HARE Star Tropics

Now here's a glitter that I am madly in love with. HARE Star Tropics is from Spring 2012, but was a very limited release due to some formula and glitter problems. I have experienced neither of those issues, but last I heard Nikole was reformulating, so hopefully it will be released with a future collection! It is absolutely gorgeous.

Star Tropics consists of 2 sizes of silver square glitter and small silver hex glitter in a blue jelly base. The base is very slightly blurple, but still distinctly blue. It sort of reminds me of Starry Starry Night, but on some hardcore steroids. With that in mind, I layered it over a dark blue. First, I tried it over Ruby Kisses Regaled Out Blue. 3 coats of the Ruby Kisses, 2 coats of Star Tropics, Gelous, and top coat.

I liked the combination, but felt like my base color didn't quite go. It doesn't have the slight indigo tinge to it, so the second time I decided to layer it over Revlon Urban, and that was perfect!

As you can see, I'm a bit rusty on my glitter application, lol. Fear of removal keeps me from wearing these crazy glitters, to be blunt! Since it's a super chunky glitter in a jelly base, it's not surprising that it's pretty thick, but application wasn't bad, and I had no trouble getting the giant squares onto my nails.

In case I haven't told you enough yet, I LOVE SQUARE GLITTER. Here's a closer look, from the first manicure I did:

The depth that the jelly base imparts is just awesome, even if it doesn't quite go.

As far as I know, there aren't any dupes of this out there. I don't know about you, but I'd love to have a glitter mix with these exact sizes and shapes, in a bunch of differently-colored bases. That would be AWESOME. If someone made a light grey creme/jelly (I still refuse to use the word "crelly") with matte, retina-searing hot pink glitter like this, I would be all over that. And aqua and yellow. Dark teal jelly and an antique-ish gold. I always have these ideas floating around in my head but I'm terrified of messing up and wasting money/supplies so I never actually get around to attempting any of them ._. Story of my life.

Thanks for looking and commenting, and have a great weekend!

Top 30 of 2012! (part 3)

I don't post a whole lot of layering combinations, but that's mostly because I don't get around to photographing them. Here are the colors that I've reached for the most. First up, the base colors.

Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Dorien Grey

A nice, simple, clean light grey creme. It's so versatile!

Ruby Kisses Regaled Out Blue

Dark blue goes with a lot of things, and I can't resist a nice jelly.

China Glaze VIII

An excellent basic eggplant creme. Smooth formula, dries quickly, completely solid in 2 coats.

Nails Inc. Kensington

Inky teal jelly, almost black. Works really well for water marbling, too!

New York Summer Hot Sky Blue

Another squishy blue jelly! This is great for jelly sandwiches, and also looks awesome under flakies.

And my favorite layering polishes:

Lynnderella Connect the Dots

Yep, it's on two of my lists. It's that good. With black and white glitter, there are so many layering possibilities!

Nails Inc. the Wyndham

This has the distinction of being my first flakie polish, and it remains my favorite. The green is so vivid, and there is a very evident blue shift.

Finger Paints Asylum

It has blue flakies!! I have been lusting after a flakie with just blue, but since I loathe Nfu Oh bottles and find Inglot to be too much of a hassle to get ahold of, this is as close as I will get for a while. It is lovely though.

Essie As Gold as it Gets

Sheer gold flecks. This is really delicate and pretty, especially over dusty, mid-toned colors.

Essie Shine of the Times

A basic orange-green flakie. It's very dense, so you don't need  much at all for a single manicure.

So, there you have it! My 30 favorites from last year. Thoughts? Do you like layering too, or do you find it troublesome?

Ruby Kisses Regaled Out Blue

Ruby Kisses is one of those brands that I've only ever seen at hole-in-the-wall beauty supplies, so I have no idea whether they even do collections or anything of the sort. They're quite cheap, $1 per bottle, but most of the colors didn't interest me. Regaled Out Blue is a total exception! Let's take a look.

Squishy navy jelly awesomeness. I can't even.

Check out that gloss. I don't even have top coat on in these photos. Here it is in the sun:

Now, the formula...is not so good. It takes 3 coats, which isn't bad, but the polish is watery and runny, so you really have to be careful to avoid getting it all up in your cuticles. And the other thing is, once that blue gets onto your skin, good luck getting it out without messing up the rest of the polish. This stuff stains your skin pretty much instantly. But as you know, I'm a big jelly lover, and for a $1 polish that looks like this...I can forgive the other flaws. Or at least, overlook them.

I think there are several alternatives to Regaled Out Blue, since navy jellies aren't really that hard to come by. Color Club Blue-topia, for example, is close enough. L'oreal After Hours is darker, but similar. And Nfu Oh 119 is slightly purple-toned, but for all intents and purposes, these polishes are close enough that one of them will probably suffice. Sparitual also has a new dark blue jelly out for fall/winter called Osmium, but that one looks much darker, almost black.

Do you have any navy jellies? Love 'em? Hate 'em? Do their formulas suck too?

Thanks for looking and commenting, and have a great weekend!

Franken Friday #4

Happy Friday!!! It's been a while since I posted a franken...just haven't gotten around to wearing 'em lately, I guess.

The Milani holos were my first foray into holographic polishes over a year ago, and I wound up with HD (the silver one) and Cyberspace (the blue one). HD is still my favorite of any silver holo out there, but I've also acquired OPI DS Sapphire and China Glaze 2NITE since then, and honestly, those are a lot more interesting than Cyberspace, so I figured I'd franken with it.

As you can see, there's no longer any trace of the holo, but I'm okay with that. I started with a 70% full bottle of Cyberspace, and the other 30% is Ruby Kisses Regaled Out Blue and Verity Aqua Blue in a roughly 2:1 ratio. The Milani holos have a very interesting type of shimmer- rather than normal particles, these are more like shards of shimmer. You can see it more closely here:

Pardon my weirdo thumbnail shape...I nicked it on something and was too lazy to file out the unevenness before taking this photo, lol.

Thanks for looking and commenting, and have a great weekend!