Orly Color Amp’d Two-Part Nail Color

March 27, 2015Sophia Ravenna

Nail color and top coat.

Ok, so here’s the deal. I wrote a long, detailed post about this product and then WordPress ate it. It’s already 1pm on a Friday and I don’t have time to re-write everything I wrote, so you get the short and not very sweet version instead.

Orly Color Amp’d is a gel-style nail system only available at Target. It claims to last for up to a week but starts chipping within days. The first time I tried it, I had significant chipping in less than 24 hours, and I hadn’t done anything ridiculous to my nails, I just dared to take a shower.

The one thing it has going for it is a very fast dry time. It claims to dry in 8 minutes and both times that I tried it, I found that 8 minutes after applying the “flexible sealcoat”, my nails felt completely dry and did not get smudged or dented as I went around the house doing normal stuff. I found that my manicure was more reliably dry and damage-proof than it is when I follow my normal routine of applying drying drops and waiting 10 minutes before doing anything.

Color Amp’d seems very over-priced for what it is. A regular bottle of Orly brand polish is .6 fluid ounces and costs $8 at Ulta. This stuff is $9.99 for only .37 fluid ounces. Wouldn’t you expect a product that they’re selling at Target to be cheaper than what they sell at Ulta? It’s more expensive than Sally Hansen’s similar system, which Target also carries. It’s like they’re expecting chumps like me who like Orly’s regular polish to be suckered in by the fact that one of their favorite brands is finally available at Target, and that we’ll ignore the price tag and the weird smell of the top coat and the fact that you can’t actually see what color the polish is because it’s in an opaque bottle with a colored wrapper around it that doesn’t properly display the color you’re buying.

I’m seriously disappointed by this stuff, guys. They claim that it lasts 88% longer than a normal manicure, but my nails look just as bad as they would have looked if I had used normal polish on Monday night and wore it until Friday morning. They might even look worse. Add to that the fact that I am really not excited about the color selection, as it’s mainly a bunch of plain cream colors and not the cool iridescent glittery shimmery shades I usually buy from Orly.

Hall of Fame.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, this is a pretty cool orangey gold/pink duochrome, but the only reason I have it is that I opened the bottle in the store and saw that it was not the simple metallic coppery color it appeared to be.

I don’t know what Orly was thinking when they came up with this product line, but I can’t help but feel that they knew it was a dud, and that’s why they’re only selling it at Target instead of offering it alongside their regular line.

Nail Polish WIN from Literary Lacquers

February 6, 2015Sophia Ravenna

Annabel Lee

Way back in April, I ordered a bottle of Annabel Lee by Literary Lacquers. I was really excited by it because I was in a grey phase and I also like Edgar Allen Poe. However, I felt like it wasn’t the best color for the brighter clothes I was wearing in Spring-Summer, so I set it aside for Winter. A few weeks ago I came across it again and I was like OH YEAH GREY GLITTER MANICURE TIME. The first coat seemed a little sheer, but I knew it was a jelly color so I wasn’t worried… But after three coats it was the barest hint of sheer grey still and I was way disappointed. However, since I had good experiences with Literary Lacquers in the past, I figured this was just a bad color but not indicative of the brand. I was prepared to stick it back in my nail polish hoard and not think about it again, like numerous other colors that looked great in the bottle and meh on my fingers.

However, a friend of mine is friends with Amy over at Literary Lacquers and she thought something was not right, so she contacted Amy who agreed that the color should be opaque after three coats, as shown in the Etsy listing. So I got in touch with her and she offered to replace my clearly faulty bottle with a brand new one. She mailed it off promptly and a few days after it I sat down and painted my nails again… so much better! One coat was more opaque than three from the bad bottle, and the above image shows three coats. The color is a beautiful jelly grey with small holographic glitter and even smaller black glitter. It reminds me of black labradorite!

See? It matches!

