Red Carpet Manicure "Peach Chiffon" - Fade Alert!

Hi again!  I said I would do a review on a Red Carpet Manicure shade from the summer "Sweet Indulgence" collection this week, and I'm a little late getting it up.  School work is getting really intense... but it's almost over! Luckily, I found some time to do some really simple but fun designs with this manicure.

I'll start with the gel polish from the permanent line in this design, because this review's simpler:  Red Carpet Manicure "Who Are You Wearing" is a mid-tone teal creme color.  I thought this might be a dupe for Gelish "Sugar Daddy", but it has more dirty grey tones than "Sugar Daddy" does.  It's actually a really, really close dupe for OPI Gelcolor "Suzi Says Feng Shui", which I reviewed last summer (oddly enough, in a manicure design that was a little bit  similar, too!)  If anything, the OPI Gelcolor is a tad more grey toned than this, but it's hard to tell the difference.  Anyway, the formula for this was a little thin and sheer, but I got to full opacity in three coats.  It did shrink away from the free edges of my nails a bit--which you can see on my thumb--but with careful application this wasn't a major issue for me.

Red Carpet Manicure "Peach Chiffon" is the new color out for this summer, in the "Sweet Indulgence" collection.  This color is gorgeous initially--it's a very pastel pinky-peach creme color, and it fits in well with the whitened-out bolds and neons that are very popular this season.  However, this color was a bust for a few reasons.  First is application: it took three coats to reach opacity, but not because it was thin and sheer.  Quite the opposite!  It was a very thick gel that applied streaky, almost like a regular polish--it's almost like it became streakier the more I tried to even out a coat.  It didn't shrink away from the edges of my nails, but it didn't always want to lay smoothly on the free edges either.  My second problem with this is the color: since it's so pale, it doesn't always come across well in different lighting.  In some lights the yellow comes out more, and in other lights the amount of white in it floods out the other colors.  I attempted to take pictures in bright sunlight and the LED flash of my camera, and this is what came out:

 

My third problem with this is the wear: don't get me wrong, it wore fine for almost two weeks.  But "Peach Chiffon" faded horribly!  It changed from a peach color with slight pink undertones to a yellow pastel.  Luckily, it also faded evenly, so the resulting color wasn't horrible looking.  But since I did "nail art" that involved putting three more coats of gel on top of my initial coats of "Peach Chiffon", it faded even faster--yes, it faded a little just with the small amount of repeat exposure to my LED lamp. Here's a comparison of a newly painted nail with my week + old nails, with flash and in indirect sunlight::

I loved this initial color, but I don't love the fading and the application--so "Peach Chiffon" might be one more color I return to the store.

It's a "Fader"! RCM "After Party Playful"

Hi again!  I showed my manicure a little a while ago, but in that post, I refrained from posting a review of the gel polish I used on my accent nail.  I wanted some more time to test it out, and I didn't want my review of this gel to get dwarfed by the macro shots and review of my main gel polish color!

Let me give you a quick refresher.  This natural lighting photo has two Red Carpet Manicure polishes--the brown, called "Toast of the Town", and the pink accent, called "After Party Playful".  I'd say the colors are most accurate in this photo, but I do have more photos to see on the link above--and I also reviewed "Toast of the Town" there, too. 

This time, I want to review Red Carpet Manicure "After Party Playful".  As I have noticed with some other lighter creme shades, I felt like this color applied a bit streaky; I needed 4 coats to achieve opacity.  

This color starts out as a nice, mid-tone pink shade--kind of the stereotypical "Barbie pink", but not too bold or flashy.  I actually felt like this color leaned a little cool-toned, too. 

...But wait, why am I talking in the past tense?  Hopefully, you've noticed that the swatch in the photo above looks kind of salmon pink, and not cool pink.  That's because "After Party Playful" started to fade within 3 days of application to a more orange-toned salmon pink, like you see in the photo above.   

