China Glaze Crackle Metals & Ulta OPI Exclusives

It took me 4 Sallys to track down all 6 from the Crackle Metal collection, but it was worth it =)

Left to right China Glaze Tarnished Gold, Cracked Medallion, Platinum Pieces, Latticed Lilac, Haute Metal, Oxidized Aqua.  I didn't notice until I was taking pics for this post, that the bottles are 2 different styles!  Most have the "Crackle Glaze" bottle, but the silver & teal just have "Crackle" off to the side of the normal China Glaze. Weird.

I also picked up this on clearance at one of the Sallys - I don't even remember which one LOL, and I forgot to include it in the vid:

Finger Paints Amethyst Atelier.

Next OPIs from Ulta - as I mention in the vid, if you want more than one free bottle with their current promotion, talk with your sales rep because it is one free over $15.00, rather than buy 2 get 1 free ... it equals out to the same amount by with the dollar requirement it took 2 transactions for me to get my 2 free bottles:

Top:  Ulta Exclusive Shimmer into Summer collection - Glitter-ally The Best Silver Ever, Sparkle Teal Sunrise, I'm an Aqua-Holic, How You Blue-In?  Bottom:  from the Nice Stems collection - Be a Dahlia Won't You & I Lily Love You.

And from the Born Pretty Store:

I received this Violet Crackle from Laushine to review.  You can save 10% there using the coupon code "CWJ691" through the end of the year on any nail art or nail polish products from their site.

Here's the vid with some swatches & comparisons:

After the fact, I decided I really wanted to see if I could get I Lily Love You & Sparkle Teal Sunrise to look like they do in the bottle with some layering.  And with a colored base rather than plain, or over black or white, I was really quite pleased.

Right is I Lily Love You over Sally Hansen Digital, left over Be a Dahlia Won't You:

I like I Lily Love You over Be a Dahlia Won't You - maybe they were meant together since they're from the same collection.

For Sparkle Teal Sunrise I tried 4 different base colors - left to right layered over:  I'm an Aqua-Holic, How You Blue-In?, Zoya Charla & China Glaze Watermelon Rind:

I think it is closest to bottle color over Watermelon Rind, but I also really like it over How You Blue-In?  Which do you prefer?

Thanks for reading.

~Colette

(Some products were sent to me for review)

FAQ: Crackle/Shatter Comparison

It's really too bad that I don't have any of the crack polishes from back in the day, live Revlon, but I do have 4 different brands (China Glaze Crackle Glaze, OPI Shatter, Sally Hanson Crackle Overcoat & Kelier Crack Polish) & I finally got around to shooting this on Friday, editing yesterday & now uploading today =)  Enjoy:

 

 

Crack polishes are not my favorite, but they're kind of growing on me.  What do you think of them?

 

Thanks for reading.

~Colette

NOTD: Zoya Tangy + m71*

I have been waiting for St. Patrick's Day so that I could use this shamrock image, from Born Pretty image plate m71*.  I think it's just perfect.  I did the stamping with Green Konad special polish, and the base color is Zoya Tangy - which is very fun & bright, & if you get it at just the right angle you can see almost an orangish duo-chrome, which was of course impossible to accurately capture in pics so you'll have to take my word on it:

 

 

I got this a few years ago during Zoya's "Green Friday" - so if you participated in that lovely event, dig this one out & hold it at an angle, I was really surprised to see the color flash.

 

Thanks for reading =)

~Colette

Review: Born Pretty Stamping Plates

OK, so it took me a while to get around to reviewing these, being so distracted with holiday-related nails, but I did use them the other day over Merry Mittens, and although obviously I haven't gone through & tried out each & every design, I want to share my impressions with you guys.  You can find these & more at the Born Pretty website http://www.bornprettystore.com/, and you can enter promo code "COLE10K31" to get 10% through 3/31/11. 

 

The image plate set that I received is the 12-piece that includes the Hello Kitty design =)  You can check out all the sets that they have avaiable HERE in the Nail Art Stamping section. 

 

The image plates very similar to the Bundle Monster plates in that they come with a plastic film & a rather sharp edge that makes it tricky to remove.  I don't think they're quite as sharp as the BM ones though.  They are also unfinished on the back, but a slightly thicker disc of metal.  The biggest difference between these & both the Bundle Monster & original Konad is that they're octagonal rather than round

 

Like Konad plates, they are labelled with M & the plate number - although some of their M's are capitalized & Konad's are lowercase, when I refer to these plates & also for my tagging purposes you'll see an asterisk * following.  But don't think that they're the same designs just because they're labelled the same.

 

Have a look at the completely different m72 vs. m72*:

 

 

And here, m12* has images from both m36 & m40:

 

The designs seem well-etched - deep enough that you get the whole design when you stamp, and all of the details came through cleanly on the design that I used, from plate m71* .  Although some familiar Konad images are included, I didn't end up with very much duplication, most of the designs are original & include some designs that have a mirror-image right next to them on the plate.

 

Overall, these are very reasonably priced at less than a dollar a plate, and worth it in my opinion if you'd like to expand you image plate collection.  Thanks for reading.

 

~Colette

 

(These products were sent to me for review)

NOTD: Finger Paints Merry Mittens + m71*

Merry Mittens is from the Finger Paints holiday collection.  I did the stamping with China Glaze Passion & Born Pretty image plate m71* - since the BP plates use the same letter as regular Konad plates, I'll be denoting them with an asterisk when I post & in the tags.  I was going to use Ghetto Fabulous for the stamping but it wasn't showing up, was going to use 2030 but it wouldn't transfer - sometimes I think the Khrome polishes dry a bit faster than the older Romantiques, making the Romantiques easier to stamp with.  Anyway, here's the finished product:

I plan to have my full review of the plates up tomorrow, so stay tuned for that, and to really check some things off of my to-do list this weekend, like the top 20 =)  Also reeeaaally need to upgrade my Picasa storage before I just run into the wall when I go to upload LOL.  Thanks for reading.

~Colette

Review: Kelier Nail Crack Polish

I was recently contact to do some reviews for Born Pretty - you can check out their shop at http://www.bornprettystore.com/ and they sell a variety of both cosmetics, nail polish & nail art supplies.  They sent me a variety of fun things to play with & the first thing I'm going to review is the Crack Polish.

 

A lot of you probably remember cracking polish from back in the day, and it recently has been making a comeback.  Jessica from Born Pretty sent me 2 colors, black & blue:

 

 

And I decided to give them a try over a variety of colors - I started out with each over red, green metallic & silver chrome:

 

I love the cracking effect, both with the big chunks & the one silver where I got a really fine crackle.  It seems to depend both on the application & the underlying polish - I gave it another try over gold & purple (although the purple looks pink in the pic) - the left nail of each had a pretty thin layer of the Crack Polish, the right nail had a slightly thicker coating:

 

 

So you can see, I would say the thinner the better.  Definitely would take a little bit of practice to get an even coat on all your nails, so that the whole manicure had a uniform level of cracking & not one nail with big chunks & the next with little bitty ones - unless that's a look you were going for.  Born Pretty has Crack polish in a variety of colors that you can check out HERE.

 

Only downside was when I tried to just apply over my existing mani, when it cracked it started to totally flake off before I could put a top coat on.  I think maybe my nails weren't quite clean enough?  Next time I try that I would make sure they're squeaky clean with alcohol or vinegar beforehand.

 

I also received some rhinestones & some stamping plates, so stay tuned for those reviews!  Thanks for reading =)

 

~Colette

 

(These products were sent to me for review)