How to make glitter toppers full coverage

I don't really care for the look of glitter toppers. Iridescent glitter or flakies I like but regular big hex glitters as sparse top coats? Not so much. Now if you were to wear those glitters as full coverage, ooh yes please! The problem is, some glitters just won't be able to reach opacity or would take too many coats and therefore result in thick nails. So if you have some glitter toppers that you want to be opaque, all you need is said polish, a pipette, something disposable like a small paper cup and to make cleaning the pipette easier I used my nail polish scrub tub.

All you're basically going to do is allow the polish to settle (takes about a day if you've shaken it) and then with your pipette, you're going to suck out some of that excess suspension base. You won't be able to get all of it and you will get some glitters sucked up too but if you are careful and find a good angle (I tilt the bottle to a 45 degree angle to get the excess base to "pool" into the corner) you will be able to get most of it. Remember to clean out your pipette between bottles! I do mine but squirting out all the sucked up base into a paper cup and then stick it into my nail polisher remover tub and suck up acetone a few times into the pipette and emptying it back into the tub. Allow to dry and move onto another bottle!

 Left to right, Milani Fuchsia, Lavender, Gold and Silver

I've swatched them below at one dabbed coat each (over an old mani) before I sucked out the excess suspension base. The formula on these are good btw.

BEFORE pic
(This is over Sally Hansen Titanium Flush in case you're wondering)

Now Gold and Silver you can reach opacity in about three dabbed coats but since I was going to be tweaking Fuchsia and Lavender anyway, I thought I might as well work on these too and make achieving full opacity a little easier with them. I don't think you will be able to reach opacity with Fuchsia and Lavender unless you use 5 coats and maybe not even then. So I allowed the polishes to settle and then the next day...

 After!

 Doesn't look like much but it really does make a big difference when you apply it!

AFTER pic!

I forgot I had this on and wore it out. Yes, I looked crazy

This is two dabbed coats. Nice! Also, these don't dry that "thirsty". One coat of top coat will do ya!

Also, you gotta love that peel off base coat :)

Hope this helps someone out there. Cheers!

Neon Orange Comparison (think Traffic Cones!)

~purchased by me~


I like neon's an awful lot, especially in the summer. They make your skin look so tan! I ran across some Milani Neons at my dollar tree and picked up this lovely little orange shade. When I got home, I remembered that I already had some other neon oranges and so of course, comparison time!

Color Club Wham! Pow!, Milani Neon Awesome Orange and Misa Six Pack Summer. I gotta say, the Color Club and Misa have super cute names haha. I have some more really bright oranges but they are much lighter and more yellow than what you see here. These are all traffic cone orange colors.

Wham! Pow! (Thumb), Awesome Orange (I+M), Six Pack Summer (R+P) 

Holy wow, neon oranges are super hard to take pictures of! They all look really similar in these pictures but IRL, you can tell the difference between them fairly easily. The moment I put on the Color Club shade, I could tell it was way brighter than the other two. Definitely no dupe there. The Milani and Misa were a lot closer but they are still actually different with the Milani being a shade darker than the Misa. Not dupes but you don't need both. I would actually recommend the one that is the most different, the Color Club. It's the brightest with the smoothest formula. The whole Color Club collection (Poptastic) was a win. Three coats, no topcoat was used on all of these.

I thought maybe if I took a pic of them separately that you could tell the difference better, but no not really lol. You'll just have to take my word for it. You can tell that Color Club Wham! Pow! is a lot brighter so I guess that's all that really matters.

Milani Neon Dude Blue vs Color Club Chelsea Girl Comparison

~purchased by me~


I have a hard time seeing the "neon" in neon blue polish. I don't really know if a bright neon highlighter blue color can be captured by nail polish. I keep on trying to find one anyway ;)

These are the only two neon blue polishes that I have; Milani Neon Dude Blue and Color Club Chelsea Girl from their poptastic collection. Both are cream (creme?) neon colors. I decided to do a quick swatch to see if they were dupes.

Milani Neon Dude Blue (I+M) vs Color Club Chelsea Girl (R+P)

Dude Blue is slightly darker than Chelsea Girl. I honestly don't really think they look all that neon but then again, I haven't ever seen a neon blue that looks neon to me. I mean, the color is the right shade of highlighter, as in I've seen a blue highlighter this color, but it seems to lack that bright intensity that a highlighter is. You know how highlighters look fluorescent? This just looks bright to me. And the Milani version isn't even all that bright, especially when compared to the Color Club.

