OPI and Serena Williams have just released the next installment of their Glam Slam! series to coincide with the French Open. This time there are two sets of colors which each have a sparkling polish shade alongside a new shade of OPI's Shatter crackle polish.


Rally Pretty Pink. This is a sheer dark pink/mauve/plummy brown base with insane amounts of bright, shiny gold metal flake sparkle. Looks and sounds familiar, doesn't it? Zoya Faye? They seem very similar to me. Faye seems deeper and richer, Rally Pretty Pink seems lighter and slightly pinker. I don't have my bottle of Faye with me so I haven't been able to do a true side-by-side evaluation to determine just how similar they are. I love this (like I loved Faye), it's a stunningly gorgeous color.


Red Shatter over Rally Pretty Pink. Red Shatter is really fascinating! As you can probably tell from the pictures, it's sheer. It's like a jelly crackle. Because if the see-through quality of this, details of the base polish show through the red. See all the sparkles from Rally Pretty Pink? Pretty cool. Another interesting effect of the sheerness is that the tone of the red shatter can change based on what you layer under it.



See how much warmer it looks here with the orange showing through? This is OPI Red Shatter over Finger Paints Outta Sight Orange. This looks awesome over glittery orange, like a big shiny sparkling fireball.

The formula on both was great. Nice and smooth, good texture, fast dry time. The crackle effect works much better over dry polish, but I used it over wet polish in these pictures and it's still pretty good. Just be aware that when applying over wet polish, the crackle will spread as it dries and take the base polish with it, causing bald spots.

I love both of these, but I must say... what an odd color combination. I don't know how much I like the red crackle polish over the golden-mauve base color, I think it blends in too much. I don't dislike them together, but I think the crackle effect doesn't seem as pronounced as with other colors. Needs more contrast. Maybe a yellow underneath?

(These were sent to me for review.)

OPI Serena Glam Slam! France 2011 - Rally Pretty Pink and Red Shatter

Well, uh, hey there guys! I know I haven't posted in quite a while so it's a little awkward starting this post. I ended up being sicker than I expected and I'm still not fully recovered. Unfortunately, I was still in the middle of swatching when I got sick so I don't have any of the new collections finished enough to post yet.

Just wanted to let you know that I'm still alive and that when I'm completely recovered I'll be getting back to posting. I leave you with the last mani I did before I got sick:

Illamasqua Radium as a base with Illamasqua Gamma polka dots and China Glaze Lightning Bolt on the ring finger. I haven't swatched the whole Toxic Nature collection (I will soon!) but I wanted to try on some of the crazy colors and this is what I ended up with. It's like crazy nuclear toadstool psychedelic acid trip terror moldy nightmare. I love it. I'll go into more detail about the collection when I finally get my review finished, but let me just say that Illamasqua really knows how to create a whole fantasy world just based on colors.

That mani lasted a really long time, too. An entire week. Of course, I wasn't doing anything besides sleeping and tripping out on NyQuil, but still... it lasted the whole time without chipping.

See you in a bit.

I don't want to go on the cart...

I did this mani that I really hated, but I didn't feel like taking it off and starting over. No matter what I layered over it, I still hated it... So I figured, why not add one more layer just to see what it looks like? I didn't necessarily love what I ended up with, but it was at least better. I photographed the evidence:


Here's me playing with China Glaze Fault Line and Broken Hearted. I don't remember everything it's layered over, but it included Milani Magenta Metal as the base and Sally Hansen HD in Byte on top of everything. I liked the subtle crackle effect of Fault Line with little glints of duochrome sparkle from Byte peeking through. Fault Line still doesn't crack as well as the other shades, but I did get it to crackle more this time by applying it over completely dry polish and waiting 5 minutes before applying topcoat.



This one I actually liked. It's China Glaze Lightning Bolt over the random pink polish mess. I love the way the glass fleck sparkles in Byte shine through the cracks of the white polish. White crackle is really neat. I want to do it over neon yellow... think I'll try that soon.


So, there's that. Just thought I'd share a few more layering combinations with the crackles. I'm still a bit obsessed with crackle. I don't think I've done more than one or two manis in the past month that haven't had crackle on them...

Playing with China Glaze Crackle Glaze again...

You may remember me mentioning these Kiss nail decals in my Valentine's Day post. They deserve their own post, they're so great. They might have replaced those Fing'rs EDGE skull designs as my favorite decals...

The only name I can find on the package for this style is "Action" so I'm going to assume that that's what they're called. There's a number on the front, so that could also be the name of the style. I have no idea. But this is what they look like:

It comes with four sheets of decals. Each clear sheet containing the stickers is placed on top of a square of pink paper so it makes this pretty colored stripe effect in the package.

