Nailene SensatioNail Invincible Gel Polish Review

Yesterday I finally got around to picking up the new SensatioNail Invincible Gel Polish from Nailene, at Walmart. It was $49.95, but there is a $5 off coupon available on their Facebook. I'd been debating for a few weeks on whether to get it or not, because it was rather pricey, but I finally gave in.

The outside of the box. I picked the Starter Kit in Raspberry Wine, as the other option (as far as Starter Kits go. They have ten other colors) was Scarlet Red.

Flip up the top, and on the inside of the box is this. I love it!! It's, obviously, flimsy cardboard, but it is quite cool. The top holds all the polishes, while the bottom holds the nail packet, and the adapter for the LED lamp.

The LED lamp. A small, "Pro 3060 LED Lamp." It's very nice and doesn't take up a lot of space. It worked pretty well, from what I can tell, although this was my first experience with gel nails at all. It comes with an adapter that plugs into the wall, so no batteries, which is nice because I never have any.

The top level of the cardboard shelf held these. From left, the Gel cleanser, Gel Primer, Raspberry Wine Gel Color, and the Gel Base & Top Coat.

The bottom level held this. A manicure stick to push back your cuticles, a double-sided nail buffer, and a pack of Lint-Free Wipes.

The process is very simple. Buff your nails lightly and push back your cuticles. Pour a little bit of the gel cleanser onto one of the Lint-Free Wipes (one thing--I highly doubt anyone else is stupid enough to do this, but when I first saw it, I had thought that it was one huge wipe and thought "oh, that must be re-usable!" Then I started pouring some of the gel cleanser on it, and realized it was a bunch of thin wipes. So make sure you separate them.) and wipe your nails.

Then coat your nails with gel primer and cure for 30 seconds. This LED lamp is awesome-- I had my iPod on next to me as a timer, but the lamp beeps after 30 seconds. Sadly, it doesn't do it after 60 seconds but it's not too much of a problem. Either just count it out or use a timer. One coat of the base gel, cure for 30 seconds. Next, coat your nails with a thin coat of the color gel, cure for 60 seconds. Do a second coat of color gel, cure for sixty more seconds. Then apply a coat of the top coat, and cure for 30 more seconds.

After that, you can wipe your nails off with the gel cleanser. This doesn't take away the color or anything, but the nails are slightly sticky after the last cure, so if you don't want them to be like that, then wipe them down.

This was the finished product. I only did it on one finger to test, although I will definitely be trying it again after I get my hands on some acetone. That is the one thing the kit doesn't come with, which I wish it did, because I don't live near any beauty supply stores and it is kind of a pain to find. You can use regular nail polish remover, I think, but it will take much longer.

And also, as you can see, I accidentally got some of it on my cuticles, so be careful of that, too. And either I didn't do a good job with the application (likely) or the polish is slightly sheer, because two coats of the polish didn't make it fully opaque. Regardless, it got the job done. After under five minutes for one nail, it was colored and dry to the touch.

I'm hoping to do some experimenting with this-- SensatioNail has posted some nail art ideas on their facebook, like marbling, so I would like to try some nail art. I will also be testing the wear, and I want to try the LED lamp with some other gel nail polishes.

Overall, it's super nice! If the price for the starter kit deters you, don't worry. Considering that, at least at the salon where I got my Dorothy Who manicure done, gel nails can cost upwards of $40 for one application, this is really a steal. The additional kits with other colors were only $20 at my Wal-Mart, so I can definitely see myself picking some up or putting them on a wishlist.

Nails of the week

I have two nail pictures to show y'all this week! (:

The first one is not my nails, but my sister's. This is the first time that I've done nail art on someone else's hands. If I'd been doing it for myself, it probably would have only taken 15 minutes at most. But... it took closer to 45 minutes, I believe.

I got the design off of one posted on soompi, but I didn't write down the username. This design was done using Zoya Skylar and a black striper and a grey striper.

This is a swatch of China Glaze Dorothy Who. It's so pretty! I got my nails professionally done that time. I know, I could have spent the $10 on a bottle of OPI and done my own nails, but I wanted to see how they shape my nails, do my cuticles, etc. Sadly, I do not own this polish because I didn't get it either time China Glaze released it. It is now my dream to own it though.

Zoya True and Fleck Effects 2012 Swatches & Review

I have the new, spring 2012 collection from Zoya for review today. It features 6 colors in the "True" collection, with 3 fleck polishes that can either be worn alone, or layered on top of the nail polishes.

