Showing posts with label Black. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Black. Show all posts

Rescue Beauty Lounge Black Russian

Merry Christmas Eve or Merry Christmas, depending on where you're located! Today I have another black with red glitter polish, although this one is quite different than Lippmann's Ruby Red Slippers I posted about yesterday. RBL's Black Russian is much more black with less noticeable red glitter than the Ruby Red Slippers, but it is still a wonderful shade. This applied in typical RBL fashion (2 coats), and I've got to admit, these have always had one of the best, if not the best formula of any polish I own. I'll keep this post short, because yes, it's Christmas Eve and I still have tons of wrapping and food prep to do! I hate wrapping!


Lippmann Ruby Red Slippers

I think this may just be my manicure for Christmas Eve! Ruby Red Slippers is nothing short of stunning. It has a blackened base that upon the first coat, is a watery charcoal color with sparse coverage. The second coat builds the base and the glitter to near perfection, although I think I may opt for 3 thin coats when I do this again tomorrow. What you end up with is an abundance of sparkling rubies awash in a sea of black glossiness. Top it off with a matte top coat and you get another look altogether. Simply put, I love this one.


Chanel Black Pearl

Good morning, Dear Reader!

Last night I tried out Chanel Black Pearl, so that's what I have for you today.  Black Pearl applied well, and it was good in two coats.  It's an almost frosty charcoal with a bit of a teal flash, and I think it really does look a lot like a black pearl.

Chanel Black Pearl
Chanel Black Pearl Nail Polish, Two Coats
I like it, as I expected to, but I think that I prefer Peche Nacree to Black Pearl by a good margin.

That's it for today, Dear Reader.  Until next time, love and nail polish to you!  


Petites Midnight Frost-$1.79 Buys A Nice Polish!

Above & Below: Petites brand in Midnight Frost. I used 2 coats, and it dried quickly.
Below: With one coat of Essie's Matte About You.
Above & Below: A comparison to Orly's Iron Butterfly shows that they are similar, but the Petites has much less glitter and the glitter itself is larger in the Petites.
Today I have another bargain drugstore nail polish for you, this one is Petites brand in Midnight Frost. Petites are manufactured right here in my home state by Scherer, Inc. They also manufacture the Chameleon and CQ brands, often found along side the Petites. I picked mine up at Rite-Aid, and I believe they can also be found at many Walmart stores as well. Midnight Frost is a black creme base, filled with tiny silver glitter. I used 2 coats and it covered quite well. I kept picturing Orly's new matte polish in Iron Butterfly as I applied this, wondering how close this would look to the Orly if I applied a matte top coat. As you can see, it is somewhat similar. For $1.79, I think it was money well spent, because this is a very pretty black glitter polish.


Sally Hansen's New Complete Salon Swatches

Above & Below: Midnight in NY is a black creme base with very subtle multi-colored microfine glitter. The black is one shade away from black in my opinion, and could be considered the deepest shade of charcoal grey. All of these polishes are shown indoors using 2 coats.
Below: Gray on Gray is a blue gray shade that I would say doesn't lean more toward blue or gray, but rather a true blue gray shade.

Below: A bottle picture comparison alongside Barielle's Slate of Affairs. As you can see, Slate of Affairs is much more blue.
Below: Fairy Teal is a true teal, although it does have a slight 'dusty' look to it in real life.

Below: Bottle comparison picture of Fairy Teal with Misa's Dirty Sexy Money. They are in the same color family, but not all that similar.
Below: Look at the inconsistency in the brush cut on Midnight in NY (L) and Gray on Gray (R). The one on the left is tapered (and has some stray hairs!), while the one on the right is much less tapered and straighter along the end. Quality Control was obviously not involved in the production of these!
I wanted to try out some of the new Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicures I picked up earlier this week (click here for original post), so today I have swatches of Midnight in NY, Gray by Gray, and Fairy Teal to show you. This new line has quite a few shades in it and they retail for about $6.50. I found mine in an end cap display at Walmart. These have the flat stem and tapered brush, much like their Insta-Dri line. I don't dislike the brush/stem structure, but it does take a bit of getting used to. As you'll notice above, the brushes are inconsistent in their cut from bottle to bottle, even though these are all from the same line. My biggest complaint with these, as with the Insta-Dri line, is that it seems to me that the bottle opening should be a little wider. The bottles themselves are also a new shape and are quite heavy and substantial. Otherwise, the polishes all applied nicely in 2 coats, dried quickly, and although they all seemed somewhat thick, the formula caused me no application problems. All in all, I think Sally Hansen's formulas and color range are improving with every new collection.


