Did I just find my new favorite polish?

Another hologram today.  This time Layla's Ocean Rush.  And I have to say, this is easily top 10 material.

This is a beautiful mid toned blue, with a ton of holographic sheen.  Gorgeous indoors and out.

Application was terrible.  It's incredibly patchy and I blame this largely on me not prepping the nails like Layla recommends as well as not having an aqua base.  I'm not filing my nails down though, they're already paper thin.

I did three coats then a top coat.  A fourth coat covered all the left over patchiness.  I did wear this for about a day and a half but this isn't something I can wear to work, plus it was getting a little worn looking so off it went.  This polish does seem like it would wear down easily, however I am tough on my hands.  I washed dishes, swept, mopped, did laundry and moved furniture with this on.

Photos don't do this justice!  It's really holo.

I am in need of an aqua base because 4 coats every time will make this disappear too quickly and I love it too much for that.  It might be my favorite polish (at least for today).

Sunday toppings

Today is all about pink.

This is Color Club Poptastic, a really great neon pink.  I decided that Sally Hansen's Wool Lite would go with this.  And I think I was right.

This is two coats of the fuzzy coat.

A couple of observations on this polish.  It is insanely (INSANE) difficult to remove.  The polish itself is thick and kinda gloopy.  It is unfortunately very humid here so I experience this problem frequently, but when a formula is thicker it is much more prone to problems in humid conditions, imo.  It covers quite nicely at one coat, and I bet you could reach opacity at around three (maybe four).  It doesn't make me think fuzzy, but it does actually remind me of feathers.  The final texture is just that; it is not glass smooth but I'm sure that can be achieved with a coat of top coat or two.  I am really into this craze right now.  I'm sure in about 6 months, it will be so passe that you won't see anybody wearing it anymore, but for now, I'm going to keep on putting it on!

Color Club Poptastics

Today up for show is the entire collection of Color Club's Poptastic set.  I usually do one color at a time posts, but I'm getting a back log of polishes and just decided why not do all of these in one?

I got this set at Beall's Outlet.  Let me clear this up though for those of you who are from Texas or Louisiana.  This is not the same store as the Beall's you see around town.  I'm from Texas, and when I moved here, I thought they were the same; they're not.  However, if you do live in the land of Palais Royals (which owns all those Beall's in Texas and Louisiana), have no fear because you still probably have access to Beall's (of Florida) stores.  Just look for the name Burke's outlet.  I love these stores, not so much for the clothing they have, but that they have a ton of drugstore cosmetics and it's really cheap.  Alternatively, I've seen these CC sets at TJ Maxx (and they're likely at Marshall's and Ross as well).  I paid $8.99 for the whole she-bang.

First up: Almost Famous.

Almost Famous is a real yellow.  It reminds me a lot of Milani's Yellow Mark, just without the texture. It doesn't really strike me as neon.  The formula is thick and goopy.  It absolutely needs three coats, otherwise it looks patchy and ugly.  However, I bet once I thin it, it will be a lot easier to work with.  With three coats, dry time was pretty good.

Next: Wham! Pow!

What can I say about this?  It's bright...unspeakably bright.  This is like orange highlighter for your nails.  Easy application, two coats was pretty good coverage.  Great pedi color but I'm a little scared of this one.  Apt name.  Dries to a semi matte finish as expected, so use a top coat on this. I also wanted to mention that this made my hands (along with my led lamp) look dead...purple, zombie flesh color.  When I turned the led off, that went away, BUT the led alone has never made my hands look like that before.  Very weird and totally off-putting.

Number 3: The name sake, Poptastic

What a great color.  Very bright, cheery neon pink.  Gorgeous.  Decent formula, used three coats.  Would have stopped at two, but I messed up the pinky nail (touched it before topcoat-oh no!); overall result was that it looked a little better at three, though I don't know if it's worth the extra time.  Again, dries semi-matte so needs a topcoat.  But it's a keeper for sure.

Number 4: Warhol

Notice the bottle difference from what's on the nail

Similar in the bottle to Poptastic, it appears only slightly darker.  This one is actually comes out on the nail looking pretty different, so what you see isn't what you get. It's very neon and it's also really pretty.  Great one coater, but I've used two here for good measure.  Had to use flash to get the camera to pick up a color close to true.