TRUE

This is Lotus. This one was kind of hard for me to capture! It's a really nice cool purple with pink shimmer. This is three coats, although it was mostly opaque at two. Very nice application (although I did manage to get too impatient and accidentally made a mark on my ring finger). Looks good with my skintone, so I can envision wearing this often. (And I completely forgot to clean off my cuticles in the second picture, so I'm sorry!)

This is Tru. Flash in the second picture to show the shimmer. A nice, deep, red-toned purple with pink shimmer. It dries a shade darker than the bottle (not that you can really tell the bottle's color from my picture, with the way I'm clutching at it), which is kind of weird but it looks really nice!

Cho. Maybe I'm the only one, but when I first heard that name, I thought of Cho Chang from Harry Potter. Just me? Anyways, this is a creamy, yellow-toned shade with a subtle silver shimmer. It actually looks good with my skintone, and I might wear it more often (I don't usually do neutrals/tannish colors like this).

Farah. Dirty beige. It does not look good with my skintone as well, so I probably won't wear it very often. It is pretty though, darker than Cho, and stays close to the bottle color.

Skylar. Wow. This is so pretty! It dries a shade darker than the bottle, actually. I thought it would be a dupe for a Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure color, but no way. Skylar is a deep, unique blue with gold and silver shimmer. Awesome shimmer, too. It always turned out in my pictures. The first picture is more true to color.

Bevin. Would it be weird to say that this nail polish reminds me of a person? Not the name or anything, but when I saw Bevin, I instantly thought of my friend. Strange. It is a soft, turquoise-y green. It's extremely pretty! And it actually looked good on me, which I didn't expect from the bottle. I wore it for the longest, a week, and got tons of compliments on it.

Blurred to show the flakes. This is two coats of Lotus with one coat of Chloe on top. It's so pretty! The pink base is (obviously) unnoticeable when it's layered with Lotus.

Two coats of Tru with one coat of Chloe.

Two coats of Cho with one coat of Chloe. (It looks unbelievably beautiful!! In this picture, at least)

Two coats of Farah with one coat of Opal.

Three coats of Skylar with one coat of Maise.

From left: Zoya Maisie, Opal, and Chloe

From left: Zoya Cho, True, and Farah

From left: Zoya Bevin, Lotus, and Skylar

Dry time: Fast for the True Collection, but the Fleck collection takes awhile to dry. Not too long, but it is a bit longer than average dry time.

Color selection: I love the True collection, except I wish they'd done another color instead of two beiges. And the Fleck collection is amazing-- I'm a sucker for flakie top coats. But I do wish that Opal and Maisie weren't so close! Over another polish, they look exactly the same.

Wear time: I wore Bevin for a week, and at the end of the week, the only signs were some average tip wear.

Overall, this collection is very nice, and I'm glad that I got to review it! It was released on Jan. 13th, and you can buy it online at www.zoya.com

(Zoya sent these to me to review).

Depression + Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Two updates in one week?

I forewent one of my last nail designs so that I could post these (just finished them yesterday).



This one is using a regular shiny topcoat.



And this one uses Essie Matte About You (just because I love the look of it... no real purpose.

I chose green and pink for this week because green is the color for Depression Awareness Month, which is October, and pink is for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which is also in October. To raise awareness, I'll be wearing these nails for a week and posting a picture of them in Soompi and on my Facebook and Twitter. For every comment (either on Facebook or my blog), "like," (Facebook) "thumbs up" (Soompi) "retweet" (Twitter) and new follower I get from this post, I will donate $0.50 to the Avon Breast Cancer Crusade Foundation, and $0.50 to Hope for Depression Research Foundation. I'm also hoping to get together a giveaway of Pink items to be given away by the end of the month.

I used OPI Jade Is the New Black as the base, three coats for each. Then I used my pink striper polish to draw the design. The thumb nail is kind of random, the pointer finger is supposed to be the Breast Cancer ribbon, the middle finger is just a cross, the ring finger is a french manicure with lines, and the pinky finger says HOPE.

I really love these, and I'm glad that I can actually do my nails for a reason this time, instead of just for fun. (:

(Also, the picture turned out fine!! Now if only I could actually get a good picture, with clean up, without tip wear (need to thin out my Seche Vite... it's getting goopy and dragging my nail polish back)

Star nail of the week

Heyy.

Okay, so I did do a nail design last week. And this week.

But I didn't post it because I am lazy. :)


Here is my nail art from two weeks ago. It came from a nail artist on Soompi, but I'm afraid that I did not write down who did it (I just saved the picture a couple of months ago. Regret.) I kind of failed.