Barielle Coalest Day of the Year

Good morning, Dear Reader!

The next color I have to show you from Barielle's Holiday Hustle Collection is Coalest Day of the Year.  It's described by the manufacturer as "a carbon gray with white pearls," but I think it's charcoal with silver-white shimmer.  Probably six of one and a half dozen of the other, but that's what I'd call it.

Anyhow, the polish is a bit on the thick side, but thin coats make it really manageable.  Coalest Day of the Year is good in two coats, and I also found it to be quite durable.  After this manicure dried but before I'd taken a picture of it, something went wrong around the house that required a whole bunch of cleaning where my hands were in water.  I was certain it would be ruined when I finished tidying up, and there's just a small amount of tip wear, which impressed me.  Here's the manicure after being tested.

Barielle Coalest Day of the Year Nail Polish
Barielle Coalest Day of the Year Nail Polish, Two Coats Dry
Dangit, I just noticed the shadow over my pinky in the picture, but this one showed the polish best, so I'm keeping it shadow and all.  Please just ignore my pinky.

Back to the polish... I see where the folks at Barielle are coming from calling this "carbon gray."  It does look a little bit like pencil lead.  The really strong shimmer you can see in this Coalest Day of the Year is what differentiates it from other charcoal shimmers for me.  Since I'm often of the "The More, The Merrier" school of thought when it comes to shimmer, I like it a lot and would reach for this shade before most charcoals.

That's the update for today, Dear Reader.  Until next time, love and nail polish to you!  


*This was sent to me for review by the manufacturer.


VNS/China Glaze Black Magic vs. Fortune Teller

Above & Below: China Glaze's exclusive Black Magic for Victoria Nail Supply shown with 2 coats, no top coat.


Above & Below: Bottle comparisons of Black Magic (left) and Fortune Teller (right). The top one is in filtered sunlight, the bottom picture indoors, with a flash.


Above: Bottle picture of Black Magic. I love how the glitter looks in the bottle! It actually applies very evenly on the nail and as you can see, it's a little more of a bright orange, whereas Fortune Teller is a coppery orange.

Above & Below: The photo above shows 2 coats of Black Magic (left) and 3 coats of Fortune Teller (right). Below shows one coat of each. If there's such a thing as a blacker shade of black, I would say that Black Magic is a bit blacker.
I mentioned previously that Victoria Nail Supply was going to be receiving an exclusive Halloween Glitter polish from China Glaze and I received mine today. I know Halloween is in the past now, but I wanted to do a comparison for you in case you were interested in it. The exclusive polish is called Black Magic (but they are label-less!) and can be found here on the VNS web site. Black Magic has a brighter orange glitter and it's very small when compared to the larger glitter in Fortune Teller. The glitter is all uniform in size and applied very evenly on the nail. The base color is black and it's a more opaque black than Fortune Teller is. In one coat, you can see from the above picture what I'm talking about with regard to the black base. Do you need them both? Of course not. Do you want them both? Only you can answer that, but I'm glad I bought it, because in my opinion, they are different enough and they're China Glaze. I have several black with orange glitter Halloween polishes, but they're mediocre at best. I know we can all agree that China Glaze makes an exceptional polish when it comes to their formula, so now I have 2 quality Halloween glitters and 3 or 4 lesser quality ones. Sounds like a good enough reason to me!


Happy Halloween NOTD & Some VNS Updates

Above & Below: My Halloween NOTD using China Glaze Liquid Leather, Spellbound and Fortune Teller with a Joby nail art sticker.
Below: A close-up of the glitter configuration in China Glaze Fortune Teller.
Happy Halloween to all of you! I hope you have a safe and enjoyable time today. Here's my quick NOTD using China Glaze Fortune Teller on 4 nails and China Glaze Liquid Leather on my ring finger. I also added a freehand french tip with China Glaze Spellbound and a Joby nail art sticker. Here's a link to the China Glaze Exclusive Halloween Glitter for Victoria Nail Supply, and I realize it's a little late for this year, but there's always next year. I ordered one because they're exclusive to VNS and I wanted to add it to my collection, although I won't have it until Monday or Tuesday. The reason they received this from China Glaze is because their shipment of the 4 piece Spellbound set was inadvertently sent to another nail supply store. Mistakes do happen, so this was China Glaze's way of making it up to them. Yen also mentioned that OPI has yet another new collection coming out around January 2010 called Hong Kong. I don't know anything about it as yet, but I'll be sure to pass along any additional information to you as soon as I do.


