China Glaze ~ Smoke and Ashes

Another really unique polish here.

It's a really dark/black base with a lot of blue and green glitter. Here is a bottleshot to show the glitter a little blit better:

Some of the glitter also has a bit of a gold flash in some angles, but it was more visible in the bottle. Another hit in my book!

China Glaze ~ Halloween 2011, Haunting

And here is the second of the Halloween glitters:

It's a "simple" black polish with a smattering of silver glitter. I type simple in quotation marks, because as the principle is quite simple the result is pretty awesome. It looks like the sky on a clear, dark winter night. Really really pretty.

I decided to try this one with another of China Glaze's crackle polishes, Platinum Pieces:

Ok, this combo was a bit of a dud. I actually think Platinum pieces could be nice over a plain black (like Liquid leather or similar), but here it just ate up all the pretty silver glitters. It looks decent, but the whole magical night sky feeling is lost.

China Glaze ~ Halloween 2011, It's alive!

Halloween is almost here (ok, ok, it's still about 5 weeks away but the halloween collections are already out.) China Glaze has released a collection with 2 glitters, 2 cremes and a glow-in-the-dark topcoat. I got the two glitters and the ghoulish glow topcoat, and here is the first of the glitters

It's alive:

This is two coats without topcoat. It's a dark, moss green jelly base packed with small round and larger hex glitters. The glitters appear very golden but I'm pretty sure they're green like the base. Application was good, dry time was very fast. It dries pretty gritty, and as it came bundled with China Glaze Fast forward topcoat I decided to give my trusty Seche Vite a pass and try it.

Here it is with topcoat. It smoothed out the polish, and made the colour deepen a bit. Fast forward really dried fast. I didn't time it, but for general purposes it felt as fast as Seche Vite. The consistency seemed very runny, but that may be me being used to (often slightly dried out) SV. Anyone else tried this topcoat? I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

In the bundle was also a bottle of Black mesh, the black crackle from CG. I have a bottle of this already, so the new one will go into giveaway/swap pile. However, I dug out my old bottle and tried it on:

So far I haven't been completely awed by crackle-polishes, but I really liked this combo. I originally thought I'd found my halloween mani but I'm not so sure anymore. What do you think? Which would be your favorite for halloween?

Kleancolor ~ Chunky holo black

This is probably the polish I had looked the most forward to of my new Kleancolor polishes. In the bottle it's a true rainbow, but on the nail I mainly got gold/orange and green flashes. This is one coat over a generous coat of China Glaze Liquid leather:

I first attempted to wear it on it's own, but it's so incredibly sheer that I'd never be happy. Application is easy, and there was no need for any major fishing expeditions. However I was rather sad that none of the blue/purple flash showed up on the nail. Anyone else tried this and managed to get all the colours?

My first konad

I got a package in the mail today. I had ordered 3 konad stamping plates and a stamp. I didn't bother with scraper or polishes as I read around that people suggest using a plastic card as the scraper will scratch the plates, plus I already have oodles of polish and I'm sure some of them will work for stamping.

So here goes:

The base is OPI Skull and glossbones, the thumb is Milani Black magic and the rest of the fingers are China Glaze Liquid leather. The thumb really is a lot lighter than the rest (hence the reason for it being only on one finger :-p ) I used the m36 plate, and I don't think it was too shabby for a first ever attempt. Now I just gotta nick some more acetone, some isopropanol and borrow a pair of tweezers from work :-D

Harry Potter Mani

I finally went to see the last harry Potter movie last night, and as it was the last of an era I wanted to do up my nails. Sadly, I was in a hurry so result was a bit bleh, but here it is.

Please disregard "crunch" on Slytherin finger, and the red streaks on Hufflepuff :-( As I said, i was in a real hurry, so had no time to redo, or really wait for it to dry completely.) These are CG Jolly Holly and Depend 047 silver glitter for Slytherin, CG Lemon Fizz and Milani Black Magic for Hufflepuff, CG First Mate and CG Goin' my way for Ravenclaw and finally CG Phat Santa and Depend 045 gold glitter for Gryffindor. If nothing else this exercise taught me I need more time, a better yellow and a more complete bronze polishes. But it was a fun experiment.

Halloween manicure!

I think I just found this years Halloween manicure. I felt I had to do something more to the Papaya punch from yesterday. I thought about adding glitter, but instead decided on a black crackle instead. This is China Glaze Black mesh, with my trusty Seche Vite on top.

Pretty neat I think. Opinions?