China Glaze Rare & Radiant

Hi guys! How's everyone's days so far? I'm trying to build up my queue so that I won't (hopefully) be scrambling to post after a couple days of not posting- a week into college and I'm already SUPER busy.

Today I wanted to show you one of my newer polishes- China Glaze Rare & Radiant! I usually NEVER pay full price for China Glaze since I buy it online from head2toebeauty instead, and save a ton of money on it. But a few weeks ago when I went to Ulta I was so excited to see this that I didn't even pay attention to the fact that it was a China Glaze until a couple hours after I got home! I was hoping to find OPI's version of this, Just Spotted The Lizard, but there were no bottles left, oh well!

As you all probably know by now, Rare & Radiant is a dupe for Chanel Peridot. I love love love Peridot, I stopped using my bottle of Peridot as much because I didn't want to use it all up, so boy am I glad people have finally started making easy to find dupes! I was going to do a comparison post between the two, but there's so many out there already I decided not to- however if anyone wants to see a comparison post just let me know! 

Formula wise, it was great in 2 coats, but I'm a habitual three coater so I did three anyway. On a couple of my nails it did get a little bubble, but I'm not sure if it's because of the polish or me. Other than that, I give this an A++

What are your guy's thoughts? Are you excited to see Peridot dupes everywhere now or are you getting bored with seeing so many?

OPI I Vant To Be A-Lone Star Swatch & Review

 Today I just have a quick little post for you guys. Last week when I went to Ulta I picked up again. Every time I've gone to Ulta in the past few months I'd always pick this one up and say "ooh this is pretty!" then put it back. But this time was different- it was on clearance! It was only marked down to $6.49 instead of the usual $8.50, but hey, that's still enough to make me finally buy it! It didn't disappoint either.

Pictured here is three coats of I Vant To Be A-Lone Star with one coat of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Anti-Chip Top Coat (review of which is soon to come!)

I Vant To Be A-Lone Star is is a light blue with a hint of grey. It has some silver shimmer in it too. The shimmer in this reminds me of a frost, it's not though, which is good because that means no brush strokes showing! Application and consistency were pretty good. Three coats and it was perfect, and it wasn't too watery or runny either, I can honestly say this is now one of my favorite polishes I own!

Unrelated to the color, but I had to trim my nails down because I will be starting college in about a week and a half and since I'm going to be a music major I have to take a keyboard class. If any of you guys have tried playing piano with longer nails, you'd understand why I cut them, playing piano with long nails is not only hurtful but really difficult when your nails just slide around on the keys and get stuck between the keys!

How do you guys prefer your nails-short or long? Personally, I prefer this length but just get too lazy to cut them and let them just grow!

OPI Pirouette My Whistle over OPI My Pointe Exactly

Pictured is one coat of OPI Pirouette My Whistle Over yesterday's nails, OPI My Pointe Exactly. I am absolutely in love with Pirouette My Whistle! I have a huge weakness for glitter polish and I don't have anything like this in my collection. It reminds me of China Glaze Techno, except it's not holo glitter! Despite not being holo, it's still sparkly and gorgeous, it just makes it great for when you want glitter, but don't want it to be "in your face" glitter. The larger pieces of hex glitter are more sparse than the fine pieces, which means if you don't want to have a nail with only 1 hex piece of glitter and others with a large amount of hex glitters, then you will want to just pay a little more attention to your application, unlike if you were applying China Glaze Fairy Dust. Aside from that, the application is wonderful. Unlike China Glaze Snow Globe, where it sinks into the polish a little bit, this just lays on top of the polish perfectly. It is lies smooth and flat.

OPI My Point Exactly Swatches & Review

Pictured is 4 coats of My Pointe Exactly and one coat of Seche Vite

I've seen many pictures of this and read many reviews of the NYC Ballet Collection, and in all the reviews I've read, everyone said these were not streaky, patchy, and were "self-leveling".