On the back of the package there are some ideas for combining decals to create new designs. There's also some really obvious directions.

Click this to enlarge. There are four distinct styles on each of the four sheets. Skulls, crosses, flowers, hearts, squiggles. The skulls are really cool because...


...When you look up close, the banner across the heart says "Rock, Kiss, Love" in hologram lettering! You may have to enlarge that picture to see it. The writing is SO SMALL, I'm amazed that they included that tiny detail. I love them for it, even though rock kiss love makes no sense.

Some of the decals have little metallic "gems" (they're really just flat shiny areas) on them in addition to the matte coloring, another nice touch.


Here I am wearing one of the floral-squiggle-gem decals over Trind Caring Color CC134 (I'll be reviewing this line soon!). The top picture is after a day and a half of wear, the bottom picture is freshly applied.

One thing that I really love about these decals is that the clear backing portion is 1) small and 2) really clear. This allows the design of the decal to be the main focus; you don't see a thick clear-ish outline around the design to distract you.

The decals are very thin and delicate but they also adhere really well, a fantastic combination. They lie completely flat, blend in with your polish perfectly and don't peel or curl up.

Honestly, I can't think of anything I don't like about these. I love the designs, the construction of the decals, the coloring, the packaging, the wear time and removal... They're just really damn good decals.

I guess I can think of one thing I don't like- the confusion about the name! Is the name 54031 or is it Action? Is it neither? What is the name?!

And maybe I suppose they're a little close to Ed Hardy territory, but whatever, they're awesome looking skull nail decals!

I don't remember where I got these... It was either Walgreen's or Meijer, but they sell Kiss decals everywhere so you shouldn't have a hard time locating them.

New Kiss Catwalk Nails Collection Decals

A few of you suggested that I try layering the crackles over each other, and I was curious to see how it would turn out... So, I layered some more crackle glaze over my existing mani and I think it turned out pretty cool! Here's what I tried:

Broken Hearted over Crushed Candy over Essie French Affair. This one didn't seem to want to crackle as much over crackle, but it still looks pretty cool. The parts where the pink and blue layer over each other turned purple! I think I like it!

Cracked Concrete over Crushed Candy over Essie French Affair. I like this one better! It crackled more. I love the color combination. Know what it reminds me of? That weird 'abstract' 80's-90's corporate art with the weird geometric shapes and splatter paint patterns in teal and grey and peach... Know what I'm talking about? The type of generic art you find in offices and stuff? Sometimes there's a palm tree, but usually funky boomerang shapes and triangles...

Sorry about the blurry pictures. I can not hold my hands still today. They're shaking so bad I'm even having a hard time typing. Bleh!

China Glaze Crackle Glaze Layering

I've been so bored/burned out with nail polish lately, but seeing these arrive on my doorstep totally perked me up! These are amazing. Definitely worth getting excited about. If you're into the crackle finish, you'll love these for sure. I personally love having more color options for layering. So excited to post these...

You can use them over any color or finish you want, I just used what I had nearby and I think the layering combinations turned out pretty nice!


Black Mesh (over China Glaze Happy Go Lucky). Standard black crackle finish. Crackles really quickly, absolutely flawless.


Broken Hearted (over Color Club Bizerk Turq). This is a new one to me- pink crackle! Beautiful candy pink crackle. I think it looks amazing over the neon turquoise, but I have so many ideas for layering this. I want to try it with yellow and orange next!


Cracked Concrete (over Essie Nice is Nice). Medium grey crackle. About the same color as China Glaze Recycle, just in a crackle finish! This one looks really good over pastel pink, too, but I wanted to try it over pastel purple to see how it looked. Looks good to me!


Crushed Candy (over Essie French Affair). This may be my favorite of all of them. It's a light turquoise blue, along the same lines as China Glaze For Audrey. Love this over the pastel pink. It reminds me of Saved By The Bell or something... 1940's-50's kitchens?


Fault Line (over China Glaze Midnight Kiss). This is a lovely royal purple shimmer color with a crackle finish. Also, note how it's not very crackled looking. This is why you have to wait for your polish to dry before you apply the crackle! But even doing that, this color still doesn't seem to crackle as much as any of the others:

This is it over completely dry polish and it didn't crackle like the rest. Maybe because this is the thickest of all of them, or because something about the shimmer in the color interferes with the crackling action?

Lightning Bolt (over... actually, I don't remember what color this was... Eep!). A white crackle! This one is more sheer so you will see some of the base color through it. Also:




Anyway...