Even More Halloween Nails

Happy Halloween, Dear Reader!

Well, I didn't get as many Halloween manicures done as I wanted to this year, but I have today's and another to show you today.  The one from last week was done using the Color Club Cast a Spell set of Halloween minis along with some Halloween Art Club rhinestones for Halloween, both of which Color Club sent to me.

The mini set has a black, orange, holo, and dark purple shimmer (the same purple as last year, I think).  The really cool thing it has is some fun decals.  I was just playing around with it and did an orange manicure with a black accent nail, then applied the decals to the orange nails and a line of orange rhinestones to the accent nail.  This is what I came up with.

Halloween Nails Using Color Club Cast a Spell
Halloween Nails Using Color Club Cast a Spell Mini Set

For today, I did a simple manicure, but it's the scariest one for me.  I'll even tell you the little story of why it's the scariest (if you don't care, feel free to skip to the paragraph after the story).  It's spider-related, so if they care you skip it.

Six or seven years ago, I lived in new house on the edge of town, in a neighborhood that was being developed in what used to be corn fields.  Now, I've always been terrified of spiders, and when the construction guys would dig a new lot out of this corn field, the spiders and bugs were everywhere.  So gross and scary... After a few months of panicking at the sight of a spider, I decided I'd be all Zen and not kill them anymore, just ignore them and go about my business in order to get over my fear of them.  Good plan, right?  I soon saw two spider webs in the corner of the bedroom a few feet from my side of the bed, and for a few days was all pleased with myself for ignoring them.  Pleased, that is, until I woke up one morning to zillions of tiny spider dots all over two walls of the room and squished all over the bed.  The two spiders had mated and the eggs had hatched overnight.  I have never again felt compelled to peacefully coexist with an arachnid, and am more freaked out than ever about spiders.

Back to the manicure!  In honor of my scary spider story, I decided to do a spider in a web on my left ring nail.  For the base color, I decided on Chanel Rouge Noir - it's a good dried blood color, and sufficiently Halloween-y on long nails.  For the web and spider, I used stamping plate BM13, white for the web and black for the spider, both Konad Special Polish.  To make my spider even scarier, I added a red dot (Zoya Lisa) to its back to make it a Black Widow.

Black Widow Nails over Chanel Rouge Noir
Black Widow Nails on Chanel Rouge Noir

Black Widow Nails on Chanel Rouge Noir, Closer
Black Widow Nails on Chanel Rouge Noir, Closer View

I really like this manicure because it's not overtly a novelty, the accent nail is more like a little surprise if someone looks closely.  And I couldn't handle more than one spider on my nails, lest they become friends and make zillions of tiny spider dots.

So, that's the update on Halloween manicures and your scary Halloween story to start out the day.  I hope you have a great day today, and until next time, love and nail polish to you!  


Jack O'Lantern Nails

Good afternoon, Dear Reader!

It was time for a color change, so today I did another Halloween manicure since I might not have a chance to change it tomorrow.  Since I haven't done the obligatory black and orange combination yet, I figured I'd do that today with the jack o'lantern pattern from nail stamping plate D03, one of the two Halloween D-Series plates.

I wanted a bright orange, and for that I chose Zoya Paz.  It took three coats, and I thought I'd extend the theme and cut the stamping by 60% by alternating nails between Paz and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Black Out, the two coat black creme that was nearest Paz when I was gathering supplies for this manicure.  After allowing the base colors to dry, I stamped Paz with the Jack O'Lantern face in Konad Black Pearl.  I'd planned on stamping some additional Halloween patterns on the black, but after placing the first one on my pinky I thought the better of it and removed the stamp (this is the rare occasion when the decision that less is more was made at the front end of a manicure...).  I sealed the stamping and shined up the manicure with Sally Hansen Salon Speed Shine and called it finished. Here are my Jack O'Lantern nails.

