Sally Hansen Color Whirl

When I did the wheel with spotted polishes last month, the Sally Hansen Color Whirl shades didn't make it on there because my polish sorting wasn't careful enough and they weren't where they were supposed to be. I came across one of them while looking for something else and that led me to go track down the other one so I could finally swatch them. As far as I know, there were only ever two colors of these, released in 2018: Steam Punk (black) and Marble-ous (milky pink).



Based on how some of the spotted polishes on the wheel no longer worked, I wouldn't have been surprised if these Color Whirl were a bust, so when I tried Marble-ous over Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Vinyl Tap, a grey creme. I was pleased to see some spots form. I tried to keep the Marble-ous coat thin and even but you can see I didn't succed a lot of the time. I don't blame the polish for that, it was me. It's also quite possible that I didn't give the base enough time to dry in my impatience to see if the Color Whirl worked.





I tried Steam Punk over Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure All Fired Up, a red creme. I did better with the thin even coat of this one, though this didn't make as many spots. I did like the effect, though, and think it could be used to make a tortoiseshell mani with differen base colors.





I wanted to give both of these another chance (or rather, give myself another chance with both of them), so laid down a base of Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Teesta Turquoise, a blue green creme, then did a quick dry top coat to try and make sure the base was set before adding the Color Whirl shades on alternate nails. I also added topcoat over the Color Whirl to smooth things over. I definitely saw more spots with the drier base and more careful application. I can only get better, right?





These are fun, and I'm sorry I didn't use them sooner, as they were probably more "bubbly" when they were new. Ah well, life happens.

Wheel A13: Spotted and Crackle Polishes

Today's Nail Wheel Wednesday episode is a lesson in why one might want to swatch polishes right away. I pulled out all the spotted polishes I could find plus some crackles from less common brands and discovered that a lot of the spots weren't working well ... or at all. It was disappointing. The crackles still cracked, but the spots weren't behaving as they should have. Some did nothing. Some had a few spots in amongst cracks. Only one worked like I'd expected them all to, though who knows how long before that one degrades, too. I've read they can be picky about what base polish they're used with, and how wet/dry that is, and one person added some hair serum to their bottle and it worked again, so maybe I'll experiment a bit more before I give up on these, but maybe I'll just stick to crackles.



(all one coat over either black or white creme base, or in the case of #13 both black and white)

1. OPI Black Spotted [just a few spots, mostly cracks]
2. Fing'rs Get Spotted [even fewer spots than the OPI, just a few pin pricks among the cracks]
3. Layla Bubbly Effect Black Forest [straight lines in the finish here are due to an ill-advised attempt to topcoat before it was fully dry; I left topcoat off all the others, though I notice now that the area I put the topcoat does have fewer cracks]
4. Layla Bubbly Effect Cherry Muffin [the Laylas for the most part at least made more and bigger spots in amongst their cracks]
5. Layla Bubbly Effect Anise Shake
6. Layla Bubbly Effect Red Velvet Cake
7. Layla Bubbly Effect Meringue Pie
8. SinfulColors Hypnotic Transforming Top Coat Purpink [I can see that it's trying to work ... maybe if I'd concentrated on doing a thinner coat with it]
9. SinfulColors Hypnotic Transforming Top Coat Concrete Jungle [againk, maybe a thinner coat would have coaxed a few cells to pop here]
10. SinfulColors Hypnotic Transforming Top Coat Rebel Rebel [best of the Sinfuls by far]
11. SinfulColors Hypnotic Transforming Top Coat Punk the Town [nope, nothing doing]
12. SinfulColors Hypnotic Transforming Top Coat Redrum [fail]
13. IsaDora Graffiti Nail Top Masterpiece Pink
14. IsaDora Graffiti Nail Top Subway Green [took the cardboard cover off the cap of this one]
15. IsaDora Graffiti Nail Top Black Tag
16. Relouis Graffi Collection 08 [should have put this over white, maybe as it's darker than I thought]
17. Dior Crocodile Effect Top Coat 608 [took a long time to form the pattern, but worth the wait]
18. Barry M Croc Effects Black [a finer grained croc than the Dior; also took a while to show up, and one edge never did finish cracking]
19. P2 Crackling Black Explosion
20. P2 Crackling Silver Blast


Bottles 1 and 2:



3 through 7:



8 through 12:



13 through 16:



17 through 20:

Fing'rs Get Spotted Swatches and Comparisons

One of the things I grabbed from the big Fing'rs display that was at WalMart a while back was the Get Spotted topcoat kit, which has a full size (.45 fl. oz.) bottle of black spotted effect polish and two mini bottles of regular polish in hot pink and blue.



