Stash Swatch Initiative: Color Club Blue Heaven

Hello!

Today's polish is Color Club Blue Heaven!

Color Club Blue Heaven. Indoors, artificial light, no flash.

Blue Heaven was a part of the first Halo Hues collection, which was so popular last year (the year before?). And for good reason, this is a frosty blue linear holo. It looks nice indoors but looks incredible in full sunlight.

Color Club Blue Heaven. Indoors, artificial light, no flash.

Swatches today are one coat of Sinful Colors Base Coat, two coats of Blue Heaven, and one coat of NYC In a New York Minute. Great formula here -- it's very opaque and flows nicely onto the nail. I think you could get away with one coat for everyday wear, but I did two for blog pictures.

Color Club Blue Heaven. Indoors, filtered direct sunlight, no flash.

I think I purchased this from Head2Toe Beauty some time ago.

Color Club Blue Heaven. Indoors, artificial light, no flash.

More soon! ^_^

Stash Swatch Initiative: Color Club Magic Attraction

[Whoops! Didn't post this Tuesday as planned!]

Hello!

This bling-tastic polish is Color Club's Magic Attraction!

Color Club Magic Attraction. Indoors, artificial light, no flash.

I've worn this polish multiple times, but up until I 'officially' swatched it for the blog, I thought it was simply chock full of holographic micro-glitter. It also has pink micro-glitter in the mix, which really doesn't matter much because the rainbows being thrown by this polish obscure any details unless you are scrutinizing it. It is a crazy rainbow-colored sparkle fest most of the time! It is totally awesome! It's even better in person than these photos suggest.

Color Club Magic Attraction. Indoors, artificial light, no flash..

Swatches today are one coat of Duri Rejuvacote, one coat of Sinful Colors Nail Hardener, three coats of Magic Attraction, two coats of Gelous, and one coat of Seche Vite. This polish applies like any micro-glitter polish -- it's a bit thick with glitter but works just fine. It does dry gritty, so I did need three thick coats of topcoat for a smooth finish.

Color Club Magic Attraction. Indoors, artificial light, no flash.

This polish is magic in a bottle. I love it! Check out how sparkly it is -- even in low, indoor lighting! I love the pastel look of the rainbow of light sparks!

I purchased my bottle from Head2Toe Beauty, where you can still get it!

Color Club Magic Attraction. Indoors, artificial light, no flash.

More soon! ^_^

Stash Swatch Initiative: Color Club Winter Affair

Hello!

Quick post today to show you a polish from Color Club's winter 2012 collection. This is Winter Affair.

Color Club Winter Affair. Indoors, artificial light, no flash.

Winter Affair is a deep wine-colored polish with gorgeous shimmer, there may be a tiny bit of gold, fleck-like flakies in there too. It is a beautiful polish!

Color Club Winter Affair. Indoors, artificial light, no flash.

Swatches today are a base coat of Duri Rejuvacote, one coat of Sinful Colors Nail Hardener, two coats of Winter Affair, and one coat of Seche Vite. This has a great formula. It flows smoothly and stands up to a lot of manipulation. Pigmentation is good -- nearly a one-coater.

Color Club Winter Affair. Indoors, artificial light, no flash.

I ordered this polish last spring from Head2Toe Beauty, who will still have this available now.

More soon! ^_^

Stash Swatch Initiative: Color Club Revvvolution

Hello!

Quick post to show you and oldie but goodie. This is Color Club Revvvolution.

Color Club Revvvolution. Indoors, artificial light, no flash.

Revvvolution is a near-black, charcoal polish loaded up with fine holographic shimmer. It does produce a slight linear effect out in direct sunlight.

Color Club Revvvolution. Outdoors, sunlight, no flash.

Swatches today are a base of Seche Clear, two coats of Revvvolution, and one coat of NYC In a New York Minute fast dry top coat. Formula is quite nice. It is well pigmented and applies easily.

Color Club Revvvolution. Indoors, artificial light, no flash.

I'm pretty sure I snagged this from Head2Toe Beauty, where it is still available.

Color Club Revvvolution. Indoors, artificial light, no flash.

More soon! ^_^

Stash Swatch Initiative: Color Club Cosmic Fate

Hello!

This is Color Club Cosmic Fate from the newest Halo Hues collection!

Color Club Cosmic Fate. Indoors, artificial light, no flash.

Cosmic Fate is super, incredibly, almost unbelievably, very, very holographic in direct sunlight. Look at that light bend!

Color Club Cosmic Fate. Outdoors, sunlight, no flash.

The base orange color does appear a little washed out from all that holo goodness and ends up looking like a delicate peach polish indoors. It still throws a bit of a rainbow bend indoors, though. So much so, that when I wore this out shopping, the cashier at the mall grabbed my hand and was like "What is this polish!?!" She had never heard of Color Club before... either you're welcome for introducing you or I'm sorry I may have started another polish fiend down this road, Miss Icing Store Cashier. ^_^

Color Club Cosmic Fate. Indoors, artificial light, no flash.

