Friday, October 11, 2013

L'Oreal The Magic Top Coats

Continuing with the L'Oreal theme from yesterday, today I have five of the six special effects topcoats from the L'Oreal Nail Art Made Easy display that's in stores now. (The sixth one I've already swatched; it's The Matte Velvet as seen in my recent matte topcoat comparisons post.) Left to right: The True Diamond, The True Gold, The Sparklicious, The Shift Me, The Holographic.



Because these are topcoats, I needed base colors to put them over. Rather than use the core colors that were also in the display (I try to avoid buying core colors from seasonal displays because that just encourages companies to put them there), I used the cremes from the mix and matte display that I swatched for yesterday's post.

The True Diamond has a clear base filled with lots of fine white shimmer. I layered two coats of it over Lacque-onic; I could have stopped at one coat, but then I wouldn't have so many sparklies, and I like sparklies. This is pretty smooth by itself; my swatch doesn't have any added clear topcoat, just The True Diamond.





The True Gold is small gold glitter in a clear base. I put two coats of it over No Matte-r What. I didn't use additional topcoat on this one, either, though looking at the photos now, I think perhaps it would have been a good idea. The glitter isn't too bumpy, just I think it'd look a tiny bit better "under glass".





The Sparklicious has medium black hex glitter, slightly smaller silver hex glitter, and silver holo bar glitter, all in a clear base. I really wish they'd called this something else, because I have as much trouble spelling Sparklicious now as I did when they had a polish by that name in last year's Diamond Collection. I always want to type Spark-I-licious. Why not call this The True Bold Glitter? I used Lacquer-ized as the base color for this one, and did add clear topcoat this time. I'd say I used one and a half coats of The Sparklicious, as I did one coat and then dabbed extra black hexes on top; they were pretty easy to grab out of the neck of the bottle with the brush.





The Shift Me is a light shimmery pink in the bottle. Note that it is not called The True Pink. For the base under this one, I used She's So Matte (which is black, remember) with an accent nail of Lacquer-ized (purpley pink). What did I get? A lot of blue. On my index and middle fingers, I used one coat of Shift Me; on my other two nails, I used two.





The Holographic is not what we lacquer lovers think of when we hear that term. There are no rainbows here. Instead, we have blue/green/violet shredded mylar flakies in a slightly milky base. I layered this one over Matte-r of Fact, using about one and a half coats, the half because I had to kind of push the shreds around. I added one layer of topcoat and probably should have added another, as these shreds are prone to sticking up.





The display for these says "LAYER THEM ALL!" on it, which I considered doing for a moment before deciding that even with my love of excess, five special effect topcoats used together was too many. I did experiment with some combinations, though. I laid down a base of She's So Matte with an accent nail of No Matte-r What, then chose two of the L'Oreal topcoats for each nail. Left to right below: The True Diamond and The Holographic, The Shift Me and The True Diamond, The True Gold and The Sparklicious, and The Shift Me and The True Gold.



My favorite combination was The True Gold and The Sparklicious.



Overall, I like this collection. The matte topper I shared in the post last week is nice and matte and well behaved, and there's a good variety in the rest of the group, from shimmers to glitters to shreds. I wish they'd done a true holographic topcoat, but that's hard to do at drugstore prices, I suppose. If I ever find time to franken again, I think The True Diamond would make a great shimmer base.



18 comments:

  1. While I like them, I have something similar to all of them pretty much so I'll be passing. That's a good thing though! I have wayyyy too much nail polish to begin with already!

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  2. love your combo with The True Gold and The Sparklicious :D
    if i had to choose just one, i'd took The Holographic :D

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  3. Ohh I like the layering idea, otherwise I would have given up on these

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  4. I like the combo you did at the end! I actually picked up The True Gold for some reason (I don't know... the display got me!) and will have to try this over some chunkier glitters I have!

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  5. Shit Me is a useful little polish - that's the one I like the best of these...

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  6. I love the combination of The True Gold and The Sparklicious!

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  7. The True Gold and black & silver (I won't even try to spell it. :D) are super cool. I saw magenta and royal blue toppers/glitters from them the other day...they were beautiful too, I'm dying to get them :)

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  8. Why do the big companies have such a hard time with terminology? Lack of homework maybe?Maybelline also has a problem with the term 'holographic'. LOL I picked up one of their recent Color Show polishes & tho the bottle says Holographic, the polish was a duo chrome. Oh well, at least Loreal's 'holographic' is pretty.

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  9. Loving Sparklicious and Holographic.

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  10. The Holographic is gorgeous though, despite the shreds sticking up a bit :)

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  11. Great post here! I don't dig any of them, really... But the holographig may be worth its price, it looks nice and I don't have anything similar! :)

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  12. Ooooohhh pretty top coats! And those combinations at the end look good too! Now I'm curious how The Holographic and The Sparklicious would look together. Hihi. I really love layering nail polishes.
    (^o^)

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  13. Actually these top coats don't seem that peculiar to me (I think that there's something similar from other -chaper- brands), but I really love the way you layered two of them together in the last picture.

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  14. I picked up a couple of these and passed on some as they looked like polishes I already have...but your post is giving me second thoughts now!

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  15. For Halloween, I put the true shift over my glow in the dark polish. The effect was that I have a neutral,shimmery, translucent polish on during the day, but fabulous glow in the dark wow at night. Fun. I want to try the other brands as well but these will be a fun way to change things up over the holidays.

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Thank you for reading and commenting! I greatly appreciate knowing I'm not just talking to myself here. :) I'm moderating most comments now due to the spate of spammers who claim to be looking for sexy times.