Glitter Gal Bronze Sparkle, White Sparkle & Electric Blue Sparkle

Today I have for you three of the 3D sparkle holographic polishes from Australian brand Glitter Gal. I have purchased Glitter Gal polishes previously, but these three colors were provided to me by Leah from her shop. I'm happy to share the swatches and results with you so let's get started.

Bronze Sparkle, White Sparkle, Electric Blue Sparkle

Bronze Sparkle

Bronze Sparkle reminds me of Cleopatra, or jewelry that you would traditionally associate with ancient Egyptian culture. It's a bright bronze base with lots of silver holo sparkle, which reflects red and turquoise and a rainbow of other colors, giving it that jeweled look.

The sparkles just light up, giving the polish a gorgeous depth.

In natural light, the polish looks more subdued. I like this quality - it's probably work appropriate for more settings, but it still has plenty of sparkle and interest - especially in the sun!

White Sparkle

White Sparkle is more than meets the eye - it's a sheer, pearlescent white base with scattered holo sparkles that glint and gleam. The pearly finish flares orange and pink in the light. Here, it's swatched over a single coat of Essie Marshmallow.

I can see this delicate look being appropriate for a wedding or even as a work-appropriate manicure for office environments. It's even more subtle worn alone. The scattered holo sparkles remind me of sunlight on a fresh snowfall.

I saved my favorite for last - Electric Blue Sparkle, which lives up to its name.

Electric Blue Sparkle

The bright blue jellyish base is packed - packed - with holographic sparkles. The result is a manicure that glows from within, because the jelly base makes the glitter look like it is sparkling from underwater.

When I tilt my nails in under a light source, I get a beautiful teal/turquoise glow. It's hard to capture in a photograph, but it's in there! Truly lovely. Definitely not subtle or delicate. Blue polish lovers will love this one.

All three of these polishes were easy to apply; Electric Blue Sparkle was probably the easiest to control because of the jellyish quality. I've always gotten good wear from Glitter Gal polishes and these were no exception (I've worn Electric Blue Sparkle and Bronze Sparkle for full manicures and both lasted 2-3 days before showing tipwear or chips). The sparkle is more dense in Broze and Electric Blue than in White Sparkle, so if you're looking for a glitter bomb, those are the two you'll want to consider. White Sparkle is a more sheer, subtle look.

In case you're not familiar with Glitter Gal polishes, remember that these bottles are smaller (.3 fl oz) than many nail polish bottles that you might be used to (OPI, Essie, Zoya, etc). As an example, here's a bottle of Glitter Gal next to a Revlon bottle.

Having purchased Glitter Gal polishes before, I can say that the quality and color payoff are certainly worth the price. Just know that they are smaller and you won't be surprised when you receive them!

You can get Glitter Gal polishes from Leah at her shop (she also offers Ozotic, a-England and other harder-to-find brands). I have always found her customer service to be fantastic.

The polishes featured in this post were provided to me for consideration from the seller. Aside from product samples, I have not received any compensation for this post. Opinions are strictly my own.

Nic's Sticks Rainbow's End

A few months ago there was a big frenzy for Nic's Sticks in Silver-ella and Rainbow's End - both holos! People were finding them at Tuesday Morning stores, buying two or three at a time and decanting them into regular bottles.

Why would you do that, you ask? Because Nic's Sticks are not easy to use, and they come with probably the worst brush I've ever seen. Worse even than the Missha brushes, which is saying a lot. For all of that, I will admit that the final result is not bad. I didn't have to do a ton of cleanup, just some tidying around my cuticles. It just took a lot longer than usual to paint my nails.

To use a Nic's Stick, you have to press down on the cartridge that holds the polish. This releases a small amount of the polish, which then flows down into and over the brush. Sounds good in theory, but it results in very clumsy application, and it's very difficult to control how much polish you get on the brush from nail to nail. Add to that the inherent challenges of a holo polish and you stand to have a real mess on your hands. (Literally! Ha!)

I only found one stick in the Rainbow's End color, a peachy/nude holo. It's a shame OPI didn't just bottle these colors up because Rainbow's End, at least, is gorgeous.

 This is a linear holo and it shines and glows even in low light, including my dreadful office lighting.

I love this color because it's almost a neutral/office appropriate shade while still being interesting and incredibly pretty.