Swatches today are a base coat of Duri Rejuvacote, and two coats of Cosmic Fate (no topcoat). This has a super formula. It glides on easily, dries fast, and is quite forgiving. Orange holo perfection!

I purchased this bottle during my celebratory Head2Toe Beauty haul.

Color Club Cosmic Fate. Indoors, artificial light, no flash.

More soon! ^_^

Stash Swatch Initiative: Color Club Gossip Column

Hello! Happy Friday!

Color Club Gossip Column. Indoors, artificial light, no flash.

Quick post today to cover one of my older polishes. This is Color Club Gossip Column.

Color Club Gossip Column. Indoors, artificial light, no flash.

Gossip Column is a basic, deep teal creme polish. Hard to capture true-to-color, this leans a little more blue in photos than it is in reality.

Color Club Gossip Column. Indoors, artificial light, with flash -- no sun to photograph under!

Swatches today are a base of Seche Clear, two coats of Gossip Column, and one coat of Seche Vite. Like all the Color Club polishes I have, this flows smoothly onto the nail and levels nicely. Great formula.

Color Club Gossip Column. Indoors, artificial light, no flash.

More soon! ^_^

Stash Swatch Initiative: Color Club Wild at Heart

Hello!

This lovely is Color Club Wild at Heart!

Color Club Wild at Heart. Indoors, artificial light, no flash.

Wild at Heart is a super saturated purple with linear holographic effect. The holo shine has a pinkish cast to my eye, which I love. How gorgeous is this in the sun?

Color Club Wild at Heart. Outdoors, sunlight, no flash.

Swatches today are a base coat of Seche Clear, two coats of Wild at Heart, and one coat of Seche Vite.

Color Club Wild at Heart. Indoors, artificial light, no flash.

Wild at Heart has a great formula. It is well-pigmented, and can be used as a stamping polish. It flows onto the nail easily.

Color Club Wild at Heart. Outdoors, sunlight, no flash.

This was the namesake polish for Color Club's Wild at Heart Collection. As usual, I was able to find this older release over at Head2Toe Beauty for a fantastic price ($3!! -- looks like prices have gone up just a tad, it's $3.10 now). Happy shopping!

Color Club Wild at Heart. Indoors, artificial light, no flash.

More soon!! ^_^

Stash Swatch Initiative: Color Club Wildflower

Hello!!

This bit of gorgeous  is Color Club Wildflower.

Color Club Wildflower. Indoors, artificial light, no flash.

Wildflower is a vibrant, deep coral creme. Or is it a red-orange? Pink? Coral? I'm not sure where this one falls, actually. Whatever you classify it as, it is beautiful.

Color Club Wildflower. Outdoors, sunlight, no flash.

Swatches today are a base of Seche Clear, two coats of Wildflower, and one coat of Seche Vite. The formula on this is super smooth. It is extremely pigmented, and I have had great success using this as a stamping polish.

Color Club Wildflower. Indoors, artificial light, no flash.

This polish is so lovely! It was a random buy for me, and I'm so glad a picked it up! I think I found this at Bed, Bath, & Beyond quite awhile ago. Happy hunting if this is one you want!

Color Club Wildflower. Indoors, artificail light, no flash.

More soon! ^_^

NOTW: Snowflakes!

Hello!

Indoors, artificial light, no flash.

January (not to mention the entire winter so far) has been rather tame here in the Mid-Atlantic states. We even had a fail Winter Storm Warning this week (That's right. Storm warning issued for four to six inches of snow and ZERO fell.). Being from Minnesota, I find myself missing the wintry weather (yep, I'm one of those crazies who love the snow!). So, this week, I brought the snow to my nails. I started with my go-to base of Sinful Colors Nail Hardener and layered two coats of Color Club Worth the Risque over that. Once that was dry, I sponged on Zoya Ibiza to create my gradient. The snowflakes were stamped on from the first series of Bundle Monster plates with Orly Luxe, Zoya Zuza, and Konad Special Polish in white. Everything then got a coat of NYC's In a New York Minute!

Outdoors, sunlight, no flash.

Zoya Ibiza is incredibly pigmented, and, for the life of me, I could not get it off the skin around my nails entirely. I scrubbed with qtips, my normal cleanup brush, and an orange stick. I got most of it, but wound up taking more polish off the tops of my nails than I intended. Le sigh... can't win 'em all.

Have a good weekend! More soon!! ^_^

"This is Halloween" Nail Art Challenge: Water Marble

Hello again! Happy Friday!!

Today's theme for the Halloween nail art challenge is water marble. Water marble nail art is a hard technique to get right every single time. I've had great success and great failure with water marbling. This week's mani would have been total, epic failure had it not been for Halloween. My water marble totally tanked, but it ended up looking kinda creepy so I decided to go ahead and show it to you.

