China Glaze Spellbound Top Coat

Okay. I'm going to show you a polish that is VHTF (very hard to find)! China Glaze Spellbound top coat came out for Halloween of 2009, and it was L/E. I think those of us who managed to nab this are probably hoarding it!
Mind you, I've had to baby mine. I mean, it's ridiculous how much I've had to baby it - about a year after I bought it, I was checking out my stash and saw that this was completely dried up. I mean, it was down to about a quarter of a bottle, and when I went to open it and pull out the brush - bam. Dried up glitter. I went to work on it, and it took me forever. Lots and lots of polish thinner, along with some clear polish. Seemed to work, and then a couple months later I noticed it drying again, so back with the polish thinner. I've had to do this several times but now, it seems to be just fine. I've got a little gunked up glitter in the neck of the bottle, but had no troubles with this application.
So, this is a clear based glitter - small and large orange hex glitter and large silver hex glitter. It's fun to place over different colors, as it is billed as a top coat, but I once saw this over the top of a silver and that's how I like it best. You could use China Glaze Millenium, or another chrome, but this time I used a silver foil - China Glaze Cheers To You from last year's Christmas collection. Divine! I used two layers of Spellbound on top of Cheers To You.

Now, let's be honest - this was a pain to remove. I did soak it down for about ten minutes, but still - I ended up with little silver glitters everywhere. Was it worth it? Heck yeah, I LOVE this pairing. It's so awesome!
So that's the first of my Halloween features. Do you have Spellbound or are you desperately lemming it?

Supplies: Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat

This is a series I was running on my other blog, so I think it's useful to continue it here. I hope you all will like it and find it useful! When I talk about supplies, I am referring to things like top coat, base coat, treatments, cuticle removers, nail polish removers, etc.
I want to talk briefly about formula. Not every top coat works the same way with every person - for instance, there are a lot of folks who absolutely adore Seche Vite. I can't stand it, it doesn't work for me at all. It shrinks every single manicure, and I don't want to have to thin the bottle halfway through. Same for Out The Door, which works great for many folks - it never dries on me! I had previously been relying on CND Air Dry, which is not billed as a quick dry top coat, but for me it dries relatively quickly, never thickens, levels out polish imperfections very well, and most importantly - no shrinkage! So it hit all of the major points I look for. However, I read a couple of reviews of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat, and I decided to give it a whirl.
There were a couple of reasons I decided to try it out - when CND changed their bottle style, they also changed the brush. Air Dry now has kind of a moppy brush that's almost too big for my taste, I have less control. Secondly, the Revlon is roughly half the price of the CND!

So, does it work? For me, yes! It's self leveling - meaning, I rarely ever have to use a second top coat, and any imperfections in application get smoothed out. It dries quickly, no shrinkage, and hasn't thickened up at all! Even better, sometimes you can nab this at the drugstore on sale. So it's easy to find, you don't have to go to Ulta or order online! If you love CND Air Dry, and you have problems with Seche Vite and Out The Door like I do, this may be the solution you've been looking for.
Edited to add: This makes my polishes super shiny! I used it with my China Glaze Flying Dragon manicure, for reference. So it is very glossy!