Annabel Lee wore really well for a few days, until bead show set-up day, where I did things to my hands that hands should not endure. No manicure could survive that, and sure enough, there were huge chips all over the place. I feel like I could have easily gotten 5-7 days of wear in a normal week, though, especially with a good base and top coat (I’m currently having issues on that front as my usual base coat got goopy). Obviously this isn’t the sort of color that you would wear on stage a lot, but for a Gothic belly dancer looking for an alternative to black, this would be a great choice… Especially if you’re doing a ghosty performance. It reminds me of gravestones (appropriate for a color inspired by Poe).

So the point of this is that not only is this a beautiful nail color, but Literary Lacquers is a nice business to work with! It’s always refreshing to work with a company that cares about its customers and is willing to fix problems. I’m sure I would not have received such a prompt response from a big cosmetics company.

Nail Polish Round-Up!

December 12, 2014Sophia Ravenna

British Racing Green.

You guys know I love nail polish. I’m fortunate enough to have really long, strong natural nails, and it seems a shame not to decorate them as often as I can. So in the interest of not having my beauty blogs be all nails, all the time, I’m going to try to just do a round-up of all the new brands and products I’ve tried once a month or so.

This month’s big winner is Butter London’s British Racing Green. This is an expensive brand, so I waited a long time to try it. A couple of months ago Ulta had a sale so I picked up two colors, and this was one of them. Although it’s inspired by that classic car paint color, I think it’s also a really nice choice for the holidays! You could dress it up even more with some silver or gold glitter, a festive accent nail, or some other nail art. The above photo shows two coats, and you can see it’s a nice opaque color with a bit of shimmer to it. I think I got about a week or so of wear on my hands, and several weeks on my toes. Even then, my toes were only a little chipped and I was changing my color more out of boredom than necessity. I’d say this brand is probably worth the splurge, especially if you catch it on sale or use some reward points on it. If you’re looking for holiday gifts for someone, they have some cute steampunk themed nail polish sets right now, too.

There is one drawback to British Racing Green, however. Because it’s a dark color, it will stain. I used a base coat, so my nails were fine, but there were some spots where there was stubborn bits of green in my cuticles or under my nails. Plus it left green residue all over my skin! Let’s take a look at my feet after I decided to replace the Butter nail polish with some Lime Basil Parfumerie polish…

I’m bad at pedicures!

See the green stain on my index toe? I even tried using a makeup remover wipe on it. That color did not want to go away. Luckily a shower soaked it off. As for the Lime Basil polish, it’s a fun bright opaque green and was perfectly opaque after two coats. I can’t report back about the scent though, since I’m not about to try to smell my own toenails.

Now for a color that is beautiful, but really high-maintenance.

Formula X, when will I learn?

I don’t know why I keep buying Sephora Formula X colors, I never end up being quite happy with them, and they’re not cheap. But the colors themselves are so gorgeous, I always tell myself this time it will be different! So here we are with the Brushed Metallics, a line that is matte and iridescent and downright beautiful. I was in a weird mood when I was at Sephora, so I bought the weirdest color they had. Determined is a matte taupe brown with blue iridescence. It’s really cool and weird and a great choice for winter. It would look beautiful with a blue and brown costume… and yet… It was almost impossible to apply. It went on streaky, and attempts to smooth it out just made it worse, resulting in big blank swathes on my nails. And because it’s a matte color, I can’t put a top coat over it. So when I took a shower the next morning, it started chipping, and just kept flaking away for the next day or two. I painted my nails Monday night, repaired the chips Wednesday afternoon, and I’m sitting here on Friday morning with nails that look awful. In fact, as soon as I get done with this blog, I’m taking this polish off. I can’t look at these huge naked spots any longer! This is definitely the sort of color that you’re only going to get one or two days of wear from.

Oh, and speaking of removers, a quick shout-out for the Formula X Delete nail polish remover. It works really well, and comes in a cool pump bottle, and isn’t too stinky. A nice upgrade from the cheap drugstore brand polishes I’ve used in the past.

Matte Manicure Mishap

October 10, 2014Sophia Ravenna

A little messy.

Don’t worry, I promise I’m done with nail polish reviews for a little while!

