Comparison post: Fleck-finish greens

Hello!!

I've had a few requests for comparison posts and dupe posts, and it's a good reminder that it's been a while since I've done either. So I decided to pull this forward in my rotation a bit, and show you a comparison of 8 green fleck-finish polishes that I own. :)

Here is the bottle shot for the first 5:

Hard Candy Crush On Ivy; Zoya Rikki; Brash Sergeant Khaki; Zoya Ivanka; Zoya Logan

I wanted to do with comparison initially because I suspected Hard Candy Crush On Ivy and Zoya Rikki might be dupes, so I wanted to put these two together; can you guess which two they are, lol?:

From left to right we have:

Zoya Ivanka
Brash Sergeant Khaki
Zoya Rikki
Hard Candy Crush On Ivy

As best I can tell, Zoya Rikki and Hard Candy Crush on Ivy are not quite dupes, but they're close; they both sage green but Rikki has gold flecks in it that Crush On Ivy don't have, and I love that (Rikki also has a slightly better formula, imo). But, they're close enough that if you have one, you can easily skip the other.

As for the other polishes, Brash's Sergeant Khaki is true to its name and has a much deeper, more olive color, while Ivanka is a brighter, more grass-green polish. SK has a wonderful formula and is a one coater; did I mention it was only $2.99 at Payless Shoe Source? They have a whole line of polishes there, and I never had a clue about that before stumbling on this (actually, a friend I was shopping with noticed them and called me over!). I can't find any information about whether or not they're cruelty-free, which is why I haven't bought anymore--I can't say for sure they aren't, but I can't find anything saying they are, either.

But wait, didn't I say 5 polishes? Oh yeah:

On my thumb I have Zoya Logan, which is a more forest green with subtle gold flecks. This was from their holiday collection and is certainly a pretty, Christmassy green. The color is so rich, it actually washed out the other colors in the picture. I love love love the play of yellow-gold and green in this polish. :)

To continue on the comparison over both hands so you can see how they all compare to one another, I swatched Zoya Rikki on the pinkie of my other hand, then put on the final three polishes. Here is the bottle shot first:

Julep Etta; Zoya Meg, Apple and Rikki

Here they are on the nail:

From left to right:

Julep Etta
Zoya Meg
Zoya Apple
Zoya Rikki (again)

Zoya Apple turns out to be well named, as it's a pretty green-apple color; the formula on this was very thin and with two coats it was still patchy and needed a third; this is really the only one of the bunch I probably wouldn't buy again. Zoya Meg had no such problem--her formula was wonderful and she was nearly a one-coater. Her brand of green is more of the lime persuasion, and I could look at that color all day ::sigh::. Finally, Julep Etta is an almost yellow avocado sort of green; she also had a good formula.

And that concludes my first comparison/dupe combination post! I hope it was helpful. What are your favorites? And which color/finish would you like to see me compare next?

Hugs and loves,
M.

Before & After: Hard Candy Peach Pop

Hello!

How ya doing? How's your week going? I can't lie, I'll be happy to see this week come to an end--it's been a weird one. But, I'm alive and happy and I can't complain. Hey! Let's go grab some coffee! Or a cookie! Yum, cookies...

Okay, sorry, I'm back now, and I'm focused. Today I have a little beauty for you that I just adore: Hard Candy Peach Pop. It's a pretty peach crelly with red, orange and silver glitters in it. Warning: this manicure was done when my cuticles were at their very worst, making them icky and making it impossible to get the red polish off of them (even though yes, I'd just put balm on them), so just ignore the cuticles and stare directly at the polish, lol:

Hard Candy Peach Pop

I wanted to pull my accent color from the pretty red glitter, so I stamped with Cheeky plate GA30 and Sally Hansen Rapid Red. I finished up with some red rhinestones:

So far of the Hard Candies I've picked up, this one is my favorite--I'm actually thinking of getting a back-up of it!

Hope your week is going well and wraps up on a good note. Thanks for stopping by! :)

Big hugs,

M.

Before & After: Medieval Tapestry

Hello!

Urg. This is the first of my time period challenge manicures that I'm not happy with.

I'm sort of half happy with it. Maybe three-quarters happy with it, because I like 3 out of the 4 nails you can see.

But let me start at the beginning. This week's time period is the medieval period, and when I think of this time period, I think of tapestries, like this pretty one I found online:

(Click here for source)

So, of course, I decided to try to replicate the feel on my nails. Should have been easy enough, and mostly it was.

I started with a base of Hard Candy Crush On Ivy, one of the new Hard Candy colors; it's a pretty frosty green with lashings of golden yellow:

Hard Candy Crush On Ivy

Next, I stamped on a leaf pattern to recreate the leafy border of the above tapestry with Winstonia plate W117, and China Glaze Passion. Then, since unicorns are such a big symbol in medieval tapestries, I decided it would be perfect to have a unicorn on the accent nail, so I stamped one with China Glaze Mahogany Magic:

It's a unicorn, really. That's a horn on top of the head.

"But Michelle," I know you're saying, "Um...I'm pretty sure that unicorns in medieval tapestry are white, because they are symbols of purity and chastity and innocence and stuff, and that's why they're on the tapestries in the first place! Why, oh why, did you not stamp the unicorn in white??"

>.<

Yes, that would have been a good idea, and I did actually try to stamp it in white--in fact if you look really closely, you can see it under the brown horse, just below a bit. It didn't show up at all!!! I didn't expect that it would meld into the gold so much, but it did. So, some little part of my brain that apparently had been deprived of oxygen yelled out 'Hey! BROWN!!" So I did it in brown. And it looks like a horse. And I didn't have a chance to redo it.

So, if you'd do me a favor of just looking at the other three nails and pretending that there is no ring finger there, we can both just walk away and pretend none of this ever happened.

In fact, best thing is to just go look at the other medieval manicures linked below, and forget about this one as soon as possible...>.>

Thanks for taking a look! Big hugs. :)
M.

Before & After: Ancient Rome

Hello!!


Today's prompt in the Llama Nails Time Periods challenge is Ancient Rome. I love ancient Roman mosaics like the one below, so I decided to try to do a manicure based on them:

Source for this: click here.

I started with a base of Hard Candy Crush On Copper, which has a very Roman sort of feel to me; it reminds me of the colors of the buildings you see in pictures of Rome. It's a fleck-finish copper/orange/rose duochrome with excellent application and nightmarish removal:

Hard Candy Crush On Copper

Next I cut a thin slice off of a make-up sponge, and then cut a square piece off of the end of it, so that I could simulate mosaic squares. Then I started with China Glaze Kalahari Kiss, and sponged 'tiles' onto my nails, leaving gaps at the top where tiles would have broken off. Next I sponged the bottom part in the same way with China Glaze Mahogany Magic, I ended the sponging portion by putting some lines for definition with Wet n Wild Ebony Hates Chris, using the edge of the sponge:

I liked how this looked, but it didn't capture the mosaic sort of look I had hoped--when I looked at it, it began to look more like the background of a shot of Rome to me, so I decided to turn it into that. To that end, I stamped an image of the Coliseum with my Wistonia plate W114, using Barry M Silver Foil polish:

I absolutely adore the final look--I love the contrast between the silver Coliseum and the abstract background, and I love how the colors work together. Which do you prefer, the mosaic look alone, or turned into a background for the Coliseum?

Thanks for looking, and don't forget to take a trip back to Ancient Rome via the other manis linked below. :)

Big hugs!
M.