Belated Christmas mani: Nicole by OPI – Sensational Scarlet

Yet again, I have neglected this blog! Apologies all around. Previous term was pretty awful, but since it’s a new term and a new year, I though I’d start off fresh…by showing you what I wore for Christmas!

Nicole by OPI’s Sensational Scarlet. A beautiful jelly berry red full of small red glitters and rounded holographic glitters. So wonderfully festive! Got tons of compliments on this colour – it was just perfect for the holidays.

This brush was awful. Nearly unusable. I tried to cut off the rounded edge to make the brush perfectly straight in the hopes of making it like the OPI ProWide brushes, which sort of worked. The formula of this is not too bad to work with. It’s a bit thick, and the texture is something rough and goopy…I remember reading somewhere that it reminded someone of oatmeal? Not a bad description. It dries to a gritty finish and loses its shine as well, so make sure to follow up with an ultra-shiny fast-drying top coat!

butter LONDON – All Hail the Queen/McQueen

IT’S READING BREAK! Rejoice! Oh, and a happy Anna Howard Shaw Day to you (I give all my love to people who know that reference)!

How have I been spending it, you ask? Oh, not much, just sitting around at home being sick out of my mind, being spoon-fed medicine by my mother. I’m telling you, it’s truly an experience every time she brings me another dose of medicine. Currently she has me taking this cough syrup which is making me feel, uh, woozy. Drunk drowsy. Mind is fuzzy. You know the deal.

Thankfully I’m nearing the end of the illness (hopefully). Sore throat is gone, just have the lingering annoying cough. Maybe I’ll finally be able to enjoy my reading break starting tomorrow? Oh wait, I’ve still got a stack of homework and midterms to study for. Who has time for Valentine’s Day? No one wants to be close to a sick person, ha! So unfortunately I’ve had no one to share this lovely nail polish with:

butter LONDON’s All Hail the Queen (also known as All Hail McQueen). Ah, how I have lusted after you for weeks! Finally found this gem a few months ago at BeautyMark in Yaletown. Funny naming though – I’ve always known it as All Hail McQueen from blogs (this shade was created as a tribute to the legendary designer not long after his passing), but when trying to look for it at the shop, all I could find was a polish that looked very similar, but was called All Hail the Queen. Rest assured, some Googling afterwards confirmed that it was the same shade. Why the name change? Who knows, maybe some copyright issues?

All Hail the Queen is a very unique neutral polish with lots of microglitter – it’s not immediately evident, but it clearly has a slight holographic thing going on. The glitters very subtly reflect “rainbow”, similar to GOSH Holographic. It’s definitely the most interesting neutral polish I own, and makes it so awesome – suitable for everyday wear in an office, for example (or at school if you don’t want people looking at your nails strangely, haha). But it still has enough interest with the holographic glitter for a polish lover like myself. Kind of eccentrically sophisticated. Loves it.

butter LONDON is a pretty new brand to me, but my experience with this polish was pleasant. It comes in an classy rectangular bottle with a removable cap – very much like Chanel. The brush is also Chanel-esque; rounded and long. The price was  quite steep (can’t remember exactly, but it was around $20CAD), but the polish applies with great ease and is just the right consistency. It’s also a 3-free lacquer, meaning it contains no formaldehyde, toluene, or DBP, and claims to be not carcinogenic.

It’s not often that I drop over $10 on a polish, but when I do, I expect it to be amazing. For the uniqueness of the polish alone, I think the price was worth it.

Holographic Shatter!

Hello again, hope your weekend was swell :)

So if you’ve been reading my previous posts,  you’ll know I was at the kid’s salon looking for OPI Black Shatter. I saw a Katy Perry display but there was none to be found. Worried, I asked the owner if she had any more. Turns out she had stored them elsewhere and said I could only buy it if I also bought another polish. Ha! Like she thinks she can deter me from buying one polish by forcing me to buy another. I was happy to have an excuse to buy one more, thank you very much.

Enter GOSH Holographic. This is one of those rarities that seems to elude you. I have been stalking the GOSH section of Shoppers Drug Mart for months looking for this! To this day I still can’t find it. I had to buy this in Hong Kong for ~$10CAD, and for only 8ml! That’s $1.27/ml. By comparison, an OPI polish is 15ml and costs around $8CAD, or $0.53/ml. Ridiculous.

Nonetheless, I think it was worth it. This polish is NUTS. Look at that crazy holographic rainbow. Even messed up my camera’s focus so everything looks a bit off for some reason. Just…wow. So amazing it probably deserves its own post.

Time to shatter it up!

Hmm. I think the coats I applied were too thin, so the cracks were also thin.  You can’t really see the cool holographic qualities of the GOSH polish underneath. Thicker coats would be better next time.

This works best over polish that is dry to the touch, or else it doesn’t shatter properly. I think this could also be my issue. Check out the cap of the bottle – the shape of the shatter looks much different than what is actually on my nail, which ended up looking like lightning or tree branches. Still cool, but not what I imagined. Also, a top coat is needed over the shatter to protect it. It dries super fast to a matte finish, but is pretty fragile and can chip off easily.

Worth the hype? I think yes. Gives a really cool effect without much effort. Apparently shatter polishes have been around for a while (I wouldn’t know), but the formula of this OPI one is superb. So ladies, if you want it…better act fast! They’re flying off the shelves.