Catherine Arley 803

803 is the lime green from the Catherine Arley holos. Most of them apply like glue and no amount of thinner will help, but I'm happy to report this one is okay!

Bright, zingy green with a subtle, scattered holo effect. The first picture is more colour accurate but the others really show off the holo. I think the green does funny things to my skin tone but I like it so much that I don't care!

Catherine Arley 800

Really bright corally, pinky reddish holo. Three coats.

The second picture shows the holo effect more but I think both pictures are colour accurate. This is one of those polishes which looks slightly different in different lightings. Application was a little gloopy like a lot of my other Catherine Arleys but nothing horrible or too hard to manage.
This is such a lovely colour- really bright and cheerful :)
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Black Holo Comparison

I got more nail wheels in the mail yesterday so I decided to dig out all my black holos and do a little comparison.

From L to R we have Bloom London, Glitter Gal (Sparkle) Black, BK 02, Catherine Arley 805 and Economy Class (my MPJ franken)

I made the franken about a year ago and sent some over to a friend with the original charcoal MPJ and she confirmed they were dupes in terms of colour and holoness except mine was a little more opaque. I've since added just a touch of clear to get an exact dupe.

Also, I decided not to include ChG Let's Do It In 3-D, CC Revvvolution etc because I felt they weren't dark enough to be considered black.

Anyway, enough jabbering from me...

I've kept the pics extra large so click for a lot more detail. This is 2 coats of each except for the MPJ franken which is 3 coats.

You can see here that the first two, Bloom London and Glitter Gal Black are scattered holos while the other three are linear.

Closeups...

Again, you can click to make them much bigger.

At first I thought these two were dupes. But as you can see, the Glitter Gal is clearly more holo- the particles in it seem to reflect a more distinct rainbow than the Bloom which is really, really weak.

Out of these three, the least holo was Catherine Arley 805. The holo effect in this one seemed a little less pronounced and it mostly reflected red/orange/yellow instead of the full rainbow.

The other two (BK 02 and my MPJ franken) are very similar except the BK is almost opaque in one coat while my MPJ franken requires at least three. Also, the base colour of the BK is very obviously black while the franken leans charcoal.

After I did this comparison I decided to do my nails in BK 02.

Can you see a corner of my middle nail broke off? It's too low down to make all my nails that length :( Oh well, what can you do.

Hope you enjoyed!

Random Swatches

Hey guys! Just a few swatches for you today

CM Midnight Imposter. One of my favourite "starry night" polishes. Little silver square glitters in a deep blue base. 3 coats.

Precision Twilight Zone. Red toned purple with holo glitter and a violet shimmer running through. Kind of reminds me of China Glaze Grape Crush but more red. Really nice formula on this one, 2 coats.

Avon Olive Green. Man Avon has been really good lately. Awesome new colours, brushes and formula. This one is a dupe to RBL Orbis Non Sufficit I believe. This is one freaking coat. Amazing!

Missha HGR01. Three coats. Frosty metallic green with a slight gold and blue duochrome that doesn't show up on the nail as it does in the bottle. It's a little brushstrokey so I had to be careful with this one but the colour is really nice.

Color Club Take Me To Your Chateau. Baby blue cream from the Pardon My French collection. A really stark blue. Lots of white in the base. Two very smooth coats.

China Glaze Sexagon. A silver scattered, but strong holo. Three coats. A little sheer and watery, but all the ones from the Kaleidoscope collection are like that. This puppy looks great under artificial light as well as in the sun.

Essie Demure Vixen from Summer 2010. Putty mauve base with a violet shimmer. Such an unusual color. I really love it, but it didn't look the best against my skin. 3 coats.

China Glaze 2NITE. Smooth, linear blue holo. Gorgeous! One coat over Nfu-Oh Aqua Base.

Catherine Arley 805. Scattered black holo. It's no competitor to MPJ, but it's nice. Really smooth formula that glided on in 2 coats.

BK 04. I picked this baby up while on vacation in Shanghai. Notice it's in a very similar bottle to the Nfu-Ohs. Bright pink holo. The BK holos are really nice. They have this unusual... almost foil finish to them. They're still really sparkly under artificial lighting; not plain metallic looking.

China Glaze Crushed Candy over BK 04. I really like the pink and blue combo of this and the holo just peeking out beneath the crack.

Thanks for reading :)