I'm in Holographic Heaven!

I have been wanting to do this post since my birthday in mid June when my spectraflair finally arrived in the post but the weather has not been forthcoming! You really need direct sunlight to get good photos of holographic polishes, and until now there has only been one day of sun which I had to use for some nail art I had to do on a guest post deadline! After my ''stormy night'' post yesterday lunchtime, complaining about the weather, there was finally a crack in the clouds and we had a little bit of sun! Essentially it was still a cloudy day but once in a while the clouds would part and the sun would shine through for a couple of minutes! So I dived on my nail bar and got cracking with the spectraflair pics I wanted to do before the clouds took my sun away again forever! So far, Australia has not been as sunny as I was promised and I have seen more rain than anyhing else since I got here last year, even crazy flooding!

Anyways, enough of the complaining, and onto the nails (which give me absolutely no cause for complaint!) but you may want to grab a coffee as this is going to be a long post!

So this is the spectraflair that arrived in the post on my brithday, this is a 2 gram bottle roughly about the size of a 15ml polish bottle, and is held in a lacquer suspension base as it is now illegal to put spectraflair powder in the post. It cost $30 plus $10 international postage, or you can buy 1 gram for $15. I bought this little bottle of magic from spectraflair4u.storenvy.com and they also sell real yellow and white gold flake topcoats which I may have to purchase eventually! The shipping times were spot on and it arrived in exactly 2 weeks.

I decided the most sensible thing to do to begin with was to franken a holographic top coat, and though I admit to making 2 mistakes, I am still happy with the results.
The first mistake I made was the choice of top coat to franken. In my mind it made sense to franken my favourite top coat which is from Revlon, so without giving it much more thought than that I went and bought a new bottle and added it to that. Only once I added it did I realise that perhaps this was not the best choice, as the Revlon top coat bottle is made with thick frosted glass, and I wasn't able to see what kind of effect the spectraflair was making inside the bottle! I couldn't tell if it was enough, if I should add more etc. DOH! Once I realised this I basically had to add a drop, swatch it to see the effect, add another drop, swatch it again and so on until I was happy with the result. In the end I believe I added just the right amount which was about 4 little drops.

The second mistake I made was thinking that the suspension base in which it comes would be enough to hold it up in the top coat, but I was tragically wrong and the day after found that it had all settled in the bottom of the bottle. I really should have tipped a bit out and added at least a third of a bottle amount of suspension base, but it would have been tough luck anyway because I don't have any, and the only supplier for it I have found in Australia has a $100 minimum order, which I wasn't about to spend just to franken a top coat!

To be honest though I actually don't mind that it settles. Yeah sure, I have to give the bottle a damn good shaking before I can use it, but the plus side to that is that I can control the amount of holographicness I want! If I want a subtle shimmer I can just shake the bottle a little, if I want full on holo madness I just shake it up a lot! Its like having different strength holo top coats all in one bottle, and as I used only four tiny drops of spectraflair I still have tons left to do it properly next time if I really want!

So once I had my topcoat I wanted to test it on a series of different colours, and when the sun came out yesterday I was finally able to do that! The first test was on white and black, and silver and gold.

The colours I used were:
White: Sinful Colours 'Snow Me White'
Black: Sally Hansen Lacquer Shine 'No. 7 Lustrous'
Gold: BC & Co 'shade 23'
Silver: 10 ''Put a ring on it''

The first thing I noticed is that it shows up much better on darker colours!

(which is usually the case with these fancy effect polishes). Even though you cant see the holo effect very well on the lighter colours, it was much more visible to the naked eye. The camera didn't pick up the holo on the white at all, but I promise that in reality it is very visible and super pretty!

Next I tried the holo top coat on some nice bright colours.

The colours I useed were:
Thumb: Sinful Colours 'Hazard'
Index: Mud 'Meet Minty'
Middle: LA Girl 'Mermaids Lagoon'
Ring: YSNY '014'
Little: A no brand name no colour name polish that came in a bottle that looks like a pumpkin! 

