Endgame - hēhē, Hit the Bottle, MdU, Sally Hansen, Ulta3, OPI, Savvy

This is a tribute to Avengers: Endgame, the 22nd movie and the climax to the Infinity Wars storyline in MCU. I won't spoil anyone, but I loved the movie! I wore this mani when I went to watch the movie, and I'm so happy that I did this for Endgame.

[Stars & Stripes]

[Red & Gold]

Let me go into more detail with each one now!

[hēhē's Super Hero 001 stamping plate]

[Captain America]

This mani is a tribute to Captain America, all very red, blue and white. The forefinger and ring finger are stamped using hēhē's Super Hero 001 stamping plate. I stamp all of them onto a silicone stamping mat and then...well, I transfer onto my nails, but as you can see, I embarrassingly applied the 'A' incorrectly on my forefinger. It's flipped. /o\ Ah well... For the ring finger, I stamped the stars and stripe twice, and then colour in the red stars.

The shield is not stamped, it's hand drawn. The reason is because the way the stamping plate has the rings and stars, it's not possible to colour them in correctly based on Cap's actual shield. It bothered me the last time I used the Super Hero 001 plate, so I decided to hand draw it this time round. Honestly? REGRET. SO MUCH WORK. Hahaha... it was way too hard getting it kind of circular, next time, I'm just stamping it even if it's incorrect. On my pinkie finger, it's a hand drawn red, silver and blue stripes.

For the base nail polish colours, I used Sally Hansen Right Said Red + Ulta3 English Rose to get that red colour, Sally Hansen Pacific Blue for the blues, and OPI Unfrost My Heart for the silver that I hand drawn. For the forefinger and ring finger, I stamped using Hit the Bottle Chromeo, a chrome silver stamping polish.

[hēhē's Super Hero 002 stamping plate]

[Iron Man]

And now this tribute is to Iron Man, all red and gold. All of it is stamped from hēhē's Super Hero 002 stamping plate. Hey, I got the 'A' correct this time, haha!

The base nail polishes are Sally Hansen Right Said Red + Ulta3 English Rose to get that shade of red, and Savvy's Ginger Ale which is a gold glitter polish. For the stamping polish, I used Hit the Bottle Chromeo, a chrome silver stamping polish for the 'A', MdU Reddish which is a red stamping polish for the middle finger, Hit the Bottle's Spun Gold for the chrome gold on the ring finger, and Hit the Bottle's A Bolt from the Blue for the chrome blue of the arc reactor.  I just really love the Iron Man helmet on the middle finger, very iconic.

Anyway, I got many comments on this in person, which was kind of nice because I really wanted something to commemorate this movie. :)

Broken Tooth - Savvy Carnivale, Konad m63

Sometimes, stamping doesn't go as you imagined... 

[Mm..blah]

This is one of those times! I tried to take flattering pics but eh... not sure how much success I had!

[Bottle to nail: Savvy Carnivale (3 coats)]

I started out with a base of Savvy Carnivale, a glitter-packed polish that Jme has already reviewed (with lovely photos!) here.

[3 coats: Savvy Carnivale]

It's a nice mix of colours but I took three coats to get to opacity and wasn't a fan of the dry time or thickness, unfortunately.

[3 coats: Savvy Carnivale]

On the other hand, it wasn't too hard to get smooth!

[Base: Savvy Carnivale; Stamping: Konad plate m63]

So, in my head, I had an idea of a glitterbomb with a crisp black pattern over the top for some contrast. Unfortunately, it didn't work out as planned! I think the chaotic glitter, plus the fact that the silver glitter bits seem to reflect quite dark for some reason, ended up blurring the houndstooth design (from Konad plate m63). I thought it was pretty hard to make out what it was meant to be!

Anyway, a concept to try again another day!

Party Shine - Savvy Carnivale

It's been awhile since I bought a nail polish in Sydney, and I'm glad I got this one!

[3 Coats Savvy Carnivale]

This is Savvy Carnivale, which is a cheerful glitter bomb. It has silver-gold glitter with tonnes of holo glitter and pink glitter. It's opaque in three coats, but you can go for four just to be sure.

It's simple but different enough that I know I don't have anything like this in my arsenal right now. :)

Shifting Meadows - Savvy Galaxy

Savvy Galaxy caught my attention recently, and with the 'buy 2, get 1 free' sale at Priceline, I couldn't resist!

[Galaxy Savvy]

Savvy Galaxy is a blue-green duochrome foil with tiny holo flakes. The colour isn't like the numerous Chanel Peridot or OPI Just Spotted The Lizard dupes, and closer to the China Glaze Deviantly Daring colour. But it does have a stronger duochrome shift than Deviantly Daring.

Unfortunately, the flakes are practically non-existent in Galaxy. You can see occasional glimmers of them, but they're really small, so they hardly stand out sadly. I tried to photograph them here:

The little bits of shiny you see are the flakes.

So is Galaxy worth buying? Well, without the sale, it's only AUD3, so it's rather cheap anyway. If you don't have anything similar, it is plenty pretty. But if you do have something similar and just wanted it for the flakes, I would recommend giving it a pass.

Rose Sparks - Savvy Razzle & Dazzle

This is a gorgeous polish I picked up at Priceline just last week! =) Savvy has been coming out with lots of dupes recently and this one, Razzle and Dazzle, looks to be a pretty spot-on dupe of A England She Walks in Beauty.

[Bottle to nail: Savvy Razzle & Dazzle (3 coats)]

In the bottle, the polish looks a bit odd, like clumpy? Unmixed? But don't worry if that's what you see - this is how it's meant to look like! I think it's due to the extremely high density of tiny gold particles in the clear base. As you can tell from the photo, it also looks like some green-gold duochrome action is happening there. In addition to the gold, there's also large and small dusty pink hexes in Razzle & Dazzle.

[3 coats: Savvy Razzle & Dazzle]

You can probably wipe the brush off heaps and use it as a glitter topper, but here I've used it as a full mani. I've shown three coats, but with this nail length, it didn't look very much different from two coats.

[3 coats: Savvy Razzle & Dazzle]

The dusty pink hexes have a tendency to gather towards the tip of the nail as you pull the brush down, so my second and third coats were a mixture of brushstrokes and dabbling the glitter where I wanted it. Not that the formula was difficult to work with - I found it fine to use and dry time was average to quick.

[3 coats: Savvy Razzle & Dazzle]

Straight on, it's most definitely a pale gold with winks of pink, but at an angle as in the photo above, you can see some of green tinge. =) All the glitter laid flat and for three coats (plus topcoat), it actually isn't very thick on the nail at all.

[3 coats: Savvy Razzle & Dazzle]

My closeups sort of make it look patchy? But in real life, it isn't at all. Here's a crappy photo from afar to show you what it looks like. Basically, an EXTREMELY SHINY gold foil polish with hints of pink. If you're worried about patchiness, you could layer a gold foil underneath as well. =)

At only $3, this is a definite bargain! Savvy are certainly making bin-diving at Priceline an awesome experience... ;) Also, if I remember correctly, there's a 3 for 2 sale for Savvy products that began last Thursday. Bonus!

Summer Drink - Savvy Ginger Ale

I was looking over my photos, and I just realised how few photos I have taken this month! I really have been slacking off with my manis. :(

Here's one of my relatively new polishes from Savvy. It's not summer now, but writing Ginger Ale so many times in this post is making me thirsty for a cool drink on a hot day!

[Savvy Ginger Ale
Ring finger: Ginger Ale over blue polish]

Savvy Ginger Ale looks like a dupe of Sally Hansen Big Money, but I don't actually have Big Money so I can't say how close they are. I do like Ginger Ale in that it's not flashy glittery. It's a subtle champagne gold with lavender glitter. It's almost like foil, and it applies thin and easy with full coverage in two coats.

