OPI Red Shatter over OPI Rally Pretty Pink (Serena Williams collex)

OPI Red Shatter over OPI Rally Pretty Pink

I have been so pleasantly surprised by the gorgeousness of the Serena Williams collection -- I think I may have almost all of them -- but Red Shatter was a disappointment. First of all, Rally Pretty Pink is, as the name suggests, really damn pretty. And Red Shatter kind of is a dull jelly... which just makes the manicure look lifeless. :( I wouldn't hesitate to try out Red Shatter on, say, a white creme but it seems a waste to use it on an interesting shimmery polish.

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Illamasqua force - a 'WTF?' polish

(Ho ho ho, a Star Wars joke, bet you didn't see that coming!)

Since we've had a rare few days of sunshine, and since I now have a car, I took the opportunity to go to some of the National Trust properties nearby. They're basically rural stately homes that are preserved by a charity and they're generally speaking lovely - Packwood House, where we went last week, is a favourite. It's a Tudor manor house, originally erected in 1480, which was much restored in the 1920s and 1930s by a chap called Graham Baron Ash, who was a deeply enthusiastic restorer and spent an enormous amount of money doing up this house and others nearby.



Anyway, I promise I am going somewhere with this tangential history lesson. Aside from the fact that it's an interesting and beautiful place to visit, it also has some lovely interiors and a stunning garden. The colours gave me lots of ideas for manicures I wanted to try (nail varnish being my artistic medium, and all...). This is the first 'NT-inspired' manicure - I wanted to take the colours from the French tiling in the bathroom:





I decided my best bet for a match would probably be Illamasqua Force, a dusky mid blue, with white crackle layered over the top. However, I forgot that Force is an...idiosyncratic polish. Basically, it doesn't behave itself. The Swatchaholic has already commented on how it changes colour with Seche Vite. In my experiments today it behaved even more weirdly. Here it is on its own, with no top coat. This is a very colour accurate shot, IMHO. It has an unusual grey-violet undertone to it that makes it unique amongst my (large) collection of blues.









Fugly pic time! This shot shows what happens when you layer white crackle over the top. You can see a) the bits I didn't clean up (intentionally, to show you - sorry for the fug) where white crackle is not on top of Force, and is white; b) where it went over Force and turned pale blue; and c) how they've both deepened considerably to a royal blue/lavender combo with the addition of top coat (Lumos, since you ask). What a weeeeeeird polish.







Here's some proper pictures:

So that...uh...totally didn't work. The final effect is nothing like the tiles! Just to show that CG white crackle doesn't normally change over blue, here it is over Orly La Playa. (I know, I know, claw-hands and an iphone picture, I'm spoiling you today). Force is...odd.

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China Glaze Fault Lines Crackle over Huemorista Hidden Rainbow

I wasn't ready to take off my Hidden Rainbow mani so I put ChG Fault Lines over it.

China Glaze Fault Lines over Huemorista Hidden Rainbow

Errr. This was not pretty. Is there a reason this dried so dull and cracked so sadly? C'mon, it was a purple shimmer crackle! That's practically a formula for gorgeous, no? :( This is one thick coat of Fault Lines.

Fault Lines over Hidden Rainbow

Yeah, doesn't look better in closeup... at all. Yuck.

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Essie Smooth Sailing and OPI Navy Shatter

I never thought that eBay would be my preferred outlet for buying any nail polish but gotta say, it does me well for Essie. (The trick is to, um, buy a lot and order from a seller who has a great combined shipping deal.)

Essie Smooth Sailing

Photos just don't do this justice. It's actually a kind of chunky iridescent shimmer that sparkles blue and pink and purple and is so very, very, very pretty. Great application, two coats. This is the third day of wear.

Closeup of Smooth Sailing

You can sort of see the great shimmer in this photo. Just imagine it all over the nail...