I used my regular base coat for this (don't ask me why it slipped my mind to try my new Nfu-Oh Aqua Base) and Sally Hansen Insta-Dri as a top coat. It's held up remarkably well - I've been wearing it for four days and it still looks great. I have some tip wear and one small chip on my left hand. (Another good thing about this color - it doesn't show wear very easily!)

I'm a huge fan of this shade, which is why it bums me out that it's no longer widely available. Even if it was, to truly use it the way I'd want to (often, and with minimal fuss), it would need to be in a real nail polish bottle with a real brush. And this is something I don't understand about the nail polish biz: How is it that OPI can put this awesome shade in a Nic's Stick with a subpar brush, but not in a Nicole or OPI bottle with a regular brush? I love the OPI ProWide brush, it's probably my favorite aside from RBL.

The bottom line is that I'd love it if OPI released a collection of awesome, high quality holos like this one, but I'd also want to enjoy applying and wearing it. And for that, it needs to be in a real bottle.

What do you think? Have you ever used a Nic's Stick? How did it work out for you?

Honk if you love OPI - DS Original

Honk if you love OPI is from the Touring America collectionA gorgeous blackened berryI free handed some sadly misshapen v french tips and my ring finger with DS OrigionalI love blackened shades like this where you can easily in any light tell the color but it's so very deep and vampy stillI used 2 coats of Honk if you <3 OPI and one of DS OriginalVampy and holo is a favorite combo for it they

A quick NOTD

My pal Janice recommended Milani Hi-Tech to go under Lynnderella She Lived In A Swamp, so I picked it up when I swung my CVS last week (ExtraBucks clutched in my hand). I put it on with every intention of immediately topping it with She Lived In A Swamp, but...

I love it so much on its own that I'm holding off for the time being. It's stunning in many different types of light and it applied perfectly. Recommend!

Make Up Store holographic nail polish

First things first: My manicure today is Maybelline Be Scene In Green from the new fall collection.

I picked up this one and Cool Couture, which you can see on the right in the picture below. (Be Scene In Green is on the left.)

Another shot of BSIG.

So. I like this in theory. It is a very pretty medium green, perhaps leaning a bit teal, with lots of gold shimmer. On the nail the effect is kind of foily. I'm just not that big a fan of this particular manicure. For one thing, although I filed and buffed my nails before applying BSIG, the polish brought out every imperfection. So while you can't really see much of this in the pictures, there are all kinds of lumps and ridges showing, which of course annoys me to no end.

It's making me give this polish a side-eye, is what I'm saying.

However! I thought you might like to see bottle pics and nail wheel swatches of the Make Up Store holos I bought during their 40% nail polish sale at the end of August.

Madeline, Greta, Siw (I asked and found out this is pronounced "Seev," thus solving one of the Great Nail Polish Mysteries of my life).

The bottles are awesome. Round, perfectly solid. There is no undercap but I found them very comfortable to hold. Also the brush on these is much nicer than on my Nfu-Ohs.

Madeline, Greta, Siw.

Yeah.

*fans self*

Thus far I've worn Greta but did not get pictures because my cuticles were so displeasing to the eye. I used Essie Matte About You as a top coat and it definitely worked the best of anything I've tried with this type of holo. I'm still working out the perfect application, though. I had a few bald patches with Greta and it chipped pretty quickly, but I think some of that comes with the holo territory.

Anyway, that's all the news for now. I hope to show you some more Lynnderella goodness this week, and I'm fairly sure that I'm going to buy myself the Chanel Les Jeans collection for my birthday. We'll see if I pull the trigger when the time comes (I suspect I will).

More recent NOTDs

Hello there friends!

I have a couple of recent NOTDs to share, but first, let's catch up a little. I am eagerly anticipating my Make Up Store holographic polishes that I got for 40% off on Wednesday, and word on the street is that we will begin receiving Lynnderella invoices over the weekend. I also have a line on the Rivkas I wanted and then of course there are those Fashion's Night Out Chanels coming up. Needless to say this is all being done in the name of WHEE IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!! My birthday is actually September 13 but...I like to spread it out a little.

I've twice tried to get the new Estee Lauder color, Metallic Sage, and twice failed. Yes I could order it online but the shipping cost is bumming me out. I've gone to two Lauder counters and one behaved as though they had no idea what I could be talking about. Sigh.

Also, my blog sale is back up. I have some new things on there that I've decided to part with so take a look if you are so inclined. I've changed up the shipping a little bit because I was losing money on it but I still think it's pretty reasonable.

