February Polish Party - Chevrons

I'm a bit late posting, but the theme for February's Polish Party is... CHEVRONS. When I've done chevrons before I've used either special tip guides (I bought some in Superdrug, but they've all be used up now) or sellotape, but today I made my own out of paper labels. I folded one label in half lengthways, and then cut it off in diagonal strips, giving symmetrical guides. Because in the past I've done chevrons pointing towards or away from the tip of my nail, I decided to do these sideways instead, and to try and get them to look like chevron road signs.

I wanted a silver holo base, so I used my ancient Sally Hansen Nail Prisms in Diamond. Because that's so thin, I started with a base of Barry M Silver Foil, then added two coats of Diamond. Then I placed my guides, and added a coat of OPI 4 in the Morning from the Gwen Stefani collection.  

I like the contrast of the matte black and the holo silver. I like that the silver looks dull in some lights, and crazy holo in others, just like the road signs. 

 I also tried this with a topcoat, just to see what it was like. I'm not sure I like it as much though. 

My main excitement today is that I bought a tent light box!  My boy Ferg immediately claimed it!

I took a couple of photos in it quickly, but of course the holo doesn't show properly in it. I need to have a play around with my lighting to get this working properly, but I'm excited! No more wavy bathroom wall background!

Somehow my skin looks MUCH drier in there!

To tie in with this month's theme - this week I encountered a teenage boy called... CHEVRON. Yes, really.




Check out the other Polish Party posts here:

An InLinkz Link-up

Sally Hansen Nail Prisms - Lavender Pearl?

I've posted before about my friend Squeakymom's ability to sniff out a long lost and discontinued nail varnish treasure trove in a dusty old pound shop! This is the last of the bunch that she sent me several months ago - I've just realised that I never got round to taking any photos of it!  So here it is.  This one is unlabelled, but we think it's Lavender Pearl - if you know better, please let me know!

This is four coats of Lavender Pearl on its own. As you can see, it's very sheer and pale, and does show brushstrokes.  The formula is very thin, as with many of the Nail Prisms, although I'm not sure if that's because it's a thin formula, or because these prisms are so very old.

Lavender Pearl is a very pale silvery pink when worn alone. Somewhere between a pearly white and a shimmery pink, with a touch of green in the right light.

I then tried it over black (Rimmel Black Out) and this is where this prism polish comes alive!  Over a dark colour, it's a rich green/purple duochrome that looks really effective, in my opinion. This is one coat over black. 

I hate how short my ring and middle finger nails are! They are growing though, as they were far worse a week ago.

It's really hard to capture the purple effect on camera, but it is there, honest!


I've just realised that I have not bought a single bottle of polish since 1st July!  Over two months ago! I haven't looked that often in shops, but when I have, I haven't seen anything that I've wanted to get. I'm hoping that the autumn/winter collections are a bit more interesting than the things I've seen recently!

Sally Hansen Nail Prisms - Lavender Sky?

This is one of the fabulous Sally Hansen Nail Prisms that Squeakymom found in a bargain bin in a secret location somewhere!  I've had it a while but have only just got round to making it useable.  When it arrived, it looked like this!

There's no brush! I fished around for a bit with a cocktail stick and dragged out a lot of very shiny bristles. Today I decanted the polish (using one of the tiny funnels from my Claire's caviar beads) into an old Seche bottle, leaving the original bottle looking like this!

Now I can use it!  This is five (yes really!) coats of the mystery Nail Prisms that I believe may be Lavender Sky - although please correct me if I'm wrong!

It's so pretty isn't it? Formula is very very thin and sheer, left me with a bit of flooding round the cuticles and meant the polish isn't really dry the way I'd like. I think next time I'll layer it over maybe a silver base.

This is so pretty though, I can forgive the thin formula. The silver-purple-greeny-blue duochrome is more visible in the light when I move my fingers around, it's very hard to capture on camera. I still love it though.

I think there are already tiny dents on my thumbnail, oops!

Sally Hansen Nail Prisms Mystery - Mandarin Garnet? Golden Tourmaline??

This is another of my unlabelled Sally Hansen Nail Prisms. I am torn between thinking it's Mandarin Garnet (except that mine looks redder) and Golden Tourmaline (except that mine looks more orange). It's somewhere between the two from what I can see!

