The ABCs: S for Sara

I rarely wear red polish, but I always love them when I do. Red nails are classic for a reason, you know! I was happy when I saw that I had an untried red polish starting with the letter S, namely Zoya Sara from the Fire and Ice collection.

Sara is a real stunner, packed with lots and lots of glassfleck glitter that makes it look like it glows from within. It’s a very raspberry-leaning red, almost looking pink at certain angles. I figured out why, it’s because the glassflecks actually change from gold to pink! You can tell from the bottle in these pictures, see how the glitter is golden at the top of the bottle, but flashes magenta at the bottom? Gorgeous!

Please excuse the vampirish skintone in these pics, I just got my hands on a macro lens for my Nikon D90, and I haven’t completely figured out how to adjust the white balance and everything else perfectly yet.

Sara is a dream to apply, the polish glides on very effortlessly. You could probably get away with one thickish coat of this one, but I did two thinner coats to make the color deeper and more saturated.

I got this from Nailetc, where it’s still available for $8. (It’s listed as Sarah, though, my bottle says Sara. Scrangie mentioned the same difference between bottle name and Zoya spoon name in her post about this collection.)

The ABCs: A for Amber Ruby

I’m starting a new “series” of sorts here today, or maybe rather a way to challenge myself to wear more of my untrieds. I’m sure you’ve all been there, you have a huge stash of gorgeous colors to choose from, but you just can’t make up your mind! That’s when I came up with the idea of The ABCs, simply to pick my manis alphabetically by polish name! So starting today, I’ll show you a polish (or polishes) starting with the next letter in the alphabet each time. I can’t promise to update every day, but I hope that this little project will give me a kick in the butt I need to make up my mind and just do my nails already!

Without further ado, let’s start at the very beginning with the letter A! Here’s Sally Hansen Amber Ruby, a stunning duochrome from the Nail Prisms line. My pictures doesn’t do it justice at all, it changes from green to gold to orange to red to magenta, such an awesome polish! By the way, if you’re curious about the Sally Hansen Nail Prisms, nailXchange has a useful guide to the whole line here.

Amber Ruby looks gorgeous on the nails, but the formula is far from nice. It’s thin and runny, so it’s difficult to keep it from flooding the cuticles. It builds nicely to opacity in three coats, but the catch is that it never dries! Even with Seche Vite, it was still soft and dentable 12 hours after application. Maybe layering over black will help with the drying issues?

Sally Hansen Nail Prisms are not the easiest to get hold of, I know that US gals have found them randomly in stores here and there, but the safest bet is getting it from blog sales or eBay. If you can’t find it there, you could try Ozotic Pro 520 instead, which can be bought at Picture Polish or Llarowe.

Random Spam #3

It’s time for another round of spam from the previously unsung heroes of my stash! This edition has no red thread, so just sit back and enjoy the ride. I hope there’s something good for everyone.

China Glaze Visit Me In Prism

Color and finish: Golden-taupey nude scattered holographic.
Collection: Kaleidoscope (2009)
Formula and coverage: Easy to apply, but be aware that you’ll easily drag the previous coat and get bald spots if you don’t wait a bit between coats. Very sheer, 4 coats for full coverage.
Where to get: Unfortunately, these are hard to come by nowadays, but maybe you’ll get lucky and find it in a blog sale somewhere? Also, “dusty” salons are likely to still have these in stock, or eBay as a last resort. Price will naturally vary.

China Glaze Starboard

Color and finish: Starboard-lantern green creme. Reminds me of when I used to go fishing with my dad when I was little, and he used to let me steer the boat, and how he taught me the difference between port and starboard. A nice basic color. (I had to hold the topcoat bottle, because when I held the polish bottle, all the green in the frame freaked out my camera and made the pic very inaccurate!)
Collection: Anchors Away (2011)
Formula and coverage: Glides nice and easy on the nail. Surprisingly sheer, I needed three thin coats for opacity.
Where to get: Web shops such as TransDesign, $2.99.

Orly Emberstone

Color and finish: Orange-red glassfleck (or mineral-fleck?). I can also see some pinkish particles here and there! This was hard to capture on camera, so my pics are more orange than it looks in real life.
Collection: Mineral FX (2011)
Formula and coverage: Easy application, but slightly on the runny side. 3 coats.
Where to get: TransDesign, $5.32.

Color Club Alter Ego

Color and finish: Purple based foil with gold and silver sparkles. Looks oddly grey and mostly silver on me, though.
Collection: Alter Ego (2011)
Formula and coverage: Slightly runny, but easy enough to apply. Sheer, so I needed 4 thin coats for full coverage.
Where to get: TransDesign, $3.10.

Hope you enjoyed this little roundup, thanks for stopping by!

Shimmer-glitter-sparkle-holo-gasm!

I just couldn’t leave well enough alone, so I had to layer something over LA Girls Idol to give it a little more oomph for New Year’s Day. I started out with a coat of China Glaze Blonde Bombshell, which is pretty in its own right. The multi-sized gold glitter goes very well with the dusty blue.

I still wasn’t quite satisified, so I added a coat of CND Crimson Sparkle. That was too subtle, so I needed something more. The magic happened when I finally added a coat of OPI DS Original on top. Holy cow, this is one of my favorite manis to date! In strong light it has the most beautiful holo effect, with a smidge of glitter peeking out underneath. But in low light, the holo effect is more subdued, and it looks more bronze-y, slightly duochrome and very glittery. I’m swooning over here!

Quite a successful layering, if I might say so myself! I need to do this more often, experiment with layers and effects. Even if it doesn’t turn out perfect every time, sometimes you get gems like these and it’s all worth it.

I hope you like it as much as I do! Thanks for reading.

Orly Rock-It

You truly know you’re living a life of luxury when the biggest problem you have is that you just have too many great polishes in your untrieds drawer, making it hard to choose what to wear next. I managed to overcome this daunting obstacle, and decided to put on Orly Rock-It from the Fall 2011 Mineral FX collection.

The Mineral FX collection is a lot like the hugely popular Cosmic FX collection from 2010, very sparkly, duochrome and overall awesome! Orly claims these polishes are infused with minerals, specifically fluorophlogopites (crystals), glass particles, mica, silica and other pigments, which together create the multi-dimensional duochrome effect.

Rock-It is a color that’s very hard to describe, much because of the aforementioned multichrome effect. It’s sometimes burgundy, sometimes golden and other times it’s a deep, glowy magenta. It’s super pretty, and I think this would be such a great underwear for Clarins 230!

I had some trouble applying this, it wanted to flood my cuticles all the time. Not a good thing when it’s such a dark color with lots of sparkles, it made for a tricky cleanup process. This needs two coats for opacity, but I’ve used three coats because I dinged it up before it was dry and I had to smooth it out.

I bought this from Trans Design (link in the sidebar), and while this collection is slightly more expensive than the regular line, it’s still quite affordable at $5.32 a bottle. Shipping to Norway is a breeze if you choose the flat rate box, which costs $20 and can fit up to 9 bottles.