The side of the box has the simple instructions (and here you get a peek at the state of my hand during swatching sessions, with four bare nails and a thumb with whatever mani I was wearing last): let base color dry completely, apply the spotted topper, let dry then add clear topcoat.



The directions say to use a thick coat of Get Spoted for "less and larger" spots or a thin coat for "more smaller" spots. In the swatch below, I went thick on my index finger (top) and tried to go thinner as I moved toward my pinky. It made a difference, but not much of one. I never managed to get a truly thin coat or all that many spots. (The base color here is Sally Hansen Hide 'n' Pink topped with Costume Jewelry.)





You know I had to do a comparison, so I rounded up OPI Black Spotted (which I don't believe I've used since last year) and Layla Bubbly Effect Black Forest (which I got thanks to Sparkled Beauty, who grabbed me some in Canada; this line never made it to my Ulta here in the states and Ulta's the only place I've ever seen Layla to buy in person).



Left to right below (over Sally Hansen Guess Blue): OPI (thick coat), Fing'rs, OPI (thinner coat), Layla. I think the Layla wins this comparison, though perhaps if I thinned the OPI and Fing'rs they'd do better. As you can see, none of them are especially easy to clean up.



I wasn't too happy with how the Fing'rs behaved up to this point, so I gave it another chance, with one finger of OPI Spotted for comparison's sake. Left to right below: 3 fingers of the Fing'rs with OPI on my pinky. The OPI is easier to work with. (Base color is Sally Hansen M-asked to Dance topped with Myst-ique Pink.)



Of these three, the Layla is my favorite. The Fing'rs was definitely the most affordable, though, and who knows maybe I'll like it better if I try thinning it. But as long as I've got the Layla I don't have to mess with that.

OPI Black Spotted

As teased on my Google+ page, I've managed to get a bottle of OPI Black Spotted. This is a special effect topper similar to crackle but instead of cracks it makes spots. I wanted it from the first pictures I came across on the web; I'd never seen anything like it. The difficult thing: it was apparently a France exclusive, something they got with the Spider-Man collection instead of Green Shatter. I don't live in France, and Sephora France doesn't ship to the U.S., so things were not looking good, especially since I read that there were patent or ingredient issues that would keep this from being released to the U.S. so waiting wasn't necessarily going to help. Then a very kind friend of mine and her sister offered to add a bottle for me to their order and amazingly soon it arrived considering it had to make its way from France to sister to friend to me.



I was so curious to try it that the minute I was able to, I put it on over my existing mani (the Nabi magnetics in Red and Natural from yesterday's post). This works just like crack; you put a coat on over already dry nail polish and the effect appears as the Spotted dries.



Photos above and directly below are without topcoat.



And here it is with OPI Top Coat added:



I just had to see what it looked like over something else, so I put on two coats of Butter London Slapper (bright teal creme), added one coat of Butter London Henley Regatta, then one of OPI RapiDry Top Coat to give the Spotted a smooth surface to slide over. I waited a bit for that all to dry since I'd read that putting Spotted over not quite dry polish could lead to cracks between the spots. Then came Spotted and more RapiDry top coat.





While playing with this, I learned that a thin coat seems to lead to more spotting and the sooner you do clean up the better because this stuff is tenacious when it gets on skin.

I like this effect a lot. That it's labelled "Black Spotted" and not just "Spotted" makes me wonder if other colors are in the works, like happened with OPI's Shatter polishes. I also wonder if other brands will do something similar. I hope so.