Icing magnetix blue

I'm sure by now you've seen this color swatched on other blogs so I'll say briefly I really like this color and I love the magnet that comes with these polishes - but my brush was SO wonky it almost made me not want to use this.  It was like trying to apply polish with a mop.  Horrible.

I've noticed with magnetic polishes that the design seems to muddy or become less defined after a couple days of wear.  So on this mani, I actually held the magnet over my nail for a full 60 seconds then immediately popped my nail under a nail dryer to try to set the nice crisp design.  And I think it helped!

Incidentally these pics were taken after 3 days so you can see a little bit of tip wear.  But it held up pretty well for an inexpensive polish!  This was 2 coats of color.  No complaints there!

Here is a pic of the brush.  Can you see where the bristles actually TWIST at the end? 

Hope you enjoyed today's post and have a great day everyone!

Pink Wednesday: A different take on magnetic polish

Hi ladies! Happy hump day! Almost to the weekend, what are your plans? My boyfriend is coming up for the weekend. He is still in school still -- I don't get to see him whenever I want, so I'm pretty excited :)

For this mani, I started with a base of two coats of e.l.f. Fuchsia. Such an original name, man....Fuchsia, for a fuchsia polish. These execs at e.l.f. are so deep and creative. All the other e.l.f. polishes I have are streaky and sheer, so imagine my surprise when this one was opaque in just two coats! The brush was wonky on it, but again... all my e.l.f. polish brushes are wonky and need hair cuts. I don't know why I love this color so much -- it's your regular, run of the mill magenta, fuchsia color. I don't know! I never used to like pinks either... I must be going soft in my old age.

Here are some swatches of Fuchsia by itself:

On day two, I wanted to freshen this mani up. It had gotten dull and I already had tip wear a day later. Mama sent me two Icing magnetics a few days ago that I decided to use on it. When I initially got the package, I played with the magnetics and could NOT get them to work for the life of me. It would only magnetize down the center of my nail. But, when I tried this time, I used thinner coats and it seemed to work a little better. I still need some practice with them though to get a harsher pattern to show up, I think.

Anyway, I just taped down the diagonal of my nails and painted on a coat of this gold magnetic polish from Icing. It has no name. Icing, y u no name awesome polishes?!

Finished up with a black line over top of the diagonals and voila! A simple Pink Wednesday mani that isn't your standard magnetic mani. Mom called it "interesting" ... I guess I can live with that.

Also, just a little note: I've added a requests/submit button on our Tumblr! So if there's any mani ideas, requests, questions, what have you.... send em there! :)

Icing magnetic pink Wednesday!

This was my first attempt with magnetic polish.  I picked up 3 of the 4 colors at Icing Saturday night and decided to start off with the pink one for Pink Wednesday!

I started with a base of Color Club Hot Like Lava, which is a beautiful color in and of itself.  I love this Foiled collection - the polishes apply well, dry fast and are very forgiving of brush strokes.

The Icing polish applies nicely as well, it isn't too thick or too thin; but it is in a smaller than average bottle with .33 oz of product rather than the usual .5.  The price was much more reasonable than most of the other magnetic polishes that have been marketed to date (but that may soon be changing as more companies jump on the magnetic polish bandwagon).  I paid $9 for one bottle, but Icing was having a BOGO half off sale so the second polish rang up at $4.50.  That's $6.75 per bottle. (I are a math whiz)

The polish comes with a removable cap containing the magnet, so you dont have to flip your brush upside down to magnetize the design.  The magnet also contains little finger ledges to help with holding the magnet the correct distance from your nail without it coming in contact with it.  Well -- in theory anyway.  I actually had to redo 5 nails because I got a tiny bit too close and bumped the magnet into my wet polish.  So there is an initial learning curve.

And here is the lovely Hot Like Lava on it's own

Noobie tips

1) Do only one nail at a time, you want to magnetize the polish while it's still wet.

2) Hold the magnet stationery.  I was under the misguided notion that since I have wide nail beds if I kinda slowly pivoted the magnet from one side to the other I'd get a more uniform design.  Untrue.   Your best design comes from holding the magnet absolutely still.

