Tuesday, December 27, 2011

All I Got For Christmas...

Well, I say all, but it wasn't a ton of stuff. I can't sleep, so I thought I'd share my review of the Cult Nails base and top coats, which I used for the first time when I got Vicious from them back in September. I know, I know, I'm running way way behind on that, but as you may have noticed, life has been whompin' on me lately. It's all good though. I'm not gonna sit around and whine about the crud, I'm going to enjoy the wonderful good stuff. Let's jump in!

So anyway, I bought myself the base and top coats from Cult Nails when I bought Vicious. Let me start by saying that Vicious is COMPLETELY GORGEOUS, and I'm in love with it. And I'm pretty impressed with the base and top coats as well.

So, let's see how my naked nails look, before we get started at all. Ridgy and yellow, that kinda covers it. This is why I don't do sheer polish, except on very rare occasions.

Get It On flows on nicely. It's tinted ever so delicately pink, which looks natural. Dries just ever so slightly tacky (which is what you want in a base coat!) but could probably be worn alone as well. Has some shine but not so much that it looks, uh, well, dumb. Haha. Of course it doesn't cover the yellowness of my nails, but since I am so so rarely without color, it's not a big thing for me. If I were to want to go bare, I'd whiten my nails up anyway, with denture tabs.

Vicious is a gorgeous purple, not really leaning either blue or red.

Two thin or one thick coat gives complete coverage. Practically applies itself, levels beautifully, and dries fairly quickly to a nice shine.

It's a dark purple, but doesn't look black, which is nice.

In bright light, it's very vivid.

It was easy to clean up (since there wasn't much mess to start) and I probably can't sing the praises of these polishes enough.

You'd think I was getting paid a bunch of money or something to sing their praises, but nope, I bought them myself.

Wicked Fast is completely clear, goes on smoothly, and is slightly thinner than SV to start. 

Self-levels, and is dry to very light touch within around 45 seconds. Within two minutes it is dried to a barely tacky high-shine finish. 

At around 3 and a half minutes, it's quite dry, and well on the way to being solid enough to use fingers carefully.

Within 15 minutes I was typing and using my hands as usual, and my polish was staying intact. I'll do a comparison post with SV sometime, and see how they are side by side, and how this works with other polishes. Within an hour or so of doing my nails, I took a nap, and not a hint of sheetmarks or anything.

Just a hint of tipwear at three days, and five days. Really impressive when you consider that I am absolutely horrid to my nails most of the time. I never remember to put gloves on (mostly because they bother my skin so much), and I have a bad habit of using my nails as tools (Bad Michy!). 

So while you're looking at these, did you have any interest in knowing what I got for the holidays? 

Well, the BIG one was that I got a Kindle Fire. I was not expecting The Mate to buy that for me. I figured I'd get one in a couple months after saving up. 

I figured I could make this mani last longer by adding a french tip stamp, and I did. Of course, I suck at lining these up.

One thing to note: when you apply this top coat, it WILL make your polish sorta liquid-y again, so beware of that. If you're using it over a Konad design, wait until the design is very dry, and go over it with a delicate hand. This is not a bad thing, just something to be aware of. I think that this is part of why it works SO very well to prevent chips and wear. 

So, besides the Kindle, I was completely flabbergasted to also receive a pair of Bose headphones!!!

I've wanted a really good set of headphones for YEARSm but most of the ones I'd found hurt my ears. See, I have psoriasis on my ears and head, and anything that presses the wrong way will cause me some pretty major issues.

So, imagine the pleasure of FINALLY having a set of headphones that not only doesn't leak sound all over when I use them, and provides some sound dampening... but does not hurt my head or ears! It's like a freaking miracle. 

The only other two things I got were a really cool pen, and a Zippo lighter (My Dad knows me so well, it's an awesome lighter). I'm not complaining, because OMG these presents are GREAT! 

I'm seriously lucky to have gotten such a bounty this year. The Mate is happy with his presents too, even though one of them can't be here until after the New Year. That would be his new service dog, which wasn't born until November 5th. I also grabbed him an electric blanket for the car, several good dog books, a pen like mine, and my Dad got him a Zippo too, which he can add to his small but growing collection. A fantastic holiday all around really. 

So, back to the polish here, I managed to keep this on without any chips for ELEVEN days total! If you know me, that is a major miracle, as I don't think I've ever gone over a week before. It's rather doubtful that I will very often in the future either, but knowing that I CAN if I want to is nice. 

Now that I've been using these for a few months, my final impressions are this:
  • If you have very ridged nails like I do, you may want to use a ridge-filling base with the Get It On. That helps smooth it out, and then the GIO provides the stickiness that I always got from Orly Bonder, though it doesn't have the tendency to drag quite as much as Bonder can sometimes (usually with an older bottle). 
  • Wicked Fast is pretty much tied with SV for my favorite top coat ever, with SH Insta-Dri as a third lagging behind a little ways. I do find WF might soften the polish up a little bit upon application, but that seems to be how it works, and once it's dry, it's DRY. SV seems to dry just a tiny bit faster, and is thicker, and of course there is the whole SV getting stringy at about half a bottle, which WF doesn't seem to do (I'm on my second bottle of WF now). 
  • The price is very reasonable. SV runs around $6-7 usually, and sometimes more. Orly Bonder is less expensive, but has it's own issues. If you don't have extra lumpy crud nails like me, GIO is probably going to work really well for you. 
So there you have it, my review. As I said earlier, I bought these for myself, and I like to think I'm pretty objective about it all. So tell me, what did YOU get for the holidays?

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