Color Club Hot Like Lava

Hi everyone!

Hope you've all had a great weekend!

It's now the turn of Color Club Hot Like Lava to get reviewed.

I'll start by saying that, while I love foil/metallic finish lacquers, this wasn't a shade I thought I'd like that much... The colour made me a bit unsure, and I also worried that there would be visible brush stroke issues with this one.

However; when I actually swatched it, I was very pleasantly surprised! The colour is pretty dramatic, (good thing), the pigmentation is great (very good thing), and the sparkliness is brilliant- (great thing!)

Here it is:

Color Club Hot Like Lava view I

This shade is very rich and seems to glow on the nails. It was perfectly saturated in two coats.

Color Club Hot Like Lava view II

Judging by my very happy thoughts on this polish, I now wish I had more shades from this collection. I can't get enough of this finish!

On a side note, I think that it would be really interesting if someone brought out a collection of sludgy foil polishes! You know the sort- mushroomy purples, taupes, sludgy greens and greys.... I think that would be crazy cool!

...Next Autumn perhaps?

*Color Club Hot Like Lava was provided to me for reviewing purposes. I was not paid to review this polish or to say great things about it. All opinions, good or bad, are my own*

The Impatience Test: Crackle/Shatter Lacquers

A bit of background for you guys before I get started on this post:

I've lived in London for six years now and it's a fast paced life- running round the city on the Tube, battling the crowds on Oxford Street (don't ever do that on Christmas Eve- what a complete and utter nightmare!), darting from one friend to another, attempting to prevent myself getting flattened by black taxis....
You get the picture.

London has transformed me into one of those city types who wants it all, and wants it now!

With my patience and attention span of a flea, I've found my ventures into crackle/shatter nail polishes very interesting. I've already reviewed OPI and Barry M shatters, if you haven't seen them yet you can check them out here-

http://london-lacquer.blogspot.com/2011/08/what-come-on-opi.html (OPI)

 ...And here:

http://london-lacquer.blogspot.com/2011/08/opi-and-barry-m-combo.html (Barry M)

...Anyways, today is the turn of China Glaze Tarnished Gold Crackle Glaze, and Color Club Smash Hit (pure Black shatter)

Let me just start the review by saying that, because this is an Impatience Test, I didn't let the colours I used on the base dry in either case with these shatters. I was swatching that day and didn't use my Seche Vite topcoat, as I always do when doing a complete Mani for either swatches I tried the shatters out on.

Also, the base colours (and finishes) I used in the Impatience Test were different. With both of the bases I waited until I had taken pictures and both of the Manis in question were touch dry when I put the shatter coats on.

With that said, let's get started!

First up, China Glaze Tarnished Gold Crackle:

Great shade, I must say. This is a beautiful shimmery gold crackle containing gold and silver pigment, which I layered over OPI DS Temptation.

Here is the result:

 China Glaze Tarnished Gold Crackle over OPI DS Temptation

A close up of China Glaze Tarnished Gold Crackle over OPI DS Temptation

And now for Color Club Smash Hit over Color Club Hot Like Lava:

L-R: Index finger- thin crackle coat, Middle finger- thick crackle coat, Ring finger- thin crackle coat, Little finger- thick crackle coat

So after doing these two Crackle swatches, I thought- well, obviously the Color Club turned out out a lot better than the China Glaze Crackle... I also really liked the fact that with the Color Club, it seemed easier to get a thicker or thinner Crackle effect, as demonstrated in the photo above. Color Club had won the Crackle battle!...

...At least for now. I later thought that it might have been unfair to judge China Glaze perhaps too fast, and so I decided to experiment with the polishes further and conduct a completely fair test.

For my bases, I used different finishes:

* Color Club Artsy Crafty: Creme
* Color Club Hot Like Lava: Metal/Foil
* OPI DS Original: Holographic
* China Glaze It's Alive: Glitter

I painted all four colours twice on a nail wheel and left them to dry to touch, before layering over the China Glaze and Color Club crackles.

Here are the results:

Left Set: Afore mentioned colours plus Color Club Smash Hit (Black Crackle) and Right Set: Afore mentioned colours plus China Glaze Tarnished Gold Crackle

Color Club crackle close up. I lightened the the Artsy Crafty nail a bit to let you guys see the crackle effect better.

A close up of the China Glaze set.

I still prefer the Color Club crackle. I like the way it 'separates' more than the China Glaze, and I mentioned, I really like that the color Club crackle seems more versatile- it can easily be crackled thin or thick for different effects.

Color Club wins for me!

What do you guys think?

*China Glaze Tarnished Gold Crackle and Color Club Smash Hit were provided to me for reviewing purposes. I was not paid to review these polishes or to say great things about them. All opinions, good or bad, are my own*

Olympia Beauty 2011

Hello everyone!

Hope you all had a lovely weekend! Yesterday, Sunday 18th and Monday 19th of September, were days I had been looking forward to for nearly two months! The reason? It was the the Olympia Beauty event in Kensington Olympia, London.

BIG woooooo!

...Anyways, more about that in a minute. First let me show you guys the manicure I did for the event. Seeing as I blog about Nails, I wanted to create a really special, completely blinged out Mani for the event.
This is what I came up with:

Nail Expo Special Mani!

A close up-

Pretty, no?

For this Mani, first of all I used two coats of Orly Dazzle, then two coats of OPI Crown Me Already!, then glued a Swarovski crystal onto each nail with nail glue.
It came out pretty cool I think, I felt a bit like GaGa or something- this is one impractical manicure! Still, I got lots of compliments on them whilst going round all the stalls, so that was nice.

To start, can I just say, omg! The event was so much fun!

OPI was there, as was Nubar, China Glaze, Color Club, Essie, Jessica and more!

Here's a video I shot on my phone- as you can see, it was busy, busy busy!

Olympia Beauty Event

Some pictures of the stalls:

The OPI stall was insanely busy the whole time! -Look at those brand new, unavailable in shops Muppets Mini packs! I picked one up, of course! Swatches coming soon... :)

To prove how busy the OPI stall was all the time, here's a picture of the queue:

OPI Mania! (And yes, in case you were wondering, the queue was this long all the time! Go OPI!)

...And who can blame people when OPI was being sold at trade price!? Discontinued Lacquers were discounted to £3.00!

£3.00 OPI's!? Thank you very much!

I also had a lot of fun getting my greedy little polish loving mitts on some lemmings I've had for certain polishes from other brands:

The China Glaze stall view I

China Glaze view II

Here's the Nubar Stall:

The Nubar Stall

Discontinued Lacquers at Nubar were only £2.00!

 What a bargain!

The Color Club stall was brilliant. I was really excited to see this stall here because I've only ever seen Color Club available on the Internet. It was great to see all the shades in person...

Color Club view I

Color Club view II

And some general shots of the Exhibition Centre:

View I

View II

View III

As you can guess, I was loving every minute of it!

My Top 5 new acquisitions from the Expo are (in no particular order):

* China Glaze Skyscraper
* OPI DS Temptation
* Color Club Wish Upon A Rock-Star
* Nubar Purple Rain Glitter
* OPI I Brake For Manicures

Lots of new swatches to come soon for your viewing pleasure!

Have a great day, everyone! :)