Essie Smooth Sailing and OPI Navy Shatter

Am loving the jelly crackles. Some people might be annoyed that there's such a difference between one and two coats of the polish -- the discrepancy is most obvious on my middle finger -- but I kind of like the variation it gives to the polish. At one coat, it's obviously a blue jelly; at two, it turns more into dark navy (almost black but not quite).

Closeup of Smooth Sailing and Navy Shatter

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Essie Braziliant and OPI Blue Shatter

Hey, I'm alive, I exist. Really. Summer has FINALLY arrived for me -- except not really because I do actually have a ton of work to do and am going to France in two weeks for a conference -- and I have a pretty substantial backlog of NOTDs that I have to post! (Plus a lot of swatching to do... alas, I don't think I'll be able to resume swatching until after I get back from France.)

Essie Braziliant

This was such a disappointment for me. It was this really bright orange in the bottle with this fabulous magenta shimmer... and then I put it on and discover that it just looks coral in most lights. (Oddly, once I uploaded the photos to blogger, it looks a lot more red...) You can see the magenta up close (though I wasn't able to capture it in the photos) but it just sort of mixes with the orange and turns into coral... and I just don't look good in most corals. Application was great though: two coats. This photo was taken on day 2 or 3.

Essie Braziliant and OPI Blue Shatter

My SO took one close look at my nails and asked, "Why did you choose this color combination?"

I answered, "Because it's the ugliest color combination."

He replied, "OK. Just making sure you knew that."

But I love it. I would not mix blue and orange in any other situation but my nails but I just love this shatter *coughcrackle!cough* mani. This was taken on Day 2 of the shatter mani (which would be day 4 of the Braziliant mani). I used one coat of the blue shimmer shatter and it crackled beautifully. Why can't all crackle polishes crackle nicely? (Oh, and it wasn't clumpy. Thank goodness.)

Braziliant and Blue Shatter closeup

So I have a question for y'all: I have several boxes that are CHOCK FULL of nail polishes that I need to get off my hands. (I'm sure there will be more after my annual summer de-stash.) Some are older, some are more recent. The vast majority have only been used once; a small fraction have had 1/4th decanted from them. Most cost between $1 and $10. Many, many different brands. I do plan on selling the ones that I paid many pretty pennies for individually (though I won't charge pretty penny prices, I promise) but there are at least 300 polishes that don't fall into the "oh man, I spent too much on this one polish, I have to recoup this loss" category. I just don't have the time to sell all of them off individually.

I know my $10 (+$5 shipping) small flat-rate grab-boxes have been popular in the past. But even selling these polishes by the dozen is a daunting task. Would there be any interest in my selling medium flat-rate grab-boxes? I need to pack one up properly to see how many I can fit into a single box but I estimate it to be between 40-50 polishes. The price will probably work out to be about $1.50 a polish (plus shipping), a good mix of brands, colors and finishes guaranteed. (And seriously, no one will get a box even half full of polishes that cost me less than $3.) It's a steep price but for those who want to build their stash quickly... I mean, it's a stash-in-a-box. Open it up and voila, a decent-sized stash for a fraction of its retail price.

If I do go with the medium flat-rate grab-box idea, after selling a few, I'll probably be offering small flat-rate grab-envelopes (which can reliably hold 20 polishes, price TBD). ...there's plenty of nail polish to go around!

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A tale of two polishes

Or, how to ruin perfectly good mani. I just cannot leave things alone.

This is Illamasqua Caress, a gorgeous baby blue creme. Easy two-coat application, smooth finish, stunning colour. When they do pastels right, they really do them right, and this is a fabulous example.



I managed to leave it all of two hours before deciding that what was clearly missing was a bumpy, draggy, horrible topcoat to frakk everything up. Lo! What's that I spy? It's Barry M Blue crackle!



I hesitated to show you this one because it was SO AWFUL. I still don't know how it's so bad, but it dragged the base polish everywhere, dented it, didn't crack properly, and was still really bumpy and gritty after two coats of lumos. Some days I really, really hate myself for doing stupid things like this to perfectly lovely polishes. I took it straight off because I was too embarrassed to leave the house with such a revolting manicure...*shame face*

On the plus side, this used up two polishes in my no-buy challenge.

