Hauls and a new brand for me

I haven't posted my hauls lately but I've picked up a few new polishes.  One thing I was particularly excited about was that I found Barielle polishes in Canada!  Mind you they were at Winners and a very limited selection but they were only $5!  There was actually only one polish that I absolutely had to have:

This is 2 coats of Barielle Slate of Affairs.  Nice formula and I love the shimmer in it but the colour doesn't look great on me for some reason.  It's funny because these murky dusty colours are usually my favourite, and especially the cremes with subtle shimmer, so I don't know why I don't like this one.

So something I'd been meaning to try for awhile was multi-coloured stamping.  Here I used BM210 with Color Club's Cold Metal (dark blue), Foil Me Once (pink) and Perfect Mol-ten (green).  Unfortunately sucky photo once again and you can't really see the different colours but it's really not all that noticeable on the nail anyways.

So here's the rest of the haul from the last few weeks:

Color Club Foiled and Bohemian Collections - Winners $12.99

Sally Hansen Diamond Strength - Brooding Blue and Temperamental Purple (3/$5 at Len's Mill)
Nina Ultra Pro - Ink-Ling and Mossy Britches ($3 on sale at Sally's)
Icing Chrome - Light Pink ($2 bargain bin)
Icing Mood - Sultry/Moody ($2 bargain bin)
Orly - Androgynie ($6.99 at Winners)
Barielle - Slate of Affairs ($5 at Winners)
NailWOW Polish Strips ($2.50 at Liquidation World/Big Lots)

I was pretty happy to see the new Orly collection at Winners as well.  They also had them in little gift sets with 3 polishes for $15 and a free gift.  The thing that sucks most about Winners is that every one has different stock.  I got the Orly and the Barielle at 2 different stores and neither had both.  I really do need to cool it with the spending though.  I couldn't possibly get through all the polish I currently own even if I changed my polish every day for the rest of my life.  Scary huh?

Later
P

My boyfriend kicks ass - part 2

I would have preferred to test this out on bare nails but I've been doing the gel thing lately and I didn't have much choice.  So this is over top of my previous Charla-dupe gel mani.

I started with 2 coats of China Glaze Hologram (which, by the way, has become sort of chunky similar to Nfu Oh 61?!).  Then I added 3 coats of my Holo Auto Paint Top Coat.

Although I don't yet own any of the Kaleidoscopes, I think this is probably similar.  It definitely shows more holo than the Tronicas but it's not really linear.  I guess the closest thing I own to this would be the Milani 3D's, but it even more holographic than those as well.

I didn't wear this for very long since it was a lot of layers of nail polish and it drove me nuts.  I had to add 2 top coats to this as well because it was a bit gritty.  I do like it a lot though.  So I stripped it back down to my gel mani and did a quick stamp:

I really liked the fishnet pattern so I decided to try it out again.  This time with Billie French White and BM209.

And here's a parting shot of my bottle of rainbow-y awesomeness:

Later
P

Can I just say...

That my boyfriend fucking rocks!

We were recently discussing Christmas and I told him 'you can't go wrong with nail polish' lol.  So he told me to make a list, which I did and of course included all the obligatory hard to find and retired polishes, with a little addition at the end of the list - Spectraflair.

So last night he comes home and sets a little bottle down on the table.  It looks like a pretty silvery holo powder.  But he tells me it's not Spectraflair and that he can't get it here, but this stuff is pretty close.  So I immediately ran upstairs to grab my franken supplies.

I mixed it with a random topcoat.  Definitely not Spectraflair but still really cool.  It immediately reminded me of China Glaze's Fairy Dust but I made it more dense.

