Wheel P6: Glitters from Claire's and Other Brands

As promised/threatened last week, Nail Wheel Wednesday is back. In this edition, I have glitters, some toppers, some wearable on their own, and mostly from Claire's. I haven't been to a Claire's in ages; I have to go just a little out of my way to get to any of the ones in my area, and it's best that I don't because I invariably find something to buy when I do. I am especially weak in the face of the mini sets they always seem to have, one of which I've got on today's wheel.



My notes don't say anything about adding topcoat to these; I usually do on glitter wheels, and usually note it in my little book, but this time no note and some of these look kind of bumpy, so maybe I skipped it.

1. Claire's unlabeled mini silver holo (3 coats)
2. Claire's unlabeled mini silver holo and black (3)
3. Claire's unlabeled mini green/turquoise/magenta (3)
4. Claire's unlabeled mini turquoise/magenta (3)
5. Claire's unlabeled mini purple (3)
6. Claire's High Maintenance (3) [almost a two coater]
7. Claire's Gold Glitter Top Coat (3) [pretty dense for a topcoat]
8. Claire's Glitter Top Coat (3) [ditto]
9. Claire's Disco (3)
10. Claire's Bedazzled (3)
11. Claire's Chunky Purple (3) [I still don't know why this didn't get on the same wheel as its chunky siblings]
12. Claire's Candy Shop (2)
13. Claire's Mystical (3)
14. Claire's unlabeled heart bottle lilac/iridescent (2)
15. Claire's unlabeled heart bottle magenta/iridescent (2)
16. Le Chat CM Midnight Imposter (2) [I don't think I'll ever get Essie Starry Starry Night, but I'm happy with this more purple, bigger-glittered cousin]
17. Nina Ultra Pro Glamrock (2) [looks a lot like some of the chunky textures that came out later]
18. Nina Ultra Pro Purple Xing (2)
19. Kleancolor Starry Meteor (3) [this makes me think of Easter for some reason]
20. Kleancolor Twinkly Love (2)

Bottles 1 through 6:


7 through 10:


12 through 15:


16 through 20:

Matte Topcoat Comparisons, Part 8

In my previous matte topcoat comparison at the end of January, I said I'd have another one "before too long". That turned out to be not so true, as here it is two months later, though I guess that could be considered soon if one has a very long time horizon.

Today I've got four new to me matte topcoats: Glitter Guilty Mattify Top Coat, Rescue Beauty Lounge Matte Top Coat, H & M Matte Top Coat, Kleancolor Madly Matte. I bought the RBL; the other three were gifts from my friend Trish, who has excellent nail polish hunting skills.



Here they are on the nail over Wet 'n' Wild Black Creme, in the same order as the bottles above. The RBL is the winner of this quartet when the scores for matteness and ease of application are combined. The Kleancolor comes in second; it's decently matte and readily available (at Amazon and other places), but it didn't level as well as the RBL. I'm not sure if that was due to the formula or the brush; in any case, a second coat might have resolved the issue, but I am generally too impatient to do two coats of topcoat. The Glitter Guilty and the H & M are in a photo finish for third; they're just very slightly less matte than the Kleancolor (but still definitely matte, not satin).



Here's another look at these four:



I advanced the top two from the first group to a matte off with my two current favorites from my stash. Left to right: Wet 'n' Wild Matte Topcoat, Rescue Beauty Lounge Matte Top Coat, OPI Matte Top Coat, and Kleancolor Madly Matte.



And on the nail below. The RBL is really good. It's also really expensive at $18 a bottle, which means that the 99 cent Wet 'n' Wild remains my overall matte topcoat champion.





I haven't gotten any more matte toppers since I swatched these, so there is no Part 9 of this series in the works right now. Of course if I do see a mattifier I don't have, I will buy it, so I expect this is to be continued.

Links to all the episodes in this series (so far):

Part 1: OPI, Barielle, China Glaze, Sinful Colors, Butter London, Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics
Part 2: Revlon, NYC, Essie, Claire's
Part 3: OPI, Essie, GOSH, Cult Nails, Icing, Ulta, Fing'rs
Part 4: Orly, Salon Perfect, OPI, Sally Girl
Part 5: OPI, elf, L'Oreal
Part 6: Nicole by OPI, OPI, Sally Hansen, Formula X for Sephora, Deborah Lippmann, Dolce & Gabbana, Nails Inc., Nina Ultra Pro, Illamasqua
Part 7: Fresh Paint, OPI, CK One, Wet 'n' Wild

I Got Yer Displays Right Here

It's only been a couple weeks since my last display post, but I've seen enough new stuff since then that it's time for another one.

