Sparkled Beauty

It was a crazy rainy day yesterday, plus we had some bus connection issue on the way home the night before that. Need not to say I was not in a good mood. But at least I have a really cute nail colour to talk about.

This is P2 Elegant, a beautiful lavender shade with a strong hint of grey, and a subtle pink duochrome. I love me some complicated and unique nail polish shades like this. They make painting my nails a lot more exciting, not mentioning the constant glance of the nails during the day :)

Since P2 is a brand only sold in Europe, I believe this shade was from either a swap or a blog sale. Sorry ladies, it is not widely available. P2 makes some great makeup products too, it's a shame they haven't gone global.

Anybody ready for the long weekend to start? I know I am. Still have to take Squirt out for some festive activities (our Canada Day is on Sunday vs. the 4th of July celebration in the US) but I'm also hoping for some down time.

If you haven't seen already, there are a lot of new drugstore products coming out in July. Let the hunt begin, preferably sooner than later. Who's excited? :)

No, I didn't get to go to Europe but am lucky to have a big enabler that hunts stuff down for me where she lives and where she travels. You probably remember Marie from Mon Coin a Moua through my France swap last year. She is in a blog hiatus for a while now but we still keep in touch. She always offers to pick me up some stuff and send them over.

This first batch of stuff, she got from London a while back but couldn't send them to me because of the Canada Post strike.

I tried to be good and didn't ask her to get too much. There wasn't any LE Sleek palettes around at the time, so nothing for me there.

I got a beautyuk eyeshadow palette #2 and some MUA (Makeup Academy) £1 range: lipstick #7 and eyeshadows #2, #7, #12 and #14, all Pearl finish. It's silly with all numbers as names, but nothing I can do there lol.

And then, nail polish. Prices are for reference only, I'm shocked sometimes of how little these cost compared to the quality
- H&M Hunt Me Down - I couldn't find this shade at my store here, €3.50
- P2 Crackling top coat in Golden Rush, €1.75. This completes my main colour range for crackles
- Essence Colour & Go in Where is the Party? - duochrome goodness, €1.25, and a Nail Art magnet, €1.79, to work the few magnetic nail polish I have. We'll see if it works.

- Kiko #237 Rosso Glitter Sparkle Touch, #278 Viola Orchidea Microglitter, #255 Viola Microglitter and #231 Multicolour Paillettes Sparkle Touch, €2.50 each. Only numbers on the bottles but there are names on their website. I have always wanted to try Kiko, they aren't easy to get a hold of.

Catrice has been coming out with fabulous LE collections lately and I'm absolutely in love with how they look and even their names.
- From the Papagena collection: Tigerlily Crystal Clear Gloss Stick, €3.99. Same concept as the Maybelline Pop sticks
- Out of Space collection: Beam Me Scotty! nail polish €2.49, Supernova Skywalker and Back To Pandora baked eyeshadows, €3.49 each. There'll be more nail polish and eyeshadows from this collection coming my way, I wanted to collect them all
- Glamourama collection: Drama, Baby! and En Vogue Absolute Eye Colours, on clearance for €1.50 each, woo hoo! These 2 shades show up on camera brighter than IRL. Can't wait to do more smoky eyes with them.

The box she sent the stuff in was packed to the rim. See what she sneaked in as extras for me:
- Essence You Rock! collection: Cut Off the Beige, Love, Peace and Purple, Kings of Mints and Speed of Light Blue
- Essence Sun Club in BBC Splash Refresh.

How cute are those tiny little bottles (7ml)? They are slightly bigger than the Colour & Go line (5ml) but are still babies next to the Sun Club (11ml). Love the colours she picked for me, especially Love, Peace and Purple with the duochrome sheen.

Then there's more.
- Catrice Absolute Eye Colour palette in The Season's Must Have
- P2 Kiwi Cuticle Peeling
- P2 Me, Myself and I nail sticker
- Essence Blossoms Etc. eye pencils in I Like and Bloom-a-Loom
- Essence You Rock! lip stain in Your Pink is on Fire
- P2 Home Sweet Home Everlasting eye primer in Little Darling, and
- P2 Happy Blooming eyeshadow in Cheerful Lilac.

