Saturday, September 28, 2013

Fall Gel Polish Picks!

Hello again!  I've not really been into video-making lately, but I decided to do one for my gel polish pics for the fall season, as I've done with all the other seasons this year. 


Unfortunately my nails for this video are not very fall-like, but I wanted to do a "Skittles" gel manicure before the summer ended--and as a bonus, Skittles also remind me of Halloween candy, haha.  But I'll have a post on that later!

The colors mentioned in this video are:

OPI Gelcolor - Skyfall
OPI Gelcolor - Casino Royale
OPI Gelcolor - Eurso Euro
OPI Gelcolor - Lincoln Park After Dark
OPI Gelcolor - Every Month is Oktoberfest
OPI Gelcolor - Deutsch You Want Me Baby
OPI Gelcolor - Nein! Nein! Nein! Ok Fine!
OPI Gelcolor - A Good Man-darin is Hard to Find
Red Carpet Manicure - It's Not a Taupe
Red Carpet Manicure -  Toast of the Town
Supernail Progel - Baltic
NaiLuv - Rum Cola
NaiLuv - Hollywood
NaiLuv - Hardcore ROck
NaiLuv - Love Power
Orly SmartGels - Naughty
Sally Hansen Salon Gel Polish - Troublemaker
Gelish - A Runway for the Money

The colors I don't have, but am really looking forward to getting for the fall (because they're pretty unique!):

OPI Gelcolor - Peace & Love & OPI
Orly GelFX - Yellow-Gold Chrome, Magenta-Violet Chrome, Rose-Bronze Chrome, and Pink-Blue Chrome
OPI Gelcolor - Here Today... Aragon Tomorrow (I'm hoping this is less yellow-grey and has a better formula than the mentioned Gelish color)

Monday, September 23, 2013

Red Carpet Manicure Deals! (Online Only?)

Hello again!  I'm quite shocked that this next deal lasted almost the entire month of September, and I didn't realize it was going on until just NOW! 

Red Carpet Manicure Gel Polishes Buy-One-Get-One %50 Off at Ulta.com.

If you're looking for some cheap gel polishes, this sale only lasts 5 more days (until the 28th of September).  Remember that Ulta always has $3.50 off $10 coupons that you could stack up with this offer for an even better deal--that'd be two gel polishes for under $7.00 each! 

I think this sale must be online-only, though, because I was in Ulta earlier this month and definitely didn't see any RCM polishes on sale, unfortunately. 

I think Ulta is catching on to the fact that we consumers like sales on gel polishes as well as everything else--hopefully they'll continue offering more. 

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Every Month is Oktoberfest!

....Or so says OPI!

You know how some nail colors are "duds" because they look so complex and great in the bottle, but on your nails they turn kind of flat?  IE the duo-chrome shimmer kind of disappears, or the glitter overwhelms the base color (or vice versa)? 

Yeah, this polish is NOT one of those colors!





I mean, just look at it!  I hope my sub-par photography skills did it justice.

OPI Gelcolor "Every Month is Oktoberfest" is a perfectly balanced mix of a dark, navy blue base filled with rusty red colored shimmer.   These colors play off of one another so that they create a glowing finish in all but the dimmest lighting.  Some colors as dark as this may get confused for being black, but you won't have that issue here; the interplay between the base and the shimmer creates sort of a purple "raisin" color (to use the words of one girl who complimented my nails), and the red shimmer ensures that the lighting won't just make it look flat black. On top of that, in daylight the navy undertones really shine through and even kind of glow like blue glass--which you can really see in my macro shot.  I could go on and on about this polish, but I'm not sure how to describe this in a way that will do it justice. And only two coats worked great for this gel polish. 

I only have two small caveats.  One, there was a sneaky, tiny amount of "shrinking" from the edges of my nails that was unnoticeable until I was all finished.  My polish actually did wear away faster and create a few tiny chips within a week because of this, but I recapped the edges and was OK for another week.  In the future, I think capping the edges and curing that before painting the rest of my nails may help out my problem a bit.  And two, the color ran just a little bit, hence why the cuticle area of my nails looks a little jagged--it also snuck into the sidewalls of my nails in a few spots.  But that's nothing that wouldn't keep me from buying this gel again if I had to!

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Red Carpet Manicure "One of a Kind"

I haven't updated in a while, but I wore this color for what felt like forever, so I had nothing else new to post about!




I like lavender, but lavender is a hard color for gels.  The problem is that, from what I hear, purple pigments are more UV sensitive or "unstable" than other colors, so over time your manicure may change color to a more yellow, green, or grey shade.  Red Carpet has a beautiful lavender color called "Violetta Darling" which is similar to "One of a Kind" but in a creme shade, but since I heard that it had that weird ugly fading issue, I opted for this color instead.

Honestly I was not to happy about this color when I first painted it.  Red Carpet Manicure "One of a Kind" is a very metallic light purple shade that seemed to have a slight mauve undertone at first.  And I do mean very metallic--you may see brush strokes, and may I suggest capping your tips first unless you want to end up with unsightly smudges like you can see on the tip of my middle finger.  Any wayward strokes will mar the look of this gel!  Although in my macro shot you can see that sometimes the metallic finish diffuses the light to reflect slightly purple, blue, or yellow spots of "sparkle", this is not something you will be able to see from more than a foot away--it just looks like it shines a silvery metallic.

I wasn't too happy about that kind of mauve undertone, though; I felt like it made me look older and didn't provide a nice contrast with my skin tone.  But that brings me to my next point: the fading! Since purple gels, especially light purple ones, may tend to fade, I wanted to test this out to see what it would do.  Happily, "One of a Kind" pretty quickly faded to just a shade or two lighter, which I felt just enhanced the metallic properties of this gel.  I tried to grab a photo of a comparison with two nails that had been sporting this gel polish for two weeks, and two nails that were newly painted.  The fading is only very slightly noticeable, and honestly it probably wouldn't be a big deal even if you liked the original color, unlike me!



Lastly, I found this gel polish to be a bit on the thinner side, so I used three coats, and my manicure lasted for about two weeks with a few touch-ups.