Ravishing Romance - a jelly sandwich

My Valentine's manicure inspired me to try wearing more red - and to see what effects I can achieve with the deep red jelly polish I found buried in my stash - China Glaze Ravishing, Dahling. I had bought it months ago at a Sally Express sale for £1.50, and from what I saw recently, it's still available as a bargain on their website.

After some faffing about with a piece of paper and trying out different layering solutions (I usually do it on plain paper in my notebook), I ended up with a duo of Essence Time for Romance and China Glaze Ravishing, Dahling.

Here are the results!

Jelly sandwich with Essence Time for Romance and China Glaze Ravishing, Dahling.

I used a single coat of Time for Romance as the base. It wasn't opaque, but considering I was going to cover it with a fairly dark jelly, the lack of full coverage was not an issue. Additionally, I didn't want to layer the glitter too much to make removal a bit easier. You can see the bottle look of Time for Romance in the photograph below.

Jelly sandwich with Essence Time for Romance and China Glaze Ravishing, Dahling.

I then covered the dry glitter with a medium coat of China Glaze Ravishing, Dahling. The pink-leaning wine jelly is very manageable, and there were no issues with streakiness, at least over the busy glitter background. I had once layered it over white, and it was much harder to get the uniform colour dictribution.

Jelly sandwich with Essence Time for Romance and China Glaze Ravishing, Dahling.

The jelly layer smoothed out the glitter on it's own pretty well, so a single generous coat of Seche Vite was enough to ensure a smooth glossy finish. The end result was simply magnificent - like rubies drowned in syrup, or cherry jello. I don't happen to own any polishes even remotely close to this effect, but I guess China Glaze Ruby Pumps would be in the general ballpark. And with Ravishing, Dahling I have full control over the glitter I use underneath, which makes it a very versatile solution. I need to try it out over a glitter gradient next!


Polishes I used:

• Essence Time for Romance - a dusky rose glitter of various sizes in a tinted base. On its own it would be fully opaque in three coats, although it would be fairly lumpy by then. The Essence brush is very wide, and slightly unwieldy, especially when bits of glitter get stuck between the bristles and fluff it up too much. The glitter removal is hard, and the foil method is definitely recommended.
• China Glaze Ravishing, Dahling - a pink-leaning red wine jelly, perfect for layering. It would be opaque on its own in three coats. Fairly easy to apply, although I found that for me the narrow China Glaze brush doesn't really lend itself to clean cuticle lines. The one serious minus is that it stains the cuticles, and is very hard to clean up - my hands looked a bit mangled, as I wasn't able to fully fix all the staining.

Thanks for looking!