Sally Hansen Pearl Crush Swatches

One of the new things out this summer from Sally Hansen is the Pearl Crush Special Effects line. These are eight colors of shimmery bases with large iridescent glitter pieces. They're very pretty in the bottle, for sure.



Eight colors; you know what that means—Skittles swatches. The first set started with Oy-ster It Up, a white shimmer, on my index finger. The lilac Shell & Tell went on my middle. Silver Scallop (silver) adorned my ring finger and Clam Digger (black) my pinky. I used three coats plus topcoat. The glitter in these is quite eye catching; small changes in angle mean big changes in how the light reflects off of it. The shimmer bases are pretty interesting, too; some really look like the inside of seasheels and some have subtle duochrome shifts.





With glitter pieces as big as these are, I wasn't surprised that it wasn't super easy to get them onto the nail. The instructions on the bottle pretty much acknowledge the issue by saying that the coats need to be dabbed on, rather than just applied as per usual. Dabbing does work better to get the glitter on the nail, true. The problem is it also tends to create small piles of shimmer rather than distributing it evenly, and I don't especially like that effect. It's most noticeable above on my ring finger.



The second set, top to bottom: She Sells (peach), Mer-mint (green), Lady Crab (pink), Rainbow Fish (blue). Again, three coats plus topcoat. Mer-mint wasn't as green on the nail as I'd expected.





The shimmery bases looked like they might take well to being layered over black, so I tried that next. Here's the first quartet, one coat plus topcaoat over Wet 'n' Wild Black Creme: Oy-ster It Up, Shell & Tell, Silver Scallop, and Clam Digger. this was interesting; the white turned blue, the lilac turned pink, the silver turned blue AND pink, and the black pretty much stayed black with very dark plum tendencies. Also, the glitter popped out more visually.



Here's the second set; top to bottom—She Sells, Mer-mint, Lady Crab, and Rainbow Fish. The peach sort of faded into grey, the green made a green/pink duochrome, the pink turned blue, and the blue turned green. The "shimmer dabbing" issue was more of a problem over black; you may be able to see the mottled effect on my index finger from over enthusiatic dabbing.



I thought these were pretty. I also thought they were a bit fiddly to work with. On balance, I was more attracted by the pretty than put off by the fiddly, so I decided to do one more look with them, amping up the fiddly even. I did a base coat of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Green Thumb, a yellow green creme that's one of the new shades released recently. The formula on this was a little runny. I topped the green with Silver Scallop, wiping off the glitter from the brush so I'd just get the shimmer. Over the green, the shimmer looked more pink/silver than pink/blue like it had over the black. Then, on two nails, I placed glitter pieces close to each other to cover the nail as best I could (picking the pieces up with a dotting tool one by one), then added topcoat. Depending on the angle of the light, the individual glitter pieces changed colors and winked in and out of visibility, which was fun to look at. Because the glitter is transluscent as well as iridescent, it was somewhat hard to see when picking it out of the pool of polish, so in some cases I got two pieces stuck together. I'm choosing to look at that as a feature, giving added depth to the look. This glitter is very thin, so even where there were two stacked on each other, the surface didn't feel bumpy once the topcoat was on.





These Pearl Crush are a bit challenging to work with, but in my opinion they're worth the effort. I'm not going to pull one of them out to do a mani unless I have more time than usual, but I am keeping them around. I sort of wish the shimmer bases and gliltter were sold separately, as I'd wear most of the shimmers on their own, too, and love them for layering. So, think of these as the friend that sometimes annoys the heck out of you but that you keep in your life because they have so many other good qualities.

HPB Presents May Flowers

Starting the week with something new: a blog link-up challenge. Seems like in five years doing this, I would have done one before, but no, just getting to it now, under the banner of the Hobby Polish Bloggers group on Facebook. The mani theme for this month's event is flowers, which opened up so many possibilities. I pondered freehand art and stamping and real dried flowers before deciding on glitter placement to make my nail bouquet.

I started with a base of Catrice Hugo Moss, a deep green creme, then used one of my dotting tools to pick and place glitter out of Salon Perfect Flower Power and Mad About Mod before finishing with Gelous, Beauty Secrets Top Coat, and OPI Matte Top Coat.





And here's how I built up this look, starting with my key raw materials—

Salon Perfect Flower Power:



Salon Perfect Mad About Mod:



Trying out some ideas on a black base:



Before matte topcoat:



Mattified:



Experimenting before taking it off with adding dotting tool dots of Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Teesta Turquoise; the blobby nature of some of my dots shows why I didn't try to do this whole design with a dotting tool:



I think I want to revisit this look sometime, maybe on a slightly lighter green base, and definitely taking more care to get the glitters exactly where I want them (with no stragglers hitching a ride on the larger glitters, either) and experimenting first to find just the right topcoat layers to smooth with no bubbles or other issues. Despite the flaws I see when I study the macro shots, I had fun doing this and was definitely tempted to cancel my planned swatching session the next day so I could wear this longer.



Click through the links at the bottom to see what other bloggers did for this challenge.

An InLinkz Link-up

Hearts for Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day! For the occasion, I have a holiday appropriate glitter topper Funky Fingers put out this year called I <3 U. This has heart glitter in white, pastel pink, and hot pink along with small iridescent glitter in a clear base. I used two coats of an unnamed lilac creme from Bonita as a base color (this is from the Hello Sunshine set that my KMart had around Christmas time last year) then dabbed on one coat of I Heart U on all but my index finger before adding clear topcoat. Getting the hearts out did take some coaxing, which isn't surprising for larger glitters.



I also tried I <3 U over a dark base, in this case two coats of Bonita Prima Donna (from the Fabulously Diva collection I swatched earlier this month). When I applied the topper, I made sure to wipe off all the hearts first and just lay down a coat with the iridescent glitter. Then I placed one heart glitter of each color in a line down the center of my nail, using a dotting tool to pick each one up and nudge it into place. I sealed the whole shebang with clear topcoat (two coats of it would have been better since the hearts do not curve like my nails do, so the edges stuck out a bit).





I <3 U is a fun polish and perfect for Valentine's Day. I'm not sure how often I'll use it other times of the year, but it was only $2 (less, probably, since I'm pretty sure I took advantage of the 3 for $5 and got some other colors for swapping).