Tag Archives: jelly sandwich

Manicure Monday: Garnet Jelly Sandwich

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This week’s Manicure Monday was so much fun! I know I’m going to hate taking this off in a couple of days. I rarely get to do jelly sandwiches, so I’m happy about having the chance, and doing something besides slapping glitter down on polish and calling it art. Today, I’m wearing two coats of OPI’s Which is Witch? between coats of Disney Villains Varnish Mother Gothel.

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Mother Gothel is a deep burgundy, and when I got it, I had no idea it would make a jelly sandwich like this. I swatched it once and I put it away until I started playing with it, planning a future manicure with it. I don’t remember when or how I decided to see what it looked like over glitter, but after I saw it, I couldn’t not do it. To me, this is the perfect translucence for a jelly sandwich: you can still see the holo shine from the glitter, but not the glitter itself. This is a look I love a lot. On its own, Mother Gothel is very shiny, like it could do without a top coat shiny. With top coat, my nails just look like tiny little garnets.

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OPI’s Which is Witch? is special to me because it’s one I had my friend in New York send me. She has a local salon that sells OPI for half the price Ulta does, and even after shipping, I still paid less than I would have at Ulta. Also, I don’t even think I knew what this one looked like when she bought it; I don’t remember asking for it, and I think it was comparable to something else I was looking for that they didn’t have. I love it, though; there are so many kinds of holographic silver glitter in it. A couple of the bar glitters didn’t want to play nice; you can probably still see a couple of them I couldn’t get off of my cuticles.

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Regardless, I am amazed at how this turned out. Note to self: do this more often.

Manicure Monday: Red Jelly Sandwich

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Did I ever tell you guys about how much I love red nails? I love red nails. I love glitter. I love the way this turned out.

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My last attempt at a glitter sandwich was in March, and if you’re longtime reader, you’ll remember this nail fail that resembles Italian food. When I did that manicure, this was the one I wanted. Pretty much as soon as I discovered Wet ‘n Wild’s Everybody Loves Redmond was slightly translucent on the first coat, I knew I was going to have to do this. Of course, the coverage seems to build, so had I used a bit more, the glitter would have been totally covered. You can see this on the middle finger, somewhat; I’d uncovered some of the glitter during cleanup, and did a second coat on just that nail. As a result, the glitter is harder to see.

In direct sunlight, but still indoors.

In direct sunlight, but still indoors.

Unfortunately, these labels don’t stand up to my haphazard storage method of having everything sitting around in a box. I have a couple bottles of these Wet ‘n Wild Fast Dry polishes, and all of the labels are completely rubbed off. Anyway, I like this color a lot. Indoors, it’s an orangey red, but outside in the sunlight, it’s very red, very bright. I’ll go ahead and admit I had pretty low expectations for this color, but I’m very impressed.

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The glitter is Julep’s Paris. I got it in a mystery box sometime over the summer, but it’s exactly the kind of thing I would have chosen and purchased on my own. Even though there’s a ton of glitter in the bottle, it’s meant to be used as a top coat, to give a manicure the right amount of sparkle without being over the top. Of course, I don’t like things that aren’t over the top, so I went crazy with this glitter, adding three thick coats before putting down the last layer of red.  As a result, the bottle is two-thirds empty now.

Wet 'n Wild's Everybody Loves Redmond, Julep's Paris

Wet ‘n Wild’s Everybody Loves Redmond, Julep’s Paris

Also, let me tell you some about the topcoat I used this week. I’ve been buying a lot of indie products lately. Indie polish is the latest scourge on my wallet. It’s so gloriously inventive and completely unlike anything I could ever find in a store that the extra money and shipping fees are totally worth it. After the topcoat issues I had the past couple weeks, I decided to try Digital Nails’ topcoat, since I was buying their awesome new color-changing polish anyway. I’m pleased to report that it’s awesome. It dries in about the same time as Seche Vite.  I’m really impressed with it. Not that Digital Nails makes bad stuff, but I didn’t expect it to work so well. I’m wearing three coats here, and it gives me great shine and makes my nails rigid, which is something I look for in a topcoat. My nails are extremely soft and thin, and I rely on a hard topcoat to not only protect my color, but my whole nail. I would totally recommend it.

Oh Lord Jesus it's a fire.

Oh Lord Jesus it’s a fire.

The only problem is, it was clear when I started. I don’t know if this is an issue with the topcoat itself or the fact that I used it on cheap red nail polish, but now it’s an odd pink. It doesn’t look like the tint affects it in any way, which is good, but I don’t want this to happen every time I use it and having some weird brown topcoat after a few weeks. I guess we’ll see.

Manicure Monday: Orange Jelly Sandwich

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I have nothing to say about these nails, except that they look like pizza and I can’t get past it.

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The orange polish is called Y’All Come Back Ya Hear, and it’s from OPI’s Texas collection from 2011. I got it and a few others from the collection for free some time I had a rewards coupon from Ulta. I was pretty unhappy with them because I didn’t expect them to be translucent, which is my own fault for not testing them first. It wasn’t until recently that I learned of the jelly sandwich and gained a new appreciation for these sheer colors. I did my first jelly sandwich with Too Hot Pink to Hold ‘Em from the same collection, and I loved it. I had the same high hopes for this manicure, but things kind of fell apart when I couldn’t find the right glitter.

My test nails started with a coarse holographic glitter that looked okay, but was missing something. I tried almost every glitter I had, and none of them gave me that Eureka! moment I get when I know I’ve found the right one. At least, not until I saw It’s a Trap-eze sitting on the top of my polish box. I picked it up and tried it on my mannequin hand. This was the one.

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 In tests, it looked great. In practice, on my actual nails, it looks like pizza. It looks like vodka sauce. There was more white color in the glitter polish than I thought there would be, which is why the orange looks creamy and tomato-ish. The orange cancels out most of the colors from the glitter, which is why only the greens seem to stand out. I just don’t know about these. I mean, I’ll live with them for the week, they’re not that awful, but I wanted something like the pink ones that got a lot of attention from everybody.

This is the first full manicure I’ve done with the Seche Vite top coat. I used it instead of the Top 2 Bottom I usually use because the glitter went on kind of thick and I’d wrecked one during my frog hunting adventure yesterday. I knew the Seche would dry faster and prevent any other accidents, so I used it instead. I never want to use another top coat.

So yeah, this week was a nail fail, but it’s okay. It was a good experiment.