I started with a base of Milani White Out and used Color Club Revvvolution, Color Club Worth the Risque, Zoya Arizona, Zoya Mimi, and Zoya Midori to marble with. I think my downfall on this water marble was Arizona. That one didn't want to spread out so well in the water. After the first nail, I went ahead and thinned my bottle out, which helped a little bit, but this mani is still not what I had envisioned. *sigh* I can't win them all I guess.

I think the reason we get so frustrated with this technique is because it takes a lot of time and a LOT of polish, plus it's messy. So when it doesn't turn out how you want, it's easy to get quickly frustrated and give up. This one didn't work for me, but I'll keep trying this out because when it does work, it's totally awesome. And, I've had some work. I think a lot depends on polish choice--you definitely don't want a quick dry polish for this. I've read that water temperature can also make or break it. Maybe that was part of my problem today too.

Hopefully, you all had greater success than I did!!



 

More soon!! ^_^

Stash Swatch Initiative: Color Club Warhol

Hello again!

Color Club Warhol. Indoors, artificial light, no flash.

 I wanted to start the week off with my very first lemming. This is Color Club Warhol from the Poptastic collection. This may be one of my favorite polishes of all time!

Color Club Warhol. Indoors, artificial light, with flash. It's not quite so orange normally.

I was lemming this before I even knew what 'lemming' meant. For any newcomers, a nail polish lemming is a polish you've seen someone else wear and now you must have it for yourself--like lemmings who follow one another even to their doom! ^_^  I know they are a real animal, but I can't help but think of the little green-haired guys from the video game first! Anyway, before I really got into nail polish, my mother came home from the nail salon with this color on, and I had to have it. I searched online and found it, but didn't order--back then I wasn't keen on online shopping (that has certainly changed!!), but I never forgot the name of that polish. It was one of the first things I ordered when I started taking an interest in nail polish and nail blogs. 

Swatches today are one coat of Sally Hansen Nail Protix base, two fabulously easy coats of Warhol, and a coat of Seche Vite. Every Color Club polish I have worn has had a fantastic formula. This flows smoothly onto the nail and gave me no trouble whatsoever. This is neon, and very bright. It's definitely pink with orangey undertones, which you can see in certain light. I didn't have any sunlight for these swatches unfortunately. It rained steady all day Saturday of this past weekend. Sunday was sunny for a few hours, which I capitalized on to get some nice sunlight pictures of some holo and glitter polishes, but not this one. I took some flash pictures, which I normally skip, to try to give you a range of lighting conditions.

These pictures were taken in my lightbox. The left is without camera flash and the right is with flash.

I think I got this from Head2Toe Beauty--they're a great source for older nail polish collections and cheap too!

Color Club Warhol. Indoors, artificial light, no flash.

More soon!! ^_^

Stash Swatch Initiative: A-England Lady of the Lake

Outdoors, sunlight.

Hello again!

Today we start my attempt to swatch everything in my collection, which I've dubbed 'The Stash Swatch Initiative'. I got a lot of swatching done this past weekend, so updates will be short swatch posts daily during the week until I run out of polishes (unlikely, as I'm on the hunt for new ones any time I leave the house). I plan to show you what I wear each week, too.

Anyway, on to the polish! Today's swatch is Lady of the Lake from A-England.

Indoors, artificial light, no flash.

Outdoors, sunlight.

This is a gorgeous deep blue-purple polish with a scattered holographic effect. When I added this baby to my shopping cart, I didn't think I had anything like it. I was wrong. Take a look at Lady of the Lake compared to Color Club's Wild at Heart. Both pictures show Wild at Heart on my index and middle fingers while Lady of the Lake is on my ring finger and pinky.

Outdoors, natural light. Lady of the Lake on pinky and ring fingers, Wild at Heart on middle and index finger.

No base or topcoat here. Both are shown at two coats. Formula-wise, they are very close. The each have a great formula, which becomes opaque in two coats. I didn't have any problems with application and dry time was quick.

Indoors, artificial light, no flash.

They certainly aren't dupes, but they are similar. Wild at Heart is warmer and has a pink-tinged holo effect, where Lady of the Lake's holo is full spectrum rainbow.
Lady of the Lake is a part of A-England's 'The Mythicals' collection and can be purchased from A-England's website as well as from llarowe (which is where I got mine). This was in the first order of polishes I purchased from llarowe, and I was impressed. I ordered on a Friday afternoon, received shipping confirmation two hours later, and by Monday afternoon, the package was sitting in my mailbox. Magic, I say! It's a long jaunt to the mid-Atlantic states from Colorado.

I purchased my bottle of Wild at Heart from Head2Toe Beauty. It's been a long time since I made that order, so I can't recall how quickly it came. I do know that I will order from there again--they've got a great selection of polishes from older collections at really cheap prices (I think most Color Club are $3 and China Glaze too).

More soon! ^_^