Anyway, this is NARS Orgasm.

I love the shimmer in this. I do think I used too many coats or perhaps the wrong top coat, because I could still dent it after about 24 hours. I used four coats of Orgasm (hahaha) over two coats of NYC Little Italy. I think next time I would try one coat of Little Italy and three of the NARS. Also, I used SV and it could be that NARS just didn't play well. Beautiful color though. I've wanted this for a while even though peachy colors like this typically don't do me any favors. The shimmer in this one saves it though and I'm really happy with it.

Today I'm wearing Diamond Cosmetics in Chainmail Charm.

I ordered this more than two years ago and never tried it until now! I still remember getting my Diamond order because I ordered so many. At the time they were still $2 each (they're $2.50 now I think) and I had them delivered to a friend's house because I was on vacation.

BUT I DIGRESS.

There are, of course, "dud" versions of this. I do not think this is one.

Thanks for looking!

Glitter Gal Light As A Feather

I've been waiting not-so-patiently for the new Glitter Gal linear holos to be available in the U.S. Earlier this week I received the long-awaited email and I quickly ordered Lizard Belly, a dark green (!) linear holo (!!) and Light As A Feather, a white linear holo (!!!).

Before I get into that however I need to tell you about taking off the Missha purple glitter. How much foil, how many cotton balls, how much acetone was sacrificed in the name of getting that stuff off my nails? I hesitate to try and tote up the damages. Not even 10 minutes with foil wrapped around my fingers did the trick. It merely softened the glitter's hold on my nails until I could gently pick it off with an orange stick. Also there was glitter EVERYWHERE. I said on Twitter that it looked like I murdered Ke$ha in my bathroom sink.

After all of that my nails were surprisingly undamaged, but I did use my ridge filler just to be on the safe side.

Light As A Feather. This is a white linear holo with a jellyish quality to it, and as you can see it comes out a soft, delicate mist gray on the nail. I used three coats.

In this nail wheel swatch, you can see that Light As A Feather (far left) looks very white, not gray. My nail wheels are white, and I suspect that if you did two or more coats of the holo over a white polish, you might get closer to this effect. I tried it over two coats of Sally Hansen White On and didn't like my result, but that's probably more the fault of White On. The Asian Girl suggested Essie Marshmallow as a base and I agree. I love Essie Marshmallow's application and coverage. (You can also see Lizard Belly on this nail wheel. It's gorgeous!)

Taken in early morning sun. You can see more of the holo in these pictures. Application was a breeze - the jellyish texture makes it super easy to apply.

I ordered these polishes from shop.llarowe.com and my experience was excellent! I ordered on 8/16 and received my polishes 8/19. Shipping is so reasonable and I think we can all agree that sometimes that is a make-or-break with e-tailers. I have heard international buyers rave about the shop as well. (No I'm not affiliated...just a very big fan.)

As an aside, I'm not having much luck finding the new Halloween releases from Wet n Wild or the new Revlons. I'm not sure how many (if any) of these I want to get, but I do want to see them in the wild. Yesterday I did happen upon the new Maybelline limited edition fall releases, and picked up Cool Couture (a dusty opaque blue-gray with blue shimmer) and Be Scene In Green (a medium green shot through with gold and green shimmer). Here's a quick peek:

L-R: Be Scene In Green, Cool Couture.

More news on those as events warrant!

Sally Hansen Golden Tourmaline

Holographic polishes have grown on me after not really being a fan for a long while. Maybe it's the summer sun pouring through my windows, but right now I can't get enough of them. I remembered that I had a couple Sally Hansen Prisms languishing in a drawer of my Helmer, so I decided to give them a whirl. I showed you Purple Diamond last time.

This is Golden Tourmaline.

I got very excited because I thought it would be a true red holo. And it is red, but the holo effect is not as strong in this one as in Purple Diamond.

(Here's Purple Diamond, if you don't feel like scrolling back.)

I wouldn't say this was "disappointing" per se. I still enjoyed wearing it. It just bears more resemblance to a straightforward red shimmer than a holo. It's still gorgeous in bright sunlight and would probably be a fun pedicure color. (Although I like holos on my fingers...so I can gaze at them admiringly. You know, like a lunatic.)

Lastly, a comparison.

