I swear most beauty and fashion bloggers have suffered from that sort of skewed rationalization at one point or another.

Sally Hansen’s Magnetic Nail Color in Silver Elements starts off as a very frosty and metallic (read: somewhat streaky) mid-tone silver. With the magnet applied (located in the removable cap), stripes of darkened grey sprinkled with lighter silver sparkles appear. This is a very interesting magnetic polish! Unlike the previous Color Club one I tried, this one appears to have varying finishes after magnetization. What I mean is, the lighter stripes are just metallic, while the darker stripes are metallic and sparkly. I always thought magnets would just affect the colour of the polish without changing the “sparkle” factor of a certain area, but this colour proved me wrong. I hope all of that made sense!

This is a rather lovely effect which makes you look like you spent hours doing your nails. But nope! All I did was coat all ten fingers in one go with one thin coat of the polish. Then I did each finger individually with a thicker coat, and hovered the magnet over each finger before moving to the next one. 15 minutes, tops.

One important thing to note is that you must let magnetic polish dry completely before applying top coat. If you don’t wait long enough, the top coat will drag bits of the polish over the surface, leaving you with streaky lines and ruining the striped magnetic effect.

Sally Hansen’s Gem Crush Nail Color in Big Money. I’m not a huge fan of glitters – they’re terrifying to remove and a little too much for everyday wear. I do love this one though! The tiny base glitters  are a neutral gold, almost metallic taupe, interspersed with larger round particles of lavender glitter. It’s one of the more unique and wearable ones I’ve seen, and it’s pretty dense for a glitter polish. Tips: To make removal easier though, I started with a coat of OPI’s Tickle My France-y (review & swatch here), and used two coats of Big Money. Also, glitters tend to “eat up” top coat , so you might want to use two layers of top coat if you want that ultra-glossy smooth finish.

Close-up of the neutral gold + lavender glitters

Bonus – it went with my dress beautifully! (Say hello to my friend Justina on the right – she was integral in persuading me to start this blog, by the way! Justina, don’t hate me for using this photo please :p).

• Thumb – OPI’s You Don’t Know Jacques (possibly my favourite taupe)
• Index – Leighton Denny’s Supermodel (not available in North America as far as I know. Got it for free in an issue of Cosmo UK, I think, sometime in the summer. I’ve always wanted to try the brand so I was very excited about this freebie. Why don’t US magazines give freebies like the UK ones do?!)
• Middle – OPI’s Tickle My France-y (possibly my favourite neutral)
• Ring – 1 part OPI’s Tickle My France-y, and 1 part each of two Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure colours in Wet Clay and Lavender Cloud
• Pinky – 1 part Wet Clay and 1 part Lavender Cloud

Mixing the colours wasn’t actually that difficult. I used a piece of plastic packaging as my palette to mix colours on. I put a generous drop of each polish colour onto the plastic, and used the brush from one of the actual bottles to mix and apply. Make sure to mix enough for two fingers, and apply it to the same finger on both hands before proceeding to the next one – you don’t know want your unique polish colour to sit on the plastic for too long and dry up!

As for those worried about using a brush from an existing bottle, I wouldn’t be too concerned about it. The colours you’ll mix are likely to be similar, so any “tainting” of the original colour will be marginal.

An easy and fun way to expand your mani “repertoire” :)

I think Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Grass Slipper fits the bill! A simply gorgeous, clean-looking lime-yellow green creme. Not much to say about it, except that just looking at it makes me happy! Formula on this was was superb for a drugstore brand. Two easy coats, no streaking issues or weird consistency at all. The brush, which I usually hate (it’s one of those “sculpted” ones) worked decently. I think these kinds of brushes are a hit or miss. If they’re cut well, they work well. If they’re cut poorly, it’s just a big ol’ mess. Luckily I got a good one with this bottle.

I have read that this colour can stain quite a bit (I certainly experienced this with another one Sally Hansen’s bright colours), so make sure you use a good base coat before applying!

