China Glaze Strap On Your Moonboots

Continuing the theme, today I have China Glaze Strap On Your Moonboots, which is from their Spring 2013 Hologlam Collection. I recently bought this on sale at Sally's and almost instantly had buyer's remorse while I waited for the bus home. I knew from the outset that the holographic effect of these was not what a lot of people expected, and while I don't mind a subtle holo effect, I was a bit disappointed when I couldn't even see the effect in the bottle. Luckily, on the nail, you can definitely see holo in Strap On Your Moonboots.

 Strap On Your Moonboots is a dusky blue that kind of has a demin feel to it. Unfortunately, I had some issues applying this polish. This polish wanted to drag because it dries fairly quickly, so I wound up with some thin spots and had to use three coats on most of my nails.

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I do wish the holo effect was a bit more prominent in the polish, but I do really love the base color. I also wish it had applied a bit better, but since I got it on sale I'm not too broken up about some issues. It is a really pretty polish-- however, if you want something that it really holographic, Strap On Your Moonboots is definitely not the polish you're looking for.

China Glaze Escaping Reality

Sorry I've been so lazy about blogging. I have tons of polishes I need to share with you, but have been feeling less than motivated to actual take the time to do it! Then things get busy and my will to do anything other than throw on sweat pants and collapse in front of the tv. Yeah, my life is so glamorous.

I wanted to take a break from indie glitters (even though I love them too) and share one of my new favorite polishes with you. It's not exactly new, but it is new to me. This is Escaping Reality, which is one of the polishes from China Glaze's Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away collection, which was released this past December. I wasn't totally blown away by the collection, but recently I stopped by Sally's and they had a buy-one-get-one special going on with the polishes from the collection. There were only three different polishes in the display, so I grabbed Escaping Reality and another polish I'll show you later.
Escaping Reality is what I would call a "nearly neon hot pink." It's a creme and dries down to a satin matte finish (similar to a neon) but isn't actually a neon. The formula is a good and goes on very easily and smoothly. There is some visible nail line, but nothing too bothersome. Here I used two coats and no top coat.

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I love how bright this is without being neon. It's bright and cheerful and I love how it looks. It's necessarily a unique polish in the grand scheme of things, but I still love it. It's the perfect pick-me-up for the midwinter blahs.

China Glaze Cross Iron 360

Wow, it's been such a long time since I featured a China Glaze polish on my blog! Somehow, this brand has fallen off my radar, though I do have polishes waiting to be swatched (several polishes from the Hunger Games Collection) so it's not like I've forgotten about them entirely! The polish I have for you tonight is Cross Iron 360, which was re-released last year for the Halloween season. It was part of a 4 piece mini collection available at Sally Beauty Supply. Cross Iron 360 was originally released as a part of a winter collection several years ago. Kind of an interesting color for winter, but definitely perfectly for fall and Halloween! I would describe Cross Iron 360 as a "metallic orange with gold and bronze tones."

The formula on Cross Iron 360 was just ok. It was a little runny and difficult to work it, but not impossible. It's also a metallic, so you have to be a bit careful while applying it, but I didn't seem to have too many brushstroke issues. Here I have used three coats and no top coat. On the surface (and in the bottle), Cross Iron 360 seems very similar to Sally Hansen Shiny Penny, but on the nail they are definitely different. Cross Iron 360 is more orange and golden in appearance. The metallic threads in this polish really glow, giving it that gorgeous "lit from within" quality on the nail. It's so pretty!

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Ugh, I didn't notice until I started cropping these photos that there was a dog hair stuck to my ring finger! Argh!! That darn dog! =) Oh well... whatcha gonna do, right?

Anyway, Cross Iron 360 is a gorgeous, perfect metallic orange for fall and Halloween and I love how it glows!

Olympics!! (Oh, and a manicute too)

The XXXth Olympiad kicks off tonight in London with the Opening Ceremonies and I'm so excited! I'm a huge Olympics fan and have watched them as far back as I can remember, basically. One of my most vivid memories is watching Kristi Yamaguchi skate to gold in 1992. I even got to attend the Olympics last year in Vancouver (to watch women's figure skating) and it was incredible. I plan on being glued to my tv over the next two weeks.

For my manicure, I finally decided to do some real nail art and used the Olympic Rings as my inspiration. I painted the colors of the rings across my fingers and then used a gold striping brush to write 2012 on my four fingers. Originally, I wanted to write London on my thumb, but this proved to be too difficult for me, at least with the tools I had at my disposal. So I decided to pay tribute to the host country by painting the Union Jack on my thumb! This was my first attempt at "proper" nail art and I'm actually quite pleased with how it turned out!

