A public service announcement

Please note, the link below is not an affiliate link, and I am not being compensated for this post.

Apparently, China Glaze is bringing back their first holographic polishes, and right now, you can get them at Head2Toe Beauty for $4.75 each plus shipping!  Below are my swatches of 2NITE and BFF, which were the only ones I could grab the first time the collection was available.

Ohio Wears Blue April 8, 2015

Wear Blue is a statewide awareness campaign that takes place on the second Wednesday of every April, Child Abuse Prevention Month. Ohioans are encouraged to wear blue that day - to work, to school, to a community event - to show support for preventing child abuse and neglect.

Since my outfit tomorrow will be a navy blue & white tweed jacket and navy pants, I thought I'd also post some blue nail polishes!

Tons more after the jump!

Dear China Glaze,

Recently, I paid for six of the Avant Garden polishes with my own money, with the intention of swatching them for my (very small) beauty blog and of wearing them just for the joy of the colors.  I even included them in a recent "haul post" showing off what I'd gotten because I was so very excited.

That changed the minute I read about what your contractor did to Kelly of Vampy Varnish and to Sam of Fashion Polish.  It's bad enough that she stole pictures belonging to bloggers who work very hard at photographing and reviewing your products, but that the pictures were then used on both The Shopping Chanel Canada (where the pictures are still being used!) and ShopNBC without credit to either blogger is unforgivable.  The fact that China Glaze's PR division responses to the two bloggers involved was inconsistent does not speak well of your company.

China Glaze is not a small company.  You have the power to stop allowing TSC to sell your products, and I'm sure they'd comply with a request from your corporate office to remove the photos from their website.  However, the most you have done is to offer a lame apology and even lamer excuse to one of the bloggers.

We bloggers are all small fish in your great big pond, but we are also your customers.  Those of us who love your products would prefer to know that we buy from a company with integrity.

Please do your best to correct the wrong done to Sam, Kelly, and by extension, the entire beauty blogging community.  Until then, those six Avant Garden polishes will sit on my shelf and gather dust.

Haul post!

I haven't done one of these in a while, and I've been rather piggy lately, so I thought I might as well admit to my greed. :)

From Ninja Polish:

Dandy Nails Cashmere Night, Ninja Polish Will You Be My Valentine?, Ninja Polish Cupid Floam

More good stuff after the jump!

China Glaze It's a Trap-Eze!

It's a Trap-Eze! is part of the China Glaze and Cirque de Soleil collection.  It's a lovely, soft, milky white jelly absolutely stuffed with multi-colored glitter.  It's fantastic and feminine and fun!   It was surprisingly easy to work with and was perfect in three thin coats.  It dried a bit bumpy, but I only needed two coats of Zoya Armor to smooth it out.  All swatches are three coats plus top coat.

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The Cirque de Soleil collection was LE, but the polishes are still available at most e-tailers, and brick and mortar stores like Sally Beauty and Ulta might still have some bottles.  China Glaze polishes retail from $3.25-$6.99 each.

Blue Monday: China Glaze Water You Waiting for?

Water You Waiting for? is part of the China Glaze and Cirque de Soleil collection.  It's a gorgeous deep blue  jelly with violet-blue and kelly green micro-glitter.  My bottle was a little thick, so I only needed two coats, but if you thinned it to a more "normal" consistency, I think you'd need three coats for opacity.  This polish is so loaded with glitter that I don't know if it would work as a layering polish, but I love it on its own and got several compliments when I wore it!  All swatches are two coats with top coat (and this polish is very top-coat-hungry!).

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One thing I should definitely mention is that I wore this polish for four days with minimal tipwear and NO staining.  That's right, no Smurf-y fingers with this beauty!  Water You Waiting for? is available still at most e-tailers and there may still be some in brick and mortar stores like Ulta and Sally Beauty.  Depending on the vendor, these polishes range in price from $3.25-$6.99.

Press release: China Glaze Spring 2013, Avant-Garden

Ooooh, the pastels are all calling my name, and so are the two shimmery brights!

