Wheel N10: Glitters from Island Girl and Color Zone

Today Nail Wheel Wednesday features glitter polishes from the Island Girl brand, which is available ABC stores. I got a few of these on my one and so far only trip to Hawaii, while the others came from the ABC in Las Vegas. The two Color Zone polishes rounding out the wheel got picked because their bottle shape and cap are the same (I got those at I want to say TJ Maxx, but maybe it was another discount chain).



(all are two coats except as noted below, and all have clear topcoat added)

1. Island Girl Red Sun
2. Island Girl Island Sun [this has white hearts in it that are disappearing against the nail wheel; next time I need to put a colored base under it]
3. Island Girl Waikiki Sunset
4. Island Girl Island Volcano [this would be better over a dark base]
5. Island Girl Island Coast
6. Island Girl Island Volcano (3 coats) [yes, same name as #4; not sure if a mislabel or recycling the name]
7. Island Girl Island Heat
8. Island Girl Island Sunset
9. Island Girl Island Paradise
10. Island Girl Hawaiian Islands [needs a colored base, I think; stars didn't need too much fishing to get out of the bottle]
11. Island Girl Surfing Safari [used dabbing technique to place stars]
12. Island Girl Aloha Surf
13. Island Girl Hawaiian Sunset
14. Island Girl Hawaiian Sun
15. Island Girl Island Color
16. Island Girl Island Sunset (3 coats) [yes, another duplicate name]
17. Island Girl Island Sunset (3 coats) [seriously, yes, I have three with the same name;
18. Island Girl Island Girl
19. Color Zone unnamed silver holo bar glitter topper
20. Color Zone unnamed blue and purple dense glitter


Bottles 1 through 5:



6 through 10:


11 through 15:



16 through 20:



In detail shots, you'll see I'm still learning how the new camera focuses, or fails to.













Direct light to bring out the holo glitter:

SinfulColors Meets Funky Fingers

Of the ten new core shades SinfulColors introduced for 2018, I've (so far) bought three of them: Electric Sage, Coco Bae, and Forbitten Fruit.



Coco Bae is a pastel peach with subtle shimmer. My swatch is three coats; two might have been sufficient if I'd made them a touch thicker.



The shimmer which was invisible in the light box showed up in direct light:



Doesn't matter what the trends are, I still love glitter, so I couldn't let Coco Bae go unadorned. I pulled out Funky Fingers Unicorn Dust, which has pink shifty shimmer and small and large iridescent glitter in a sheer pale pink base.



I put one coat of Unicorn Dust on Coco Bae and added clear topcoat, though I didn't really need to as Unicorn Dust leveled nicely on its own. The combination was definitely low contrast; the shimmer and glitter made themselves known, but quietly. The neutral base brought out the pink and gold tones in the shimmer and glitter.





Forbitten Fruit is a dark periwinkle with subtle pink shimmer. I did one coat for my swatch. Yep, one.



As with Coco Bae, direct like coaxes out the shimmer in Forbitten Fruit:



Of course Forbitten Fruit got the Unicorn Dust treatment ... and I loved the combination of these two! The deeper base brought out so many colors in the shimmer of Unicorn Dust; I saw pink and blue and purple, with the glitter showing even more variety than that.





There's nothing subtle about the shimmer in Electric Sage; it's a dark green with dense golden green flecks. I did two coats of this one. It doesn't say "spring" or "summer" to me, but let us not be bound by seasonality: this is gorgeous.







In direct light, the shimmer really pops and the base looks even darker. Still gorgeous.



When I put Unicorn Dust on Electric Sage, the shimmer in it showed mostly its blue face, with some shift to purple and pink. It was a nice effect that reminded me somewhat of a galaxy mani.









I'm sure I have other toppers like Unicorn Dust but I'm not at all sorry I bought it. Electric Sage is my hands down favorite of these three SinfulColors. I'm keeping an eye out for Sucker Punch, a bright pink shimmer that's a Walgreens exclusive, but I don't know that it'll be able to knock Electric Sage out of my top spot. If you've got a favorite of the new 2018 Sinfuls, let me know in the comments.

Sassy and Chic Stencil Stickers

While on my recent Dollar Tree expeditions, I found these Sassy + Chic Nail Art Stencil Stickers. For a buck, I figured I'd try them.



The directions are straightforward: start with clean and dry nails, put on a base color and let dry, put on the stencil, paint over it, let that dry, peel off the stencil.



I skipped ahead to the putting on the sticker step, as I just used my existing Essie Treat Me Bright as my base color. The stickers are long enough that I was able to cut them in half, leaving more in the package for later. They were a tad narrow for me, though, with the design not quite reaching to both sides of my nails in all cases. I used Sally Hansen Insta Dri in Purple Heart and Cerulean to paint over the stencils.



When it came time to peel off the stencils, I felt they were a touch too sticky and hard to peel off. Mostly they worked okay, though, with the exception of one nail where the base color peeled up along with the sticker. It was so light a color, though, that it wasn't too noticeable. On the other end of the spectrum, I had some problems on a couple nails where I hadn't stuck the stencil down quite well enough at the tip of the nails so the design wasn't crisp there. Everywhere else, though the lines were good. The stencils are thick enough that topcoat is a must, but I didn't pick mine well. First I used OPI, which both smeared the design and wasn't thick enough to completely smooth out the nail. Topping the topcoat with OPI Sec 'n Dry did the trick (but couldn't fix the smearing, of course).



Here's the spot where I pulled up the base color (and you can see the issue with the narrowness of the stencil leaving blank stripes along the edges of my nails).



But when you pull back, it's not too bad.



For the money, I think these are a good value. Probably not as easy to work with as more expensive vinyls, and there's not much variety in available designs, but they do the job.

Wheel M10: Mood Struck, Mostly

For this week's Nail Wheel Wednesday, I have some older mood polishes. Most of these are Blue Cross Mood Struck colors I got at Meijer back in 2010, when I named them based on the last digits of their UPC numbers. Those swatches are here. Some are from Rite Aid in 2011; those don't have unique UPCs. The last two are older than that even, so old I don't remember when or where I got them. Some of these no longer change; thermals are like that.



(3 coats of all; some were nearly two coaters)

1. Mood Struck lime to yellow [called Five]
2. Mood Struck light teal to blue
3. Mood Struck teal to dark teal [Six]
4. Mood Struck blue to dark blue [Eleven]
5. Mood Struck blue to purple
6. Mood Struck Purple to Light Pink [this one has a name; I think I got it at Forever 21 or some place like that]
7. Mood Struck purple to pink
8. Mood Struck purple to pink [Four; seems to be the same as the one above, which is almost the same as the one before that, just a bit darker]
9. Mood Struck neon purple to pink [Nine]
10. Mood Struck hot pink to pink [Seven]
11. Mood Struck pink to red [Three]
12. Mood Struck pink to light pink
13. Mood Struck pink to peach
14. Mood Struck light peach to light yellow [Fourteen]
15. Mood Struck peach to light peach [Eight]
16. Mood Struck purple to pink [Ten]
17. Mood Struck light purple to pink [Twelve]
18. Mood Struck lilac to pink [Thirteen]
19. Mood Struck Bi Polar
20. Toma Mood Changing Color Sky Blue to Silver


Bottles 1 through 5:



6 through 10:


11 through 15:



16 through 20:






Above dipped in hot water; only the first one still changes.





Hot water dip results:





Above three don't change in hot water anymore. If you don't see dip pics going forward, that means they didn't change for me.



Hot water dip: