Glitter and the removal thereof

My friend Karen wrote about using finger cots instead of foil for removing stubborn polish a while back - as you'll see if you click over there, she was using it to take off a gel mani, but I was mostly interested in the technique myself for glitter removal. (That's mostly because I am too cheap - so far - to fork out for a gel setup. If I find one on sale, all bets may be off there.) I finally remembered to buy some finger cots a week or so ago, in time to try it on my - sort of vaguely Valentine's-themed - repeat of Zoya Paloma over Luna. And it worked really well. It's basically the same idea as the aluminum-foil technique, but it's much easier. And finger cots are pretty cheap. I bought a package of 36 assorted-size ones at the grocery store for a couple of dollars. (They were in the pharmacy section with the first-aid items.) Cut some cotton rounds into quarters, saturate one with acetone, cover your nail with the acetone-soaked cotton, and then cover the whole thing with an appropriately-sized cot and let it sit a while. I haven't settled on a definite soak time but it really didn't take long, on my experimental round. A couple of minutes seemed to pretty much take care of it, but of course this may vary wildly depending on what exactly you're removing. Luna still required some extra silver-glitter cleanup afterwards, of course, but not near as much as I would have guessed.

(I did the Paloma/Luna combo more or less the same way I did the last time, except I think I did an undercoat there that I left out this time, and I couldn't tell the difference at all. Basecoat, 2 coats of Luna, 3 coats of Paloma, and topcoat. Still a lot of coats, but I like the result.)

So since I have an improved method of glitter removal, that put me in the mood for more glitter, specifically Studio M Slammin' Red. Which, come to think of it, I got from Karen in the first place, in a swap a year or so ago, I think. (Naturally Karen documented her end of the swap much better than I did. Although she sent me so much bonus stuff that I still frequently say, "Oh, that's one of the polishes I got from Karen," so I hope that tells you how great she is as a swap partner!) I know she sent me a couple of Milani shimmers that I have worn a lot, and she also introduced me to Studio M glitters, which I now love. I would have trouble feeding this addiction since they are exclusive to Meijer stores and we don't have those in Texas, but as it happens, my in-laws live in prime Meijer-land in Ohio, so I visit periodically and can indulge. My very favorite was a silver-gray one that I unfortunately failed to close properly and ruined, but Slammin' Red is a close second. I really think of it as more of a pink than a red - a dark raspberry-pink, sort of like Zoya Blaze's showier cousin. The Studio M glitters are really glitter-packed, with what looks like pink and silver holo glitter. I did try taking iPhone pictures in a couple of different lights, and this was the best one, in (rather cloudy) daylight today:

You can see the glitter a bit there, but for a better look at the total glitter effect, you have to try somebody else's pictures: Polish Monster, for example, has pictures that really show off the glitter. (She also said that Studio M is basically the same as Color Club, which I hadn't heard before. So if you totally fall in love with this color but you don't live in Meijer territory, that's something else to try!)

I almost forgot to say that this is two coats but one could easily be enough - this goes on quite thick, for one thing, besides being quite opaque as well. And boy, it ate up the top coat. I used two and it was still bumpy. But I like it too much to care.

So I've been having fun trying out one pink after another. I'm sure this one will probably last through Valentine's Day (although if you look at my pinky closely, you'll notice that it does have a distressing tendency to chip a bit), and after that I'll go off on some other tangent. Purple, maybe!