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TiNS The Neptune and China Glaze Lightening Bolt Crackle

TiNS makes the most incredible glitterbombs. Alas they are fairly expensive and rare in the US so I have to rely on... well, an MUAer by the name of TerribleTerra. She gets tons of polishes from Asia, sells the ones she doesn't want... and over the years, I must've purchased around 100 polishes from her. Nearly all my Asian polishes -- with the exception of the ones I purchased this year from Taipei -- are from her.

TiNS The Neptune

Cobalt blue jelly, chunky (but not in a dull and icky way) with different sizes of holo glitter. This was two coats and on the third day of wear (as you can see from the tipwear/shrinkage). Most TiNS glitter polishes sparkle without the benefit of actual sunlight. I. just. love.

Close-up of The Neptune

ALL sorts of holo glitter: larger hex glitter, smaller round glitter, square glitter... glitter galore!

TiNS The Neptune with China Glaze Lightening Bolt on top

This didn't turn out as well as I hoped it would. Part of it is that the white crackle never quite looks as opaque as one feels like it should. Part of it was that the contrast wasn't striking enough.

BUT! Take a peek at this pic. I wish all the nails turned out like my ring finger:

Crackle polishes were made for macro mode, don't you think?

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Winning Duo - OPI Spark de Triomphe + White Shatter

OPI Spark de Triomphe and White Shatter are two polishes newly introduced in one of the Serena Glam Slam duos released for the French Open. (Spark de Triomphe...get it? *eyeroll*)

Spark de Triomphe deserves kudos for being amazing all on its own! It's a gorgeous combination of gold and silver that needs to be seen in person to be fully appreciated, but here it is...

It's packed with different sizes of glitter...

My favourite are the larger discs of glitter that seem to sit on top of the polish - it looks completely jewel-encrusted...

When I initially purchased the duo, I fully intended to swap or give away White Shatter, but I tried it for fun and ended up really loving it!!

Spark de Triomphe peeks through the cracks - so when you coat your nails in a couple layers of topcoat, the end result looks like an opaque white stone with veins of gold sparkle running through it - a gorgeous gemstone.

This duo is a total game-set-match style win for me! (Maybe it will be for Serena as well?) I expect that Spark de Triomphe will be on my toes many times this summer...and maybe even on my tips if I need a glittery pick-me-up! And now that I know I actually *like* the White Shatter, I'm excited to try it over some pastels.

What are your thoughts on the Serena French Open duos? Are you planning to pick any of them up?

kittytokaren

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*insert pirate joke here* - my POTC picks!

You've already heard (way too much) about the OPI Pirates of the Caribbean Collection, I'm sure, so let's get to the meat of this sandwich!

These are the colours I chose from the collection, and I think they are all must-haves!

Stranger Tides

Probably my #1 favourite - a murky pistachio green that feels like it was designed with my skin tone in mind. Neutral enough to be wearable as it doesn't scream "GREEN!", but different enough to be edgy and cool. I. Am. In. Love!!! Unfortunately, this is *really* close to Essie Da Bush - from the Essie Resort 2011 Collection, which you will see soon - but I love the colour so much I'm going to keep both. (For those interested, Da Bush is a bit darker and ever-so-slightly more blue-toned.)

Skull & Glossbones

Again, this feels like it was made for me. Usually greys turn purple on me thanks to my yellow skin - even Essie Chinchilly, which many people claimed had green undertones, looks purple on me. See? Other greys are just too cool-toned for me and look...off. But this is my perfect light grey! It is somehow grey and warm at the same time. *swoon*

Steady As She Rose

I wasn't expecting to like this as much as I do! It's a great pale pink - it looks practically lavender in the bottle! On the nail murky and blue enough to keep this pink from being too sugary and girly - it's feet stay firmly in chic territory. Hallelujah!