I’ve had Yuna from Zoya’s new Fall collection for a little while, and I kept wanting to try it out but it was a little dark for the summer clothes I was still wearing because it was still hot in AZ. Finally, I decided that it was October, so I was going to wear dark nails no matter how hot it was. I took off that blood red I reviewed last week and replaced it with Yuna and I was happy. What a gorgeous grey with bronzey greeny shimmery micro-glitter! So beautiful, so unusual.

The very next day I got my hands on the new Matte Velvet topcoat from Zoya and I had a thought… Wouldn’t it be cool if I did sweet matte tips and then I would have an awesome, edgy Fall manicure? Surely my meager nail art skills were up to the task!

I’d read that you could use normal stationary tape for masking your nails to do your tips like this, so I grabbed some Scotch tape and went to town with my matte topcoat. It was so easy! It was going to be so cool!

Well, it didn’t go quite as well as I had planned. The tape pulled up from my nails in spots. In some cases this allowed the top coat to leak under the tape and extend the effect farther than I wanted to. In other spots, when the tape moved it also lifted the top coat with it, so that parts of the tip stayed shiny. And in one spot, the tape took some of the nail color with it, leaving a blank white spot on my nail!

I have a couple thoughts for how to make this manicure idea more successful for next time:

Fit the tape to my nail instead of wrapping all the way around my finger.
Try masking tape instead.
Apply to a fresh manicure instead of a day-old one that already has a top coat.
Try it with a different color. Yuna’s charm comes from the bronze glitter, and the matte dulls that effect, which makes it look like a completely different color and made for a less attractive matte tip. I think a simpler color would be better suited to the matte tip treatment.

This just goes to show that it’s really good to experiment with makeup ideas when you have nothing else going on. I didn’t have any performances last weekend so it didn’t matter that I had wacky nails. If I had done this right before a gig I would have had to remove it right away and try to do something else attractive with my nails on a short time frame! It also goes to show that maybe I shouldn’t try a new-to-me nail technique at 11pm, because what seems like a good idea late at night might seem like a mistake in the morning.

Pacifica Nail Color

October 3, 2014Sophia Ravenna

Red Red Wine

What’s that, red nails? This is only the second time in my adult life my nails have been red, and the only time they’ve been a plain opaque red. What precipitated this departure from weird nail colors? Well, I received this Pacifica Nail Color in “Red Red Wine” in my ipsy bag last month and I figured I should try it out, and I figured it would match the red velvet skirt that I was going to wear for Open Stage last night.

I have to say, that picture is not very representative of what this color looks like. On my nails it’s actually almost a perfect blood red color. It really looks like dark red wine or blood, not this stop sign fire engine color. I thought about adjusting the photo to try to make it work, but then I figured it might be important for you to know that if you want to wear this for a photo shoot, it might look different depending on the light and the camera and it might not be as bloody as you want.

I’m not sure I can really recommend this brand of polish, though. Sure, it’s 7 Free, 100% Vegan and Cruelty Free, which may appeal to a lot of people. But after two coats it’s still not very even, I had color transfer onto the brush of my top coat when I was doing my nails (even though I’d let the polish dry for at least 5 mins before applying the top coat), and the day after I painted my nails it was already starting to chip. Today is my second day wearing it and I think I’m ready to remove it and replace it with something more “me”. Sure, this blood color is awesomely thematic for this time of year, and I may break it out again for Halloween itself depending how what I choose to dress as, but over all I’m not really impressed and I’d rather replace it with some Zoya.

I haven’t really had a chance to properly review my ipsy bag, and the new one will be here in a week or two, so here’s a pic of what I got:

This stuff.

While this is my favorite actual bag so far, I’m not really feeling the items that I received. The lipstick seems promising but I don’t need more powder and I’d really rather receive actual cosmetics instead of lotions and cleansers. I think I’m going to give ipsy one or two more months, maybe adjust my answers to the quiz they use to help pick my items, but if I keep getting “meh” things like lotion, untinted lip balm and tanning oil, I may ditch them in favor of getting the Julep Maven box, where I’ll get some good quality nail polish.

