Wheel K6: Miscellaneous Glitters

Hey there, I am back from my unplanned blogging break. The day after I did my last post, I flew off to join Mr. Karen for a ski vacation, during which I had every intention of doing some entries here, since that's what I've done other times we've been at our condo in Idaho—generally I'm back from the slopes by 4 or 4:30 and they do have internet there, after all. But this trip I wasn't feeling that great (I've had a cold/sinus/bronchitis thing going on since mid December) and didn't have as much energy to go around as usual. I did ski, but not as much as I'd normally do and I needed lots of sleep to recover, so something had to give and one of those things was blogging. Still, we had a good time while we were there, and the mountains are as beautiful as ever. One afternoon I sat on the couch in the condo, reading and looking up now and then just to admire this view:



Since it's Wednesday, I thought it only right to come back with a Nail Wheel Wednesday post. Today I've got another 20 glitter polishes. Many of these are wearable on their own but others would benefit from being layered over a base color. Maybe when I finish swatching all my glitters on wheels I'll go back and do some layered glitter wheels. Look for those starting around 2025.



(all three coats plus topcoat, except as noted below)

1. Forever 21 Rose Petal Light Green [the green is so light it doesn't really read as green; might try this over lime or forest]
2. Forever 21 Rose Petal Blue/Silver
3. Forever 21 Rose Petal Dusty Blue/Silver (2 coats) [interesting frosty base here]
4. Forever 21 Rose Petal Lavender
5. Forever 21 Rose Petal Magenta/Silver
6. Forever 21 Rose Petal Blossom
7. Forever 21 Rose Petal Pink
8. Forever 21 Rose Petal Gold (2 coats)
9. Forever 21 Rose Petal Silver
10. Forever 21 Rose Petal Black/Silver
11. Sally Girl 812031
12. Sally Girl [I will have to come back and fill in the numbers for these next three, as I neglected to write them down]
13. Sally Girl
14. Sally Girl
15. Wet 'n' Wild Fantasy Makers Super Silver
16. Wet 'n' Wild Fantasy Makers Passionate Purple [pale purple is more like it, but maybe this was more vibrant when it was new; I didn't add it to my stash until years after it was released]
17. Unknown purple [this and the next are no name polishes that Walgreens had at Halloween a few years back; I wished I'd tried them right away so I could have bought more colors; I think they're very pretty]
18. Unknown green
19. Hello Kitty Pink Sprinkles
20. Hello Kitty Purple Sprinkles (2 coats) [best Hello Kitty polish ever]


Bottles 1 through 5:


6 through 10:


11 through 14:


15 through 18:


19 and 20:





















I do still plan to do a Top 20 list for 2013, and I have another Texture Week planned, so I am going to try to not disappear again anytime soon.

Stamping Experiments

When I wore the CND Night Factory duo recently and discovered that Urban Oasis was a one-coater, I thought I should try stamping with it, since surely it would be opaque enough. I got a chance to play with it last night and it worked great.



For my base color, I used Borghese Arrivederci Mist, one of the new core colors. Any wonkiness in the stamping is not the fault of Urban Oasis but operator error on my part; I just haven't gotten enough practice yet. (And my impatience shows up in the smears from me putting on a top coat too soon after stamping.)

The design I used is from the plate in a stamping kit that the Born Pretty nail art store sent to me for review. The plate is labeled M71 and has nine designs on it: the flower I used above, a smaller flower with leaves trailing from it, a swirly one I can't figure out, grapes, a cat, a four-leaf clover (I'm thinking St. Patrick's Day mani), a butterfly, dolphins, and Hello Kitty. This plate, like others, comes with an pretty much invisible plastic film on it that must be peeled off before use. (If you guessed I know this from experience, you'd be right. Here's a tip: if you can't get polish to stay in the design when you scrape off the excess, ask yourself "did I remove the plastic film?") I don't like the sound or feel of metal on metal, so I didn't use the scraper from the kit but instead wielded my trusty plastic Humane Society membership card.



Since I've seen this plate referred to as the "Hello Kitty plate" on a few different nail blogs, I figured I had to try that design. It amused to me to use Banana Creme, one of the Hello Kitty polishes I'd gotten from Sephora as my base color. For the stamping, I tried Revlon Top Speed in Bubble, a bright pink, very girlie creme. What I didn't think about was Bubble is just about the same color as the surface of the stamper, so while I tried to see where the design was so I could place it on my nails, the polish was drying out and thus I didn't get any really good transfers. Again, operator error. The plate was fine, the polish was fine; my stamping skills are not quite there yet. Keep that in mind as you gaze upon my randomly placed incomplete Hello Kitty heads below.



Born Pretty sells the set with the M71 plate, the stamper, and the scraper for US$3.88. They also have a French tip stamping kit with two plates and the stamper and scraper for US$4.85, and two different sets of 12 plates for $12.63 (one of which includes the M71 plate). If you use code KARENDK31 you will get 10% off from now through March 31, 2011.

The stamper and plate shown in this entry were provided to me for free for review purposes. The content of the entry was not dictated by the provider, and I get to keep the tools for my own use.

Hello Kitty Beauty

Just before Christmas, Sephora had a preview sale of the Hello Kitty products that are scheduled to launch later this month. Given my weakness for cuteness, it's some sort of miracle that I only bought three nail polishes (of eight colors available): Pink Sprinkles, Banana Cream, and Purple Sprinkles.



I'm not usually a big fan of yellows, but Banana Cream impressed me. It was well behaved, especially for a pastel, going on in three coats with minimal streaking.



I added two coats of Pink Sprinkles and got a look that made me think of springtime.





I only had time to swatch Purple Sprinkles on my thumb; I liked it it a lot. I did two coats and added top coat because it seemed a little bumpy on its own. I was surprised at how pigmented the base was and loved the dustiness of that base color contrasted with the glitter bits.





These were US$10 for 9 ml, so one definitely pays a premium for the kitty head bottle; in the case of Banana Cream and Purple Sprinkles, I think is was worth it. Pink Sprinkles doesn't seem as special, but still—kitty head bottle.