Kokie Spring Trio

PR sample provided for review

 

Today I've got three polishes from Kokie to celebrate the arrival of spring. Up here on the mountain where I live, the weather is still wavering between winter and spring, with plenty of snow still piled up (about three feet of it outside my back windows, for instance) but also some warmer days when it's comfortable to go out without multiple layers under my outerwear. Before too long, it'll be mud season, when the rains come and things get dreary for a few weeks. Then I'll really need pretty polishes like these. Left to right: Mystic Mauve, Celestial, and Blossom. (Yes, when the caps are tightened down, the elephant doesn't always like to be front and center; that I can look at this photo and not strongly want to reshoot is a sign I've made a lot of progress with letting go of my perfectionism over the years. Which has nothing to do with this post but my mind, it wanders where it will.)

 

I started with Blossom, a pale peachy pink crelly. Two coats gave my nails a slightly better than natural look, a nice palate cleanser. This is on the sheer side of crelly, but is buildable and self-levels nicely.

 

 

Of course I had to experiment with layering Blossom. I painted my tips with Kokie Iced Out, one of the polishes the brand sent me this past winter, and topped with two coats of Blossom for a bit of a twist on a classic French mani. This approach nicely took care of hiding the slight yellow cast my natural nails seem to have regardless of how careful I am to use base coat under polish.

 

 

Celestial has a clear base densely packed with small metallic glitter accented with a sprinkling of small holo glitter. I used three coats for full coverage, though two coats probably would have worked if I'd made them a touch thinner. I did add clear topcoat, too, though this wasn't especially bumpy. This color is a bit of a chameleon, sometimes looking more silver, sometimes more platinum or even light bronze, but it always looked nice and sparkly yet somehow also subtle (though my idea of subtle may be skewed by having used so much bright color and big glitters over the years).

 

 

Here's Celestial showing off its colors in regular room light:

 

Mystic Mauve is a warm purple creme, opaque in two coats.

 

 

You know I had to try layering Celestial over Mystic Mauve. I added one coat of Celestial plus clear topcoat. One could argue that Celestial is too glitter-filled to be a good topper, but I liked the combination.

 

 

Before I put these polishes away, I tried combining all three into one dotted pond mani, starting with two coats of Blossom, dots of Mystic Mauve themselves dotted with Celestial, then two more coats of Blossom. I think instead of "pond" I got "petri dish" but decided to share it anyway because experiments are good even when they don't quite turn out as hoped.

 

These shades (along with dozens of others) are available at Sally Beauty stores for $4.99 per 16ml bottle. They're also online on the Sally Beauty and Kokie websites.

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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.

Sally Hansen Color Therapy Trio

So yeah, I did go on another unplanned blogging mini-hiatus. This time it was due to a double whammy of travel (Mr. K and I left home on October 5th and got back on November 19th) and illness (I got an upper respiratory thing that I'm just finally feeling like I'm getting over now—to give you an idea how bad it got, I couldn't muster the energy to go to Meijer and look for new Studio M before we left Illinois in November). Much as I like blogging and nail polish, sometimes they slip down my priority list. The good news is I'm not planning on any more long trips for quite a while, and I did buy some new polishes on my trip and should be able to make the time to swatch them as ski season hasn't started in earnest yet (the mountain has been open on weekends, but terrain is very limited at this point). Today, though, I have swatches I did a while back of three Sally Hansen Color Therapy shades that were part of the limited edition release done as part of the Enchanting Gems display this past fall. I chose Rose Diamond, Smoky Emerald, and Opulent Pearl. (Back in the day I would have gotten all six of the LEs, so I am making some small progress toward getting my stash expansion rate down.)



Rose Diamond is a dusty light pink with very fine pearl shimmer. It's the sort of polish that I wore all the time when I was in my serious conservative professional woman phase: quiet, classic, goes with any skirted suit ensemble. Now these sorts of polishes are "palate cleansers" for me and a way to not attract too much attention to my hands when I'm feeling they're not at their best or I just don't want to field questions about what I'm wearing. My swatch is three coats, but two would probably have worked as well.



This has a nice soft glow in direct light:



Opulent Pearl is a pearly white with shimmer that flashes pink. In the bottle, it looked like it might be a bit sheer, so I experimented and put one coat of it on top of Rose Diamond. I quite liked this combination; Opulent Pearl added interest to Rose Diamond without changing its essential character as a quiet, classic option.





