Thursday, January 12, 2012

goldie-locked tips

Deborah Lippman - Boom Boom Pow
OPI - Up Front and Personal

This is what I wore for Christmas! I basically painted all my aunts' and girl-cousins' nails on Christmas eve. (Damn, I should've snapped a picture.)

Boom Boom Pow is very sheer - it's a clear (or slightly yellow/gold-tinted, I can't really tell) base with micro-mini gold bits (like teeny weeny gold flakies) - which I suppose is the ''24k gold'' part of the polish? - with small and medium gold hexagonal glitter suspended in it.

It's way too sheer to be worn fully opaque, but when worn alone it will appear like gold glitter suspended on your nails. Check out Scrangie's swatch to see it flying solo but personally I would prefer to layer it over another polish. What I have layered 2 coats of Boom Boom Pow over is 1 coat of Up Front and Personal - a very delicate-looking (seems sheer but fully opaque in two coats) champagne-gold polish with tons of shimmer. I love Up Front and Personal, by the way. It's so so pretty and so glad Mom purchased it!

I think the shimmer and the gold hex glitter complement each other very well and creates a very festive look! Layering also helps conserve the very costly Deborah Lippmann shade too, as compared to wearing 4 full coats. I can't really remember the exact figures but I paid around $20+ (USD) for it at Nordstrom to pacify my need for Deborah Lippmann polishes, since Across the Universe wasn't available then. (Damn! I found it the next day, on a 30% sale at a beauty supply store at 3rd Street Promenade.) Perhaps this is why I'm so particular about it needing to be close to perfection.

Of course I managed to find ways to nit-pick at this polish... Haha. In bullet points:
1. Dries too slowly. I suffered so much just waiting for 2 coats to dry... I cannot imagine enduring the dry-time of 4 (or possibly more).
2. Not terribly buildable, in my humble opinion.
3. Looks (well it is) thick and goopy especially where the large glitter pile up as well as near the tips.
4. Dry time... Ugh so long it deserves a second (bad) mention.
5. So damn expensive for the chore it proved to be! The ''24k gold'' is just a marketing fluke. I doesn't deserve to be priced higher than the regular DL shades.

I can't really remember how removal was like; I think it was alright though. Not easy but not too difficult as well. Then again it could be due to the layering... Need to do more research on that. Overall, I was largely contented with some bling on my nails at all. It did add to the festive cheer! :-) Sigh, me and my glitter.

x, Ish

Ps, On a sidenote... I think Seche shrunk Boom Boom Pow... (wrt to picture; look around my cuticles!)
Pss, Why can't the first 2 pictures of each post be enlarged? :-/ pffffttttt Solved!



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