn't a concern for me as I was going to layer it anyway. If you're wearing this on its own, a third coat would probably be a good idea!



The flakies didn't turn out the way I wanted them to at all, they're almost invisible. I should have used a contrasting flakie like Twisted instead. But I absolutely LOVE how the Ozotics 532 looks layered over this great blue polish!



Close up shot: Click for massive sparkly goodness!



China Glaze is available all over the place, including Sally Beauty online. Finger Paints flakies available from your local Sally Beauty only.

Ozotics is a bit harder to get hold of for us North American types. I got mine at Harlow & Co.

Post-swatching debrief - lessons learned

This weekend marked the first time I've ever done a massive swatching of colours. I learned a TON, and maybe some of it will be useful to others who want to start mass swatching :)

Here's a few things I learned from this weekend - a bit of a primer on how to swatch your manicure and take nice photographs!

1) Gather all your stuff together before you start. This sounds like a no brainer, but I forgot to bring so much stuff over when I started and had to go digging. Frustrating! My list included:

• The polishes, of course
• base coat
• top coat
• q-tips
• orange stick
• camera 
• spare batteries
• regular polish remover
• pure acetone
• small cosmetics brush (more on this later)
• paper towel (in case of spills)
• make up remover pads (I prefer these to cotton balls, less messy)
• surface protector for the table 
• printer paper to provide a clean background for pictures

2) Budget a LOT of time. I'm sure experienced swatchers can do this more quickly, but it took me roughly 30 - 45 minutes per colour to do the full swatching/clean up/picture editing/posting on the blog. For the 11 colours I did, I spent about 4 hours on polish, and 2 - 3 hours on photo editing and posting. That's a LOT of work!

3) Sunlight is mandatory for great colour! Unless you have a professional photo studio, which I do not. I use a simple point and shoot camera, some white paper to provide a clean background, and the sun.

4) Keep an eye on the weather forecast! Living in the north, I'm at a serious disadvantage in winter when it comes to the window I have for swatching. At this time of year, I have a few hours of good strong sunlight that will let me take nice pictures, so I took advantage of every minute. Once summer rolls around, I'm sure the advantage will skew in my favour - I look forward to it!

5) Keep a glass of water nearby. Between the polish fumes and acetone fumes, your throat will get scratchy and dry. This leads directly to...

6) Work in a well-ventilated area to reduce exposure to noxious fumes. Acetone is NOT a fun thing to breathe in!

7) Do the colours you're working with really need a base coat? If it doesn't stain, then don't waste your time. And don't assume that dark colours will stain while light colours won't - ManGlaze's Fuck off and Dye is a hot pink that will stain your nailbeds as soon as you put it on, while the Deborah Lippmann Edge of Glory black creme I had on today didn't stain at all with no base coat through several applications. Test and be sure!

8) Be expedient. I've yet to take a single picture that shows my thumb or my right hand, so now I just polish the four fingers on my left hand. This saves a lot of time and clean up!

9) Rushing your polish job will just end in misery later when you try and fix your mistakes in Photoshop. 

10) On the topic of Photoshop, learn what's an easy post-processing fix, and what's just an invitation to torture. Ding your creme polish a bit? Not a big deal - that can be quickly and easily fixed in Photoshop. Got polish along your cuticle? You're gonna pull your hair out trying to fix it.

11) A small cosmetic brush and a bottle of pure acetone are your best friends for cleaning up your manicure. Take your time and gently brush away any mistakes along your cuticle, edges, and sides of your fingers. The pure acetone will just eat away the polish, so be careful! 

12) Every second you spend cleaning up your nails before you take a picture means minutes saved afterwards.

13) Even if you don't see the mess on your nails, your camera will. A high resolution macro shot in sunlight is extremely unforgiving - every speck of stray polish, every bit of dry skin, every stray piece of pet fur will show up.

14) Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it's not there. Even if you can't see a mess on your cuticles, run the brush over them anyway because the camera will.

