Golden Rose Reblog

I wanted to reblog a pair of polishes that made me frustrated when I first worked with them here. Pretty poor formula was my experience.

Perhaps, though, this is a moot point, as GoldenRose's USA site is impossible to navigate to w/o a weird redirect, although their Facebook page is front and center.

Meanwhile...

GoldenRose 119

I've since let it evaporate a bit and thinned it with OPI thinner.
This process means I leave it uncapped anywhere from a few hours to a few days. It also requires nice weather. So, it definitely is a summer activity! Sometimes I thin just with thinner, other times I add a clear polish. This was a quick evaporation project.

OPI thinner is a low-ingredient-count thinner that has been a true stand-by for me.

This is two coats over black. Pure and simple: love it!  Taken under bright sunshine, as it favors only sun and doesn't play well under lamps.

Scattered holo over black = yummy!!!



GoldenRose 102

Same concept, evaporated and thinned.

Three coats alone. Mercilessly requiring sun, and even then just playing the innocent "who me? holo? what?"

I can't tell if this is a silvery lavender or a whitish blue. Still, very nice!


Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Golden Rose Holo Pair: 119 and 102

Golden Rose is a European brand that has an online USA footprint. They also have very affordable polishes.

I am going to admit that I hate the formula of the two polishes I have below.

First up is Golden Rose 102

Having said I hate the formula, I do admit that I am one of the few holo aficionados that adores a scattered holo. This is a good one.

Tiny 6 mL bottle means that one manicure finishes up about 1/5th of the bottle easily.

Gorgeous holo, very fine, but scattered.

This isn't a silver, but a pale powder blue.

Three, possibly four, coats here.  I'll discuss formula at the end.


Next is Golden Rose 119

More scattered holo in a smokey black base. Very lovely.

Three coats.

On to the formula. Every single Golden Rose polish I have seems to have a very sharp stinky 3-Free type of formula. I really have to love the color to put up with the smell. It's sharper than Kleancolor, but in that realm.

The worst part of the formula is that it really just is too thick and will not dry. I put a top coat on each and in every case I was rewarded with the same thing: sleek candy shell over a gooey mess below.

So, I took my bottles (yes, I have two of each) and dumped them into larger old Sally Hansen Salon bottles and thinned the bejeebus out of them. I feel they will be in realm of top coats. I managed to get 102 to dry after a spell and decided to keep it on as a manicure, so I didn't swatch the results.

Drying 102 entailed holding my fingers about 1/2" away from the bulb of my OttLite (registered trademark, because who wouldn't enjoy spelling "light" like "lite"!) for many minutes. Like curing a car paint job under heat lights.

Really not fun. I was pretty much done with the brand.


These Golden Rose Holos come in now discontinued square bottles. Their GoldenRoseUsa site seems to have some very retro tall slim handled bottles with holos. I can't speak for the formula of those, but I won't be expanding my GR collection any time soon.

Generally it takes one craptacular formula to get me to pan a polish, and though many attribute it to chemistry between base coat/polish/body I just don't have the energy to figure out why a fail is a fail. This is why you will never really see much Golden Rose or Kleancolor any more on my blog. I can not make it work.

OK, you may see GR again and one KC. I have that diluted pair of bottles and I am going to try them, plus I have one old KC that smells like normal polish (crazy!)

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

The Comp I've Been Wanting To Do For A While Now

Hey folks, you guys are really awesome.

It's nearing my two year anniversary, so I will pepper this entry with a bit of nostalgia.

Why? I don't know, I'm sentimental, romantic, foolish, and a bit of a kid at heart. (I guess that could read: old fashioned, never satisfied, foolish and childish, if you want to be more serious)

When I first started even thinking about nail polish I found the Isa Dora at Rite Aid (gone now, where did that brand go? Or did I buy it in Seattle? It's a blur), then I scuttled into a NW Beauty Supply and found OPI Sahara Sapphire (dang, I need to swatch that! Definitely Oldest Untried, how dorky?) which was so great to me, because Nail Polish (capitalized) could be a thing that could be super fun!

Then I went online and found some blogs: Polish Addict and Scrangie

Wow!

When Rescue Beauty Lounge came out with blogger polishes, everyone went crazee over them, including me. I had to have Scrangie because I love that color and it was soooo unique.

Even with knock offs, it is the components in RBL Scrangie and how they look on the nail that seem to work like their own kind of magic.

The nearest copies that I've ever seen are Sally Hansen Grape Going and Golden Rose 149.

Here is the comparison:

From left to right: SG Grape Going, RBl Scrangie, GR 149.

I can't remember number of coats, but Grape Going and 149 needed more than Scrangie.

I've done a comparison before, but I really wanted to wear RBL Scrangie. This is Three coats. There is no drag on the Scrangie, that is the light reflecting, no baldspot.

What is different? What is similar?

The Golden Rose seems closer on the base, but too light. Also it is closer on the shimmer particles, but too many.  The Scrangie shimmer is more broken up, feels more like a mineral than a uniform particle.

Grape Going has a base that is more blue and the shimmer is also more blue.



Another photo of the first coat:

Same order, SH, RBL, GR.

The first coat: wow on RBL Scrangie! The coverage!!! Wow!
As to the shimmer has some rainbow properties, so I am guessing it is a different animal than the uniform shimmers of Grape Going or 149.