Life is Rosy: blushed mauve

Pink-ie Promise: iridescent baby pink

Tart-y for the Party: light lavender creme

Fade Into Hue: periwinkle creme

Keep Calm, Paint On: sea foam green

Dandy Lyin’ Around: shimmery vanilla icing

Budding Romance: moss green

Sunday Funday: bright blue

Fancy Pants: indigo with pink and purple shimmer

Snap My Dragon: bright red with pink shimmer

Passion for Petals: bright salmon-pink

Mimosas Before Manis: coral with a light wash of shimmer

Blue Monday--China Glaze 2NITE

Starting the week with a bang, here are my show-off swatches of China Glaze 2NITE, a grey-leaning periwinkle blue holo, taken at Disney Cruise Line's island, Castaway Cay.  All swatches are three coats with no top coat.

On the trip, I took black and white clothes, and white and exactly this color of periwinkle clothing as well.  Loved wearing this and couldn't resist a few swatches. :)

China Glaze Holiday Joy collection: Glistening Snow, Angel Wings and Champagne Kisses

Now that we're past the reds, which make up almost half of the China Glaze Holiday Joy collection, I'll be posting the metallic glitters today and the tail end of the collection tomorrow.  All of today's polishes are gorgeous metallic holo micro-glitters suspended in a clear base.  All three were opaque in three coats, dried quickly and quite matte and were very easy to work with and somewhat more difficult to remove.  I think these three are the real stars of the collection, and I wish China Glaze had done twelve different colors in this finish.  All swatches are three coats without top coat, because I like the way they look like sanding sugar, but they gloss up quite nicely with top coat.

Glistening Snow is a silver holo micro-glitter.

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More pics after the jump!

China Glaze Holiday Joy collection: Pure Joy and Cranberry Splash

Today I have the other two reds from the China Glaze Holiday Joy collection.  Pure Joy is a red and gold glitter and Cranberry Splash is a medium red shimmer.

Although it looks orange in the pictures, Pure Joy is a mix of red and gold glitters.  This one is probably best as a layering polish, because it took three full coats to be opaque.  It wasn't overly thick, and I got a good amount of glitter in each stroke.  It dried matte, and very thirsty--you can see some lumps and bumps on my nails after just one coat of Nubar Diamont.  If I were wearing this on its own, I'd use a coat of Gelous first.  All pictures are three coats of polish with one coat of top coat.

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Cranberry Splash is a medium red shimmer which was opaque in two coats.  It's shows a few brush strokes, but that might be as much my application as the polish.  It's quite pretty and shiny, but very ordinary.  All swatches are two coats without top coat.

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Again, I'm confused as to why China Glaze reverted to a holiday collection that is almost half reds.  It's as if they used up all their creative ideas earlier this year!

The Holiday Joy collection is available now at etailers and brick and mortar stores.

China Glaze Holiday Joy collection: The Red Crèmes

China Glaze's Holiday 2012 collection, Holiday Joy, consists of twelve polishes.  This includes three red crèmes, which I think is a lot, especially when there's also a red glitter and a red shimmer, but hey, I'm an English major, not a Marketing major, so on with the swatches!

Merry Berry is my favorite of these three, because it's a medium blue-based red.  The formula was flawless, no running, dripping, dragging or pooling.  All swatches are two coats with no top coat.

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 Red Satin and With Love after the jump!

China Glaze Breast Cancer Awareness 2012: Exquisite

Since we're getting to the end of Breast Cancer Awareness month, I thought I'd better post this quickly!  China Glaze did 12 polishes for BCA, but only one appealed to me.  Exquisite is a bubble-gum pink glass-fleck, very girly, pretty and dainty but not boring.  The polish formula was perfect, not too thick, not too thin, it flowed nicely without pooling and I didn't really need any cleanup.  Swatches are two coats without topcoat, and the VNL you can see in the non-flash picture wasn't visible to the naked eye.

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Although I have a certain amount of philosophical disagreement with the whole idea of BCA month, this is a very pretty polish and I'm glad I got it.  The entire 12-piece collection is available at beauty stores and e-tailers now.

Halloweekends 1.5: Witchy Stockings

My second Halloween manicure is a striped green & black that looks to me like witchy stockings!  I knew I wanted to do this with OPI Zom-Body To Love (green glow-in-the-dark from last year's Halloween collection) as the base, but when I tried it, the OPI was so sheer I despaired.  I tried Zoya Shawn as underwear, but the green was too dark.  Then it occurred to me that China Glaze Unpredictable was perfect, so I used one coat of that, then topped it with two coats of Zom-body To Love.  The stripes were done using black stamping polish and French manicure guides.  I'm pretty pleased with how in turned out, I love that a bit of the glimmer from the chrome shows through, and I love that the stripes show up when the polish glows in the dark.

