Today I have for you China Glaze Blue Iguana which is from their Island Escapes collection for summer 2011. There weren't many colors from this collection that really grabbed my attention, 108 degrees which I posted about yesterday, Blue Iguana and Senorita Bonita were the only ones that I bought, and none of the others really appeal to me. So without further ado I present China Glaze Blue Iguana.
This is a medium blue polish with a foily sparkly mixture. There is pink and turquoise micro-glitter and the blue foil bits give it a very light duo-chrome effect, in the bottle at least, not as much on the nail. It is a thin/sheer polish but definitely not a jelly, it doesn't have the squishy factor that a jelly does.
 |
| shade |
I used Poshe and Essie Beam Up as base coats, 2 coats of Blue Iguana, and a coat of Seche Vite. I found that the first coat was somewhat streaky and definitely doesn't like being worked, you have to put this polish on with a purpose and not go back over it. The second coat smoothed out the streakiness, and was much easier since I had gotten a feel for how the polish was going to act.
 |
| full sun, sparkly |
With two coats this still had a visible nail line, which really doesn't bother me all that much, a third or maybe even a fourth coat would be required to get complete opacity. And since I just can't leave good enough alone
 |
| slight shrinkage on ring finger, most likely from too many layers with SV on top |
I had to do another Scotch tape mani a la
Chloe's Nails, I used Orly Liquid Vinyl for the ring finger and then put another coat of Seche Vite on everything.
Since I had heard from various sources that this polish stained your nails like whoa, I decided to remove this particular manicure using the foil method. I took my cotton strips, put 100% acetone on them wrapped them around each nail individually, and to keep the acetone from evaporating too quickly I wrapped each finger with a square of aluminum foil also. I let the acetone sit for about 5 minutes and then pulled each one off. At first I thought I hadn't avoided the dreaded staining as there was a smurfish tinge to each of my nails, but I took a cotton ball with my regular remover on it and swiped each nail and the blue came off. I'll be honest, I was surprised, but happy none-the-less. So be warned, this color blue WILL stain your nails if you aren't careful, I recommend at least two base coats under this, one should probably be a whitening or anti-yellowing base coat like Essie Beam Up or Yellow Stop.
That's all I have for today, until next time.