You can see the holo effect on the colours in the picture, but the effect was still much stronger to the naked eye.

Obviously I was then curious to see the holo top coat at it's very best, and so I tried it over a few dark coloured polishes too.

The colours I used were:
Index: OPI 'Live and Let Die'
Middle: Rimmel I Love Lasting Finish 'Go Cobalt'
Ring: Ulta3 'Enchanted'
Little: Nail Advantage '28'

As you can see the holo effect is much stronger over darker colours, and even more so in real life, you just cant tell that those first 3 colours are green, blue and purple and instead look like varying shades of black!




To finish I really wanted to try the holo top coat with red polsihes. I read a post somewhere from a girl who was on the hunt for the perfect red holographic polish and hadn't had any luck, because the holographic flecks are essentially gray in colour and made any red polish seem more pink. I had to believe that she might be right as I actually couldn't recall having ever seen a holographic polish collection with a red in it, so I had to put this theory to the test and find out which of my red polishes would hold its true colour best with the top coat. My thinking was that if red polishes tend to go pink, then it would probably be best to use an orange red polish, so I tried it with 3 different orange red polishes, and 2 pink red polishes to make comparison. Here are the reds I used without the holo top coat:

The colours I used were:

Thumb : OPI 'You only live twice'

Index: Sally Hansen Lacquer Shine, colour sticker is missing! (sorry!)

Middle: Mud 'passionight'

Ring: Rimmel 60 seconds 'Red Carpet'

Little: OPI 'Die Another Day'

The first thing I noticed was that all my orangey reds are very similar! The second thing I noticed was that the holo effect comes up really nice on red polishes! YAY! Honestly though, I don't think the holo top coat made them really that pink, a little sure, but the polishes are still quite red.

The pink reds did turn slightly fuchsia, but I think the orange reds did really well in holding their true colour and only leaned very slightly on the coral side. Red, fuchsia or coral I don't really care to be honest, they are all stunning polishes with and without the holo top coat!

 The picture is confusing as it would have you believe that the OPI on the little finger is the most red, but actually when you look at it in person it was the Mud polish on the middle finger that was the reddest red! In the bottle it is slightly darker than the other 2, so I think the deeper and darker your red base is, the more the colour will hold up under the holo top coat  Probably the fact that it is only a top coat has helped a lot as well, I imagine that if you mixed the holographic gray flecks with the actual polish it would more than likely lighten the colour quite a lot which is probably why there are never any reds in the holo collections. Not that it matters now, I can have all the red holo I want with my new top coat!

I now have 2 new objectves to achieve with my spectraflair!

1: Find the most pigmented and perfect silver and gold polishes ever to franken with spectraflair so I can do holographic stamping!

2. Play around with pure spectraflair for nail art painting. I saw something on youtube once about mixing a drop with a couple of drops of polish thinner and using it as a paint, and as the pipette my spectraflair came with now has a dry coat of spectraflair inside it, I think I'll wash it out with thinner into a little bowl and get experimenting!

I just have one last thing to show you ladies, this post is titled ''Holographic Heaven'' and I don't think one little holographic top coat constitutes actual heaven. So what does you ask? THESE BAD BOYS!

Seeing how excited I was about the arrival of my spectraflair, my AWESOME husband decided it was only right that I should have a matching pair of shoes and got me these for my birthday! Literally the only thing in the world I love more than polish is shoes, and I nearly fainted when I opened the box, I have been lusting after these shoes for months!!!! No matter what the light they look wonderful! In soft light they come up with nice pastel colours, add the sun or a flash and you've got super bright holographic laser beams! How amazing are these shoes??? NOW  I'm in holograhic heaven!

Now I just need a complete holographic collection, Im gonna have to find a handbag, with a matching purse of course, I'm gonna need a belt, maybe some holographic jewellry? how about a holographic dress?! Wait... what comes after heaven??!

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