When I tried Opulent Pearl on its own, I did three coats of it alone on my index finger and two coats of it as part of a French manicure on my other digits. There was definitely visible nail line on my index finger, but it looked okay to me, almost like a very subtle French mani effect.



In direct light, the pink shimmer really pops.



I also tried Opulent Pearl over a variety of cream base colors. Top to bottom, one coat of Opulent Pearl on: Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure In Full Blue-m (light blue), Sally Hansen Diamond Strength M-asked to Dance (bright pink), Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Out for Oxblood (burgundy), and black (I didn't write down which one). I'd say this is a pretty versatile topper. I liked it best over the black, but it did good things for the other base shades, too.





I had high hopes for Smoky Emerald. It's a black base (or maybe a green so dark it looks back) with teal shimmer that in the bottle appears to have a slight shift to purple.



In direct sun, there are even more colors that show up in the bottle:



On the nail, no shifting was evident, try as I might to angle my nails this way and that in various lights. Two coats of Smoky Emerald got me black with teal shimmer. It's fine, pretty even, just not shifty like I was hoping. I sometimes thought I caught a glimpse of purple along the sides of my nails, but it might have been wishful thinking.







I did try putting Smoky Emerald over a dark creme base to see if that would coax the shift out on the nail, but no, it did not. Guess that's not surprising given it's opaque in two coats. Those photos look pretty much just like the preceding three, so I am not going to spend the time to crop and watermark any of them.

I was glad to see some LE colors from Sally Hansen again; they used to do so many and I miss those days even though sometimes I got overwhelmed. My favorite of these three is Opulent Pearl; I can see using that to spark up cremes and subtle shimmers often.

SinfulColors SWAK

I'm feeling pretty on top of things right now, because I've swatched the new shades in the SinfulColors Valentine's display, SWAK (Sinful with a Kiss), a full two weeks before the relevant holiday. This feeling will pass as soon as my gaze lands on one of the multitude of unpacked boxes around here, but I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts!

The four new colors in this display are Kissful Thinking (shade 2203), Break Dance Not Hearts (2201), Readie or Not (2202), and It's About Valen-time (2200). I decided to include the shade numbers because that's the main way I figure out which ones are new, look for the higher numbers that form a sequence.



Of course I went first for the glitter, Kissful Thinking. This has tiny white glitter and red lips shaped glitter in a very pale pink jelly base. I wanted to try it over a range of colors, so I did a white French tip on my index finger and put SinfulColors cremes on my remaining digits: Pink Smart on my middle, Feeling Great on my ring, and Gogo Girl on my pinky. I topped all my nails with two coats of Kissful Thinking, applying the lips glitter with a dotting tool once I'd fished it out of the base. A layer of clear topcoat finished it all off.





The other three new polishes are all metallic foils (basically a lot of silver shimmer packed in there), so I swatched them together, doing some somewhat wobbly heart nail art with them on my index finger over a white creme base. Middle finger is It's About Valen-time, a medium pink metallic. Ring is Readie or Not, a plum metallic. Pinky is Break Dance Not Hearts, a light purple metallic. All three of these have a great formula; two coats were plenty and they applied very smoothly.







I love these foils a lot; SinfulColors does tend to do really well with this finish, and these are no exception. The glitter takes a bit more fishing than I'd like to get the shaped glitters out, but I guess that could be a plus if one doesn't want red lips on one's nails for a particular mani.

Funky Fingers Summer Beach Colors

In addition to the four solar shades that Funky Fingers released in time for this summer that I shared last time, they also put out four regular shades (3 for $5 vs. the 2 for $5 that the solars are): Beach Please, Aloha Beaches, Set Sails, and Salty Kisses. I don't know if this collection had an official name, as I never saw any signage, but the names definitely have a beach or "by the water" theme.



Though I am definitely getting my blogging mojo back, I seem to have lost my desire to do full hand swatches of a single color, so I combined these Funky Fingers into pairs. First up, Beach Please, a light warm pink shimmer, and Aloha Beaches, a hot pink shimmer. On my ring and middle fingers, I did a French tip with Aloha Beaches then added two coats of Beach Please, which as you can see is somewhat sheer. My ring finger is three coats of Aloha Beaches alone; this more subtle shimmer than Beach Please but it is visible. On my pinky, I topped Aloha Beaches with one coat of Beach Please, which amped up the shimmer and lightened the color a bit.