3)  I found that the best way to judge the distance from my nail bed to the magnet was to hold my finger under a bright light and look down from the free edge toward my cuticles rather than a side or lateral view.  (see pics for example)

Yes

No

4) Base color (at least on the polishes I have tried) does not seem to impact your finished product much.  I swatched on 4 different base colors and my design came out pretty much identical on all 4 swatches.

This is such a different concept to me and I like it a lot more than I thought I would.  I think the phrase I used while I was working on this mani was "freaking awesome"!  hehe  Also the color variations don't show up as well in bright light (i.e. light box) than in normal ambient lighting so your design is going to be more pronounced than it looks here.

Icing glitters - part 2

Today's post is the remaining 2 Icing glitter polishes I picked up at Icing prior to Christmas

First up is Birthday Beyotch.  Ok the name - love it or hate it?  I think I'm kinda liking it.  At first glance it's another one of those multi color glitters in a clear base.  But check out the bottle shot.   It has SO MANY colors in it.   It's like a circus exploded in the bottle!

I'm showing it as a jelly sandwich today with Revlon Grapefruit Fizz (which was part of their scented polish LE line last summer), but this would really be spectacular over a black base.  Unfortunately I didn't get many good shots of this as my light box really sucks (it's too short and I can't get my tripod into it and end up having to contort into all sorts of unnatural positions to take pics)

Then we have my favorite of the 4 - Glitterati.  It boasts small holographic glitter with large fuschia hex glitter.  Here I've layered it over Sally Hansen Pat on the Black, which is a dark vampy plum color.  I wish the photos accurately depicted the holo sparkle this had!  Then just for fun I mattified it with Essie Matte About You.  The middle picture is intentionally left blurry to show the holo glitter.

Application was pretty much the same as yesterday's swatches.  What do you think of these glitters?

Icing glitters - part 1

Before Christmas, I found these glitter polishes at Icing and they were so unique I went ahead and picked them up.  It's taken me this long to get them swatched for you.  I bought 4 and am going to be dividing the swatches up into 2 posts.

Today I have Disco Ball and Party Confetti

Sally Hansen Green Tea and Disco Ball -   I would describe Green Tea as a dusky light green color.  Like a mint but with a more greyish cast to it.  I had high hopes for Green Tea, but sadly - I did have some application issues with it.  My bottle was very thin and watery, so I had to be mindful of how much polish I loaded on my brush.  Also, as I suspected, the first coat was very streaky - which mostly evened out on the second coat.  I did have one nail that required three coats because even with 2, I didn't get opaque coverage.  I do however, love Sally Hansen's brush.  It is just perfect for the shape of my nails and the tapered or rounded end gives me a cleaner cuticle line.

I've layered Icing Disco Ball over Green Tea in these photos.  Disco Ball appears to be a clear base with small and large hex blue glitter particles.  As you can see in the photos though, the base color has now taken on a decidedly blue tint so the base must have just a hint of blue in it.  As with many glitter polishes, the base on these was very thick and goopy, making it difficult for uniform coverage with the glitter.  You may have to resort to placing the large hex glitters individually (like I did) with an orange stick or toothpick.

And here is Green Tea all by itself

Orly Purple Crush and Party Confetti - I think I made a poor choice on the base color with this one.  As Purple Crush is a neon (and cameras tend to freak out at trying to photograph neons), the pictures lost a lot of the depth that this color combination really had.  You can find Purple Crush swatched under the Orly tag elsewhere on our blog.  Party Confetti is a clear base with small and large fuschia hex glitter and a sprinkling of large purple hex glitter.  Again - same problem with application - it's difficult to get the glitter to spread evenly and some of the larger hex glitters have to be coaxed from the bottle with an orange stick.

In conclusion here is my unofficial review of these Icing glitters -

Pros

Unique color combinations; if you are a glitter nail polish fan you will like these
Price (I paid $4.50 per bottle)

Cons

Application (difficult to get large glitters out of bottle)
Cleanup - I had glitter everywhere when trying to remove these

Watch for part 2 later in the weekend with the remaining Icing glitter polishes!