Zoya Storm & Stars

By -
For a friend's birthday party last weekend, I wanted to go with Star Wars themed nails (which he'd have gotten a real kick out of), but my cheapo SP series plates from AliExpress were a major fail, totally refusing to pick up despite several different combos of stamping polish, scrapers, the works.  GRRR.  But I still managed to whip up a galaxy far, far away...

El Corazon Aurora Borealis
outdoor, shady daylight
I started with a base of 2 coats of Zoya Storm to give a feel of stars flashing by in deep space.  Storm is still not a fave - the holo properties of the flakes are very subtle, looking mostly like silver specks, no rainbows to be observed.  On the plus side, it removed effortlessly, without the usual durm und strang of a black polish.

El Corazon Aurora Borealis
outdoor, overcast daylight
After the Star Wars plates were a bust, I went with straight up stars, using a couple of different designs from KADS Min 009, itself an inexpensive AE plate, which gave me absolutely no troubles.

El Corazon Kaleidoscope Aurora Borealis
bright sunlight
I've stamped using Kaleidoscope by El Corazon Aurora Borealis, a beautiful ILNP Sirene-type shifter that goes from cobalt blue to aqua to purple.  The bottle label states that it's "ideal for both light and dark nail polish," but the swatch stick I have for reference shows it as only a sheer wash of shimmer over white, but a bold pop of duochrome flash over black.  With my already done black base, Aurora Borealis was nicely opaque, even with the thin stripes of the design on the accent nail.

El Corazon Aurora Borealis
indoor, bright CF lighting
In most all lighting conditions, this was a nicely shifty duochrome polish, easily showing more than one color at a time just over the curve of my nails, without needing to tilt my fingers at angles to catch.

Zoya Storm & El Corazon Kaleidoscope Aurora Borealis
outdoor, shady daylight
Where to buy:  Storm is part of Zoya's core line, so easily found anywhere this brand is sold - try Amazon or Ulta.  El Corazon's line of stamping polishes called Kaleidoscope can be found at a few international stockists, but I've purchased twice directly from them without issue (though yes, shipments from Russia take a couple of weeks to arrive).

~Michelle

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Topcoat battle! HK Girl VS Pro-FX quick dry!

By -
Image
I'm sure that every polish geek has a half a handful (or plenty more) topcoats - I myself have my go-to quick dry, a thicker one for chunky or unsmooth finishes, some back-up "lesser" quick drys, and a matte.  Having that many, though, honestly means we're all still looking for MORE! For a couple of years now, my holy grail TC has been HK Girl.  I'd been pretty happy with INM Out the Door for a year or so, but HKG dries much faster to a harder (aka more chip-resistant) finish, so I made that switch around the time we started blogging here.  I've never had the love affair with Seche that plenty do - it seems more stinky to me and I get shrinkage often enough to have never bought more after my first 99 cent mini of it.  I've seen a few blog posts mentioned some behemoth from WalMart, and remembered to pick up a bottle when driven to the commercial den of iniquity by a wild goose chase for multichrome notebooks, which brings us to... Topcoat Battle!!!! ...
Read more

ILNP Masquerade & Comparison

By -
Image
Every time I Love Nail Polish releases another batch of their multichromes, my wallet is going to take a little hit.  Their formula is always great, but the colors .  OMG, I die with these super shifters.  From the most recent release, my first pick was Masquerade.  Ginormously pic-heavy post in 3...2...1... Masquerade is a very sheer charcoal grey base packed with magically light-bending pigment that goes from a rich magenta-wine color, through a lighter pink, then bronze, on its way to a vibrantly saturated emerald green.  It took 3 coats to get it to visible opacity, of the sort where it can look sheer if you hold your fingernails up to the light.  Though it's most often a metallic to slightly brush-strokey chrome, in the sunlight, a sparkly shimmer peeks out. outdoor, bright sunlight The color range can be soft and muted: ok, "muted" for something like this, anyway.  outdoor, overcast/cloudy day It can be mostly wine: outdoor, ...
Read more

China Glaze Pearl Jammin' + comparison

By -
Image
For my first new mani of this year, I went straight for one that was on so many people's best of 2016 lists, China Glaze Pearl Jammin'.  This lovely lady sold out super quick, and for a while was going for INSANE prices on ebay, but I found one at normal retail price on Amazon. indoor, bright CF lighting for both Pearl Jammin' is a greyed sky-blue base packed with warm coppery shimmer that's thankfully just as beautifully flashy on the nail as it is in the bottle.  The formula is a little squirrely, the sort that's both slightly too thin and yet dries so fast that it gets gummy if you go over the same area twice.   3 coats are needed for even coverage with the sorta thin/sheer formula, but that's the price to pay for having the shimmer this bright, and all minor irregularities smooth out perfectly with a layer of topcoat.  I stamped my accent nails with the cute dreamcatcher image on BM-407 using Hit the Bottle Copper Haired Girl. Then we promptly had...
Read more