The purple: Pucci licious

This is more like a burple.  My camera had some trouble with Warhol, but this is the one where things started really going downhill.  From here on out, lighting changes will be apparent.  It pulled very blue, and I tried a lot of lighting changes.  Camera just really hated this one.  No top coat here, it stayed fairly shiny, though I would top coat if I were wearing out.  Two coats.

The green: Twiggie

This one looks really different with different lighting settings.  Can look really neon or not at all.

Hard to describe.  Neon pistachio color.  Needed two coats.  Camera liked this one better than Pucci licious but not much more.

Last: Chelsea Girl

Great blue!  Probably my favorite out of all of these.  Neon and jelly.  Goes pretty opaque at two coats, but probably would look a little better at three.  Camera had a lot of trouble with this.  Finally settled on just led light but it pulls slightly more purple than it looks irl.  It's another winner.

Last thoughts.  Fun set, but no names on the bottles!  I hate that about CC sets at the discount chains.  It's a really great bargain.  I'm now realizing what a value those sets are.  It's gonna be real hard to resist these in the future.

Layla - Coral Glam

I had to get some Layla's.  It seemed wrong that I owned none, and Hautelook made sure I fixed this.  The other two Layla's I got will be coming up soon but for today, I've got Layla Coral Glam.

This is a gorgeous peachy pinkish nude with a lot of linear holo.

Couple of things about this polish.  The holo is fantastic.  Any light will show the holo, all of these photos are actually indoors.  I am not terribly fond of the formula but it's not bad.  It's really runny, like water but still it doesn't pool.  It is so thin though, that I needed 4 coats.  At three it would have been ok, but it was showing bald spots so I top coated, and then did another coat.  It does dry extremely quickly so the 4 coats were not painful.  I don't own an aqua base (though I hope to change this soon) so I had to use a matte top coat as a base.  The first two coats of this were soooo matte, and I think it was because of this.  With all that said, I was expecting a terrible formula, unworkable from reviews.  It was surprisingly easy even without an aqua base.  I cannot wait to use the other two.

4th of July mani

I'm late...so late.  But I couldn't not post it.  So it's here.

Red is Ruby Ruby by Sinful Colors.  GREAT formula.  It's jelly but goes on nearly opaque at one coat.  Blue is Endless Blue by Sinful Colors.  Another great formula, and can be a perfect one coater.  I did two coats for both on the nails where it was the only color.  White is Essie Marshmallow.  A troublesome polish, it's a streaky jelly but it's gorgeous once right.  I did three coats of Marshmallow.

Top coat dragged a little bit of the colors unfortunately.  Still pretty.  Next year, I'll have to do something more complex but this was fun and easy.

Won't you please take a trek with me?

Poor Take A Trek...I seriously forgot about it.  But that's about to change.

Another Hologram from the China Glaze line, this is what I'd call a pretty washed out denim blue.  Honestly, it's not really my cup of tea.  Not sure why I got it other than the words hologram.

First off, I thinned this bad boy right away.  Formula was thick and gloopy, and got gloopy again about 1/3 the way through the mani.  The holo is hard to see, but was easier to see indoors than outside (I guess because it's overcast).  I think thinning it did bring some of the holo out, but it's still nothing magnificent.

I do hear that if you're lucky, you may actually find these on clearance at Sally's.  So if you are still in want of a Hologram, go by Sally's and see what they have left.

To diverge a little bit, I'm going to be doing my first gel mani for the blog.  I used to do them all the time, but quit because I'm impatient and was ruining my nails during removal.  I'm going away for a week and I won't be able to tolerate nothing or a really old looking mani for that long so I'm geling it and probably putting a neutral regular polish on top.  I do have the tendency to pick if the mani is the same for too long so hopefully I will be able to restrain myself from such bad habits. That might not be the next post but it will be one coming up so be on the look out.  That's it for now.

Revlon - Urban

I blame Father's Day.

Went to CVS to get a card, came out with that, plus two Revlon polishes.  I now also have $4 extra bucks which is just screaming for an Essie.  We'll see what happens with that.

Up first, a Revlon I've been lusting after for a long while.  Revlon Urban is a dark, lovely true royal blue.

It's a pigmented color, but almost looks jelly at first layer.  It's not.  It will turn opaque pretty quickly.  My initial thoughts on this...great color and great formula.  Even cleaning up was pretty easy.

If you want it, I'd look into it.  I'll have a quick comparison of a China Glaze color coming up on this one soon as well.  Hope y'all have been doing well.