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Wednesday, May 30, 2012

A True Color from the Capitol: 22kt Gold Glitter (pic heavy)

I feel like I should be sitting in the Capitol watching young kids fight to the death in an arena while I paint my nails with real 22kt gold glitter.







Real Gold Inc - 22kt Gold Glitter Topcoat

As many of you may know, I've been on the hunt for the perfect gold glitter, and I think I just may have found it. This is incredible. It's meant to be a top coat, but I built it up in four coats to try and make it opaque. It actually dries very quickly and thin and smooth (no Gelous needed!), so four coats wasn't a burden at all. It's hard to describe how mirror-like this is in person. It's also a beautiful, rich shade of gold - not too orange, not too green. My new favorite gold glitter!

Because it's meant to be a top coat, I wanted to try it over a couple colors:




22kt Gold Glitter (one coat) over Zoya Minka



22kt Gold Glitter (three coats) over Zoya Minka



22kt Gold Glitter (one coat) over China Glaze Liquid Leather

The funniest thing about this polish is that even though it's real gold, I've spent WAY more on plenty of other polishes. I got a set of three (22kt gold, 12kt white gold, and silver plus a top coat) for only $22, which makes each one less than a typical retail OPI! Incredibly affordable in my opinion.

The 22kt Real Gold Glitter top coat is available on the Real Gold Inc. website.  They also have 12 kt White Gold and Real Silver top coats, as well as UV gel versions, a red with 22kt gold version, and stripers, too!



Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Love & Beauty - Silver: The Blingy-est Polish I Own

I can't believe I haven't worn this until today. I remember thinking how amazing it was when I swatched it on a nail wheel, but somehow I never got around to actually wearing it until just now. It's really too bad Love & Beauty doesn't give their polishes actual names. This one just says "Silver" on the price sticker.


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Love & Beauty - Silver

Silver is a clear base that's packed with small holo hex glitters. It's not micro glitter, but it lays pretty flat and gives excellent coverage. What struck me about this polish is how much the rainbows show even in the dim light. I'm pretty sure it's the strongest holo glitter I've seen in a polish. I've worn the Layla holos and glitter bombs like OPI Crown Me Already, but this one takes the cake for the single most "blingy" polish that I own. Even better is that this glitter doesn't even dry very gritty so it's nearly perfect with one coat of Wicked Fast.

In the right light, the colors are almost blinding:





These were all taken under a particular lamp that really amplifies the rainbows in holo polishes (as a side note, one of my favorite things to do is sit under this lamp with my holo polish swatches and just stare at the beauty... *sigh*). The pictures do not even come close to portraying the amount of color and sparkle.

I LOVE when I find a new favorite polish and it happens to be incredibly inexpensive! I got this on Forever 21's website a while ago, so I'm not sure if it's still available (it could be this one or this one), but they have a lot of amazing colors (especially glitters!) and they're less than $3 each!

Thursday, May 3, 2012

The Perfect Gold Holo: Layering

Awhile ago when I reviewed HITS Hermes and was a little disappointed, one of my readers (Katie from katie's handmade) suggested that I try out Hefesto (a holo topcoat) over my favorite gold. And I finally tried it!

Here are the results:

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Gold Holo - Pure Ice Bite Me and HITS Hefesto

For these pictures, I used only one coat of Hefesto, but what's great about this combination is that you can add more coats of Hefesto to "tone down" the brassy gold color. I wanted to keep the rich gold of Bite Me because it's one of my favorites. Usually saturated golds like this don't look very nice on, but this one is stunning.

A little note: I took these pictures right after applying it. Over the next hour or so it developed a lot of bubbles! Has anybody else had this problem with the HITS No Olimpo collection? I had the same thing happen with Hermes, and it's pretty frustrating. Also, they don't seem to dry nearly as fast as other holos I own.

Here is a picture of Bite Me by itself from my previous post. I actually didn't know its name when I first posted about it because the bottom label only has a number!



Pure Ice - Bite Me

Pure Ice polishes can be found at most WalMarts and also on the Bari Cosmetics website.  Hefesto can be purchased from Llarowe or Ninja Polish when it's in stock.