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Here's a close up of the Union Jack on my thumb:

I needed a lot of polishes to make this happen:

From left to right: American Apparel Downtown LA, China Glaze Starboard, a england Camelot, Cult Nails Feel Me Up, OPI Dating A Royal and then gold, white and red striping polishes from Stripe Rite and Finger Paints. Whew! On my right hand I did a patriotic manicure with American Apparel Downtown LA and Julep America.

Are you going to be watching the Olympics over the next two weeks? What are your favorite sports? Personally, I love swimming and gymnastics the most, but I will also watch diving, beach volleyball and some of the track and field events. I also like to try and watch something I haven't before-- I might try cycling this year, since I just read Gold by Chris Cleve.

China Glaze Crimson

This is another Halloween polish from China Glaze - Crimson. This is another near black polish-- it's a deep vampy plum color. The formula on Crimson was really nice-- it was nicely pigmented and went on extremely smoothly. It was almost a one coater, but I used two coats to make sure I got good coverage.

I had a terrible time photographing this color, mainly because it was very difficult for me to capture the color in the bottle versus the color on the nail. The color in the bottle is much lighter than how the color looks on the nail.

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Crimson wasn't bad overall, though I do wish it had been slightly lighter. All of my coworkers thought Crimson was actually black on first glance. The other major bummer was that this polish chipped incredibly fast on me-- in less than 24 hours. I hate that. I'm not very good at wrapping my tips so I do get wear and tear, but these were large pieces of polish! Lame.

China Glaze Near Dark

So, I know Halloween was a week ago but I still have some polishes to post from Halloween collections. This polish is Near Dark, from China Glaze's 2011 Halloween Collection. Near Dark is a dark, murky forest green polish that is nearly black. I usually don't like near black polishes because they are so dark that it's hard to tell that they aren't actually black and I like to be able to tell what color the polish is. With Near Dark, however, I felt like even though the polish was dark, you could still tell it was a very dark green. I was actually surprised that I loved Near Dark as much as did. I also like it because the color is a little bit funky-- I like that it's a swampy, murky green. Not really sure how Halloweeny it is, but I think it's an awesome color for fall/winter.

Near Dark was very nicely pigmented-- I used two coats on most fingers, though I did need three in a few cases. The polish didn't feel too thick, either. I used Cult Nails Get It On base coat and Wicked Fast top coat.

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I completely fell in love with this vampy dark green! Now I can't wait to get my hands on RBL Fortissimo, which is in the same color family of "near black" polishes.

Football Friday: L'Oreal Amazon's Flash and China Glaze Fault Line

Time for Football Friday!! Tomorrow we play Colorado, the other Pac-12 newcomer! We're coming off a bye week and theoretically rested and healed, so this should be a game we win easily. Colorado is struggling and is a little beat up. However, given how the Huskies like to play, I'm not counting this as an easy win yet-- we'll see what tomorrow brings.

This week I decided to change it up a little bit and use gold as my primary color instead of purple. Something different! I decided to use L'Oreal Amazon's Flash, which is part of the L'Oreal's Project Runway collection. Aside from Owl's Night, this is the only polish from the collection that I was really drawn to, mainly because I figured it was something I could use for my Husky inspired manicures. Amazon's Flash is a really warm, bright gold sparkly polish. It's a little sheer-- I used three coats here and there is still visible nail line as the glitter spreads out from the cuticle towards the nail line. I think using either slightly thicker coats (ensuring that they are dry before putting on the next layer) or using more thin layers is necessary to get this polish opaque. Anyway, despite its sheerness, Amazon's Flash has a very luminous and glowy quality to it-- plus in high/bright light it's extremely bling-tastic.

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Pretty, right? It is! But, I was feeling like I needed something else and so I decided to pull out a crackle polish I haven't used yet-- China Glaze Fault Line. In fact, I pretty much bought Fault Line because it was purple and I figured I could use it for exactly an occasion such as this. I know the polish world is so over crackle/shatter polish right now... but what the hell! I don't wear crackle polish on a regular basis, so I figure pulling it out for a football game isn't really "unhip" or anything. Plus, the color combination is awesome! I waited about an hour before applying Fault Line over Amazon's Flash to make sure the base color was completely dry so Fault Line would crackle correctly. As you will see from the pictures below-- two of my nails look good and the other (index) is just ok. I applied medium thick coats on my ring/middle fingers and a fairly thick coat on my index finger, which didn't shatter as well, probably due to the thickness. Just a note in case you plan on using Fault Line yourself.
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One thing that I do like about the crackle polish is that it's kind of like lazy nail art-- lets you combine colors without needing to have a lot of skill or experience with nail art, something I definitely have none of.  So here I can have purple and gold nails! Awesome! Even though crackle polish isn't really "the thing" anymore, I do love this combination. Let's go Dawgs!