Jack O'Lantern Nails
Jack O'Lantern Nails with Stamping Plate D03

This is probably my favorite of this year's Halloween manicures.  It really doesn't leave open any questions about what the intent is!

That's another Halloween manicure and all I have for today, so until next time, love and nail polish to you!



All Rights Reserved, Siobhan@The Nailphile. If you're reading this elsewhere, it's stolen from a real nail polish blog.


Sally Hansen Salon Effects Numbskull

Good morning, Dear Reader!

I'm racing the calendar to get in Halloween manicures, so today I have another set of Sally Hansen Salon Effects Nail Polish Strips to show you today, this one named Numbskull.  They're the cartoon-y black skull and crossbones pattern in black over white from this year's Halloween Salon Effects.

I didn't use anything under them, and they were way easier to apply.  I have two repairs, on the first two applied, because I was a little too aggressive in stretching them over my tips.  I slowed down a bit and the rest turned out just fine.  The hardest part of applying this set was due to the pattern being slightly on the diagonal, which made visually lining them up straight a little tough.  I've typically centered them at the cuticle to apply the nail polish strips, but after a few of these I found it easier to get one side edge of a nail lined up the whole length and then press them down across.  Then all that was left was filing the overhanging edge off of each as I went, and when they were all applied I sealed them with Sally Hansen Salon Speed Shine.  Here is my Numbskull manicure.

Sally Hansen Salon Effects Strips Numbskull
Sally Hansen Salon Effects Nail Polish Strips in Numbskull

You can see the repair on my index finger's nail here, but it's such a tiny bit I tacked on that it doesn't really show on my hands.  I pretty much love this manicure!  I'm wearing it out to lunch today, and depending on what the weekend holds, I might add a coat of Wet n Wild glow in the dark top coat to it.  Seeing a band is an option, and if I go with that, I believe making this glow will be mandatory.

For the record, there was no trouble with the Ghoulie Girl strips that made me remove them, it's the race to fit in Halloween manis that prompted the change.

That is my Numbskull Salon Effects manicure, so until next time, Dear Reader, love and nail polish to you!



All Rights Reserved, Siobhan@The Nailphile. If you're reading this elsewhere, it's stolen from a real nail polish blog.


D-Series Halloween Nails

Good afternoon, Dear Reader!

A good while back I'd mentioned the D-Series plates that I got from Chez Delaney, the ones that were sold only as a complete set due to some of them not working 100%.  Truthfully, I have yet to run into a stamp that doesn't work, and the same was true today when I broke out the two Halloween-themed plates from the series.

I took pictures of the plates so you can see all of the patterns.  They're nice and big - some are too big for my nails even now, which is pretty uncommon amongst available patterns.  Of course, I didn't have the good sense to take pictures of the plates before I used them, so they have a little cloudy acetone residue from post-stamping cleaning, which is done when I'm sick of messing with stuff and just want to be finished.  This is plate D03 and D04.

Halloween Plate D03
Halloween Nail Stamping Plate D03

Halloween Plate D04
Halloween Nail Stamping Plate D04

I wanted to use the spooky-font "Trick or Treat," but there's no angle at which I can fit anywhere near the whole thing on any nail.  There are plenty of others to choose from though, so I'll show you what I did.  This isn't intended to be the most fabulous manicure ever, it's more to sample the patterns and show you the size and quality of engraving.

The base color I used was two coats of Barielle Coalest Day of the Year, a good basic charcoal shimmer.  It's a two-coater with a respectable drying time, so it seemed like a good choice.  I wanted to stamp the patterns in White Konad Princess Polish just because it's reliable and one with which I'm familiar to knock out a variable in terms of how well the stamps worked, and Coalest Day of the Year seemed to offer good contrast without being as stark as a black creme.  I gave that a few minutes to dry with Tout de Suite then just went at it with the multistamper and sealed the stamps with Sally Hansen Salon Speed Shine.  Here's my amusing Halloween manicure.

Halloween-Themed Nail Art
Halloween-Themed Nail Art Manicure

The sunlight obscures some of the pattern on my pinky - it's the funny witch at about nine o'clock on plate D03.  Every one of the patterns worked well, even the spider web ones (which are always tough) and the scary skull (the ones with a great deal of solid engraved space are also tough).  I like it - it's silly and fun without being too immediately attention grabbing, with attention grabbing on a stamp-sampling manicure being the very reason I didn't use and orange base and stamp in black.