A reverse order photo:

Really the GR 149 becomes a shimmer bath, and the base is gone. I don't mind that in a polish, but I think it sweeps it off the table as a possible "it can do, dupe".

This is two coats, and still Grape Going just doesn't have the punch to get coverage. In the past I nonchalantly said "it'll do" but it is a different shimmer, more blue, and I believe I used 4 coats by the time I was done with it.


Last photo:

Sun bath of all three polishes.

This truly shows how the shimmer is different in RBL Scrangie as compared to the other two. In a pinch,  the differences between Grape Going and Scrangie are not chasmic, but they are enough to sweep "dupe" off the table.

There you have it!

A comparison I've been wanting to do for a while! A polish from a blogger who is quite the Blog-ess in the Nail Polish firmament (I just wanted a chance to use that word! :D)

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Here are some beauties that, I feel, are underrated in the realm of "favorites".

Right now the passion is for holographic finishes, to the degree that people are buying auto paint pigments and frankening with them. Please. Just wear a mask. Several years of chemistry makes me respect an MSDS sheet, no matter how benign it sounds. Bleach may be around the house, lye may be in your cupboard, and pigments may be on eBay, but respect them, and, more importantly, respect your lungs and health. I totally respect people's frustration with the complete LACK of decent holographic nail polishes on the market. I also know that there are solutions, companies like GOSH and Make Up Store and Nfu Oh are putting out holographic polishes, oh, and Milani, Golden Rose, and probably others I can't think of, so I completely respect the frustration that people are experiencing if you've missed out on the OMG or Kaleidoscope collex from China Glaze or others in the "holographic hall of legends".
Just be safe.

I know, what a bore. 

So, anyhow...

Here are three, easy to acquire, already mixed, beautiful polishes that get nary a mention on the blogosphere or message boards... (why I'm doing threes these days, who knows)

Golden Rose 146

These can be found on the Goldenroseusa.com website. They are and EU brand and quite affordable.

It is a lavender blue base, blue to the point where I'd probably go out on a limb and say "periwinkle-esque"  shot through with a magnificent bright turquoise blue shimmer. Wonderful!

Here it is four coats. It also is a bit of a touchy thing to get dry, but with patience, the heat of the Ott light and some drying drops...oh and a quick dry top coat, it was fine and dandy.

Truly worth the effort. 

In another incarnation, it could be a layering polish, or do well with some lingerie layer of nude or white and probably might work with two coats.

Personally, I'm not anti-multicoat, but there are days when an Insta-Dri one coater, or a good old two-coater really is a boon.

Here it is in the bottle:

All those happy shimmer particles dancing around with joy!

Misa Russian Sage

I found this on one of the etailer websites, it was on page 5 or 6 and the html was all janked up on my browser and I almost didn't see it. Glad I did. It's Misa, it's in the purple family, and I thought, why not?

In some light it's this quiet lavender with a soft shimmer

In others it's a bit more dusty and muted and you can see the purple shimmer a bit better.

This is without a top coat, so it is very shiny. Mirror shiny! ;D

Three coats here and so easy to work with. Dried well and no complaints on the whole wear front, either.

Sally Hansen Grape Going

This is the "Scrangie Dupe", per what I've read, but I haven't gotten my bottle of Scrangie out of the vault to compare. Meanwhile, this is still on the racks at the drug stores and it's an Insta Dri, which further creates happiness. Well, aside from the brush, which takes a bit of finagling to get it to work on the pinkies.

Purple base and this bright blue shimmer. A medium base, though, not too lavender-like.

This is three coats.

A better view of the base, with the shimmer buried in the shadow.

Then I got some sunshine:

I think the base and shimmer mix it up here. Very well.

That is my offering of pretty-easy-to-get cool-payoff polishes. Golden Rose does seem similar to Grape Going, however it is more of an aqua blue shimmer, where Grape Going is more in the royal blue family.  

Thank you for reading my little nail polish journal!

Black Holo: Golden Rose

A very nice lady with equally awesome nails posted some photos of Golden Rose nail polish on the Makeup Alley Nail Board.
It was pretty fab!

I hustled on over and ordered me some of that goodness!

Goldenroseusa.com has very good customer service. I will say that the images of the nail polish is a bit of a crap shoot. I got about 4-5 polishes.
These are EU polishes, so they are 3-Free and have that particular smell like airplane glue. I found that in my Orly Sweet polishes.
For disclosure's sake: I bought these myself. Period.

Ok. So the bottles are tiny, 6 ml and needed about 10 or so drops of Poshe' thinner, fine with me!

This color is 119.

This is a black w/holographic pieces. I feel like the holo particles are more diffuse than something like a certain unmentionable legendary OPI polish, more like the Sally Hansen Tourmaline I just had on.
Enough to give you that holo happiness moment, but not enough to transfix you while you are driving, hence causing erratic distracted driving! ("Yeah! Hence!")

I used 3 coats, but had drying problems and also, sadly dinged two fingers after I thought it was dry, so it didn't stay on to give much experience with wear time.

Meanwhile, I've got a few more of these that need to be swatched. They are quite a deal, though!

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

ps I love comments and email, so if you have any questions holler!