Beat the Heat!

I needed to beat the heat today; it was 109 in Sacramento.



SensatioNail "Beat the Heat", with accent nail of "Sun Kissed", three coats of each. Nailtiques 2+ as base coat, Sally Hansen gel base and top coat, one coat of each.

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I LOVE yellow. And my sister's favorite color is orange. So when I wandered into Walgreens and saw the new SensatioNail Island Fever collection, I picked these two up immediately. Without hesitation.

The application was great! "Beat the Heat" could probably be a two-coater. As a hater of VNL, I did three coats of each. The orange is definitely a jelly and although the VNL doesn't show up well here, it was very much there. The colors are a little less neon than they are in the photos, more like straight yellow crayon yellow and orange. My camera really hated them. You can see that it's a little brighter than the box color, though.

The wear ... lacked. I had issues with bubbling, some after the fact. On one finger, the bubble peeled off and revealed several layers of polish which made me wonder if it hadn't cured correctly. I tried again, doubling the cure time, and it still happened. It only happened with "Beat the Heat" and is visible on my index, middle finger, and thumb in the photos. I have used SensatioNail polish without the base layer ("gel primer") before and never had this problem. I'm hopeful that this was a bad batch. A lemon even!

Verdict: the colors are worth it for me. There isn't a comparable/dupe yellow gel that I'm aware of.

*All products here were purchased by me for my own wear and review. 

Pretty & Polished 'Candy Corn' color change polish

This stuff is amazing! I think I'm going to have to get some more of Pretty & Polished's color change polishes because it was so much fun to have this on. Every time I'd look at my nails, they would be different. Especially great this time of year because the temperature is all over the place.

The one downside to this polish was that it wasn't totally opaque. I HATE hate hate VNL and had I realized I would have it (somehow I didn't think I would; wishful thinking!), I'd have done it over white or nude gel or something. Next time! Because I *will* be wearing this again. It would be very cool to stamp over.

Pretty & Polished polishes are available on etsy here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/PrettyandPolished 'Candy Corn' is in stock at the time I'm posting this.

Mustard yellow is my favorite color.

This is China Glaze 'Trendsetter' with one coat of top coat. This is, obviously, a pretty simple one. After St. Patrick's Day and three weeks of green, all I wanted was something simple. (The mani before this was actually China Glaze 'Mahogany Magic', which is about as plain as you could get.)

I have a thing for yellow.

If that wasn't clear before, I bet it is now. This is Ulta Sun-Sational with a coat each of Milani Jewel FX Gems and Ulta Pinata-Yada. Pinata-Yada is my favorite of the multi-colored, multi-size glitters that I have. The biggest pieces are gold and red, which looks great. Sun-Sational is one of the better yellows I've ever worked with. I needed three coats, but it could have been done with two. It's not too streaky or chalky, like most yellows.

This mani totally reminds me of a fiesta! And I thought that before I realized Pinata-Yada was named such.