NOTD: ChG Blk-Bila-Bong

This color is from the 2007 Surf Collection from China Glaze. It's d/c and not available at TD, but I bought mine from my favorite eBay seller, Imf0rsale. I paid approx. $16 shipped for 3 colors from this collection. That's $5.33 each. A little on the high side for ChG, but certainly doable. I also got Pink-Rox-E and White-Kwik-Silvr. I bought these b/c I am absolutely in love with the ChG glass fleck shimmer. And colors from the Surf collection aren't super HTF like other glass flecked collections (Tequila Toes, Martini Pedicure and others). I also have 3 otherglass flecked polishes... Strawberry Fields and Raspberry Festival from Summer Days and Blue Island Ice Tea from the Bahama Blues collection.

I love this color (with a few caveats). It's so beautiful in the light. However, I had the same problem with BBB that I had with Russian Navy, though RN was never redeemable for me. BBB looked a little flat and muddy on the nail. Thankfully 3 coats of TC fixed that. Plus, it's black w/ teal flecks, but it just looks black unless you are studying it, so it has a tendency to look a little goth. Also, I left my glue-ons a bit long for this mani, so the black wasn't doing me any favors. All along, though, I knew I wanted to do something with this color and OPI Teal the Cows Come Home. I thought TtCCH would be the perfect compliment to BBB and really bring out the teal shimmer. I was right. :) This mani went from being stark and slightly off-putting to gorgeous by adding a french and a bit of konadding.

Let me just say that the using konad with TtCCH was rather difficult. My original plan was to do use the konad on all my fingers, but I just stuck with the ring fingers because I had problems. I had a hard time getting it to scrap and transfer. Could have been a problem w/ the plate, though, now that I'm thinking of it. I had really good luck with m2 last week, but m40 has always been a PITA for me. It's like the laser cuts don't go deep enough or something. I have a hard time w/ it working with special konad polish. Much less another brand.



Also there are some girls on the NB that do amazing frenches, both with guides and freehand (jealous). I am not one of those girls. I do okay. I haven't bought any guides and I'm trying to not buy anything np related until August. I've been really spendy the last few months. So, I'm just going to make do for awhile. So, as you can tell, I'm not a freehand french expert, but I think it looks okay, especially from arm's length. LOL. It's when you get to macro closeups that it looks like shiz.

All in all, I really like BBB, maybe even love it, but I think for me, having a color, like TtCCH to offset the starkness of the black is a must. Maybe trying shorties is a good option for BBB also. Also, this would probably look good with a Sinful glitter over it. Like Pearl Harbor. Also, I've heard that BBB is a good dupe for Chanel Nuit de Russie from last fall's Moscou collection. I don't own NdR and I'm not going to own it as it's sold out (nevermind it was $30 retail to begin with) and it's going for $50 on eBay. Crazy talk. Steph's Closet(http://www.stephscloset.com/) even mentions BBB as a good alternative to NdR. So if you've been lemming NdR, perhaps BBB will be a good substitute.