China Glaze - Agro: Holo Layering

Just a quick post today.

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China Glaze Agro and HITS Hefesto

This is China Glaze Agro with one coat of HITS Hefesto over the top. As you can see, Hefesto kind of mutes whatever color is underneath. I love the bright holo effect it creates, but wish it didn't grey out the base color so much. Oh well, the sage green holo it turned into was still pretty awesome.


Here are a couple pictures of Agro on its own:

China Glaze - Agro

Agro is a sage-olive green shimmer that has a bit of that "glowy" appearance. It gains a lot more depth with a top coat, and is on the edgy side of chic.

Agro was part of the China Glaze Hunger Games collection in spring 2012, but as of now it's still available on Transdesign. HITS Hefesto is available at Llarowe and Ninja Polish.

Sally Hansen Nail Prisms Amber Ruby Swatch

Here is another of the Sally Hansen Nail Prisms line:  Amber Ruby.  This is one I love so much I had to get a backup bottle of it.  It has a strong duochrome/multichrome shift between red, copper, gold, and green (and apparently it goes all the way to blue, but it can only be seen in the underwater pictures).  I swatched it recently but was unsatisfied in my capture of all of the colors, so I re-swatched it over OPI Royal Rajah Ruby and it seems to bring out the colors just a tad more (two coats Royal Rajah Ruby, one coat Amber Ruby).

Sally Hansen Nail Prisms - Amber Ruby

What can I say? It's just STUNNING. See the beautiful mossy green on the edges? Yes, it does show up like that in person. In low lighting this polish is constantly shifting between all of its colors. It also has a very nice metallic finish without showing brushstrokes. Here's a picture taken at an angle where you can see the mossy green by itself:

And now for the underwater pictures (I love taking these - it's so fascinating!)

*gasp* I can't help it - it's so wonderful.

And here is OPI Royal Rajah Ruby on it's own, which is quite nice in itself!

Layla Magneffect Swatches

I recently had the chance to purchase some of the Layla Magneffects line at AveYou.com during a SaveMore sale (I got $75 worth of stuff for $35, and with an order of $50 or more, you get $1 shipping... all in all I payed only $38.50 for these five, and they normally retail for $15.50 each!). I am SO glad I decided to try these out! They are AWESOME!

The pictures below show one thick coat on index and ring fingers, and two thick coats on middle and pinky.

Layla Magneffect - Velvet Groove

I'm pretty sure this is my favorite one. At two coats it truly looks like soft burgundy velvet... LOVE.

Layla Magneffect - Golden Nugget

This was a color that at first I thought "Ewwww, that doesn't look attractive." Somehow I changed my mind and it ended up in my order, and I'm glad it did!

For this one I lined up the magnet vertically with my nails, and it's hard to see in the picture but it really makes them look VERY 3D and awesome. Although I like the diagonal stripes, I think this is my favorite orientation - it even makes my short nails look long and pretty in person. It's hard to capture the 3D effect in a still photo, but trust me: try this at home!!

Layla Magneffect - Blue Grey Flow

Another neat color. The metal parts end up looking silver and the spaces in between become a navy blue.

Layla Magneffect - Purple Galaxy

The first coat of this looks like a nice rich purple, and with two coats it becomes a vampy dark plum with metallic accents. Very classy, in my opinion!

I'm not too big of a fan of the horizontal stripes, though...

Layla Magneffect - Metallic Sky

And my third favorite of the bunch. The brightest one of all, and just stunning in person.

Now I've been playing with frankening lately, and these made me very curious as to how they would look with holographic or duochrome pigment (doesn't it sound like it'd be awesome?!). However, I'm not ready to decant any of these new preciouses to try it, so I figured I'd try layering them over a holo (the holo-est holo I own - Nfu-Oh 62). Here are the results:

Layla Magneffects over Nfu-Oh 62

Disappointing, no? Oh well, at least I'm not gonna worry about combining them with holo pigment anymore. However, I still think that if they could somehow make a magentic pigment that is also duochromatic, this could produce one of the most epic polishes in the WORLD!

Rescue Beauty Lounge Swatches and Review

I tried now to go TOO crazy during the 50% of sale at Rescue Beauty Lounge a couple weeks ago. I got five new polishes and I figured I'd swatch them all and put up my review (even though there are plenty out there already).

Rescue Beauty Lounge Plie

The first one I tried was Plie. Like All Lacquered Up, I was drawn to Plie even though pinks are so not my thing (especially light girly ones). But after I put it on my four swatch fingers, I just had to put it on the rest (thus delaying the rest of the swatches). I absolutely love this color. It's a bit warm-toned and dusty, and it looked great on my skin tone. It's seems thin, but it's pretty opaque and easy to work with. This is two coats.

Rescue Beauty Lounge Au Chocolat

The second one is Au Chocolat. It's a reddish-brown creme/jelly. It has nice buildup to opacity in just two coats, but somehow manages to have that glossy jelly look. It's very nice, and doesn't look black even in low light.

Rescue Beauty Lounge Orbis Non Sufficit

This is such an awesome green, and I'm so glad I got it because I have nothing like it in my collection! The dusty quality really sets it apart. It's also almost perfect in one coat, but I like the slightly thicker look of two coats.

Rescue Beauty Lounge No More War

This one is so cool, but you really have to like that olivey brownish-green murky type of color. I do have something similar (NOT a dupe) in my collection: Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics Swamp Thing. I decided to do a quick comparison for you here. You can see that Swamp Thing is a couple shades darker and sometimes looks more green, sometimes more brown. No More War definitely has a tad more yellow.



I also got Medium White, but it doesn't look right by itself in my opinion (even after three coats), but I may do an America/French manicure with it to show it off in the near future.

Overall, I'm very pleased with all of the polishes I got from this sale. They are all of excellent quality and I will certainly be wearing each one more than once! The sale is no longer going on, but you can still purchase RBL polishes here.