Here it is over various different base colours. Thumb is three coats of MYSTERY PRISM on its own. All the others are two coats over one coat of base colour. Index over red (Orly Ma Cherie), middle over pink (Barry M Shocking Pink), ring over orange (OPI A Roll in the Hague) and little finger over black (Rimmel Black Out). 

The finger that looks closest to the Prism on its own is the ring finger, so the orange base. Having said that, over orange, pink and red, the Sally Hansen looks very very similar. I do not like it over black. The other four fingers though - wow! I love this polish, it's just my colour, and it's so sparkly! 


There is no sun today, so it was hard to really capture the sparkle. But I wore it last week over orange for two days, and got so many comments about it. I love how it looks.


Does anyone recognise this colour, or have either Golden Tourmaline or Mandarin Garnet, to compare?  Or is there some other colour that I'm not considering?  Please let me know what you think!

Sally Hansen Garnet Lapis - and a Mystery! (Turquoise Opal?)

I have posted about Garnet Lapis before - see here and here. 

This week my friend Lorraine sent me ANOTHER "Garnet Lapis". It was unlabelled, but looked just the same as her Garnet Lapis and mine (both labelled). However, once I started looking at my two bottles together, I started to doubt myself, and to see differences. The new bottle (on the left) has a bright green tinge in certain lights that the original (labelled) bottle does not.

To compare, I swatched both. At one coat, they looked identical. At two, they looked identical. But at four - they did not! It was really hard to capture the difference on camera, but it was really clear in real life.

I didn't get round to doing a clean up on these, as I wanted to grab the sunshine while I could. My apologies for the mess round my cuticles!

L-R is definite Garnet Lapis over black, definite Garnet Lapis alone (4 coats), 'new' Garnet Lapis? alone (4 coats) and 'new' Garnet Lapis? over black.  

As you can see, the colours are very very similar, especially worn alone. But there is a definite difference I think, especially over black. The mystery potential Garnet Lapis is greener, and the one that definitely is Garnet Lapis is bluer. 

In many photos I took, these two polishes look identical. In the right angles and lights, when the purple is showing, the colour is the same. But twist my hand a bit, change the light, and one looks distinctly green, and the other looks distinctly blue. 

Here they are again, the mystery colour on my little and ring fingers, the definite one on my middle and index fingers.

So, I am concluding that I think the new polish is NOT Garnet Lapis, unless there were two slightly different versions, which I don't think is the case. It may be Turquoise Opal, but without an expert opinion, I can't say. 

What does everyone else think?  Any ideas?  At the end of the day, who cares what the colour is called, they're both GORGEOUS!

 

Sally Hansen Nail Prisms - Diamond

My lovely friend Lorraine over at Squeaky Baby has some kind of nail varnish sixth sense, and TWICE now she's found a stash of Sally Hansen Nail Prisms - those gorgeous, and long discontinued sparkly holographic and sometimes duochrome polishes - in bargain basements. Last time she sent me Blush Diamond, Golden Cinnabar, Garnet Lapis and Ruby Sapphire.   This time she discovered another treasure trove in a pound shop, and sent me Diamond, another Garnet Lapis, and three mystery polishes! Look!

Aren't they gorgeous!? L-R is Garnet Lapis, Mystery No1, Diamond, Mystery No2, Mystery No3.

This is Mystery No1. We think it may be Golden Tourmaline, but we're not certain.  

This is Mystery No2. We think it may be Lavender Sky.

Look what happened when I opened this one though!  No brush at all! I dug around in the bottle with a cocktail stick, and out came a partially decomposed and tangled ratty bundle of brush hairs, like some kind of shiny pearly dead beast. It was a bit gross. But I can use a different brush (maybe an old one from an empty bottle of Seche Vite) for this, so no harm done.

Mystery No3 is the one on the end of the line in the first photo. Probably Lavender Pearl? 

Anyway, on to actually wearing one, yay!  This is one coat of Barry M Silver Foil, with two coats of Sally Hansen Nail Prisms in Diamond.  Diamond is very thin and a bit watery, but goes on very smooth and dries well.  In normal non-direct light, it all looks a bit dull, doesn't it?

But just you wait! Look at it in sunlight!

I mean - LOOK AT IT!

Isn't it pretty?

Sorry, did I say pretty? I mean WOWSERS, LOOK AT THIS GORGEOUSNESS!!

Needless to say, these photos come nowhere near showing how amazing it looks in real life. It is a mega sparkly, shiny holographic layer of awesome all over my fingers.  I need to try it over some dark colours next and see what happens.