Formula was good. I did two coats of each, no topcoat. I like how they were both not streaky or needed white undies to reach perfect opacity. Though they both didn't quite reach my standards of "neon", they are both lovely bright blues. Also, no dupes!

I don't usually like opaque bottles like the Milani bottle but they did a really good job with matching the bottle color to the actual color of the polish inside. The entire Color Club Poptastic collection is fantastic and if you can still find it, I would recommend getting them. They are all bright creams (cremes?) with great formulas. I believe I purchased the whole set at Marshall's for $8. The Milani Neon's are starting to pop up at dollar stores around my area so if you are interested you can check there. Do you have any blue neons that you absolutely adore? Comment to let me know what they are because as of now my search continues for the perfect neon blue!

Mini haul/surprise beauty steals!

~purchased by me~


So I had a mad craving for some chè đậu trắng (a vietnamese rice pudding with black eyed peas) and since I live quite a ways from chinatown (It's actually vietnamese so...viet town?) I had to make it on my own. No problem; it's easy to make! I just had to go to my local vietnamese grocery store about 15 minutes from my house to get the ingredients. So I get dressed and head up there only to find!! randomly they were closed today until next sunday T_T. Fail. Dejected, I head back home and since I took the effort to look presentable I decided to stop by Target. And lo and behold, look what I spotted!

Minted Metal (L) & Titanium Flush (R)

These were in the clearance bin for $4.88 (usually 6.99) each! It wasn't the biggest discount but it was better than what I could get for it before (at regular price and utilizing sales and coupons) so yay! I've been wanting to try these for a long while, though not these two particular shades. I actually wanted to try Liquid Gold and Cobalt Chrome but they didn't have those left. Still, I'm happy I actually managed to get some of the Color Foil line on clearance! The green is Minted Metal and the pink is Titanium Flush. They also had Rose Copper, Sterling Silver and Purple Alloy left but I wasn't really into the pale pink, already had a dupe for the silver shade (O.P.I Push And Shove) and I'm not a fan of purple. But if you are looking to get you some of these colors then get thee to Target asap! So continuing on my way home, I remembered I needed some more of the vanilla-scented trash bags that my dollar tree store carries (glamorous right) so I stopped by and....

Razzle Be Dazzle (L) & Bling Addict (R)

Woot! I found more goodies! They also had the Milani Neon shade Totally 80's but I'm not too big on chartreuse. If it was a true highlighter yellow I would have been on all over that! Isn't it strange how they put each bottle in that little cardboard packaging? Anyway, they also had several Milani polishes from their gold line and fast dry line and I also saw some Wet N Wild Wild Shine polishes. These L'Oreal Nail Lingerie nail stickers looked so cute that I had to pick them up to try but I don't have any experience with these at all so I don't really know how they apply/wear. But for a buck, how could I resist! Here's a close up of the nail stickers so you can better see the design. They are both pretty much the same thing just one is in white and the other black. 

 

If you are interested in any of these, go check out your Target clearance sections and dollar tree stores! YMMV but it's worth a shot! I'm going to start stalking my Walgreen's to see if anymore of the Color Foil shades pop up on clearance!

Milani Golden Romance Swatch

~purchased by me~

When the Maybelline Brocades collection came out a LONG time ago I wasn't initially impressed, but as time went on and more and more swatches came out I developed a deep lemming for the shade Gilded Rose. Unfortunately for me, the brocades collection never came to my stores. Any of them. And then, as if the nail polish gods had heard my prayers, Maybelline decided to make Gilded Rose core. I immediately ran to the drugstore, in search of the elusive shiny but alas, no luck. The store I went to hadn't updated their Color Show shelf yet and there was simply no shiny to be had. So I wandered around the CVS, a bit dejected when my eyes landed on what looked like the aforementioned shade in a very different bottle.

What was this sorcery? I hadn't even heard anything about this polish at all among the nail bloggers I follow, though its assumed Maybelline twin had made quite a big splash. Surely it wasn't a dupe? I had to find out.

So pretty that I couldn't wait for daylight before snapping a pic!

ooh, shiny. Even better the next morning

It sure looked like it. I did a quick google image search at home and it looked like an exact dupe for the Maybelline Gilded Rose! And it only cost me $1.99!

