Nails Inc. - The After Party, Part 3 - Covent Garden Market

The last of these is the one I actually wore for Christmas. When I took these swatches I was enamored. Here it was, finally. After all those China Glazes and Orlys that I found uninspired, the 4000 Deborah Lippmann exclusive collections (of which there is one more! OMG!), none of which had that perfect polish, here it was. The perfect Christmas red. 

 Yeah, it's pretty chunky, it needs a solid top coat on it, as I would find out, even one generous coat of Seche couldn't smooth it out completely. Two did acceptably, and that was on top of another gel top coat. 

But I loved it. It was bright, very red, very sparkly...ooooo!

 Look at all that. You can see here how thick this is and the texture of it, which is really not smooth. Really not. Can't stress that enough because I'm not exaggerating. But it's SO RED!

All that to-doing there makes this challenging to apply. There is a lot of drag, it's very thick so it doesn't really flow, but if you are patient the end result is lovely.

Oh yeah. There's the texture. Now you can see.

You would think this would wear like iron. Glitters typically do. I tend to think of them as suspended in some sort of glue, generally.

I happily took this to my manicure, handed it over...it's not what BMWWU wanted to do. She wanted to do another gel. No. I wouldn't have gone for it regardless. I don't like them. I'm sorry. I don't. The top coat she put on this was some sort of UV gel top coat from OPI. I didn't pay for it so I didn't say anything, but....It wore really well. For about 4 hours. I'm not even kidding, I wish I was. I don't have pictures of this, I wish I did.

I got my nails did, ran errands, tried desperately to drop off a present to a good friend and couldn't get across traffic. I came home, unloaded the car and started to make cookies. It was Saturday before Christmas. I had to work partial days on Sunday and Monday...I needed to make the cookies.

...

This started to chip WHILE I WAS MAKING COOKIES. I'm not even joking. It just started flaking right off. It flaked off when I started the first batch. The more cookies I made the worse it did. I did a lot of dishes, I admit that, but I hadn't started them when the chipping started. My nails just looked worse after I had done them.

I repaired it, put some Seche on it (two coats) and it made it another couple of days. Like...one. By Christmas eve this was a hot mess. I was quite simply too tired to remove it because glitters are difficult. I do the whole holding the acetone on and all, but it's still a nuisance. For Christmas this year I had horrible nails.

The question I keep debating is: Was it the polish, or the top coat? Would it act better without that gel on there? I will have to try it again and find out. I haven't had good wear with the other Nails Inc's I've tried (and not blogged, actually) but nor do I have good luck with gel anything. I don't know. I was really disappointed, though.

Hm.

I suppose there is a dud in every bunch, huh.

Happy Talons


ETA: At the request of Kelly, I'm adding a couple more  swatches of this layered over something else. The Something Else is BB Couture's Orion's Belt, which I was currently wearing, which is a whole other thing. The next post I was planning was going to be an A-England. The tips weren't wearing well, my job is to blame, and I wanted to just touch them up last night. Welllll, MDAMO handed the wrong cute little square bottle and as I was indulging one of my stupider habits, that of painting my nails to the light of The Big Bang Theory, I didn't notice either. Both polishes are primarily black. I just thought it was weird that it dried kind of rough. OK, hand me the Seche and then hours later I realized...I had painted over with the wrong polish! I thought this was really rather funny. MDAMO apologized many times, but I wasn't upset. I will tell you one thing: Orion's Belt can cover another not really black polish in one coat.

Here is one coat of Covent Garden Market over mostly black Orion's Belt:

This is really a good experiment, actually. I'm glad Kelly asked me to try this. These show you better than I had before what the polish is really made of. The glitter is small but so incredibly dense. It does have a little sticker on the cap saying "Full Coverage Glitter" and I guess they mean it.

I'm not sure you could really thin these coats. Maybe you could? I've confessed before I'm basically a drunken monkey at painting my nails. I just love to do it.

What do you think?


PS: The Orion's Belt started peeling, it was too thick over the A-England so I'll be swatching some new stuff that arrived today!

Do Ya Think I'm Sexy? Do ya? DO YA?? Deborah Lippman wants to know!

Deborah Lippmann did a whole bunch of chunky glitters this year. They're all beautiful, you've already seen one here. I have a couple more to show you as well! This one is a gorgeous chunky red. I only did one coat for the swatches...I think the last chunky glitter shows you what they look like layered, but I didn't feel like I was really showing you the polish. So...I present a one coat of these glitters, at least for the next couple.

Oooo. It's like Valentine's heart red. See, on this single coat swatch thing you can really see the glitters and how they disperse. I can't lie, these are not that easy to use. See the pinky finger and then the ring finger difference? That's a really easy difference to make. Then you get into a layering war thing trying to make sure you get them sort of even. As pretty as these are, I think I prefer to layer these over something else, but do what you gotta do. You're not going to be wrong regardless.

Those silver labels are so hard to photograph!
OK, see the reflection here? This one is a straight up clear base, no tint to it at all. With this red do you really need it? Not so much! I'm looking at this and wondering what I'd put it over. Pink could be interesting...or black. I could see that as my Valentine's mani. BB Couture Cash Black or Lippmann Black Vinyl with this on it.
Not a big fan of the Valentine's.

This may have been intended as a more Christmas color...huh. All I can see are those big heart shaped boxes of chocolate.

See the weird disbursement of glitter? I found that irritating, actually. Then see how on the ring finger nail, I tried to level it out and instead they stuck to one another and caused a 12 sparkle pile up. Thpppbbbbb. Keep an orange stick handy for these.

They're just so irresistible. You know they're going to be hard to get off, you're going to have glitter everywhere, if you can even get them off! and you're going to fight with it to get it how you want it. And yet...gotta have them. They're so hypnotic. You just want to stare at them. The glitters are so shiny...they're practically tiny sequins. With the right outfit this would be a show stopper.

As I was only swatching this, I can't speak to wear but I imagine if you do a good job keeping the glitters from sticking off the ends of your nails it should wear rather well. It's basically chain mail, for pete's sake. These are gritty, obviously, and I don't know that any amount of top coat is going to help that. It's just going to be rough to feel and that's about the end on that!

I hope you like it and you think it's sexy!!

Happy Talons!