Ozotic 511, SH Golden Tourmaline, SH Pink Diamond. This picture really shows how strong the Ozotic holo is compared to Golden Tourmaline. Pink Diamond is a little stronger, and the color is closer to the Ozotic.

I also tried a Sally Hansen Prisms duochrome, which I'll photograph in daylight tomorrow and share with you accordingly.

A couple of recent colors

Hello there. It's been a busy week and I'm very glad tomorrow is Friday. The only bummer is that there's no Formula 1 race this weekend or ANY weekend in fact until the end of the month. At my house we do love our Formula 1 Sundays.

In any event, I thought I'd share some recent manicures. No real theme other than I have the photos and I wanted to post!

This is Kleancolor Metallic Green. I got some not-so-nice comments on this one along with some raves. Green nail polish is very polarizing for some reason, I guess. I like it. It's a very glowy polish. If you are into this sort of thing, it would make a good St. Patrick's Day manicure.

I have to say though that the not-so-nice comments took the fun out of wearing it a little bit. So it didn't give me the usual joy to look at it.

Someone on MUA mentioned they got this color for stamping, so maybe I'll try another fishnet manicure with this as the accent color.

I was in the mood for another holo recently and I remembered that I have a couple of Sally Hansen Prisms. Unbelievably I found these in a local Dollar Tree. I feel like so many people find treasures at their Dollar Trees and mine are always nail polish wastelands. But one time I got lucky!

This is Purple Diamond.

I don't know if this is true for all of the Prisms, but this one has a very strong holo effect. It's even visible in relatively low light.

You'll have to forgive the leftovers of Metallic Green on my cuticles. It was stain-y!

Glitter Gal Deep Green Sparkle

In my continuing quest to seek out polishes from all across the globe, I ordered Glitter Gal Deep Green Sparkle sometime early this month. There was a slight delay in shipping (due to the supplier and not the US stockist) but my polish finally arrived last week!

Deep Green Sparkle is a scattered holo glitter in a dark green jellyish base. While the base is very dark it is indeed very definitely green, almost a very deep teal.

My photos of this are not the best I've ever done, I really should take some more in the sunlight. These were done pretty late at night, with dry cuticles because I had just removed my previous manicure (Chanel Graphite!). Forgive me.

The polish itself was pretty thick and tended to drag, so I stuck to thin coats and let the first coat dry quite a bit before doing the second, which worked great. Two coats were sufficient. I might thin the polish just a tiny bit, but not too much because it was very easy to control and I don't want it running all over the place.

The only "drawback" of Glitter Gal polishes is that they are small - 0.3 oz to be precise (OPI bottles contain 0.5 oz). It's so small that you might consider it a mini. This in itself isn't so bad, but they do cost $15 per bottle, making Glitter Gal one of the more expensive brands. However...consider the payoff...these are pretty unique!

This being said, I will not hesitate to buy a couple more of them. I like the quality and the US seller I went through (she is on eBay) was excellent so I am happy to give her my business. I heard that Overall Beauty will also be carrying Glitter Gal soon, too. I plan on pre-ordering the upcoming green and white (!!!) linear holos (!!!).

Lastly, a request: I am eagerly seeking some Rivka polishes from Brazil. If any of you have any advice/ideas on how I can purchase some, please let me know!

Holo franken nails & my bestest Fangirl

I was playing around with frankens the other day and as much as I likedthe base colors they still needed something......glitter? No Holographic glitter, YES!And wouldn't you know not a bit of sunshine! *sigh*Oh wait...they match my hair! :o)The pink shows off her holo a bit more than the teal. (Teal is a little shy)I will wear them again when we have sunshine so you can see the pretty holo

HOMG SPARKLEZ

Sorry, I can't be any more articulate than that.

I've wanted some Ozotics for a looooong time now, ever since I started hanging out on the MUA nail board. Until fairly recently you could only get them by a) going to Australia or b) getting someone in Australia to send them to you. But now you can get them at Picture Polish, who will send them internationally! All the way from Australia! (The Ozotics are 10% off through July 5, and Picture Polish's international shipping rates are way reasonable as those things go.)

I bought two Ozotics, but let's talk about 511.

I used to think I wasn't a big fan of holographic polishes but OOPS I WAS WRONG.

Just like the Nfu-Oh I showed you, this isn't much in dim or indirect light but in the sun? Yowza!

I guess this is why holos are so fun to wear in the summer. (Duh.)