The Power of Black

Sally Hansen’s ‘In The Spotlight’

All my bright pastel nail colours are sitting in their plastic box waiting for next season. The deep, dark colours of winter are now in heavy rotation. I love Winter because some of my favourite colours are the rich blood red of Revlon’s ‘Vixen’ and the glitters like Sally Hansen’s ‘In The Spotlight.’

Many people don’t like to wear black polish. They think it’s boring or not colourful. I’ve rediscovered black polish by using it as a base and putting a glitter or gloss over it.

I used an old Rimmel black and topped it with SH’s ‘In The Spotlight.’ I got compliments immediately. In fact, my pharmacist, who sees my nails every day, said this was her favourite so far.

The key to wearing black polish is making sure to use a shiny top coat. Another trick is to take an old colour and mix it with your black to give it some depth. I have an old burgundy I mixed with some black to make an incredibly warm and stunning black.

Colour mixing is a great way to spruce up a black polish and you can buy a cheap black and mix two new bottles of colour using an old deep blue pearl for a wonderful black/blue pearl. The possibilities are endless and the great thing about black is it matches everything so you can wear it longer.

Red Revival 645 lipstick by Maybelline

As a former makeup artist I was always on the lookout for a good flat red lip colour. I once had a movie makeup artist come in looking for one immediately. She wanted a flat red, not cool or warm, just a basic flat red.

I was able to get her one with Maybelline’s 2010 line called Red Revival 645.

Red Revival 645

It’s the flattest brightest red I’ve ever sold. It’s neither warm nor cool.

Your eyes can fool you. You can be looking at a cool red and not know it. The key to choosing red lipsticks is to put a bunch of them together and looking at them in natural light.

This lipstick is relatively cheap. At the time they were about 9 dollars CDN.

It’s very moist and full of pigment. Worth it.

Winter OPI 2014 Nail Colours

As a bargain hound and a disabled woman I can’t usually spend money on high cost nail colours. My cheating involves using Seche Vite’s top coat to cover up the fact that I can wear a $2 nail colour and make it look good. Plus, I’m a stickler when it comes to caring for my hands and feet.

OPI’s new collection is beautiful. Here’s the Youtube video featuring 12 new colours.

Those colours are great but I’m not going to pay 10 dollars a bottle for them so I picked the shades I liked, specifically this one:

I went about finding another brand with the same colour and found Sally Hansen’s ‘Grey Area.’

It’s the same colour but 2/3rds the price.

I put on 2 coats and a top coat of Seche and I’m good to go.