This was opaque in 2 coats and dried quickly. I'm not one for sheer polish but even at one coat, where you could still see VNL, I loved it. It's extremely reflective; so much so that you can even see yourself in it. Pictures do it no justice; this is one that you have got to see in real life. For a polish that is so glitter/particle heavy, it dried smooth. I only used one coat of topcoat (Seche Vite) and it was perfect! Formula win!

In case you didn't know, Milani is clearancing out this line currently at most if not all drugstores. In fact, you can get this polish on the Milani website for only $1.99! Score! It's gorgeously shiny in the sun as well.

So shiny apparently, that it attracts big black nasty bugs :(

I didn't notice it until I was editing the picture!

The one chief complaint I heard about the Maybelline Brocades was that they were notorious for chipping something fierce. I worried about that being a problem in this polish since they both look like they are made of the same material but my worries were unfounded ^_^ This polish wore like iron for me, lasting 5 days without chips. Ignore the strange line of my middle finger. I think it's just a reflection because I definitely don't see it on my nails now.

5 days and going strong!

Most impressive, no? Even more remarkable was the fact that I didn't wear my usual Orly Bonder as base coat for this polish. I had a scary bendy moment with my pinky nail so I wore Sally Hansen Hard As Nails Hardener (which I highly recommend) as my base. Grand verdict: if you don't have this yet or have problems with chipping for Gilded Rose, consider getting this! It's achingly beautiful, cheap as all heck and wears very well. You might still be able to catch it on clearance at the drugstore or you can buy it direct from the site. Go get this bug attracting polish today!

Blackheart Beauty Nail Polish Swatches and Comparison Part 2

~purchased by me~

Hello!
Here is part 2 of my blackheart beauty nail polishes. I have Purple Green Iridescent, Oil Slick and Violet Tendencies.

From left to right, Purple Green Iridescent, Oil Slick and Violet Tendencies.

First up is Purple Green Iridescent. This is a murky plummy color with bright green shimmer running through it. Makes me think of alien skin! Formula was good, this is three thin coats.

Blackheart Purple Green Iridescent, three coats with topcoat

I thought it looked awfully close to Color Club's Port-folio. It's probably also like Zoya's Adina but I don't own Adina. Here I have Port-folio on my index and middle finger and Purple Green Iridescent on my ring and pinky. Both topcoated.

Color Club Port-folio (I+M) and Blackheart Purple Green Iridescent (R+P)

 Port-folio has a better formula and is less sheer. This only required two coats. Can you tell the difference? I can't! I call these dupes! They are really similar in the bottle too.

Blackheart Purple Green Iridescent and Color Club Port-folio

Next we have Violet Tendencies. Blackheart has some really uncreative names but this one was pretty good lol. This is three coats with topcoat. It's a purple to blue glass fleck duochrome, pretty!

Blackheart Violet Tendencies, three coats with topcoat

I thought it might be similar to Sally Hansen's Laser and Milani's Blue Lightening. Here I have Laser on my index, Blue Lightening on my middle and Violet Tendencies on my ring and pinky. They look a lot closer in the picture than in real life. They are actually quite noticeably different, it's just that they all have that purple-to-blue duochrome glass fleck to them. There are a ton of other polishes that look like this. This is just the three I have.

Blue Lightening (I), Laser (M) and Violet Tendencies (R+P) w/ topcoat

Blue Lightening is the most opaque of these three, needing only two coats. It's also the only one with a royal blue base. Laser needed three coats and had a more purple base. Also, it has the weakest duochrome effect. Finally, Violet Tendencies has a clearly violet base. If I recall correctly, the duochrome becomes a lot stronger if you layer Laser over a black base, which is how I usually wear it. Bottle shots!

Sally Hansen Laser, Blackheart Violet Tendencies and Milani Blue Lightening

Last up is Oil Slick. This has duochrome glass flecks similar to Orly's Space Cadet or Hard Candy's Beetle but in a dark evergreen base. Gorgeous! I don't own anything like it. This is three thin coats.

Blackheart Oil Slick swatch, three coats with top coat

And a bottle shot, just 'cause it's pretty.

Blackheart Oil Slick

So that's the six blackheart nail polishes I have to show you. I actually have two more but I didn't include them in this mini series because one of them, I fudged with and added some more color to it to make it less sheer and the other is a glitter topper with taco-ing glitter that I'll probably dump out and use the bottle to franken with! I'll make a post about those two separately. Hope you enjoyed the swatches and comparison!
Blackheart Beauty nail polishes can be purchased at Blackheart Beauty or Hot Topic for $5 or less.