Besides cute names, the packaging is adorable too. Can I have these brands here, please? All of them? I'm clueless of what to try first, can't decide. What do you want to see first?

I switched up the brand this time. Icing is one that I don't own many bottles from, just because I can't get to their store very often.

This is Icing Grape A Licious, one of the shades from my Boxing Day haul last year. It's a magenta-ish pink with a bunch of fine magenta and silver glitters.

The brush is the typical wide one that Icing is known of, so application was easy. The shade was opaque after 2 coats. The colour is more purple than pink, more like what you see in the bottle than on my nails, because of the flash.

Then, I happened to have a bottle of glittery top coat on my desk in the same colour family with Grape A Licious, so I added it on for fun.

It's Santee Purple Sparkle, with chunky magenta glitters and small multi-coloured smaller glitters in a clear base. I got it from a blog sale, didn't know much about the brand but loved the glitters. I believe we don't have this brand around here, unfortunately.

Feel free to click on the pics to enlarge, so you can see the glitters in action a little better.

Forewarning: If you are not a fan or have seen enough of crackle manis, you can stop here. I still have lots of fun using the crackles I have, so here we go!

I added P2 Crackling Top coat in Black Explosion on all my nails except the ring fingers. I did quite a think coat of it, so the cracks were big, letting the base show through.

Bloggers did experience with different directions of application, for different crack directions, but I'm still going traditional - from top straight down to the bottom of the nails.

Final shot, for show :)

I can totally confirm that the crackles are going to stick around a bit on my blog, as I have lots of fun with the 4 I have.

A few China Glaze Crackles are waiting for me at the bf's (as I had to send the order to him for local shipping from the etailer). The collection has been sold out at Sally quicker than you can say its name, so I know lots of you still wait for it.

The good news is the crackle trend is just getting started. Sally Hansen, Model's Own, and Kleancolor are among brands I knew that are bringing us more crackles very soon. I am excited :)

How's everyone? I know I haven't been updating the blog very often this past week. I had something in my mind that required a lot of thinking (I am still thinking about that now, which drives me nuts).

I have something fun to show you this weekend though :) This is Milani Fairy Tale - part of the Black Magic collection for Halloween 2009. The collection never made it to Canada, so I didn't have any of the shade until one deadly blog sale lol.

The flash did bring out the blue glitters a lot more, so it looks more blue. IRL, Fairy Tale is a black with blue glitters. The bottle shone the blue sheen very well, but on the nail, unless you are under direct sunlight (or strong flash), you only get to see the blue flash here and there.

Also, this takes 3 coats, so it's on the sheer side. Still, I love it. I think it was perfect for Halloween and a step up from a plain black. But then, I want an experiment - a crackle experiment to spice it up even more :)

I put a layer of P2 Crackling top coat in Silver Blast on top of Milani Fairy Tale. How do you like the effect here?

Now I had tried a crackle mani before with Isadora Subway Green but the experience is quite different this time.

Silver Blast took its time to crack, which was the first thing that surprised me. I just assume all crackle polish would crack like crazy within the first 5 seconds like Subway Green.

Secondly, it applies very smooth, like a regular nail polish and doesn't dry too matte like most other crackles.

Also, the intensity of the cracks varies among nails. On 4 finger on my left hand here, the nail on the middle finger cracked the least. Even a second thin coat of Silver Blast didn't change the situation. I can't seem to understand why lol. I mean I applied it evenly on all fingers. But it's probably the point of a crackle mani - random cracks, no common patterns.

In short, I think I like P2 Crackling top coat better than Isadora Graffiti nails, but love the crackle trend. The more brands we have the better. Unfortunately, both these brands are not available in North America. The good news is China Glaze is coming out with 6 crackle shades, so don't miss that collection if you want to hop on this trend.

One more picture to show you how random the crackling could be.

This is my right hand which doesn't normally make an appearance on the blog. I'm right handed, so the left hand gets all the NOTD glamour :) If you look closely, Silver Blast cracks a lot more on my right finger nails than on my left. But who's comparing?

I did add a coat of Seche Vite on top, cause I like the glossy look on crackle manis. Still, very Halloween-y, isn't it?

If you have been following the trend, which colour do you think will look good with Silver Blast? If you haven't, are you going to?