Wednesday, July 31, 2013

GoldenEye

So finally I'm back, and I have another gold glittery color--however, I think you'll find that this is a lot different than the last one!





OPI's Golden Eye (is it Golden Eye or GoldenEye, anyway?  My bottle definitely has a space between the N and the E) is a great gold glitter.  Now I have to say, I used three coats--you can still kind of see some visible nail line in some pictures, but overall the jam-packed glitter totally distracts from that when your hands are moving about in real life. 

Golden Eye is nothing but irregular flakes of a bright yellow gold glitter packed into a clear base.  The thing that elevates this gel polish, though, is that the glitter is sooooo dimensional!  Some of the glitter has an opalescence to it that will make spots shine orange and spring green when your fingers move in the light. I tried to capture this in my macro shot at the bottom, and you can see tiny little spots of green and orange if you open it up to full size--but trust me, this is much better in person.  And there's also another layer of dimension that comes with the 3D surface of your nail--as you can see in my first picture, the gold transforms from almost a bronze to a bright brassy gold depending on how the light hits it.  Sometimes (and only a very small amount of times) when the glitter shone only bright yellow with more profuse lighting, I felt my fingernails may have looked a bit yellowy, like "smoker's nails". But that was only a passing thought before I looked again and remembered how amazing this gel polish was!

There's only one slight downside to this gel: and that is, because of the sheer amount of glitter packed into it, when trying to cap the edges of my nails, the glitter did not want to lay down  flat and instead caused a bumpy ridge.  That was easily filed down, though, and it did not affect wear time at all.

Friday, July 19, 2013

Ulta Deals - Free Nail Polish Remover!

This sale started a few days ago, but I just found it in my email today, and the sale is going on until July 27th, 2013. 

What is it, exactly?

Basically, Ulta is offering one of three types of nail polish removers (pure acetone, or one of two kinds of remover wipes) free with your nail purchase of $15 or more. You don't need any coupon if you purchase through the website, but if you want to purchase in-store, you may want to sign up for Ulta emails or check your inbox for a unique coupon code. I'm sure you could also combine this with their usual $3.50 off $10 coupons, too. 

If you're running low on acetone and are lemming for some new Red Carpet Manicure or Sally Hansen gels, you might want to check this out!

Just add items from the sale in your cart until you reach $15 or more, and on the shopping basket page, below your items, you will see a drop down box that lets you select which free item you want. 

Acetone runs for about $3.99 on its own, so it's not a terribly great steal, but it is still a fun and unique offer! And acetone is essential for removing your gel polish.

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Gelish "Naughty List"

Long time, no see, internet!

Sorry about the absence; I haven't been doing anything exciting, although I've been really busy.  But I finally have another picture post!



Gelish's "Naughty List" is a great black shade jam packed with flecks of gold glitter.  Actually, there may be some silver glitter, too, as in the right sunlight it will reflect both colors (and I DID think it was silver the first night I painted my nails!), but overall the glitter comes across a nice champagne gold color.  Usually, I see black paired with silver, so this is somewhat unique--and there's so much glitter that you definitely will not mistake this shade for plain old black gel polish.

If the glitter doesn't look very gold to you in those photos--my lighting varies, after all--may I present you with a blurry outtake photo for evidence:

That's a lot of bling!

The formula was fine and went on with two coats, although if I wasn't careful, there was some patchiness.  You might pick up on that my pinky...oops!

The other thing you might pick up on is that this color had considerable tip wear.  You can see it in the pictures, and this manicure is only a week old.  Once again, I'm going to blame my spur-of-the-moment color decisions--I felt like this color required lots of mixing to get all the glitter and dark pigments dispersed well.  If I hadn't decided on this color at the last minute, I could have shaken it up a few hours (or the night before) to get those pigments and glitters mixed in without the fear of there being too many bubbles.  

This color is from Gelish's 2012 holiday collection, which contained a bunch of gel polishes packed with glitters.  I know, I know, it's July--but don't you just want to do something different sometimes?  "Christmas in July" movie marathons were on TV this past weekend, anyway!

Hopefully next time I'll be back sooner rather than later. :)