Mermaid's Tears

This is my one kind of iffy one, but to be fair, I haven't worn it as a full-on all-day-all-night manicure yet. (And it looks stunning on my friend Megan!) It's like a murky piece of polished jade - I was surprised to see that it was quite similar to Essie Turquoise & Caicos in colour, but not necessarily in saturation/brightness. To me, this is T&C's dustier, more sedate cousin. I think that while T&C is out at the beach in a bikini, Mermaid's Tears is brooding in a cafe. I'm just not sure this colour looks *quite right* on my tips...

Silver Shatter

This is probably the one I will use the least, but have the most fun with! A little fling every now and again is just fine (with polish)! Here it is over Essie Mint Candy Apple, for funsies. It's SUPER shimmery, but doesn't seem to crack as much as Black Shatter. I like to apply thicker coats to get more divided cracks - less of the spider-web effect.

I know this collection is being talked and talked and talkedandtalkedandtalked about, but I have to say it is my favourite OPI collection since Holiday 2009. I feel like these dirgy (dirty + dingy) pastels are right up my alley and will have a long, happy and loved life in my collection. Couldn't be happier. Just when we thought Johnny Depp couldn't get any better...

Did you score any POTC polishes? Which ones and what do you think?

kittytokaren

P.S. Shout-out to my friend Keeley who is doing her preliminary exam today! Good luck and knock 'em dead with your knowledge!!!

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Sally Hansen Problem Child: Happy Mother's Day!

Look, I'm alive... and have polished nails. Who knew? (I've barely known. I think I've changed my nails three times in the last three weeks.)

In honor of Mother's Day...

Sally Hansen Problem Child

I'm not the biggest fan of the SH Complete line: the brush can be a bit too thick and the pastels never go over well (too streaky). But I love their dark shimmery colors. They apply so perfectly. If you apply thick coats, you can get away with one coat but this mani was two coats. It looks like a generic dark purple shimmer until you look really closely: it's actually chock full of blue and pink microglitter (or maybe just very bright shimmer) with coppery flakies! I wouldn't have thought it'd make a good combination, but it was lovely. Also, this manicure dried completely in less than ten minutes... and then lasted over eight days without chipping.

Close-up of Problem Child

But wearing a mani for eight days gets boring. So then I decided to layer Clarins 230 over it to see if any magic would occur. (Eh, it did not. Hence, no picture.) But I did have a bottle of China Glaze Broken Hearted crackle polish near me so on it went:

China Glaze Broken Hearted over Sally Hansen Problem Child (and Clarins 230)

If you click for a closeup, the cracks in the polish look a bit like sparkly lava. Sort of.

Well, my mother is finally coming back to the States from Taipei tomorrow (now that ALL the funerary ceremonies are done... you know... a month after my grandfather's passing) so I have no one to call for mother's day. I'm sending her a "Welcome Home" bouquet of flowers though to be delivered on Tuesday.

The past two weeks since I got back from Taipei have been such a blur. I seemed to have gotten a lot of nail polish. (More sparklies from Taipei, picked up a lot of Anna Sui at Duty Free, did the Zoya Exchange, ordered off of an etailer, bought Chanel Mimosa, and splurged on some Diors -- haven't decided whether I want the whole Pirates of the Caribbean collection. Probably not. Just a couple of colors. I REALLY want the Serena Williams Glam Slam France set.) This is just pathological because I don't have time to even really do my nails this quarter.

Hey, I needed something to do while procrastinating from making a poster for a grad school research symposium that I only had two days to prepare for. The "leaving it to last minute" thing was real smart of me.

Now til the end of the quarter is going to be hell.