15) Think you're in the safe from camera mistakes with your base and top coat because they're clear? Think again. The macro setting and the sun will reveal any clear polish on your cuticles or fingers, making them look uneven and messy. Make sure to swipe the brush along your cuticles after your topcoat too!

16) When you finish cleaning up your cuticles with the brush, take a cotton pad and wipe down your fingertip and around your nail. This will clean up any polish that dripped with the acetone down your skin and collected in any lines on your fingers. Trust me, it's there. You'll be amazed what comes off on that cotton pad!

17) After all that acetone, your nails and fingers are going to be super dry. Give them a good slather of cuticle oil afterwards to help smooth things over.

18) After your nails are nicely cleaned up, take your pictures against a clean white background. Plain old printer paper will work fine for this.

19) Take a LOT of pictures from a ton of angles! You never know what you're going to capture by moving the camera a bit. You can sort out the good from the bad when you're in Photoshop

That's it for now! I'm sure I'll have more to share as I continue learning how to swatch and photograph my manicures :)

Flakie-palooza, Part 2

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


Flakie-palooza Part 1 can be found here.


I actually had a lot of sunlight to work with today - clear blue skies, and a cooperative bright sun made me a happy swatcher!

Today I managed to get through the rest of my collection of flakies: the entire Finger Paints line up, Nubar 2010, and Deborah Lippmann Edge of Glory 3D Holo (I know it's not a holo, but that's what it's called). As with all my other swatches, these are all over one coat of Edge of Glory black creme polish.

First up, Nubar 2010

The bottle:




One coat:



Two coats:




The colour scheme in this polish is identical to Picture Polish Splendour and Essie Shine of the Times. Of the three, this one has the ideal amount of flakie goodness in my opinion. It was easy to apply, and quite pretty!

Next up is Deborah Lippmann's Edge of Glory 3D Holo.

The bottle:





One coat:


Two coats:


This one was tough to apply neatly. The formula itself is quite thick and goopy, more so than any other flakie I've tested. Having said that, it's quite lovely and flashes a ton of colours. Primarily it's a blue/orange combo, but you can see pink, red, green, and purple at times. It's also the most expensive of the bunch, retailing for $40 (on sale for $29) for the combo set.

Onto the big collection: Finger Paints!

First from this collection is Motley.

The bottle:





One coat:



Two coats:



This was a surprise favourite. I thought it'd be dull and monochromatic, instead I fell in love with how beautifully cool my fingers looked. Flashes of deep indigo, teal, and aqua keep this from being just a plain blue flakie.

Next up, Asylum.

The bottle:





One coat:





This one is probably closest in colour to the Lippmann flakie - primarily orange and blue, but with some bright yellow too. The flakes are also nice and varied in size. Lovely!

Onto Flecked.

The bottle:





One coat:



Two coats:



A green version of Motley. This is perhaps my least favourite of the bunch, but it's still quite lovely.

Next is Flashy, the last of the Nubar 2010/Shine of the Times/Splendour colour scheme.

The bottle:





One coat:



Two coats:



This red/yellow/orange combo seems to be the most common one out there. All look pretty much identical except for the density and size of flakies. If I had any of the ones in this scheme, I'd give this one a miss.


Last but certainly not least, Twisted

The bottle:





One coat:


Two coats:


Definitely my favourite of the Finger Paints collection, this one has all sorts of interesting colours packed into it! I'd pick this one up no matter how many other flakies I already had.


I like all of these flakies. Do I need them all? No, but given that they're all just a bit different, I'm not unhappy to have them. If I was going to give up any, I'd give up Shine of the Times, Flashy, and Splendour as I think Nubar 2010 does this colour combo the best of all four.

So there you have it. 11 flakies, all swatched and presented in (I hope) a useful manner. If you want anything swatched side by side for better comparisons, just leave a comment and I'll do it when I redo the two I missed!

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.