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Polishes used:

Nail mail!

It's been a while since I did a haul post, but I had a ton of great nail mail today and I had to share!

From Coterie, a set of 4 Butter London polishes for $16 after shipping costs:

Left to right, Hardware top coat, Knackered, West End Wonderland, All Hail the Queen.

From Transdesign, 2 CND Effects:

Ice Blue Shimmer and Jade Sparkle

and three China Glaze polishes:

Exquisite, Bizarre Blurple and Immortal

and two OPI polishes:

DS Magic and DS Reflection

Night Circus nail art

A while back, I read and reviewed an amazing book called The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern.  Recently, I joined a Goodreads group for lovers of Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs perfumes, and we're reading The Night Circus as a group.  So I decided to brush up my sadly neglected stamping skills and do some Night Circus nail are in black and white stripes.  I used China Glaze White on White and Rimmel Black Satin for my bases and stamped with Fauxnad plate M65 and added some little red nail decals I had hanging around.  I apologize in advance to Ms. Morgenstern.

China Glaze Bohemian Collection: Want My Bawdy

 Want My Bawdy is the last polish in the Bohemian Collection, and although there are tiny hints of a purple duochrome in the bottle, on the nail it's simply a royal blue foil.  I still adore it, because I have a weakness for  blues, but if I were looking for a duochrome, I wouldn't rush out to get this one.

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Not much shift to be seen, but still a lovely royal blue, and one I'm happy to have.  The formula is typical China Glaze, which is to say very easy to use, smooth and slightly thin but not particularly prone to pooling. The Bohemian collection is still available at a few etailers.

China Glaze Bohemian Collection: Unpredictable

Unpredictable is Rare and Radiant's darker sister.  It's a beautiful forest green to gold duochrome with tiny hints of blue in some lights. As with the other polishes, all swatches are, from left to right, one coat, two coats, three coats and one coat over a black créme.

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Although I usually prefer blue-based greens, Unpredictable is pretty enough for me to forgive the fact that it doesn't flatter my skin tone the way blue-greens do.  It applies smoothly, but people with ridged nails should probably use two coats of base. The Bohemian collection is available now at etailers and brick and mortar stores, although it is sold out both on transdesign.com and at my local Sally Beauty. 

China Glaze Bohemian Collection: Swanky Silk

The next polish from the Bohemian Collection is a lovely rose-gold to gold duochrome called Swanky Silk.  All swatches are, from left to right, one coat, two coats, three coats and one coat over a black créme.

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I was surprised to find this was my favorite polish from this collection!  It's much softer and subtler than the polishes I tend to go for, but the rose gold color is gorgeous.  It applies quite smoothly, although I did double up on basecoat to avoid showing off my ridges.  The Bohemian collection is available now at etailers and brick and mortar stores, although it is sold out both on transdesign.com and at my local Sally Beauty.

China Glaze Bohemian Collection: Rare and Radiant

My third Bohemian Collection polish is Rare and Radiant, a green-to-bronze duochrome with hints of gold. All swatches are, from left to right, one coat, two coats, three coats and one coat over a black créme.

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Even though this is yet another Chanel Peridot dupe, I don't own the original or any of the others, so I'm very glad to have this in my collection!  The China Glaze Bohemian collection is available now at etailers and brick and mortar stores, although it is sold out at www.transdesign.com and at my local Sally Beauty.

China Glaze China Glaze Bohemian Collection: No Plain Jane

My second Bohemian Collection polish is No Plain Jane, a purple-to-blue with hints of gold duochrome. Like Deviantly Daring, I think No Plain Jane looks best either with three coats or over black, but it definitely has more duochrome going on. All swatches are, from left to right, one coat, two coats, three coats and one coat over a black créme.

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This isn't my favorite of the Bohemian collection, but it's a pretty polish and definitely wearable.  The Bohemian collection is available at etailers and brick and mortar stores now, although it's already sold out at my local Sally Beauty.