Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Green & Gold...for the Day on Which Everyone Drinks and Pretends to be Irish

Hello again! Before I get into this post, I wanted to say something: after the last manicure I did, I had to do some repairs if I didn't want to hurt my quick.  This was the very first time I did a repair with some fabric, and it's not too perfect.  I feel like some of my nails look a little like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, but I still want to share swatches, so here we go!

This time, I used as a base my gold shade from NaiLuv called "Hit the Jackpot"When I got this polish and opened it up in a video, I thought it was really thick because it was cold, and it would become less viscous as it warmed up.... Well, I was wrong!  Because of all the sparkles in it, it is a bit thicker in consistency, and I guess even my other glitter-packed gels are like that, too (for example: OPI Gelcolor's "Goldeneye").  So it's very thick, and doesn't "self-level" as easily as other gels, which you can kind of see on my swatch photo.  The color itself is a nice gold; it's not very yellow-based, more of a champagne-based gold, I would say, so in some lights it looks a bit more silver-like.  The gel base is slightly gold-tinged as well. I used only one coat for my swatch, so I think by three coats it would be opaque.

By the way, in this swatch my one nail looks transparent, because I painted the back of it, too... oops:

Then there's the green, which is Gelish "Polar Attraction".  I'll be honest here... for some reason, in my head I thought Gelish had suggested using only one coat of this gel because of its properties.  AFTER doing my manicure, I looked back on the videos I had watched a while ago and realized how wrong I was...that you should use two coats as normal, but only use the MAGNET on the top coat.  So my manicure looks a little bald in some spots, and perhaps a bit more sparkly because of the bald bits...




Anyway, the color itself is a very sparkly metallic green, more of a true grass green--although it can look kind of greyed out in some lights because of the metallic finish, in yellow lighting it "warms up" a bit.  Here's an interesting thing I noticed because I only used one coat: when you put the magnet on top of the gel, it redistributes the pigment a little along with the magnetized particles.  Even though I only used one coat, it DID look opaque before I put the magnet on it--honest, officer!

As for the main attraction--the ability to create "nail art" with a magnet, well, I found that both good and bad.  It did help camouflage the bald spots (albeit it also CREATED the bald spots, so whatever).  But it's a bit hard to make it look "perfect"; since it's gel you're definitely not stuck with a design you don't like, and you can always wipe it with your brush and try again, but it still takes some time to perfect your method.   You have to cure one or two fingers at a time to keep those self-leveling properties from destroying your magnetized design.  If you'll notice, a few of my fingers look blurrier than others because I wasted a little too much time before curing it, and a few are a little off centered.



Because of all of this, I think there's a few magnet designs that work better with this polish than others.  I bought my magnets online, so the magnets I used were originally for the China Glaze magnet collection.  This boxy/fishnet patterned one came out my favorite, I felt like it redistributed the pigment and the magnetized particles the best:



4 comments:

  1. I have worn Polar Attraction. I had a Love-Hate with it... I wore it pre-blog so there are no pics to speak of and I have much smaller nails so the look is different. With the magnetic redistribution and the size of my nails the color was much darker. Also, it lasted only 8 days on me... not awesome as a gel. I love the concept of the gold and green! What do you mean we all don't have our heritage automatically changed on the day of a celebrated holiday?! I gotta call our Corporate Overlords about this... lol

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    1. Yeah, this one applied weirdly as a gel (a bit thinner, I think) so that may impact how it wears... my nails still feel better than the last gel I used, though. And the color did weird things when I used the magnet on it! It looked a lot different before the magnet.

      I'm sure you're right; I must have missed that memo from the Supreme Corporate Overlords, lol.

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  2. I like this green.I saw on Gelish Facebook or Gelish Mini, can't recall, where they did a St. Patrick's Day mani layering Mint Icing with Polar Attraction and did a gold coin design.

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    1. Wow, I bet that would be a neat combination of colors. I should go check their facebook out--I'm bad at keeping up with facebook, personally!

      The neat thing, I guess, is that you don't NEED to use the magnets to use the magnetic gel polishes. Since options for gel colors can be more limiting than regular nail polish, it gives you more diversity. There's no other color like "Polar Attraction" that I've seen by any gel brand (greens are pretty limited in gel polishes).

      Oh and by the way, good luck with your foray into gel polishes, too! :)

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