The formula on these is good! They're not normal polish so you can't really compare it to a normal polish formula. They are thick and you have to apply them quickly because they dry even faster than mattes. They crackle quickly and perfectly and they remove easily, unlike the old-school crackle polishes. They dry matte, so you'll need a topcoat. I used topcoat in my pictures (except for the second picture of Fault Line).

I used a sort of random application technique on some of these to try to get a different shape happening. I like the vertical crackle lines, but I also like bigger random chunks of crackle too! These are really fun to play with. I adore crackle polishes and these make me so happy!

They're available now, online and at Sally!

(These were sent to me for review.)

China Glaze Crackle Glaze Collection for Spring 2011

I had this idea in my head for a while, so I decided to finally try it as it was perfectly suited for Valentine's Day:


But it didn't turn out exactly as I had hoped! This is a base of Essie French Affair with the new Art Club Nail Glam full nail decal design Hearts of Gold on the ring finger. I originally wanted to put the designs on every finger, but I'm really glad I started with my ring finger. Now I know what you guys were saying about these. They're... not so great. They're extremely stiff and don't conform to the natural curve of the nail, so you end up with weird lumps and wrinkles like you see on mine. And they say to seal them with topcoat, but the decal covers the whole nail so it's really not sealing it to the nail, it's just coating it with topcoat, which means... it peels. Gah, what a disappointment. I loved the design so much, too. I wish I could have made it work.

The Essie polish was exactly the color I was thinking of for the base of the mani, so that worked out well!

But yeah, too bad about the Art Club Glam decals. I had really high hopes for them. *sigh*

So, how was your Valentine's day? So what if it's a Hallmark holiday! That does not negate the awesomeness of heart-shaped sugar cookies with pink frosting! And sprinkles! Any holiday that advocates the liberal use of sprinkles is a winner in my book.

My official Valentine's Day manicure

Inque Nails is having a sale until February 8th: Get 15% off your order with code thanksget15off OR get $5 off your toenail sizing fee with code get5offsizing.

Edit: Reader Vampkat also shared this code: 20% off if you use the code FBPPPQOW

I haven't posted about them yet because I haven't tried applying them. I'm currently working on swatching a lot of polish, so I didn't want to apply the Inque nails and immediately have to take them off and waste them! But, when I get a chance to wear the same thing for more than a day, I'll do an application post about these.

In the meantime, here's a little information about Inque.

Inque Nails are a vinyl nail wrap- a little like a decal, a little like Minx. You apply them with heat and they stick to your nails, similar to the Minx process. Except, with Inque nails, you can pick and create your own designs and they're custom sized to your nails.

The first thing you have to do is register your nails. You take a picture of each hand (and/or each foot if you want Inque for your toes!) and they custom size all your designs to the shape of your nails. I'll explain this more in detail when I post my Inque tutorial.

There are a ton of designs to choose from, or you can create your very own style!

To give you an idea of what's available, here are some of their designs:


This is what the Inque nails look like when they're sized to your nails.

However, it's easier to see the detail in the patterns on unsized sheets, so I'll post the unsized ones for these pictures. Keep in mind that you'll get the sized type above once you register your nails, and they'll be perfectly fitted to your own nail shape.

Amoeba


A Little Cheetah


Dog Gone Crazy



Flight


Go Green (these might just be my favorite!)



Peacock 2 (Peacock 1 is only one feather)


Proud To Be

Snake 4

Aren't those cool?! Such amazing, intricate designs that could never be duplicated with Konad or painting alone. They've added a ton of designs since I picked mine out and there are a lot new styles I want... I'm particularly fond of the new 'Cheese' design. Wish I saw that when I picked mine!

Right now they also have Superbowl designs, in case you're into that kinda thing and want to show some team spirit.

Those are the designs I chose, but there are over 200 designs to choose from. You can also submit your own images for a completely custom design. I'll do a more detailed post on application when I am able.

(These were sent to me for review.)

Inque Nails Designs and Sale

Another layering combination with OPI Black Shatter that I really liked.


OPI Black Shatter over Color Club Jackie OH!. I love the combination of the neon with the black on top, it makes the neon look so much brighter. This reminds me of lava. If you have a neon pink or orange, you have to try this, it looks so cool in real life. I've noticed that my Black Shatter always crackles into vertical stripes... that's odd. I want some more random square chunks to happen when it crackles... The kind that make it look like a giraffe pattern... How do I get it to do that?

OPI Black Shatter over Color Club Jackie OH!