1.  1 coat Sally Hansen Celeb City, 3 coats Holo Auto Paint
2.  4 coats Holo Auto Paint
3. 1 coat Black Creme, 1 coat Holo Auto Paint
4. 1 coat Black Creme, 2 coats China Glaze Fairy Dust
5. 1 coat Black Creme, 2 coats Holo Auto Paint

The particles are bigger than Fairy Dust and the holo is almost linear at some angles.  I tried mixing it with a grey creme polish but it didn't work.  I thought I would like it best over silver but I prefer the one on it's own.  Sadly I don't think that will translate on the nail.

My boyfriend says they do have a finer grade as well he will try to get for me and I've asked him to find out the name of it.  He did get me a nice size free sample of this.  Damn, if he brings me home shit like this just randomly then I can only imagine what I'll find for Christmas!

Oh and just as an aside, he was laughing his ass off at me while I was taking photos of my nail wheel.  But that's okay because his Star Wars obsession is way beyond my nail polish obsession lol.

Later
P

Testing out the knock-offs

Soak off UV Gel polishes are expensive, like crazy expensive.  At Sally's a small .3oz bottle of Gelish is $18 here in Canada!  Yes that's with a club card!  I only bought 2 of them when they were on sale and used a coupon as well.

So here we have 3 coats of Gelish Oocha Coocha Bing Bang Bam - Alakazy Alakazam.  I'm holding Zoya's Charla for comparison because it's actually pretty close in colour, just a tad less gold.

And here I added a coat of a chinese knock-off polish called Jun Yu and the colour is A52 - a multi-sized holographic glitter in a clear base.  This polish cost me around $7 which is a bargain compared to the $18 Gelish and especially since it's double the size!  However I've heard some terrible things about these knock-offs, specifically how they are insanely difficult to remove.

So I'm hoping with 3 layers of Gelish underneath that I won't have issues with removal but we shall see.  I bought 5 of these and they are all layering polishes.  I'm planning a trip to Michigan next week so I will likely pick up a few Gelish polishes from Sally's while I'm there because they're much cheaper in the US.  Why do these have to be so friggen expensive?

So I've done a lot of reading and research on these polishes and I'll share some info with you in case anyone is considering doing their own soak off UV gel manis at home:

There are UV lights and LED lights for curing.  Not all the polishes cure under LED but they all do under UV.  LED lights are 3-5x the price of UV lights but the cure times are half that of UV.  I use the CND Shellac UV lamp.

You need special base and top coats but the brands are all interchangeable as far as I can tell.  Some work better than others.  What works best for me is the Shellac base coat and the Gelish top coat.

It takes about an hour and a half, give or take, to do your own manicure.  It takes about half an hour less to do it on someone else since you can paint one hand while the other cures.  However you need to keep your brush and polish jar away from the lamp because the light will harden it.

Removal is the same tinfoil method used for glitter. With the Gelish top coat it needs a light surface filing first.  I usually soak for about 15 minutes to be safe.  With my Shellac base/Gelish top combo the polish comes off in a sheet and my nails are ready to go.

I had a bit of trouble for my first few manis but now that I've worked out the kinks I absolutely love it and think it was a great investment.

Later
P

Halfway there!

So here we have my Shellac/Gelish combo on day one:

And here we are after one full week at Day 7:

I'm impressed!  Minimal regrowth and no chips at all!  My hands were majorly abused during those 7 days as well since I was sick and spent a few nights soaking in the hot tub, plus I had painted and removed regular polish on top at least 3 times by then.

So let's paint it some more!

This is Revlon Top Speed in Grape - 1 coat.  This was the first polish I've tried from the Top Speed line.  I'm not impressed.  This did not dry as fast as the Sally Hansen Insta-Dri polishes and it was really only dry to touch on the surface since about 5 minutes after painting I gouged one nail pretty badly.  The colour is amazing though and for some reason kept photographing blue but this pic is pretty accurate.

I was in a glitter kind of mood so I added one coat of Love My Nails in All That.  This was a cheap-ass $1 polish I picked up at a Walmart in the US.  It's got tiny green glitter and square purple and silver holo glitter in it.  I wish I could capture this better.  I like it.

Later
P