• TA-wise: one more midterm, five more homework assignments, three more worksheets, three more sections, a couple more pop quizzes, and a final exam. TA hell will be largely over by June 2nd.
• Psychonomics 2011 abstract is due June 1st. My advisor and I hope to submit my newest study, whose results are very promising. I should start writing that today.
• Analyze the results of Exp 2 (currently running) for the June 1st deadline.
• Create and run Exp 3 and have preliminary results for the June 1st deadline.
• Do preliminary corpus analysis for another, completely separate experiment.
• Find an RA for the summer.
• Revise/resubmit a paper on the research I did the first two years of grad school to a journal before their imposed (90 day) July deadline. This is going to involve many hours of recoding and reanalyzing data. Not looking forward to it.

I just want to go back to sleep.

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China Glaze crackles - crushed candy and lightning bolt

Hello! My first post here. Thank you for having me on board, I look forward to posting reams of manicure pictures and exciting all the lovely readers rather than boring all my lovely colleagues.

My early efforts with crackle polishes were, frankly, pretty grim. I tried painting it thinly, which just made it look patchy, speckly and weird. I kept trying colour combinations that seemed great in my head (navy and white, how can that go wrong?) but which looked like I'd done myself some kind of grievous injury in practice. I nearly gave up. But then I tried painting thick coats and picking complementary base colours, and now I'm quite pleased with the effect. The finish makes me think of duck eggs for some reason.

China Glaze crushed candy over Essie playa del platinum

China Glaze lightning bolt over OPI hot & spicy

The only thing I am not loving about the crackles is my total inability to apply them neatly. My only objective is getting it on thick and quick before it starts to crack. As a result it usually ends up all over my fingers. My 'swatch hand' isn't too bad, but the reason I didn't take any pictures of my dominant right hand is that it's flecked with bits of white crackle everywhere (in some frankly improbable places) and I expect my colleagues will be asking me tomorrow whether I’ve been repainting my bathroom.

Looking forward to the OPI and Models Own releases later on in the summer to try some different colours – orange, navy and turquoise are high on my list of current wants!

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OPI Black Shatter

I do not live in a hole, and I realize that you have seen fifty million photos of OPI's Black Shatter...


AND I DON'T CARE! It's awesome, it's awesome, it's awesome and I LOVE IT!

Shown here is Black Shatter over China Glaze Millennium and it is AMAZING! I taught a ceramics class the day after I applied this lovely combo and at one point I had to stop the critique because too many students WERE DISTRACTED BY THE AWESOMENESS ON MY NAILS. True story.

... and talk about a dream to remove! Presto and it was gone!

Awesome.

Happy day, all!

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Low Contrast Crack!

So by now I'm sure you have all heard of OPI Black Shatter - the "new" (read: 90's throwback. Were the 90s really long enough ago for throwbacks?) polish trend that's putting everyone in a panic. Black Shatter has been released in two OPI collections so far - the Serena Glam Slam Australian Open set, and the Katy Perry collection. I am sure that we will see different colours of shatter (red/pink, white) in upcoming Serena collections. Top secret intel.

The crackle finish...I wasn't sure how I felt about this making a return to trendiness. It can go way tacky, messy and just not wearable for me. Both of the collections this was released in suggest that you pair Black Shatter with a colourful, sparkly polish underneath. BUT I was itching to try it in a slightly different way. I wanted to keep the finishes of the polish the same (creme), and the contrast low to make the effect a little more subtle. So I wanted to show it to you with one of my favourite polishes - Essie Smokin' Hot.

OPI Black Shatter over Essie Smokin' Hot:

Another shot from another angle and with flash - I put so much topcoat on, it was so shiny and reflective it was hard to get a clear pic!

Result? I'm surprised, but I love it. Yes! I think its cool. Appropriate for all occasions? No. But I'm enjoying it. I also tried this over OPI Suzi Skis in the Pyrenees and OPI William Tell Me About OPI and I love those combinations as well. I'd also like to try it over the same colour, but a different finish - i.e. a shimmery black like Chanel Noir Ceramic.

Have you tried the crack? What's your verdict - whack/not whack?

kittytokaren

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