That's my Halloween-themed manicure and the update for today, Dear Reader, so until next time, love and nail polish to you!



All Rights Reserved, Siobhan@The Nailphile. If you're reading this elsewhere, it's stolen from a real nail polish blog.


Deborah Lippmann Forget You

Good afternoon, Dear Reader!

Today I changed my polish to Deborah Lippmann Forget You, the black jelly with multicolored glitter from the Get This Party Started set.  It is, in a word, incredible, and it's these gems that make be keep suffering through the Lippmanns that make me sad.

The black base of Forget You is perfect - two coats made it totally opaque but it still shows the glitter beautifully.  The glitter is like that in Happy Birthday, and such happy colors in  a black base is a great contrast.  I think it's different that Happy Birthday over black because the glitter in the first coat kind of peeks out through the base, which you'll see in the close picture of the glitter.

For the manicure, I used base coat, two coats of Forget You, and SpaRitual Tout de Suite because it was handy, but it's thinner that would be ideal for a glitter.  I might add another coat of top coat to make it perfectly smooth, but I think most people would find it to be smooth enough with just the one coat of top coat.  After it had a little time to dry, I took pictures, so here's Forget You on a cloudy day.

Deborah Lippmann Forget You
Deborah Lippmann Forget You Nail Polish, Two Coats

Here's a closer look at the glitter on part of one nail.

Deborah Lippmann Forget You Glitter
Deborah Lippmann Forget You Nail Polish, Close Up of Glitter

I think this is awesome. Happy Birthday always reminded me of a clown holding a bunch of colored balloons for some reason, so Forget You seems more like this guy:

Evil Clown
Evil Clown!

It's like a happy polish with a macabre sense of humor, so I love it.  That's Forget You and just about all I have to tell you about today, Dear Reader, so until next time, love and nail polish to you!




All Rights Reserved, Siobhan@The Nailphile. If you're reading this elsewhere, it's stolen from a real nail polish blog.


Sephora by OPI Halloween 2010

Good morning, Dear Reader!

Today I have swatches of the three new limited edition Sephora by OPI nail polishes for Halloween 2010, which are on Sephora's site.  They're varied and not all hits...

Full Moon is a really good one.  It's a white glow in the dark polish, not a totally stark white, but with a hint of ivory.  It differs from OPI Ghostess with the Mostess in that Full Moon is much more opaque and glows more.  For the OPI, I've always had to use two coats over two coats of a white creme, but Full Moon was opaque and even on its own in three coats.  My experience is that glow in the dark nail polish is pretty much the opposite of self leveling, so I just ignore that and a coat of top coat fixes it.

Sephora by OPI Full Moon
Sephora by OPI Full Moon Nail Polish, Three Coats

Kitty Loves Black I got because the swatch looked interesting.  Sephora describes the color as "opaque metallic black," but it's neither black nor metallic.  It's more of a dark charcoal with a bit of silver and blue shimmer, and it took three coats.  It's not bad, but nothing to write home about either.

Sephora by OPI Kitty Loves Black
Sephora by OPI Kitty Loves Black Nail Polish, Three Coats

If You've Got It, Haunt It was the one I was most excited about.  It's a blackish base with loads of silver and blue glitter, and it looks really cool in the bottle.  The good news is that it only took two coats, the bad news is that applying it was just like spreading out brownie batter.  The glitter is so dense that the polish is unbelievably thick.  Because there's so much glitter, it took three coats of Seche Vite to smooth it out.  About five minutes after taking the picture of If You've Got It, Flaunt It, I panicked about removal of all that fine glitter and took it off while I still could.  I don't know if I'll ever work up the nerve to try it again.

Sephora by OPI If You've Got It, Haunt It
Sephora by OPI If You've Got It, Haunt It Nail Polish, Two Coats

Those are Sephora by OPI's Halloween 2010 offerings.  Knowing what I know now, I think Full Moon would be the only one I would get - it's by far the nicest GID polish I have (it doesn't look like a novelty polish in normal light), and I have an occasion to wear it later this month, so that one is a keeper.  The other two, not so much.

That's the update for today, Dear Reader.  Until next time, love and nail polish to you!  


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