Rococo and more

I don't think it's news to anybody that the more expensive the brand, the fancier the packaging:

There are two bottles of Pahlish in that picture, and they're just with the rest of this stuff because they showed up in the mail the same day. The rest of this all came from Space.NK Apothecary, and it was all half-price, but even for half-price you still get all of this beautiful but moderately excessive packaging, of course. Anyway! Half-price Rococo and Jin Soon and Lipstick Queen! Why am I complaining?

For the record, the two Pahlishes (which were not on sale, if I'm remembering correctly) are Pyrite and Blood of the Mountain. (I think Blood in the Mountain has sold out in the past, right? So I was lucky to get hold of it at any reasonable price.) Then the square Rococo box is a duo, EmpoweRED or maybe it's just Empowered, but anyway it's a red polish and a toner which is supposed to darken it. I have been obsessed with blackened reds lately so I wanted to try that. Then we have a Jin Soon, which is Gossamer and was a Space.NK exclusive, I believe. (I can already report on that one, and in fact you are probably going to get sick of hearing about it because I am in love. It's an iridescent topper and it's awesome.) Next there's the single Rococo, which was Darkest Emerald Luxe - which is a blackened emerald or a teal, depending on who you ask. And in the purple cracker was a Lipstick Queen lipstick, a very nice lip brush, and another Rococo, which was... I keep forgetting the name, I think it's Stone Cold Karma. (I'm wearing that one right now - with Gossamer on top of it, of course!) The lipstick is "Nude Sinner".

A couple of other Space.NK notes: they might still be having a sale because I got an e-mail about it a couple of days ago, but I haven't checked in to see what if anything is still in stock! Also, I feel like need to say that while I found some complaints on Facebook about their shipping, my experience was fine. I got it in a reasonable time, well-packaged (actually everything in the picture was inside much more padding inside a box), and correct, so I have no complaints whatsoever other than that the fancy packaging bothers me a teensy bit. But it's not by any means the most overpackaged merchandise I've ever seen. Not even close, so my griping is just blather, to a large extent.

I don't have pictures of my recent manicures, but for the record, the two Gossamer ones were the one that I mentioned above, Gossamer over Stone Cold Karma, and before that, I put Gossamer over the Chita + topcoat mani, and it was gorgeous. On the evidence of what I've tried so far, I'd say Gossamer shows up better over darker colors. You can see it over Stone Cold Karma, but you have to look closely. Also, I should say that Stone Cold Karma is basically a nude, although it's darker than my (super-pale) skin tone, but it looks good on me and that was a bit of a surprise. (Darker may be why it looks good on me. I usually don't like light colors on me at all.) I'm not sure why I even bought that set in the cracker since nudes are not usually my thing, but I actually like the lipstick, too. So that was a big win, overall.

(I thought I already had pictures of the individual bottles, but I haven't been able to find them. I'll get those up eventually.)