In direct light, as expected, the shimmer pops more, especially for Beach Please, which shows a slight blue flash:



For the remaining two shades, I did an accent nail of Set Sails, a blue shimmer, with Salty Kisses, a blue green shimmer, on the other nails. I used two coats of both of these. Salty Kisses has a more frosty look to it than Set Sails, with a bit of brushstrokiness.





Glowing in direct light:



I still had the Funky Fingers solars out when I swatched these, so I had bit more fun and layered Beach Please over them. Top to bottom: Burning Melon plus Beach Please, Punkrock Pink plus Beach Please (Punkrock Pink in indoor mode is very similar to Aloha Beaches), Vibe with Me plus Beach Please (loved this combination!), Free Spirit with French tip of Salty Kisses topped with Aloha Beaches.



Because I like to layer, Beach Please is my favorite of these four, and a bargain at $2 each (3 for $5). Set Sails is my second choice; I like the vibrant color and the finish is nice, too. I feel like Funky Fingers has done a lot of shades similar to both Aloha Beaches and Salty Kisses, but I'm still in the long process of getting my stash organized in its new home so wasn't able to quickly lay my hands on other shades for comparison.

Recent NOTD: Sally Hansen Salon Effects French Mani

As many times as I've worn Sally Hansen strips, I'd never tried the French Mani ones until earlier this month, when I put on the Pink Macaroon design.



The directions on the side of the box are a bit different for these than the regular designs. For the regular, the steps are peel, apply, shape; for these, they're apply tip, apply strip, shape. The contents differ, too; like the regular designs, these have an instruction sheet, file, pusher stick, and two packets of full nail strips, but they also have a packet of tip strips.



In the tip strips packet, there are eight strips, which would initially seem like not enough for ten fingers, but each of them has two sections, so there's really enough for sixteen fingers in eight sizes.





I put on a coat of Orly Nail Defense before I started with the strips. That's not exactly the clean, dry nails the instructions recommend, but I want the extra protection because my nails tend to be weak, and it doesn't seem to affect the wear I get from the strips. I then applied the tip strips, which work just like the full length ones as far as peeling off the clear plastic from the top and the strip from the paper backing before putting the adhesive backed strip on the nail. The only difference is these are just for the tips. The curve cut into them matched my natural smile line pretty well.



I realized too late that rather than matching the tip strips to my actual tips, I should have cheated the placement a bit and brought the strips a touch higher on all but my ring finger, since my ring finger has a longer free edge relative to the other fingers when they're all the same distance beyond the tip of my finger. Ah well, I'm probably more aware of that than anyone else looking at my fingers.



Just like doing a French mani with polish, after the tips comes topcoat, except in this case, the topcoat comes in strip form. The full length strips in the package were perfectly clear and applied right over the tip strips. I got a couple wrinkles in them, but that was obvious only in macro shots. I also noticed a few air bubbles, but was able to get rid of those by tucking each finger under my t-shirt and smooothing the strip down with my opposite thumb rubbing the fabric in circles over the nail.





I noticed that the glitter as portrayed on the box was not an exact match for the glitter on the tips. The glitter printed on the box was larger-grained and more holo than that in the actual strips. Not a huge deal unless you had you heart set on tips that looked just like the box.



With the extra layer of strip at the tip, this mani wore even better than I'm used to with the Salon Effects. Here's what my nails looked like after seven and a half days, five and a half of which I spent pounding a keyboard at work—there's barely any tipwear at all:





My only complaint about these is that if the tip strips weren't packaged all together, I could have gotten two manis from the box, as I only needed to use one packet of the clear strips (cutting them in half as per usual so I could cover two nails with one strip, though my nails are just about long enough that that barely works now). No matter how I wrap up unused strips, I've never had any luck using them later if more than a few days passes.

Oh, I do have one more complaint, and that has nothing to to with the strips themselves—they just seemed a bit boring to me since I'm not used to my nails looking so plain. Pink glitter tips? Yawn. I've come quite a long way from the woman who would only wear sheer peach polish to work way back in the day.