China Glaze Medallion over Orly Solid Gold

China Glaze Medallion is one the gorgeous glitters that came out in the (creatively named) Fall 2009 "Glitter, Shimmers & Cremes" collection.  I know lextard has swatches of the collection in her China Glaze set on Flickr and Kris Primps has them all catalogued here.  There were 6 gold glitters in this collection - all of them visibly different and awesome!  I got Gold Digger, Goddess, and Medallion.  Here's a bottle picture comparison of them.

I'll just give you a brief description of each - eventually I'll swatch the other two, but you have to spread your blingy mani's out a little bit!  Gold Digger is a uniform, small true-gold glitter in a clear jelly base. It is slightly rosier/brassier than the other two.  Goddess is a uniform, small silver glitter in a clear jelly base that's packed with dense true-gold shimmer. The gold shimmer coats the silver glitter, making it appear to be a platinum gold.  Medallion is a multi-size glitter with small yellow-gold glitter and medium hexagonal holographic (prismatic) glitter in a clear jelly base.  All three of them have medium glitter density and require about 3 coats to be almost opaque, so they work well as layering polishes as well as on their own.

Now here's Medallion over Orly in Solid Gold.  These were taken when the sun was setting, so I got some good images of the crazy amount of sparkle.  I just could not stop taking pictures of this manicure - I lurve it!

Isn't it just gorgeous?  I played around with different polishes underneath Medallion before I settled on Solid Gold, which is a brassier gold and has that multi-gold finish that I thought gave even more dimension to the glitter.  Medallion looks good over any color, I was just in the mood for a flat-out bling-tastic manicure!  You can wear this alone, but it would probably take 4 coats for full opacity, so I think it's just easier to have a layer underneath to cut down on dry time - using a matte made it extra quick!  This was two coats of Medallion over one coat of Orly in Solid Gold, which is from the Winter 2009 "Metal Chic Metallic Matte" collection that also included Glam Rock (copper) and Iron Butterfly (black).  I added one coat of Seche Vite right away and one the next day and it was as smooth as glass - very nice for such a chunky glitter.  I think this would make for an awesome New Year's Eve mani - you want to say goodbye to 2009 with a bang!

Using the matte polish made this a super fast mani - glitter has the tendency to stay on the nail,  minimizing clean-up for me - but I will say that when I took this mani off I discovered the worst staining I have ever had. I usually use CND Stickey base coat with no problems; when I do a matte, I use NailTek Foundation II underneath Stickey to smooth out ridges, which are so apparent under mattes, but since I was putting glitter over it I didn't bother.  I asked on the NB and nobody else had staining with Solid Gold, so I'm just going to assume it was user error.  However, I would advise you to use a ridge-filling base coat, which prevents staining better than a rubberized base coat.

All of the China Glaze glitters, as well as the shimmers and cremes from fall collection are available online from the major e-tailers.  I shop at Victoria Nail Supply, 8ty8 Beauty, Head2Toe Beauty, and Trans Design and haven't had problems from any of them, though YMMV - shipping from all of them tends to be kind of slow.  The Orly "Metal Chic Metallic Matte" collection is available from VNS, H2T, and TD.  VNS also has an exclusive China Glaze glitter, Black Magic, which is a Halloween-themed polish with orange glitter in a black base - Mary at Body and Soul did a comparison with Fortune Teller here - and is offering a free gift (China Glaze Fast Forward top coat, Color Club 0-60 Topcoat, or holiday nail stickers) with the purchase of 10 glitters.  H2T is offering 5% savings (as much as you're likely ever to get from an e-tailer) through December with the code DEC05.

Yesterday, I experienced an act of hubris.  I had been feeling a bit better, so I decided not to wake up at 4 am to take my pain medication (I had been taking it every 4 hours and thought 8 hours in my sleep would be okay).  When I woke up at 8, I was frozen with pain.  I took some medicine right away, but it really knocked me for a loop and I went back and slept until about 5 tonight.  It sucks because now I'm scared to wean myself off it, but I'm also really scared of becoming addicted, since I'm taking Percocet.  My mom's a doctor, so I know she'll help me figure it out, but man it's now the tenth day post-surgery and I just want to have my pain down to where I can take some over-the-counter stuff for it!  I guess it's too much to ask of my body at this point, grrrrr.

Anyway, I plan to swatch my RBL's tomorrow.  I have a ton of new stuff to swatch, so if there's anything in specific you're looking to see, let me know and I'll try to get it done!  I hope those of you that are going back to work have an easy day to get back in the swing of things.  I'm still off work for another week to recover from my surgery.  As usual, I'd love to hear from you.  I'm thinking of posting my idea for a contest tomorrow, so I hope you'll tune in for that!