[Savvy Ginger Ale
Ring finger: Ginger Ale over blue polish]

It looks brighter under my lovely fluorescent lights:

[Savvy Ginger Ale
Ring finger: Ginger Ale over blue polish]

AUD3 for a 10ml bottle. Isn't that value for money? :D

Spotted while Shopping - Savvy dupes Sally Hansen Gem Crush

So I popped by the shops yesterday evening and had a look at  some of the new polishes on the shelves this week! Sorry for the lack of pictures! I dropped by after going for a run and did not have any picture-taking devices handy.

The main point of this post was to mention the Savvy polishes that are currently available for $2.99 in Priceline!  The display was labelled as limited edition but there was plenty of bottles available. There were cremes and shimmers, but the glitters were really noteworthy because they were really shameless dupes of Sally Hansen Gem Crush!

[Savvy Frostbite (L) and Ginger Ale (R)]

I picked up two of them: Frostbite and Ginger Ale; dupes of Sally Hansen Gem Crush Showgirl Chic and Big Money respectively.

[Savvy Frostbite]

The glitter combinations are exactly the same! Frostbite is fine silver glitter with slightly larger blue glitter. Ginger Ale is fine gold glitter with slightly larger palest lavender glitter.

[Savvy Ginger Ale]

I saw dupes for Showgirl Chic, Big Money, Be-Jewelled, Blingtastic and Razzle Dazzler. Who knows if the others were duped too and were just sold out! For $2.99 a bottle, it certainly beats Sally Hansen Gem Crush at $9+! I was pretty amazed at the shamelessness of the dupe though, woooooow!

Priceline also has the new double-ended Essence polishes up and the display I saw was pretty much still completely full. They were mostly a creme polish on one end and a sheer shimmer topcoat on the other. It looks fairly interesting but I bought a bunch of shimmer topcoats while I was in Japan and didn't end up getting any.

Did anyone else pick up any of these dupes? Jme and I will have to do a dupe comparison post one day with the Sally Hansen Gem Crush vs Savvy glitters!

The Stripy Avengers - Nubar, Orly, China Glaze, Sally Hansen, Essence, Savvy

Am I still going on about Avengers? Yes, yes, I am. :P  I watched the movie on Thursday night, and it was spectacular and so much fun! I think Whedon really did justice with a superhero team movie.

Anyway, you might have seen my Avengers nail art on Thursday. While I can't draw on my right hand with my left, I did have an Avengers theme going on:

[Left to Right: Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, Loki and Hulk]

Yet again, I'm cracking myself up writing the captions. These are just colour representations of the characters of course.

By my warped logic, Thor gets blue, gold and red because he is blonde, blue eyed, and has a red cape. The others are based on their uniform, except for Hulk. He gets pale green and black, and only two stripes to represent his dual sides. I chose black because his hair is black when he's the Hulk. >_>  My geek really is reaching impressive levels of embarrassing here.

[Left to Right: Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, Loki and Hulk]

Here are the nail polishes I used:

Blue = Nubar Night Sparkle
Red = Nubar Fire Sparkle
Silver = Sally Hansen Celeb City
Gold = Orly Luxe
Dark green = China Glaze Emerald Sparkle
Black = Savvy Coal
Light green (Thumb) = China Glaze L8R G8R
Black-gold (Thumb) = Essence Gold Old Buffy

[Left to Right: Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, Loki and Hulk]

I haven't photographed my right hand much lately, because I broke my pinky nail and thumb nail. :(  Still doesn't look that great here, but I had to share the colourfulness.

I don't believe I have swatched Essence Gold Old Buffy before, but you can see a little of it on my thumb. It's a dusky black with gold-green glass flecks. The black isn't very dark because of the abundance of the glass flecks. It's a rather smooth application.

[Left to Right: Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, Loki and Hulk]

The mani was a lot shinier than my photographs can capture, but the above iPhone pics makes a better attempt at catching the shiny glitters. Nubar Fire Sparkle and Night Sparkle really are so very shiny, except they're annoyingly difficult to remove. Over here, you can also see the holographic shine to China Glaze's L8R G8R.

What are your favourite mix of colours when it comes to superhero/supervillain costumes? I admit that I'm partial to blue, red and white/silver. But after trying on this mani, I think I like Thor's colours the best on the nails. Blue, gold and red! So snazzy!