Obviously I didn't quite get the application right then, because you can see in the last picture with flash that it's streaky and uneven in spots. Unevenness aside, this is a great color. It's a sheer grey jelly, that on my skin tone leans more on the blue side. It leans so much on the blue side on me that it makes my hands look like I'm just really cold. However the application was much better than I expected with this. Usually with sheer polishes they're a streaky mess on me, these didn't even look that streaky and uneven unless I was really looking for it, so even though they were uneven in spots, it was not that noticeable and was most likely just due to my application. 

Usually I hate seeing any VNL, but the finish on these made these acceptable to me, and I actually really love it! I bought it with the intention of doing a jelly sandwich, but I think I actually might wear it by itself a lot also! 

Zoya Ivanka

Pictured is three coats plus one coat of Seche Vite.

Like all the other Zoya's in my collection, the application and formula were great. The polish goes on smooth and doesn't get chunky like other glass flecks/glitter tend to do. Honestly, I can't tell if this is a glass fleck or a glitter. In the bottle it looked like a glass fleck but when i went to apply it it looked like very fine glitter. There is some VNL, but that was most likely due to my application, my room was dark when I applied it so I may have missed some spots.

Don't forget to wrap the tips though! I didn't and it's painfully obvious. 

Color Club Holo Swatches and Review

As many of you probably have seen, Color Club will be releasing a new holo collection this August/September! Ah! More holos! I'm So excited to get my hands on them! You can see a couple pictures here at Neverland Nail Blog. :) Because of this new collection, I decided to swatch the old, well soon to be "old", Color Club holos in preparation of the new holos! Now, onto the photos! warning, there's a TON of pictures, and you can probably tell which one is my favorite based off the absurd amount of pictures I posted of it :) Please note some of these pictures are in fact blurred, but I included them because they showed the holo a lot better than nearly all the in focus ones.

 All taken with flash in indirect sunlight from my window.

Revvvolution. Black holo

China Glaze Trendsetter

China Glaze Trendsetter is from their Metro Collection from last fall. It's a mustard yellow with gold shimmer in it. In the lighting in my house it looks more like a darker olive shade than a mustard, but once I'm outside I can see how it's mustard. My mom actually described this as "an ugly pea baby food" color, which I have to agree with. It's ugly, but awesome. I've actually had this sitting on my nail rack for almost a year now because I wasn't that fond of it and thought it was ugly, but eventually it grew on me. It reminds me of those dogs that are so ugly yet somehow they're cute and you just want to play with all day. It's so ugly and unique, that it's awesome! See for yourself!

What do you guys think? Are you into these kinds of ugly, yet awesome colors? Is it something you'd wear?

Icing After Party

Icing After Party is the colorful rainbow version of Icing Shredded, which is what I was originally looking for when I purchased this. It reminds me of OPI Rainbow Connection if it were thrown in a paper shredder and shredded into tiny bits. The brushes on Icing polishes reminds me a lot of China Glaze brushes, I'll include a picture of the brush, I like it, it's not too big but it's not too small, it's just right for me. The only downside of this polish for me is that my bottle has dried polish and glitter on the outside of it, which was there when i purchased it. I think that maybe it was with another bottle that broke and they just didn't bother to clean the bottle off, which is no big deal, but you can really see the dried polish on the bottom of the bottle. You would definitely want to wear a topcoat with this since some of the glitter bits don't lay flat against the nail and stick up a little bit, nothing a little Seche Vite can't solve though!

Pictured is one coat of Icing After Party over top of three coats of OPI Are We There Yet? 

Look at that glitter! So pretty

See the dried polish on the bottle?

A lot like China Glaze brushes, am I right?

OPI Are We There Yet?

Are We There Yet? is from OPI's Fall 2011 Touring America Collection. It's a nice orange coral with pink and gold shimmer in it. However the shimmer is so subtle that once I applied it I actually forgot it was there until I saw my nails in the sunlight! That's not to say it's not a nice color, because to me it is, and sometimes it's nice to have a color where the shimmer is incredibly subtle. Pictured here is three coats of Are We There Yet? and one coat of Seche Vite. Application was alright, it was a little streaky though, but not so streaky that it was unbearable, just mild streaking that required me to go a little slower. I tried to capture the shimmer but my camera couldn't even capture it really. But trust me, it's there.