Bleeders and Tacos

Yesterday when I was posting about the polishes from Glimmer by Erica, I stated that some of them had lightly tinted jelly bases, from what I thought was some light glitter bleeding.

Today I decided to do a quick swatch of each of my indie glitter bomb polishes (basically my Lynnderella’s and Glimmer by Erica's) on white paper to see which ones actually were tinted bases.

This got me wondering. How can I tell which ones are actually tinted bases, and which ones are tinted because of bleeders? The answer was, I couldn’t. 

With regards to bleeding glitters, from my experience, there are four things that can happen to them when they go into polish. 

• Melters – glitters that melt when put in nail polish 
• Bleeders – glitters that loose all their colour and go back to a silver, grey or neutral base colour 
• Partial bleeder – glitters that tint the base lacquer, but still retain their the exact same appearance 
• Solvent stable – glitters that wont tint the base 

Clearly solvent stable glitters are perfect for polish, but as far as I’m concerned, I’m totally ok with partial bleeders too. Especially for those people that can’t get nail polish tints like those sold at Beauty World. Using partial bleeders can create fantastic tinted jelly bases without the need to franken something from a commercial brand. 

Of course the big question is, how long might it take for a glitter to bleed out? After how long testing (or owning a bottle of polish) can you happily say “yep, this is only a partial bleeder”. 

Lynnderella posted on her blog that her Boy Girl Party polish has glitter that bleeds. Specifically, magenta glitter that creates a pink jelly. I have revisited my bottle of Boy Girl Party, which I have had for about seven months and I see no sign of any glitter changes. Here is my paper swatch, and below that a nail macro from earlier this year.

My guess would be that the glitters in Boy Girl Party fall into the partial bleeder category. I also noticed that there are lots of her polishes that are in tinted bases (as can be seen by the paper swatches above), and had she not told us there was bleeding glitter in Boy Girl Party, I would never have noticed. But I guess the question is, is seven months long enough to know if a bleeding glitter will bleed out? I think it would it would be.

I'm also guessing that the intentional bleeders in her new collection fall into the category of partial bleeders too.  But only time will tell.

Now onto another controversial subject, that of taco glitter. 

Taco glitter is a name that Scrangie came up with back in November 2011 when she reviewed the Color Club Backstage Pass Collection. I perfectly understand that the issue of taco or bendy glitter is one of personal choice. You're either ok with it and will put up with it, or will wish it a thousand deaths by a firey sun.

I know I've received comments in the past that say taco glitter in a nail polish is never ok. But I actually don’t mind some bendy glitter. Yes, they can make a polish look rough even though they are glassy smooth, but as long as I can easily get them smooth, I'm ok with them. I like how the light can refract off them at different angles. But I do agree that there is a point at which a bendy glitter becomes taco and curled (like those Color Club swatches scrangie showed) and is too curly to use.  Luckily, I don't have any polishes in my collection like that!

I also received a comment about taco glitters that said, "anything that taco’s will continue to taco until it’s unusable".  I thought that was an interesting comment and I wanted to check out some of my past curled glitters to see if they had in fact got worse over time. 

Of course the question is, just like with partial bleeders, how long might it take for a taco glitter to truly show how tacoie it will become? My JQ glitter polishes are the tacoiest ones that I own, and I have had them since June last year. Today I re-swatched all of them onto paper to see if their tacoiness had got any worse.

None of the JQ glitters look any bendier than they were a year ago, and I would think that a year would be sufficient to bring out the full extent of tacoiness. 

I also closely examined all my Lynnderella polishes, which I have had most for at least seven months. None of them exhibit any additional curling compared to how the they were first worn and photographed. 

Therefore my experience is, if a glitter is going to taco, it will probably do so within within a week or two after being mixed. Then it is unlikely to curl any more. Of course this is only my experience from my polishes, and I’m sure others may have different experiences, which of course I would love to hear about.

Indie review - Glimmer by Erica

Last week I showed you two polishes from a new indie polish brand Glimmer by Erica.  Today I have another five polishes to show you.

Drizzt -  Erica says on her Etsy site that this polish is my homage to one of her favorite novel characters of all time, Drizzt Do'Urden, from the Forgotten Realms books by R. A. Salvatore.  I've not read the book, but I did google image search 'Drizzt', and I totally see what she was doing with this polish.

The polish has lots of small black and lavender hexes, large lavender hexes, I nice sprinkling of red square glitter and a good mix of medium darker purple hexes.  This is two wiped, not dabbed coats of Drizzt over a lavender custom polish. One coat of Ulta 3 non chip and one of Seche Vite.  This polish was lovely and smooth, although the macro does show the tiniest bit of glitter curl on the red and purple glitters.  Just the right amount to make the light shift of them nicely without being a pain in the bum to cover with topcoat.

I Heart You - This one contains lots of different shades and sizes of light pink and blue hexes as well as light pink hearts. I really love this polish.  There is something about it that reminds me of a baby version of Lynnderella's Boy Girl Party. What I mean is that Boy Girl Party is like a teenage party with all the bright pink and blue glitters, whereas this one seems like a little toddler party with little boys and girls in their pastel colours.  Ok, I'm a bit weird right :)

For this mani I layered two wiped coats of I Heart You over Priti NYC Old Man Cactus (silver foil), topped with Ulta3 non chip and Seche Vite.  This one was actually very smooth, as can be seen on the macro. Even the hearts didn't stick up on the edges, and there were plenty of them that I got at least one on each finger.

Princess Disco - This one has all different shades of pink and fuchsia micro glitter and some larger silver holo squares. This one is also two wiped coats layered over Priti NYC Old Man Cactus.  Very pretty and girly and most defiantly a princess disco going on on my nails. 

Oooh and do you notice that this is a swatch of my right hand. Yippee.  I'm usually ok a painting my right hand, but what I totally suck at is photographing it.  I simply can not work out how to hold my hand without feeling completely awkward.

Twilight Sky - Again, lots of different glitters make up this polish, which makes it so much more interesting and multidimensional than the sort of glitters you usually find with commercial brands.  The main glitter base is purple glitter, with purple, blue, and orange micro glitter, blue sapphire holo glitter, purple square glitter, and dark navy blue glitter. 

This one has a few bent glitters, but I was still able to get it completely glossy smooth with just two layers of top coat.  This mani was one wiped coat layered over Priti NYC Pewter Veil.

Treasure Chest - I think this one is a rather unique combination of glitter. The base is mainly gold - which surprise, surprise I love! Then this polish is full of all kinds of holo glitter, diamond shape holos, gold and silver holo hexes, as well as red, aqua and sapphire blue glitter. There is some slight glitter bending, but nothing a thick coat of top coat can't fix.  This one also has a lightest tinted jelly blue base.  I don't believe the tinted base is intentional, cause I'm pretty sure it's from some of the blue glitter - although none of the glitters appear to have lost any luster.  I informed Erica of the slight bleed, and she said she has already identified the culprit and rectified the situation.  But honesty, I actually really like the light jelly blue base made by the bleeder.

This is two wiped coats layered over Priti NYC Chrysanthos (goil foil). This really does look like you're peering into a treasure chest full of jewels, especially in the macro photo.

All these polishes are completely packed with glitter, you could probably get full nail coverage with three coats, but it would feel rather thick.  

Overall, I really loved this range of polishes from Glimmer by Erica.  She is coming out with a couple of new LE colours soon too, so keep a look out for those.  Based on these ones, I think they will be great.

These polishes were provided for review.