At Meijer, I spotted a Color Club Fractured display attached to the side of an endcap. This had some colors I hadn't seen from this line before as well as some I had. The full line up, starting at the top left: Kiss & Break Up (bright purple), Do You Want a Piece (darker purple), Burgandy Burst (dark red), Explosion (orange), The Great Divide (teal), Tattered In Gold (gold), Broken Tokens (silver), Smash Hit (black), Clean Break (white), and Splitting Image (blue).



While I was in Illinois over the Thanksgiving weekend I not accidentally ended up at a few different Walgreens stores, because the ones there have different things than the ones here. Like this holiday-themed Pure Ice display:



Or this Pure Ice display, with pairs of color and crack packaged with little color-coordinated nail files:



One Illinois Walgreens also had a Kleancolor Crack display; I've never seen Kleancolor anything at my Michigan Walgreens. There were six colors here: Red Crackle, Green Crackle, Teal Crackle, Blue Crackle, Purple Crackle, and Brown Crackle. There was a slot for Black Crackle, too, but that was sold out and the slot filled with another color.



At a Target in Illinois, I saw the mini sets that were sold out of the Nicole by OPI display I shared in the last go-round. One set, Merry Must Have Minis, had All Reinder Go the Heaven, Extra Snowflakes Please, Miss Claus' Night Out, and How Rude-olph. The other was Merry Mini Hit-Makers with Justin Bieber colors: Coral Denominator, Not a Gold Bigger, Fuchsia Wife, and I Pink I Love Him.



An Illinois Walgreens was the first place I saw the Revlon display with new colors, though since I've been home I've found this in Michigan Walgreens as well. These appear to be new core shades, though some are ones we've seen before with new names. From top left: Knockout, Sparkling (looks like Lippmann Some Enchanted Evening to me), Saucy, Charismatic, Foxy, Dreamer, Mysterious, Classy, Fashionista, Smoldering, Extravagant, Charming, Impulsive, Sassy, Posh, Scandalous (apparently the old name, Facets of Fuchsia, doesn't fit the new scheme), Flirt, Naughty (looks like Perplex got renamed too), Fearless, and Graceful.



There's another version of this new Revlon display that I've only seen at Bed Bath & Beyond so far (I'm fortunate to have one of the BB&B stores with a health & beauty section on my way home from work). This display has more colors in it than the Walgreens one. By the time I got to it, a couple shades were already sold out, but not the one I was most interested to see: Whimsical, which is quite like Lippmann's Glitter in the Air. The lineup here, starting top left: Foxy (brown shimmer), Sparkling (rosy pink glitter), Classy (peach), Knockout (black creme), Mischievous (taupe), Scandalous (fuchsia glitter in black), Flirt (purple leaning pink), Impulsive (purple), Radiant (formerly known as Blue Mosaic), Posh (green), Sassy (lime creme), Charistmatic (light orange), Muse (green leaning tan creme), Zealous (acid green), Timeless (light grey), Fearless (orange red), Whimsical (pink and blue glitter in light blue base), Angelic (pink), Dreamer (light blue), Mysterious (blue), Smoldering (grey shimmer), Charming (light purple), Fashionista (teal), Chic (no idea), Elegant (also no idea), Saucy (red), Popular (formerly known as Starry Pink), Bewitching (red), Extravagant (deep rose), Naughty (taupe shimmer), Graceful (light brown), Stunning (silver & holo glitter, looks like Belle).



Bed Bath & Beyond also had the Color Club Beyond the Mistletoe glitter collection: Gingerbread (gold), Beyond the Mistletoe (turquoise), Holiday Splendor (green), Sugar Plum Fairy (light lilac), Candy Cane (purpley pink), and Jingle Jangle (blue).



Essie Luxeffects (which I've been calling Luxe Effects) has finally started showing up in stores around here. Glitter and flakies and shimmer top coats—I've been looking forward to these! Ulta had them in one of the standard six-slot Essie displays (I think they just change out the cards in back); since there are only five colors in Luxe Effects that bothered my OCD-ness just a bit. Left to right: As Gold as It Gets, Set in Stones, Pure Pearlfection, A Cut Above, Shine of the Times, and As Gold as It Gets (again).



At Walgreens, there was a dedicated Luxeffects display with the five polishes in the collection plus five core colors, and the display suggested pairings. If I'm interpreting the little color squares correctly, Sew Psyched was matched with As Gold as It Gets, Eternal Optimist with Shine of the Times, Wicked with A Cut Above, Marshmallow with Pure Pearlfection, and Merino Cool with Set in Stones.



Rite Aid had a four-polish display; this was missing Shine of the Times, the flakie, which was disappointing. Why play this game, Essie? As long as you're going to be in drugstores, why not put all the colors there? And don't say because you have retail exclusives to make up for it, because we saw those pop up in salons this season, so they weren't especially exclusive, were they?



