CND Night Factory Duo

Everyone knows that I regularly get excited about nail polish. But it's pretty rare that I get fanatic about one. But I am fanatic about this duo. CND's fall "fashion trend" is a creamy teal called Urban Oasis and its effect counterpart is Teal Sparkle. And Teal Sparkle is only the greatest thing to happen to nail polish all fall. I'm so in love with this effect it's not even funny. I've never bought any of the effect, so I ordered all the sparkles. I've been playing with them since the second I tore open the box and they are so much fun! The combination possibilities are endless.

I mentioned before that I'm digging teals this fall, and Urban Oasis is a unique one to me. It has just the slightest hint of dustiness to it, a quality that I'm always crazy about. And I was very pleased to see it was different from the other teals that have come out recently!

Comparison- left to right: Essence Meet You In Budapest, OPI Ski Teal We Drop (dupes to RBL Teal and Sonia Kashuk Taunting Teal), Urban Oasis, and the teal from StrangeBeautiful Volume 4. Urban Oasis is pigmented and smooth enough to be a 1-coater!

And here's the SPARKLE!! All the Sparkle Effects have flecks of flashy sparkle in them, like a flakie but smaller and more uniform in size. The flecks in Teal Sparkle, in direct light, show up blue, green and gold, giving an overall teal-y look. It's... well... amazing!


And as cool as it is in bright sunlight (which I'm SO glad I got today! It was supposed to storm on my Sparkle parade!), it's absolutely breathtaking indoors. When the sparkle catches a hint of indirect light, the whole nail looks like it's glowing. Think a slightly darker Zoya Charla. I love that these look even better indoors, cause we all know that's where we'll be spending more time during fall!


I started trying Teal Sparkle out on a bunch of other colors to see what I like and don't like. It's impossible to make this thing look bad. I've only bought 1 back up of a color ever, but this is back up worthy. Totally getting another bottle in my next order.

Over darker colors the teal color comes out beautifully, and it's best over black. My absolute favorite combination (so far) is over a dark purple, the contrast is epically amazing!

Left to right: OPI You Don't Know Jacques, RGB Plum, Barry M Grey, WnW Black


Here's more of the gold flecks:

Indoors, with flash:
Over lighter colors it looks pretty too, though I'm not as into these for fall.

Left to right: OPI Ogre the top Blue, Damone Roberts 1968, What's with the Cattitude? China Glaze Flyin' High

Seriously, looks SO much better indoors!


If you like teal, or sparkles, even just a little bit, the Night Factory Duo is MUST HAVE.

And a tip for using the Sparkle Effects: top coat between polish and effect is a must, because even if you let the polish dry the effect brush will pick up pigment and turn the clear base colored.

NOTearthD

Happy Earth day! I hope everyone ignored the oil rig that could potentially leak millions of gallons of crude in to the ocean and did something awesome to help Earth yesterday! I celebrated with a green Jade is the New Black mani, but decided it was too boring so I topped it with Chanel Illusion D'or.

I'm really going back and forth on Illusion D'or. In some light I'm amazed by the little blue-y purple-y holo bits in it. But sadly in most light it just looks like I topped my green mani with a gold frost. And I hate frost finishes. They look so dated and unfashionable. And I really don't like associating Chanel with those two words. Since I took the plunge and splurged on it, I'm not going to give up on it after one try. I'm going to try it over a matte black next time, hopefully my opinion will change. If you're on the fence about dropping so much cash on this, IMO it's probably not worth it. Go for ChG Medallion, there's so much sparkle in there and you won't miss the differences between the holo bits!

2 coats Jade is the New Black, 1 coat Illusion D'or, click for super macro:

Under the Sea

Over the weekend I was sporting Atlantis for a day, and I LOVED it! For as long as I was lemming it (like 5 weeks?), and for the amount of time I've had it untried (2 months!), it's kind of embarrassing that I didn't try it sooner. I love the color in it, and the sparkle... well, it speaks for itself. Pictures galore because this one is a stunner!



Here's some blur to show the sparkle:

Just look at this color!



Here are some comparison pictures too! From left to right we have Claire's Green Confetti, Sinful Nail Junkie, and China Glaze Atlantis. And I know I just did a tribute to Atlantis, but I have to say my fave is Nail Junkie, but I do think you need both! Atlantis has an amazing color, but Nail Junkie has some bigger sparkles and these amazing blue flecks that peek out in some light. It's best to meet them in the middle; 3 coats of Atlantis for color and then 1-2 coats of Nail Junkie. I don't have pictures, but I did an experiment with them. 1 coat will give you some blue sparkle and bigger chunks, and 2 will give you the perfect amount, but will change the color of Atlantis. I personally like 1 coat better.


Claire's Green Confetti was something I picked up for $1 on clearance, and it's pretty cool. It's more of a standard green, which you can see in the second pic, and it has larger chunks of glitter! Sadly, it's pretty sparse, and while 3 coats will get you a jelly-opaqueness with color, you need at least 4, and really 5 coats, to get enough sparkle. But it does dry fast!

(You can click these two to see them bigger, it shows the color differences much better)


For my mom's b-day I let her pick anything from my collection, even my HTF's and LE's, and did her nails. She picked Nail Junkie, and got so many compliments at her party! Even more than my Absolutely Alice did.... not that I was jealous or anything, LOL!