Year of the Dragon by Pure Ice

So the Year of the Dragon pairing by Pure Ice is a gold metallic nail polish and a bright, crisp red crackle polish topper. I had never, for whatever reason, thought to pair these two together and I have to say, I just love the result.
The gold metallic polish is a very warm gold, almost has that "old gold" feel. I adore it - surprising for me, I don't usually care for gold, but this one is right up my alley. It reminds me a bit of Misa Ghetto Fabulous. I only needed two coats for this - I probably could have done one, it was really well pigmented.

I decided to use the red crackle, Show Stopper, in a diagonal pattern. This is a fun change up for me, I really like the look of it done in this direction. I had a mishap with my ring finger and the door, so I had to go over that spot again - forgive me if it looks a bit lumpy, but that's my fault and not the fault of the crackle. Like many crackle polishes, this dries to a matte finish. I added glossy top coat to all of my fingers but my pinkie, because I wanted to show you guys the texture of the matte - I actually like that contrast against the metallic of the gold. Pretty neat!

I know that many of us are burnt out on crackle, but when I wore this I got a TON of compliments on it, and I myself really loved the look of it. The combination of color and texture to me was really pretty and I haven't worn crackle in so long, I think I just enjoyed it. What do you guys think of this?

Disclaimer: Product(s) in this post provided in return for an honest review.

Duri Red Carpet Collection

Okay, I have finally finished up editing photos of the nine polishes in Duri's Red Carpet Collection - this is going to be a bit long! I'll just go ahead and jump right in with photos and details.
As I suspected, Addicted To Fame, the orange I saw in the press release is hot! It's a bright orange loaded with gold shimmer and would look great in the summer as a pedi. I used two coats here for opacity.

Behind The Scenes is a deep vampy reddish toned purple. It looks a bit dark here in the low light photo, but trust me, you can still tell it's purple. Perfect opacity, I could almost have done one coat here.

Celebrity Scandal is a silver foil. It's very fine, though - it could almost be considered a chrome, since it's not very textured! Gorgeous. We have proof here that you need to baby these bad boys when you're applying, because I must have had SOMETHING on my middle finger that didn't agree with the polish! It shows right up on these metallics. If you don't have a nice silver foil, this is a good one - the application was easy, it dried in a snap, and any brush strokes disappear when it's dry. I love that!

Fashion Police is a gorgeous, gorgeous cornflower blue jelly with strong silver shimmer. It's more sheer than the other polishes, but that's to be expected since it's a jelly. I used three coats here. This is as gorgeous as I thought it was going to be from the press release!

Limo Ride is probably my only nemesis in this whole collection. Colors like this are just not me, it might be pretty on summer toes as one of my lovely twitter followers suggested, or topped with a darker stamped polish? It's a copper frost/pearl (maybe someone can identify, I can never QUITE tell the difference) that shows up brushstrokes pretty easily. I used two coats here.

Okay, we've come to the surprise of the collection, for me. Oscar Party is a bright, celery green shimmer. I had to do several photos for you guys and I'm going to ask you to click to enlarge these - it's a duochrome! It shifts from that celery green to a strong orange gold - stunning! I cannot get over how cool this is. I used three coats here, it's a little bit thin. This is going to be hot in the summer especially on your toes.

Whew, that was cool, huh? This next one is Paparazzi, an emerald green shimmer. I don't think I have a polish quite this shade and it is VERY pretty. Two coats here.

Tabloid Rumors is a very nice dark charcoal gray shimmer. Two coats here.

And last, but definitely not least: VIP Lounge. This bright red stole my heart - I don't even like bright reds and I fell head over heels for it! This has more of a berry/blue undertone so that's probably why I like it so much. Two coats here.

So, that's a pretty well rounded collection, huh? My favorites are VIP Lounge, Fashion Police, and Oscar Party, but I think it's a very good collection. What are your favorites?

Disclaimer: Product(s) featured in this post were provided by the PR company in return for an honest review.

Orly Dazzle and NOPI Bring On The Tinsel

Bling bling for the holidays! Orly Dazzle is a gorgeous metallic silver, very pigmented. It shines like whoa in the sun! Dazzle came out with the Back To School collection. Nicole By OPI Bring On The Tinsel is from last year's holiday collection, it is a fine multicolored glitter. There's silver, green, blue, gold, and red. It's so fine you could wear it by itself, but I've chosen to layer it over Orly Dazzle for some extra bling - and it's so much fun together!
I used two coats of Orly Dazzle - probably could have gotten away with one, it's very pigmented. I had no problems with brushstrokes, either. I used two coats of Bring On The Tinsel in order to get a lot of glitter on my nails - I couldn't seem to pick up enough on the brush on the first coat.