Hope everyone’s having a wonderful summer, because I certainly am! As you may know, I’m currently on a summer exchange program to Europe, and I am having a blast. The problem with traveling around several countries is that packing light is a necessity. As a result, I’ve only brought (gasp) two nail polishes with me. I’m already getting bored of them. It’s times like these that I wish I had this colour with me.

That is, Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure’s Kook-A-Mango. A flat coral-orange creme. It leans towards orange in the above photo and in real life as well. There’s not so much red to speak of, and it’s not really pink either. It is a very wearable orange colour which would be perfect as a mani or pedi for lounging around on the beach (could’ve used this when I was in Barcelona…). Formula was decent. Opaque in two coats. I’m not a huge fan of the brush, but somehow I managed. I wanna wear this nooooow. :(

I’ve been planning to do a Canucks manicure for a while, and even tried out a few things but failed MISERABLY. I ended up simplifying the design down to just blocks of colour and stripes, like the bottom of the jersey. Simple enough? It’s really nothing spectacular. But it still took me forever. And you don’t even want to see what my right hand looks like (horrific, the white lines are not straight at all). BUT WHATEVER. At least it looks Canucks-esque.

I’ve blogged about the blue and green before – Orly La Playa and OPI Jade is the New Black, respectively. The white stripes were done with the Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen. It looks like a felt pen with a narrow tip and dispenses a rather watery liquid. I call it a liquid and not lacquer because it behaves a little differently than typical nail polish. When I use the pen over top coat (which is completely dry), I am able to scratch off the white stripes without disturbing the polish underneath. This is brilliant for nail art because you can fix mistakes very easily. Obviously, you’ll want to seal in the pen’s design with a layer of top coat afterwards.

If I was patient enough, or my hand steady enough (probably both), I would have drawn in the little white hockey stick…but the stripes were hard enough as it is. I guess I’m just not cut out for nail art! But for my team, I will at least try :)

WOOOOOO CANUCKS! ONLY THREE MORE WINS! BRING IT HOME!

How do they work?

It comes in a little box that contains 16 nail polish strips, an orangewood stick for pushing back your cuticles, and a nail file with three surfaces – one for shaping the nail, one for polishing the nail’s surface, and one to remove the excess nail polish strip. The nail polish strips come in varying sizes to fit your nail beds, and you have to pick the best fit.

Each nail polish strip has a tab at the end, and is covered with a clear protective layer – you peel that off. Then you peel off the nail polish strip from the sticker base, then stick it onto your nail bed. Smooth it over (the strips are a little flexible so you can stretch them a bit). Fold the excess over the free edge of your nail, and file the excess off. Sounds easy enough!

Yeah, yeah, I’ll show you what it looks like.

Cool, right? The strips actually come in two packets of 8, but because my nails are short, I could double-up each strip, and ended up using only one packet. I also followed up with a layer of top coat to increase wear time.

PROS:

• The pattern looks awesome. You can’t do a (perfect-looking) houndstooth by yourself. Really. Unless you have Konad (which I don’t).
• Pretty simple to use. I didn’t come into many problems application-wise. No bubbles, tears, etc. It helps if your hands are warm so you can effectively stretch out the strip without ripping it.
• Easy. You literally just stick it on, smooth it out, and file off the excess. No need to worry about getting the perfect shape around your cuticle!
• Don’t have to wait for it to dry!

CONS:

• Picking the best nail polish strip to fit is quite tricky. The strips can be weirdly shaped. It took be FOREVER to strategically find ones that would fit my nail bed. I did a lot of trimming as well. That ate up most of my time – took me at least 30 minutes.
• The design/print job is not of the highest quality. If you look closely, you can see that the black parts can look a bit cloudy or dirty (they came like that).
• Expensive! One box of these, with 16 nail strips, is at least $9.00CAD. I could get a full bottle of nail polish for way less than $9.00, and get way more than just two applications out of it.

VERDICT:

These strips are great for those who have trouble applying traditional nail polish – if it gets everywhere, you can’t get a nice smooth cuticle line, or you hate waiting for it to dry, etc. For me though, I don’t have too much trouble with that and would much prefer using cheaper traditional nail polish. However, since I can’t do such a complex pattern on my own, and I don’t have Konad, I would buy these (or another pattern) again!