Glitter On, Glitter Off.

August 1, 2014August 13, 2014Sophia Ravenna

Best Friends Forever?

Let me tell you a story. Way back in April, I got an Ulta add and it included some new OPI glitter nail polishes and a base coat specifically designed for use with glitter polish, that would allow you to just peel it off. Finally, I thought, the product I’ve been waiting for all my life! Well, maybe not all my life, but ever since the first time I wore glitter nail polish, so since I was 13 or 14. In anticipation of purchasing and testing this product, I ordered some of the Zoya Magical Pixie Dust polish in Cosmo, because it wasn’t like I didn’t already have a ton of glitter nail polish already. I was just waiting for an excuse to buy more!

So I waited for the date the sale would start, figuring it would be on shelves by then, and I went down to my local Ulta, and I scoured the nail polish department and all the end caps and I didn’t find it anywhere. I also never found an employee anywhere near the nail polish who would help me, so I decided not to buy anything at all and left in a huff. Then I figured hey, I’ll just order it on-line, but when I went to the ad and clicked the product, it said they didn’t have it. So I went to OPI’s website to learn more, and the information about it was behind a password for pros. So I figured maybe somebody had jumped the gun and it wasn’t actually out yet and I’d just wait.

I ended up waiting a lot longer than I intended, although I kept checking any time I was any place with nail polish, to see if maybe another brand had released a similar product. No luck. Finally I went back to Ulta last week, and they still didn’t have it, but the employees were actually in the mood to offer to help me and the nice lady at the register told me that they’d gotten in maybe 4 bottles and it had all sold out, and maybe I could check Amazon because she didn’t think they were getting more. Sure enough, when I went home and checked the Ulta website it wasn’t available to order, but I did find several Amazon sellers who had it. I chose the one who offered free shipping and a few days later, finally, I had my Glitter Off!

So what exactly is Glitter Off? In the bottle its white and opaque. It goes on smooth and translucent and dries quickly. One reviewer said they were pretty sure it was just Elmer’s glue, which is apparently what bloggers have been recommending as a base for glitter for a while. It does certainly look and smell kind of like glue. I’d have to see if I could find and compare ingredients lists to see if it is exactly glue or just has some of the same chemicals. Anyway, the idea is that you paint it on your nails, let it dry, then paint on your glitter (no top coat) and then when you’re done with the glitter, you just peel it right off instead of using nail polish remover. No more soaking your nails and still having glitter on days later!

Did it work? Well, it was easy to apply and the glitter went on nicely over it. One coat of Glitter Off and two coats of Cosmo gave me a super sparkly manicure, and since Cosmo has three sizes of glitter in it, I figured that would be a good test of how well it worked. I painted my nails on Thursday night, and despite the fact that I saw some reviewers saying that it was prone to chipping or peeling on its own, I got through my weekend with very little polish loss, pretty much unnoticable unless I looked for it. By Sunday night I could wait no longer, I had to see if I could peel it off!

The answer is yes, but it was tedious. Instead of coming off in one piece or big chunks like I imagined, it mostly came off in small shreds. There were stubborn spots that I had to scrape off with another nail. So while the base coat itself doesn’t damage nails, you can damage your nails in trying to remove it! I managed to clean one hand off Sunday night and did the rest Monday morning. It was time consuming and kind of annoying. On the other hand, I now only have glitter in a couple of tiny spots where it looks like my base coat didn’t quite get to the edge of my nail (or I wasn’t able to peel it out of the corners, either way).

I think maybe this product would work better if I had applied a thicker coat so that it would peel in larger pieces without breaking. Further experimentation is definitely warranted. If any of my readers have already tried it, or had success with using glue or other products to deal with the glitter problem, please let me know in the comments!

Because Glitter!

Chill Out!

July 25, 2014July 24, 2014Sophia Ravenna

Does it work?