No top coat on either of these - look at that sparkle! Mmmm. Fun!

Orly Rage

Orly Rage came out with the Foil FX collection. These were supposed to be Minx-like polishes, but they're pretty obviously foils, so when you look at them, although they're awesomely sparkly and shiny and reflective, they're pretty obviously particles and not sheet-like at all, like a Minx would be.
Ignoring that, these polishes are indeed awesome and shiny. Rage is the rose gold of the collection, and I hope I captured the true color of this in my photos - Luxe, the true gold, is very obviously cooler and a lot more yellow, so maybe you can see how different that is from these photos of Rage.
You have to be a bit finicky with application, not as much as you would if these were chrome polishes, but still - you want your nail beds pretty smooth. I have no idea what happened, but there's a little bump of something, probably cotton, on my middle nail. *lol* So, case in point. These dry quickly and I had no brush stroke problems. What's cool about Rage is that there is silver flecks mixed in with the rose gold flecks, as you can see in my macro.

I would say that Rage, of all of these, was the most popular and well sought polish. Rose gold foils are pretty unusual, no?  I recently found this at Sally's in a display near the registers, when they put out all of their holiday polish displays.

Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Bronze Ablaze

This is a polish that was released in a set of metallics for fall, and I picked it up in a clearance bin at a Rite Aid. Confession: I hated this on me. It looks a lot better in photos than I thought it looked on me in person.
I usually adore metallic shades, and I thought I would like this, but I just didn't. It doesn't help that I've always had application issues with the Insta-Dri brush, either. It's just an awkwardly shaped mop, for me.
To be fair, I usually love Sally Hansen polishes and bottles/brushes. It's just the Insta-Dri line I don't care for.
Anyway, this is two coats of Bronze Ablaze. I'm amazed at how much better it looks in photos - it really falls flat in person.
Anyway, here are the photos.

Well, I apologize for the less-than-enthusiastic attitude with this post - but I'm just not enamored.  Total pass for me.

Focus On Black: Orly Iron Butterfly

Well. Welcome to October! I figured I'd start this month off right, and do my Focus On right away. What better time to whip out the black nail polish than October, right? Voting will be back open for next month's Focus On after this week is over.
Of course, I'm not going to show you just plain old black nail polish. Not that there's anything wrong with that - I wore a lot of Wet N Wild black polish back in the day, and I still use it as a base for other things. But I prefer to kick it up a notch now that I can, and there are lots of alternatives out there for you.
Almost two years ago(!!!), Orly brought us a trio of metallic matte polishes in a little collection called Metal Chic. Let me tell you, they were all three awesome and I utterly adore them. If you don't have them and you're remotely interested, you should get them! So from this Metal Chic collection, I'm showing you Orly Iron Butterfly.
As I mentioned, this is a metallic matte. It's a black base loaded with silver shimmer, so much so that it almost looks charcoal grey instead of black. This is one of the more easy to apply mattes - it's much more forgiving and levels out on its own. I used two coats here, just to cover anything I might have missed, and I thought I might have some ridges. Nope, it all leveled out on its own! Another bonus is that Orly's matte formula is less chiptastic than other mattes I've used. It's not as iron clad as, say, Man Glaze, but it has much better endurance than any other salon brand I've tried. I once wore Solid Gold for three days without chipping before getting bored with it and taking it off, and Iron Butterfly has the same kind of wear.
Also, these dry quickly - if you've ever worked with matte polishes, you'll already know this.
I know, a lot of talk, but one more thing. I have the worst luck ever when I'm applying black polish, and my hands were just not steady. Cleanup is always harder with black polishes, too. My apologies for this!

Check out the frosted bottle! Love it. So, do you have Iron Butterfly or either of the other Metal Chics? What do you think? What's your favorite black polish??

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Grey Area and China Glaze Latticed Lilac

Okay, I found Grey Area in a small display this past spring? I hadn't worn it yet! As a matter of fact, I probably haven't featured the Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear line much on this blog, and I quite like them. I like the brush, I like the bottle, I like the range of shades. I just wish they'd quit discontinuing my favorite shades! *coughmysticlilaccough* Well, Grey Area has a bit of a fall feel to it. It's a deep plum purple shade that's very dusty and greyed out. I used just two coats for this, coverage was good!
I'd been looking for something to try out my last China Glaze metallic Crackle I'd picked up, Latticed Lilac - and Grey Area seemed a likely candidate. I was right - it shows up perfectly over the darker plum base! I tried a diagonal crackle on my ring finger, and I think I like that pattern best. These metallic crackles are so lovely - and there's something almost lacey about the way they look. That's weird, but apt to me. I had no trouble with it being thick or hard to crack, either, like some of the creme crackles.

I kind of want the other metallic crackles, the three I got were so lovely.