 Of course, it didn't fade evenly, either--it looked a streaky mess after 5 + days, and it finally settled into a very yellowish, infected/inflamed flesh-tone type of color.  I'm not sure how else to describe a color like this, honestly.  If I was really reaching and trying to be flattering, maybe I'd liken it to "apricots and cream", but that doesn't attest to the strangeness of this streaky yellow-laced-with-pink shade on my nails.

The best way I could get a photo of this was to paint half of my nail with a few coats of fresh polish to show a side-by-side comparison:

See that streakiness in the left hand photo?  See that yellow shade?  At this point, I could barely believe it was ever pink. And unfortunately, this comparison swatch is the best "fresh" swatch of "After Party Playful" I have as well, considering by time it took me to get good photos of my manicure (which was only about 3 days), it had already faded.

RCM's "After Party Playful" is a pretty shade out of the bottle, but this color is now making me wary of  any lighter pinks!  I've had slight problems so far with some orange, salmon-pink, and light purple gel polishes, but never a pink like this.

The problem is that not all gel polishes have UV stable pigments, so with exposure to different combinations of heat and light, you may notice fading over time.  Luckily every shade varies, even ones by the same brand, so I guess my only choice is to keep swatching on. :)

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.

Sensationail Take Two - Review!

I said I did videos for this, so here they are!  I split it up to my initial impressions video, which is shorter, but kind of rambling:



And then there's the video I did after having my nails done for about 9 days:



I still have the polish on now, and it's only been 12 days, but I'm really disappointed with it at this point.  I talked about how the gel isn't very strong and kind of softens when wet especially, and at this point a good portion of my gel has peeled off and three of my nails broke along the stress cracks at the sides.  I have a lot of repairing to do!

Happy Halloween! NaiLuv Soak Off Gel Polish in "Hard Core Rock" Over "Love Power"

I used two new polishes in one manicure this time! It's a Halloween themed take on the half-moon manicure with a triangular base instead of a semi-circle.

This is actually really simple to  DIY without any "guides" to help you out--since it's just two angular lines forming a point, you can use the side of your nail brush to guide you--and it doesn't look so bad if you aren't 100% even or accurate with your shape.  So I have about two reviews in one for you; I say "about" because I wasn't really able to assess "Love Power" on its own.  We'll start with that, though.

NaiLuv's "Love Power" is an orange-creme color.  It's hard to describe, because here's the thing: it yellows over time thanks to the UV rays present in your everyday life.  It starts out this nice red-tinged creme color, almost a little coral in quality.  It is mostly a creme, but under very yellow indoor lighting, somehow the milkiness in the color disappears and it kind of looks jelly-like. Here's what I mean:

How different does that look from the orange in the finished product up top?  The top pictures with it under the black gel--taken with natural lighting--are much more representative of this gel color, but I figured I should include this tidbit anyway.  Your lighting really changes the look of this polish!  I used two coats before putting the black on top, and it was opaque except for when I looked close up in yellow light (again, where it suddenly turned jelly-like).

The only reason I noticed this polish yellowed was because I had to redo a nail about 5 days after my original manicure.  Yes, by five days this polish had yellowed.  This comparison photo, however, is after about 9 days on my nails, and a few days without any sunlight on my "swatch":

They are two pretty different hues of orange! One is a nice red-orange-almost-coral, the other is a definite yellow-orange.  It's a nice color, but this yellowing is something I'm going to have to keep in  mind if I ever decide to pair it up with another color--what may look great on day 1 may look disastrous by day 5!

As for NaiLuv's "Hard Core Rock", on the other hand, I have nothing but glowing praises.  Sadly the best part of this review will probably also be the shortest--because really, how much can I go on about a great polish?  The first coat goes on looking sheer as normal, but the second coat?  The second coat is like MAGIC.  It's like liquid latex suddenly enveloped your nails, and they are completely opaque.  No matter what fashion mags may say about what's in style or not, I think a black polish is as much of a staple as a nice pair of black heels.  You never know when you will want to wear it, and I'm glad I picked this color up.