Dance Legend Thermo 175 Swatches

I recently got a few gorgeous polishes from Rainbow Connection, including two absolutely amazing thermals from Dance Legend. I love thermals - it's like wearing two nail polishes at the same time, with accidental, ever changing nail art! The Dance Legend Thermal I'll be showing you today is the 175 (I'm so sad they don't have proper names) - a shimmery purple to pink polish.

 In it's cold state, it's a magnificent plum purple with gold and pink shimmer. It's absolutely unbelievable - it's lit from within, complex, gorgeous and I may run out of adjectives here. I would wear it even without the thermal effect.

Dance Legend Thermo 175 with top coat - cold state

When it warms up, Thermo 175 shifts into a bright warm pink with the same gorgeous shimmer as the cold state had. It's stunning, and despite my lack of love for pink, even I have to say I dig it.

Dance Legend Thermo 175 with top coat - warm state

The real fun starts when your nails have a temperature gradient to them - something my nails, with their short nail beds and lots of free hanging nail do very well.

Dance Legend Thermo 175 with top coat - gradient effect

This is the world's most effortless gradient manicure, and how my hands looked like when they were warming up. The gradual shift is beautiful, and so watchable!

Dance Legend Thermo 175 with top coat - gradient effect

I may have taken way too many photos of this polish, but I just couldn't resist.

Dance Legend Thermo 175 with top coat - warm nails, cold tips

Finally, you can see how reactive the polish is - my warm hands were touching the cool bottle, and that part of the nails shifted to purple. When I was washing my hands, single drops of cool or warm water would cause small circular shift areas. It's hypnotising!

The application was a breeze - two coats achieved complete opacity, and the wide Dance Legend brush was amazingly easy to use. I had barely any clean up at all. The polish dries to an odd matte finish that dulls the shimmer, so topcoat is recommended - I used Seche Vite.

Overall, it's an amazing thermal polish, and I would definitely recommend it.
Thanks for reading!

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An award? For me? Liebster awards!

The lovely Gracinthey from Addicted to Nails has tagged me with a Liebster award! I kinda made a high pitched squee noise when I found out. I'd never heard of it before, but it sounds like a great idea!

It's a chain designed to help blogs with less than 200 followers get noticed. The rules are:

• If you get nominated you must acknowledge the blogger who nominated you 
• Write 11 random facts about yourself
• Answer the 11 questions that the blogger who nominated you asked
• Nominate 11 people who have less than 200 followers and create 11 questions for them to answer
• Let the 11 nominees know that you are nominating them

So, here goes my contribution!

Tri-Polish Tuesdays - February round three!

The third Tuesday of February is upon us, and so is the Tri-Polish challenge, with its monthly pick of pink, grey and brown.

Polishes used: Rimmel Grey Matter, Color Club Endless, Leighton Denny On The Rocks

I had picked out the three colours for this week's manicure a few days ahead, and I was planning to make them into some sort of a gradient. Sadly, once I started dabbing the sponge on my nails, I realised it wouldn't work - the colours just ended up looking dirty and ugly. After some deliberation, I decided on a tape manicure. I then proceeded to bump and smudge my base coats of nail polish at least twice on different nails, so the painting took much longer than I anticipated. It was just one of those days, I guess.

Striped nails in pink, brown and grey

I started by painting my nails with the delicate brown On The Rocks and the Grey Matter, and adding a coat of Seche Vite. Once everything was completely dry and solid, I placed some striping tape pieces diagonally (and my ability to position these in equal distances is sorely lacking) and then went over each nail with a contrasting polish. As usually with striping, making sure that the tape is completely flat on the nail and removing it while the polish is still wet is really important. I admit I had some issues with the first rule - as you can see in the dodgy stripes. I topcoated it all with Color Club fast drying topcoat, to avoid the smudging Seche Vite would entail.

Striped nails with pink, brown and grey

Despite the imperfections, I'm quite happy with this manicure. It looks quite grown up, and I love the combination of the brown and grey. Nonetheless, I am really looking forward to March, and the new colour set.

Polishes I used:

• Rimmel Grey Matter - a mid-grey crème, cool leaning and soft. The Rimmel brush is brilliant for a drugstore brand, medium width and nicely rounded, and the application was pretty painless. This polish is opaque in two coats, and worked well for striping.
• Color Club Endless - a pale, cool-toned pink crème from the Kaleidoscope collection. It's goopy and patchy, and doesn't self-level very well - it would take three coats to be opaque on it's own. I only got it because it was in a set.
• Leighton Denny On The Rocks - a gorgeous pale brown base with a complex gold and pinkish fine shimmer. On the nail, the shimmer is barely visible, but it lends the polish some depth and light. It's like wearing praline on my fingers - I'm not a fan of browns, but this polish I can wear on its own. The application was flawless, despite the fairly thin brush. The first coat was fairly sheer, but the second one achieved full coverage. I got this polish on a TK Max sale, along with a few other bottles of LD.