Sally Hansen continues to churn out new stuff; the latest I've seen is the relaunch of Diamond Strength with a new bottle shape and a mix of old and new colors. I heard this showed up at WalMart first, but since I try to avoid that place, I didn't see it until it hit CVS. Some of the colors were missing from this particular display, and someone (not me) had rearranged the remaining bottles to fill in gaps in the rows. At least this will give you an idea what to look for if you're after any of these. But they're new core, so there's no rush.



Walgreens had an endcap that combined the new Diamond Strength line and Gem Crush. This had a full selection of the Diamond Strength colors: Flawless, Diamonds, Platinum, Aisle Be There, Glass Slipper, Brilliant Blush, Champagne Toast, It's Chiff-on, Pink Promise, Pulled Sugar, Lavendar Marquis, Love Bug, Must-Have Iris, Fuchsia Bling Bling, Diamonds and Rubies, Red Velvet, Honeymoon Red, 3K or More, Nude Shimmer, Antique Bronze, Royal Romance, Wedding Crasher, Save the Date, and Black Diamond. There's also a Diamond Flash Fast Dry Top Coat, which I might have to try.



China Glaze Eye Candy popped up at Ulta and Sally Beauty. It looked like the Ulta display had room for two full sets of the six glitters in the collection. When I got there, it was full but there were three of some colors and none of others. The display at Sally had only four slots to start with. Not matter, I ordered mine online.





Finally, at CVS, over by the hand lotion because there's still candy piled up in the beauty area, I saw a Confetti display with colors I've seen before but just not in this configuration. Left to right: All That Glitters, Sugar Plums,
Rhapsody in Blue, Tinsel, Green With Envy (which I liked better when it was called My Favorite Martian, but maybe they got sued by whomever owns the rights to that name), Sprinkles on Top (used to be Ice Ice Baby), Blue Glitz, Snow Day (not sure, but looks like Happy Birthday).



This might be the last display post for 2011. I can't think of anything I'm still waiting to see, though I didn't know those Revlons were coming so it could be I'll be surprised by something else in the next few weeks. Seems a little late for anyone to get stuff out for the holiday shopping season, though.

Kleancolor So-Called Chunky Holos

In exchange for functioning as her mail-forwarding agent, Lucy of Lucy's Stash said I could swatch her recent order of Kleancolor polishes, all of the chunky holo series. Sad to say one member of the squad didn't survive the trip to my house; poor Chunky Holo Purple, we hardly knew ye.



The other eight bottles, similarly wrapped in newspaper, were fine, so I took Lucy at her word and went ahead and swatched them on a nail wheel. (Just her luck that I didn't have any of these in my stash already so was very curious about them.) Starting with the bright pink and moving clockwise (do people still know what direction that is?), there's Chunky Holo Candy, Chunky Holo Poppy, Chunky Holo Fuchsia, Chunky Holo Scarlet, Chunky Holo Clover, Chunky Holo Teal, Chunky Holo Bluebell, and Chunky Holo Black, followed by each of the colors in the same order layered over black, followed by Poppy over silver (OPI Her Royal Shine-ness) and Teal over silver, and finally Fuchsia over bright pink (Borghese Rapido Maraschino) and Black over bright pink.



Most of the colors are sheer; on the first eight nail tips, I used three coats of all but Scarlet, which was two. Over the black, I used one coat of the Kleancolors. Over silver, three coats of Poppy and two coats of Teal. Over pink, one coat of Fuchsia and two of Black.





I was surprised to see how similar most of the colors looked over black; I guess they use the same glitter in all but Scarlet and Black (obviously that was different—it's actually chunky).








Over silver the reddish face of the glitter popped most, but the green glowed around the edges.



Unlike the silver, the bright pink was powerful enough on its that the Kleancolors only added a hint of their own base color to the combination.



None of these have topcoat, so you can see for glitters they're not bumpy at all (and they are glitters, not holos, as you've no doubt figured out by now).

I probably should have stopped there, since these weren't my polishes, after all, but I just couldn't resist playing a bit more. I mean, look here at Chunky Holo Black—how was I supposed to just pack up that bottle without seeing it on my nails? I am not that strong.





I decided OPI Jade Is the New Black would make a good base, so put on two coats of that, followed by two of Chunky Holo Black. Oh my, that sealed it—I am going to need to buy my own bottle of this Kleancolor. The combination reminded me of the glorious fall colors we're seeing on the trees around here now.



I had to take this outside to enjoy it there, too. I didn't have full sun that day, but it glowed nicely under the partly cloudy conditions, too, which is good, since I am most often not in full sun.





So yes, I definitely need to buy the Black. I'm thinking one of the others, too, probably Bluebell since it's my favorite base color of that group. If I didn't already have a lot of red glitters, I'd probably get Scarlet, too, but I do so I won't.

Thanks, Lucy for letting me try your pretties!

*****

Reminder: there are just a few more days to enter my Halloween Harvest Giveaway.