Beauty Misanthropic

1 coat Essie Ridge Filling Base Coat
1 coat Sally Hansen Ultimate Shield as base coat
3-4 coats Julep Vivien, OR Julep Harper as accent nails
2 coats SH Ultimate Shield as top coat

Julep Vivien is a champagne gold superfine glitter with medium gold hex glitter chunks, medium density.  Even 4 coats did not achieve 100% opacity, maybe about 90% opacity.  I usually don't care for gold polishes, but this is a very flattering color.  A little classy.

Only annoying thing was the hex glitters wanted to clump on my nails, and go onto the edges instead of the middle, impossible to spread around evenly.  I have a love/hate thing with glitters, but they are super popular this season.

Julep Harper I was actually a bit dubious about when I saw the bottle at first, but I actually really like it.  It's like Julep Portia turned way the hell up - a dense glitter mix of mostly medium aqua, a bit of light gold and bright cobalt, in a aqua jelly base.  Opaque with 3-4 coats.  Definitely "mermaid nails".  A lovely color.  It is bright, yet milky.  This might be fun to try as a matte next time.  It ate up my top coat, as glitters tend to, more than Vivien, but definitely do multiple top coats on both.

Even with all these extra base and top coats, this one is peeling off faster than usual for me, these pics are about 4 days in and I'm probably taking it off tomorrow before I start picking at it and ruin my nails.  Usually SH Ultimate Shield will let me wear a manicure for 7+ days (sometimes over 10 if I don't use my hands much), which is why I use it even though it takes FOREVER to dry compared to other top coats.

I just tried Sally Hansen Salon Effects nail stickers for the first time, for my week long vacation to Tokyo.  Overall I found them attractive and do-able, with impressive staying power.

As you can see, these Sally Hansen nail stickers in "Misbehaved" are gold glitter with a black "fishnet hose" pattern.  Classy, but a little edgy.  The kit comes with enough stickers for your hands OR feet, in varying sizes, plus a few extra, and a nail file and cuticle stick to help you prepare your nails.

Applying them was a little stressful and time-consuming.  Since I have relatively short nails, I first cut them in half so I could get more money's worth out of them.  I filed and cleaned my nails according to my preference and following the instructions for the files and cuticle stick.  I then applied a base coat - Essie Ridge Filling Base Coat.  Removing the protective films off the nail stickers was medium-tricky - not impossible but those stickers are a bit easy to rip so you need to go super slow and carefully.  Putting them on my nails wasn't as hard as I had feared, but I did need to be careful to start them out straight, and I sometimes had a hard time not making them look stretched and warped on the top edge, in my effort to keep air bubbles from getting under the sticker.  So they weren't perfect, but the flaws were not really noticeable.  I just tried to smooth them out slowly starting at the bottom middle.

What I found most annoying was removing the excess, however, from the sides and top.  I did not enjoy the process of trying to trim or file off those bits without ripping or stretching the sticker.  It was more medium-hard.

I then applied THREE coats of Sally Hansen Ultimate Shield base & top coat, adding a couple of cheap clear nail rhinestones on some of the nails between the first and second coats.  I am sure that this is what enabled this manicure to endure a week of brutal travel abuse without any chipping.  However - there were a few nails that I didn't do a good job of getting the sticker just perfect on the nail and it was also touching some skin - the sticker peeled upwards just a little as the top coat dried.  But, it did not chip off.

So, I am impressed with the sticking power of these, with the top coat applied.  These were rather difficult to clean off though, I had to spend a lot more time and cotton pads than usual rubbing on nail polish remover.  Next time I might try the container + sponge type of remover to make it easier to soak the nail.

Final Verdict - I would only use for a special occasion.  Otherwise it was not worth the stress and effort.

Also, I wish this pattern came in a silver instead of a gold.