This is my entire Sally Hansen Nail Prisms collection.

L-R Blush Diamond, Ruby Sapphire, Mystery 1, Garnet Lapis, Diamond, Mystery 2, Mystery 3, Garnet Lapis, Golden Cinnabar.

 

Sally Hansen Blush Diamond - Again!

I know I posted about this before - but we had bright sunshine a few days ago, and I had this on, and I just thought it was too pretty not to take more photos!

This is one coat of Sally Hansen's Blush Diamond over one coat of Essie Mademoiselle, and some evening sunshine.

Blush Diamond - Layered

I posted about my Sally Hansen Prisms in Blush Diamond before (see here), but I wanted to see what it looked like over a strong colour.

I did two layers of Barry M Bright Pink (which apparently I didn't take a photo of on its own! But please imagine a nice bright pink, with the standard Barry M saturated colour and bright glossy finish), and then added a layer of Sally Hansen Nail Prisms in Blush Diamond.

Blush Diamond toned down the brightness of the pink, and gave it a more muted look, and an AMAZING shine and holographic shimmer, especially in bright light. 

 
I was surprised how much paler the colour was under one thin coat of the Blush Diamond - it was really different! I really like it - it's so pretty and shiny!

Sally Hansen Nail Prisms - Golden Cinnabar FAIL!

This is the third of the treasure trove of discontinued Sally Hansen Nail Prisms - Golden Cinnabar.  This one, more than any of the others, seems to have been through the wars! The cap was very clogged with crusty old bits of dried polish, and took quite a lot of clean-up. I think there must have been a leak over the years that this sat somewhere in a bargain bin!  There's quite a large amount missing from the bottle, either through leaks or evaporation.

The consistency was quite a lot thicker than Garnet Lapis or Blush Diamond - again, I'm not sure whether that's age, or just how the formula was anyway.  It wasn't gloopy or impossibly thick, just noticeably thicker.   Two coats was looking good, and I applied my Seche Vite in the usual way. And then I waited for it to harden. And I waited. And about an hour later, I wasn't thinking, and scratched my foot, and this happened:

I decided to take photos anyway, because I did want to show you the colour!

While the nails felt dry on the surface, when I checked, they were still really soft and mushy, and all the polish just wiped off with a tissue! And this was at least an hour after I'd finished painting them, perhaps more!


The colour is a gorgeous pinky-gold duochrome. It moves between a really bronzey-gold to a deep pink colour. I think it's really pretty - it's just the kind of colours that I like most. I will need to do some work though to make it dry next time! I'm wondering whether I can use something like Seche Restore to make it work a bit better... If anyone has any ideas, please let me know!  It's not so much that it needs a thinner, as it's not particularly gloopy, but obviously something has evaporated over the years.

Sally Hansen Nail Prisms - Blush Diamond

So, my awesome friend who sent me Garnet Lapis then found a load MORE Sally Hansen Nail Prisms! She is clearly a nail varnish ninja who can smell a bargain!

She sent me Blush Diamond, Golden Cinnabar, and Ruby Sapphire. Here they are with my Garnet Lapis, with and without flash: (click to enlarge)


Golden Cinnabar is one that I'd noticed online when I first looked up the Nail Prisms range, and thought looked amazing, so that was the one I was initially most excited about. The cap was very clogged with polish, and once I'd done a clean-up, there is a big dent in the amount in the bottle! I think it's leaked a bit over the years, or evaporated or something. Ruby Sapphire looks the least duochromey, but I'll probably be wrong once it's on the nails. Blush Diamond was the one I decided to try first.

The bottle really reminds me of pointe shoes!  I did ballet all through my teens, and I always loved my pointe shoes. The colour of this in the bottle seems to almost exactly match the nice pinky peach colour of Freed pointe shoes, and the way the shimmer moves in lines looks so like the satin sheen of pointe shoes to me!  Do you know what I mean?

Anyway, here is three coats:

The formula was a little runny, no doubt because of the age. I did think of layering this over something darker (I'll definitely try that soon!) but I wanted to see it on its own first. 

In indoor and lower light, it just looks like a pretty pinky peach colour. But get it in the sunshine (we haven't had much of that lately!) or bright light, and wow! The holo goes bananas and makes the nails look super shiny and reflective and sparkly. I love this!