The blue color is Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Dive Deeper. Sort of. When I put on the first coat, is quite sheer. And way too light for my tastes. So I frankened the entire bottle to be darker, by adding 4-5 drops of a Sinful Colors nail polish. Whose name (and bottle) escapes me, but I will find it and update it.

Anyways! Then I drew the design with a very dark blue glitter striper polish (okay, I know. That was doomed for failure). It was too liquidy and sheer, so it barely showed up. So I went over that with a silver glitter striper polish. Then I didn't like the way that looked. So I went over it with a purple glittery striper, and then outlined the purple with silver.

I spent way too long on such an easy nail art. And then I was patting myself on the back for that, and completely failed with the picture. Wow. I have no idea HOW I did not see that before I put my camera away (Oh, right. I'm too lazy to check! sob) I should really warn you, by the way, that you can click on the picture to expand it. But if you do, it's blurry. It kind of looks okay (from really far away and without expanding it. And if you just hit spacebar over and over until you get past it).

Anyways! There's a swatch too. One coat of Dive Deeper. (without any cleanup. As you can very clearly tell). It's such a pretty color in the bottle, I'm sad it's so sheer and light.



Any tips for how to get good nail shots? Sometimes I take them outside, but that usually makes them look worse as opposed to better. Here I was, thinking that I was getting better.

I was sadly mistaken. Till next time.

Also, I just cleaned my nail polish collection. And organized it. 30 minutes later and 89 polishes later, well... Just expect a post soon. :)

Nail of the Week + Stranger Tides swatch!

Wow, I am fail. It takes me two weeks, and all I come back with is a long-overdue swatch and a sort of fail nail art? (I also did not buy any nail polishes. A lot of my money has been going to coffee.)

Anyways! I didn't have enough time last week to do a nail art, I just used some nail treatments on my nails. For a science project that is required for graduation, I'll be testing the effects of Toluene (one of the Big 3 chemicals in nail polish) on insects. What's the purpose of that?

... I do not know. But what could be better than being around nail polish, and poking roly-polys with a stick? Exactly.



My nails for the past week. A bit of tip wear because it was a day or two after I first did the design before I could take the picture.

I followed the tutorial off of this tutorial with a few major differences.

I used a sponge brush to apply Sinful Colors This Is It, then drew the flower design (although my friend remarked that it resembled a cracked egg) with my pink striper brush, and went over that with my black striper.

I didn't add the cheetah print marks because I don't really care for animal patterns. I also didn't put gold glitter in the center of the flowers, partially because I was lazy and also because I forgot. Overall though, I liked the effect :)

Here is my swatch for the week (since I have not bought anything over the weekend, you'll have to live with just a swatch. OPI Stranger Tides from the Pirates of the Caribbean collection.



I should have warned you that it was a swatch that I hadn't cleaned up my nails yet in. I'm sorry. (I'm also sorry that my watermarks and stuff kind of suck. I edit my pictures with the free picnik on Flickr, and I just pick a random color for the border and fade the Rakuzen.)

I'm working on a new design right now, so I'll post that soon hopefully.

Happy Labor Day + nail haul

Happy Labor Day!

I had the day off, so I went with my family to take my sister back to college and go to the mall.

I was very sad to find out that BeautyFirst had closed. They always had some kind of good sale going on, so yeah.



On the bright side, I went to Trade Secret and bought this. Seche Restore. My Seche Vite topcoat is getting a bit too thick and gooey, and I have a couple of older nail polishes that need to be restored to a thinner consistency so that I can use them. I'm really happy (except I paid $10 for it and then, as I was walking out, noticed one that was marked for cheaper. :\)

This is kind of a beauty post, too. I also bought this Hello Kitty clutch from Sephora. Originally marked $25, it was on sale for $10.



I'd almost had my mom buy it for me online over the summer, but eventually gave up because I couldn't justify spending $25 on a clutch that probably wouldn't get too much use. So I was overjoyed that it went on sale.



And also, I received my fimo nail art in the mail! There's 50 assorted flakes, with flowers, Hello Kitty (can you tell that I'm a freak for HK?), and a lot of random stuff. And 100 slices of bunny. And a new roll of a white butterfly. I'm so geeked; trying to think of a nail design.



I had some nails from last week, but it wasn't anything too fancy and it chipped after a day, so I didn't get any pictures. Just Super Junior written in Korean with white polish over pink nail polish (in retrospect, I ought to have used sapphire blue.)

I didn't pick up any OPI products because I'm still getting a list together for my salon supplier so that it will be cheaper. I love you, OPI, but I don't have the kind of cash to shell out $8.50 for every bottle.