Sally Hansen Salon Effects Perfect Manicure Nails, Part 2

I shared a while back about my experiences with the oval and square shapes of the Sally Hansen Perfect Manicure fake nail. Today I have a set of the almond shaped ones called Sweet as Candy, which has nails in five pastel creme shades: lavender, peach, yellow, blue, and pink.

 

When I got to selecting nails that fit me, I was surprised to see that nails in the same size weren't necessarily the same color as each other. I noticed it with the three or four biggest sizes. That's a bit unusual; in most sets, if there are only two of a size, they'll match. So I couldn't make my hands match each other, which is fine, especially for a Skittles set like this. Here's my right hand (the thumbnail is lavender):

 

And my left (the thumbnail is peach):

 

I wish I'd swapped the middle and thumb colors left to right, so there would have been more warm/cool balance on my non-thumb digits, but that probably wouldn't bother most people. As far as fit goes, these were pretty good for me, though I wished the bases were a bit narrower especially on the size that was the closest match to my middle finger. The shape is not my favorite, what with the scratchy point (even after I smoothed with the included file). The tip also curves down, maybe to make the point less likely to stab something.

 

I know I could probably get used to the shape and the length—indeed, I did type on my laptop with them on—but after a few hours, I clipped and filed them into more of an oval shape. Ah, much better for my lifestyle.

 

As with the previous sets, I used the adhesive tabs, and the nails stayed on decently well. What they didn't do was wear well. The colors don't go all through the nails but are applied on a white base, and after four days, the color was wearing off the tips of the nails and letting the white show. This was most noticeable on the fingers I use the most for grabbing things and such, but it was there on on all them to some extent by day five. Perhaps this was caused or at least made worse by my clipping and filing them to a new shape, except the color scraped off a small section of my index nail nowhere near the edge, so maybe not.

 

So far I've liked the solid color oval nails from Sally Hansen the best. Those didn't need clipping and filing to fit my life or nails and they wore well. I'm glad I tried these almond ones but I don't see myself getting more of them.

Wheel F16: Glitters from Countries Outside the U.S.

Back when swapping was a thing, I was fortunate to get polishes from all sorts of interesting places. I've also gotten to go to a few interesting places and found polish on my own. Today I've got some glitters, mostly with smaller glitter pieces, from those places.

 

(all have clear topcoat in addition to glitter coats noted below)
1. Etos Effect Nails 01 (3 coats)
2. Barry M Silver Glitter (3)
3. Barry M Silver Multi Glitter (3)
4. Barry M Pink Silver Glitter (2)
5. Barry M Aqua Glitter (2)
6. Risque Nuvem de Paete (3)
7. Risque Granulado Rose (3)
8. Masglo unknown (3)
9. Mini 40 Second Bronze Tropzienne (2)
10. Bourjois 1 Seconde Rainbow Apparition (2)
11. Jade Special Glitz Realeza (2)
12. Jade Special Glitz Vestido de Gala (2)
13. Jade Special Glitz Echarpe de Seda (2)
14. Jade Special Glitz VIP (2)
15. Jade Special Glitz Black Tie (2)
16. Jade Special Glitz Esplendor (2)
17. Basilisco unknown
18. Ulta 3 Triple Threat (2)
19. Essence The Twilight Saga Eclipse Undead (3)
20. Essence Out of Space Stories 1000 Light Years Away (2)

Bottles 1 through 5:

 

6 through 10:

 

11 through 16:

 

17 through 20:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spring Colors from Kokie

Products provided for review

 

Well hello again. I'm recently back from my not officially summer yet vacation, a road trip from Idaho to Illinois and back again. In a bold move, I left my laptop at home, which meant, among other things, that I was able to wear longer fake nails than usual, but that's a story for another day. The story for today is that Kokie kindly sent me some polishes in colors perfect for spring. Left to right: Iris, Rock Star, Crown Jewel, Classic, Georgia Peach, All the Envy.

 

I started with Classic, a pale milky peach crelly. This was buildable; I did four coats but could have stopped at three for a faux French mani look. This is indeed classic. I wore similar polishes for years early in my career as an accountant when I was trying to fit the mold of a serious businesswoman.

 

Nothing like dots to quickly add color, so I decorated with Georgia Peach, Iris, and All the Envy before adding clear topcoat.

 

Iris is a light lilac creme. This one covered in two coats.

 

I topped Iris with Crown Jewel, which has blue and holographic blue glitter in a sheer gold shimmer base. (I knew this would work because I swatched a different bottle of it over another light cool creme back in 2019. Because I was craving sparkle, I used two coats of Crown Jewel and added clear topcoat to bring out the bling even more.

 

All the Envy is a medium green creme. I used two coats for my swatch.

 

I put one coat of Crown Jewel on top of All the Envy and added topcoat to that. The somewhat deeper base brought out the gold in Crown Jewel more than Iris had.

 

I combined Rock Star, a warm lavender flecked shimmer, and Georgia Peach, a light red-leaning orange creme, into a funky French look alternating with Georgia Peach alone. Rock Star took three coats and Georgia Peach two. I did add topcoat to the funky French nails to smooth the line between the polishes. This look does say spring to me. If you want to see Rock Star on its own, I swatched a bottle I bought myself back in 2019 (and also topped it with another Kokie shimmer/glitter topper).

 

Given that Rock Star was three coats, I wondered if it would work as a topper, so I laid down a base of two coats of Iris and added one coat of Rock Star to all but my index finger. I really liked the combination. Rock Star warmed up Iris just a tiny bit, and Iris brought out the pale golden shimmer in Rock Star.

 

These are all nice polishes; good basic cremes and some bling to liven them up. It's nice that Kokie doesn't seem to discontinue things too quickly, given that I got two of these colors four years ago and you can get them today. The polishes shown in this entry were provided free for review purposes. The content of the entry was not dictated by the provider, and I get to keep the polishes for my own use.