Thanks for looking!

An InLinkz Link-up

FingerFood's Theme Week - Abstract

Polishes used: OPI Alpine Snow, Sinful Colors striper, Rimmel Sunshine, Orly Monroe's Red and Orly Shockwave.

I was really anticipating this week's theme. I had just the idea for the set of abstract nails, I just wasn't sure if I had the skills. I'd never used a striper before, so I had a bit of trial run on some swatching sticks. In the end, after a lot of careful taping, striping and some colourful language, they are not nearly as neat as I had envisioned - but I'm rocking them nonetheless. I present to you my Mondrian nails:

Mondrian inspired abstract nails.

My right hand is a simple skittle of the basic colours I used in my left hand. I'd not want to repeat this process with my non-dominant hand! This challenge was rally fun, and again, it made me learn quite a bit about new techniques.

Additionally, we had a sunny day here in Scotland today, and I found out that two polishes I believed to be crèmes were in fact gorgeous hidden shimmers. I honestly never looked at them in sunlight before.

Polishes I used:

• OPI Alpine Snow - white crème polish, opaque in three coats. A bit of a pain to apply, but at least it dries fast .
• Sinful Colors Time Off - a black striper I nabbed from Poundland. The polish is very opaque, and the brush is long, thin and flexible. Then again, I never used any other stripers before, so I don't have much to compare it with.
• Rimmel Sunshine - a medium yellow hidden shimmer. Fairly sheer and streaky in application, it would take four coats to be opaque on its own, but was good for this mani with one thick coat over white.
• Orly Monroe's Red - a cool leaning bright red with a hidden red shimmer. Great application, and full opacity in three thin coats, but I used two thicker ones on my right hand. Over white, it's bright and uniform in one coat.
• Orly Shockwave - a warm-leaning navy blue crème, one of my favourite blues in my collection. On it's own opaque in two easy coats.

Thanks for looking!

An InLinkz Link-up

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!

Belle Glamour - Lagoon swatch

I need to get this off my chest. I love thermal polishes. I can stare at them for hours, and I can always provide visible evidence that my hands are icy cold, or more rarely warm. Plus, I have very short nail beds and a lot of free hanging nail, which means I tend to get the French tip look most of the time. Finally, I am in love with the science of thermal polishes - you can read here how Lab Muffin explains how they work.

This week I wore a thermal from a UK indie brand, Belle Glamour. It's a gorgeous blue shimmer that shifts from a light blue to a deeper sky blue.

Belle Glamour Lagoon - warm and cold state

Both colours are really pretty, and as I love blue, it's right up my alley. Unfortunately, despite my normally thermal-friendly nails, I was not able to catch the colour transition - it seems like it's taking place at a temperature lower than my free hanging nail, and that it's a gradual rather than on/off process.

Belle Glamour Lagoon - three coats, warm state

As you can see, in the warm state the polish looks somewhat patchy - and that's with the three generous coats I applied. It feels like the thermal pigment spheres are quite big in this polish, and don't achieve good opacity easily. Next time I might use undies that are similar to the warm state shade.

Belle Glamour Lagoon - three coats, warm state

As you can see, Lagoon is very sparkly - it shimmers with a few lovely shades of blue, and the layering gives it amazing depth.

Belle Glamour Lagoon - three coats, cool state

The cold colour for Lagoon is a deep sky/sea blue - very intense and saturated. The image was taken after dunking my hand in cold water, so there are still some droplets here and there! I was also able to reach this state when going out for a walk in the cold, or even spending a lot of time at my desk next to large window (cold!), so you won't need to use iced water for the effect.

Belle Glamour Lagoon - three coats, cool state

As you can see, the cold state looks less patchy that the warm - and is also very sparkly. I really loved the colour, and I found myself being oddly happy when my fingers were cold :D

The application for this polish was weird, but manageable. It's very thick, and you can feel that it's packed with shimmer and pigment particles. The first coat is a bit tricky, but the next ones stick very well to the gritty finish the first one leaves. It doesn't flood the cuticles, and it dries pretty fast. The finish on Lagoon alone is very gritty, so a generous layer of top coat is needed to bring out the full sparkle. The gritty texture makes itself known during removal - use the foil method if you can.

Overall, it's a really beautiful polish, sparkly and shifting between two gorgeous blue shades. While it's not as 'shifty' as my other thermals, I love it nonetheless.