A couple of weeks ago I painted my nails, and it didn’t go too well because my polish was goopy from the heat, especially the top coat. I managed to get decent results, but it wasn’t fun and easy like doing my nails usually is. So when I saw the above tip on Pinterest (originally from a post on GottaGetBeauty), I figured I would give it a try next time. About a week later I was ready to get super-girly and paint my nails with Faye by Zoya, so I put the nail color and my base and top coats (both Formula X) in the fridge for about 15-30 minutes before doing my manicure.

Did it work? Mostly. I felt like my base coat and nail color went on more smoothly than they had the last time. But when it came time to do my top coat, it was still goopy. I don’t know if it’s because it was a warm night and by the time I did my top coat the bottle had been out of the fridge for about half an hour, or if the damage to the product’s consistency is permanent and can’t be undone by simple chilling. I do think this is a tip worth trying, especially if you live in a hot climate like me and don’t have the luxury of keeping your home at a chill 68 degrees. Honestly, I wish I could keep all of my polish in the fridge all of the time, but my collection is big enough that it wouldn’t leave much room for food!

You didn’t think I’d leave you without a nail color picture, did you?

As for the nail polish itself, I’ve always been happy with every Zoya color I’ve worn so far, and Faye is no exception. Orchid purple with a glittery gold sheen, it’s way outside of my normal wheelhouse of colors, but I felt like something a little different. It’s super pretty and glamorous, and would be a great compliment to a rose gold eye shadow look or a Radiant Orchid (2014 color of the year!) outfit. I’m getting a little chipping after 5 days of wear, but that’s OK, because guess what just arrived in the mail? My new Glitter OFF base coat. I can’t wait to test that! Check back next week for the verdict.

Revlon Parfumerie Nail Polish

June 7, 2014Sophia Ravenna

Isn’t that a cute bottle?

A few months ago I was at Target and saw a display of this new nail polish like from Revlon called Parfumerie. While I was partially curious about how nice the scents were, I mainly picked up “Wintermint” because it looked like a far more expensive nail polish that I kept admiring at Sephora. I finally tried the polish this week and I am reasonably happy with it.

I applied two coats, sandwiched between the Formula X base coat and top coat. I am happy with the coverage — it is slightly sheer after two coats, but also nice and even. The cool wintermint scent comes through even with a top coat over it, but it isn’t overwhelming. The scent is much more sophisticated than the grape and chocolate-scented Sweet Georgia Brown nail colors I had as a teenager (I wonder if that brand is still around? I used to love them!). Of course, it still smells like nail polish while it’s wet, there’s no escaping that.

I did my nails early this week (Sunday maybe? All my days have kind of blurred together lately, I blame the heat), and noticed some chips yesterday so I had to repair it yesterday before Open Stage, and now there’s more chips. So it is not the most resilient formula, but not the worst I’ve worn either. It’s not bad for a drug store brand, and there are some nice colors in the line. Plus don’t you love the perfume-inspired bottle and round cap? I think it’s a very attractive product. It’s worth checking out if you see it on the shelves and a color or scent catches your fancy.

Really well-hidden gems

April 11, 2014Sophia Ravenna

Admittedly, not the best photo I’ve ever taken.

A few weeks ago I picked up this “Hidden Gems” nail polish from L’Oreal because it was really different from any color I already had in my collection. A deep, glittery teal with a purple sheen and silver glitter, it was like a galaxy full of stars. I had to pick it up! Then the other day I figured I’d use it on my toenails because I was going to wear a teal costume for the Every Body’s Beautiful Revue, and my teal pants had a touch of purple in them, so this would be perfect, right?

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a nail polish be so different on the nail than how it looks in the bottle! This color has a weird, almost semi-matte finish, even after I put a top-coat on. The teal glitter only shows in the bright light, and there’s no hint of purple. It’s still kind of pretty, but it’s not remotely like what I thought I was purchasing. It’s also way too dark for Spring, so I think I’ll remove it this weekend and replace it with something more fun and awesome.

The color does at least seem to be holding up well after a week of wear. I applied two coats, sandwiched between Formula X base and top coat. So the quality seems ok for a $7 nail polish, I’m just not impressed by the color or the level of glitter.