Metal Madness - Failed Manicure and an Old Konad

So I had planned to swatch New York Summer Hot Metallic Gold for today but last night I decided to upgrade my computer.  So after a trip to Fry's and 2.5 hours spent swapping out my memory, processor, cpu fan and motherboard (read that as take the entire damn box apart and rebuild with the new parts) it was late and I didn't have time to change my polish.  I did have time to bleed all over my jeans as the cooling fan has sharp bits on it.

So instead I am posting one of the first pictures I took of my nails. This is China Glaze Avalanche (lavender metallic) with the zebra pattern from M57 China Glaze Millennium stamped.  I haven't swatched/reviewed either of these yet but I have used multiple times.  The Avalanche is pretty but you end up with pretty awful brushstrokes, totally alright if you are Konading with or over it though!  Millennium is great to Konad with though it does tend to dry really fast.

Sorry about the crappy photo quality, this was taken with my phone and no flash.

Metal Madness - Fingerpaints Easel Come, Easel Go

Last week I was in Sally hoping for awesome clearance nail polish and I stumbled across a Fingerpaints that looked more like a bottle of Minx than polish.  The best part is that it had a giant orange clearance sticker on it, yay!

Easel Come, Easel Go is a silver foil that looks like molten silver in the bottle.  I just knew it was going to be more than the average silver nail polish.  The formula was amazing and I had glossy, metallic nails in 2 thin coats.  Up close there is a slight texture but at arms length it really looks like my nails have been chromed.  The best response about this little gem is something one of my students said during lab today, "your nails are very distracting today, I was having a hard time paying attention to notes because they are so shiny."

I think this a a pretty close dupe for Orly Shine from the new Foil FX Collection but I still haven't bought that one yet.   

Has anyone else tested out Shine and Easel Come, Easel Go?

Easel Come Easel Go (2 coats) with top

 

Ooooooh shiny! Easel Come Easel Go up close and personal

 

I match my coffee mug!

Metal Madness - Orly Iron Butterfly

For my second metallic this week I choose Orly Iron Butterfly (also in the recent package from Head 2 Toe).   Let me start by saying I love this polish...LOVE.  I saw swatches on line and new that I had to possess it. I even liked how this one looked matte!

 

Orly Iron Butterfly 3 coats no top, excuse the dirty cuticles please, this stuff is a beast to get out of dried skin.

It applied nice and thin and smooth, though that means all the ridges in my nails are apparent.   Again as a matte, foil-like polish it dried pretty much instantly.  Application was easy and full coverage was easily attained with 2 coats (though this is 3 since I had issues with 2 chipping).  As a matte this looks like really tarnished silver or pewter, a blackened silver if you will.

I am not sure If I can really call this a metallic, I mean it has silver in it but it also has a lot of black/charcoal.  It reminds me a lot of Man Glaze's Matte is Murder except more sparkly.  Up close it was almost like a black matte with silver micro glitter though.

Close up of Orly Iron Butterfly without top.  Its blurry but you can see the weird mottled pattern that is present in the Orly Metal Chic Metallic Matte collection.  The Glam Rock has a similar pattern.

I had a REALLY hard time keeping this on my nails, it just kept chipping.  I'm not sure if it was my base coat or what (I am thinking about trying the Orly Bonder with it, has anyone used it?).  Eventually I just touched up the chips and slapped on a top coat to solve the problem.  Interesting side note...when you remove this polish (and the Glam Rock) you end up with a nice smooth layer of just the silver initially.  The remover seems to take the gray or copper polish off before the silver foil (I think its foil).  This made touch ups easy as pie since I could use a dab of polish and have a nice smooth surface of silver foil to paint.  No weird ridges from filling in chips. 

 

Iron Butterfly (3 coats) with top

As much as I love this as a matte, I love it even more with a topcoat on it.  It gives the polish a whole different look.  Much more black and silver glittery and less tarnished metal.  The gloss seems to accentuate the individual silver bits and make the charcoal look darker.

 

Iron Butterfly with top coat up close and personal

I didn't get the Solid Gold as it reminds me a lot of OPI Bling Dynasty, well the antiqued gold part does.  I know the style of polish is completely different but I already have 3 antique gold polishes.  Does anyone have both Solid Gold and Bling Dynasty?  How close are the colors?

Sinful Colors Fall '09 Haul - Part 2

Day 6 of swatching Sinful Colors...

All I have left are pearl/frosts and glitters in clear bases.  I bought the frosts thinking I might be able to Konad with them before I realized how thin and sheer most of these polishes are.  I wasn't particularly excited about testing these out but I figured they would be a good base to Konad over.


Social Ladder is a sheer pale pink with a slight iridescent shimmer.  It takes 3 coats to achieve bottle color and I still had visible nail lines.  If I was looking for a sheer nude color or for something to use like a CND effect this would be a decent choice.  It is a however streaky and doesn't apply evenly. 

Social Ladder 3 coats with top coat

Tokyo Pearl is a creamy white pearl that is extremely streaky.  I mean streaks galore.  Even after three coats I still had obvious brush strokes and had already developed bubbles.

Tokyo Pearl 3 coats with top coat

Next is Out of This World which on the first coat had potential to be out of this world, it is a sheer silver base with tiny micro glitter that is very sparse.  The microglitter is silver iridescent and in certain lights looks like a holo.  Unfortunately once you put a 2nd or 3rd coat on it just looks like blah silver polish with some lumpy bits.  As a sheer over a regular base I think this would be great.

Three coats Out of This World and top coat

All About You is a brassy gold glitter in a clear base.  The bottle is densely packed with glitter but this is not a polish that is going to give you full coverage alone.  I used three coats here and it is still completely sheer though from a distance my nails did look gold.

All About You 3 coats, excuse the smudge these
were fairly thick coats in an attempt to get full coverage
and I smudged one picking up the camera.

Nail Junkie is AMAZING in the bottle, truly amazing.  A mix of chunky turquoise glitter and iridescent hexagonal glitter this polish has glints of gold, pink silver and green when it reflects light.  It gives full coverage in three coats though there is a visible nail line in bright light and the occasional bald spot, with four coats this could be covered up.   Sounds great right?  It should be but on me it is just....off.  I don't know if its the color or the texture or what but this polish looks awful on me.  I look at it in the bottle and LOVE it, I put it on and bleech.  I think I will try one coat off it over a really dark purple like OPI Siberian Nights and see if that makes it usable.  Right now its in my Franken supply drawer.

Nail Junkie 3 coats.  I know my cuticles have polish
on them...its hard to get motivated to clean them
when the polish looks so bad I know I am taking it off.

So 10 bottles of Sinful Colors late and I have learned to be a bit more selective with my drug store purchases.  Some of these I love and some were a complete disaster.  I did see two bottles on the display last week that look like duochomes so I will probably be stopping back as Walgreens for a new haul sometime soon.