Stash: cremes pt 1 - plus Hard Candy goodness

I've been showing you glitters but actually I took pictures of the cremes first, and I think I want to show those next. I'll get back to the microglitters, don't worry! 

Oh, before I get to my stash pics - I'm always showing my vintage Hard Candy polishes, and did you see the news about that? Hard Candy is re-releasing several of their vintage polishes (in the vintage bottle with coordinating plastic ring) for their 20th anniversary in April. I never was crazy about the pastels - I was in my 30s in the 90s, so I was probably a good 15 years older than their core consumer - but I loved Scam and Trailer Trash, in particular, and Scam is in the group of 4 that will be available. They released this picture on Instagram:

Way cool. (More on Hard Candy along the way AND down at the bottom.)

And starting on the cremes in my stash, here are the neutrals at the top, and then greens and blues:

top row:

• unlabeled black creme & unlabeled white creme - there's a bunch of these unlabeled ones in the cremes - the black creme is actually pretty good and I've used that one a few times. Many of these I tend to forget about.
• Wild Shine Black Creme - I bought this because Karen kept talking about it, but she's not the only polish blogger addicted to using it as a base for other stuff. It's cheap (99 cents at Walgreen's last I looked) and it works great, in my experience. Wild Shine has new bottles out but hopefully they haven't monkeyed with the formula! (That first link has picture of the new bottles and the shade list.)
• Vibe (old Hard Candy mini) - I couldn't find anybody else's swatches of this so I put a wheel picture at the bottom of the entry. Re HC generally, here's part of Pretty Random's old Hard Candy stash, for reference. My HCs are mostly not all that old - early-to-mid 00s at the earliest. (All I know for sure is that they're pre-2009 because I bought them when I was still at my old job. But then 2009 was when HC changed everything - bottles, product names, and I think the products themselves too - and started selling at Wal-Mart.)
• Dovima (Zoya Matte Velvet) - I put the Matte Velvets into the creme category but I'm not sure they really belong here, because I think they do have some shimmer in them. It's not always evident either in the bottle or on the nail, but it's there. (I find it easier to see when you add top coat over these polishes.) In this case, the shimmer is silvery.
• Alpine Snow (OPI mini) - basic white, really, just like Black Creme is the basic black. (Annoyingly, OPI does not print color names on the mini-size bottles - luckily I only have the one set, and I did write the names down, or I'd never have sorted this out!)

between rows:

• Fetish (Cult Nails) - Cult Nails is going out of business, and this is still the only one I own. It's a good'un though, a satiny wax finish black that's really cool.

second full row:

• Gray By Gray (CSM) - a blue-tinged gray, now discontinued - Revlon Chic is said to be a dupe, though!
• (upside down) Na Prikope (Square Hue Prague collection) - greenish-gray, so sort of the green version of Gray By Gray. You can see in the picture that it reads very green next to other neutrals.
• Via Montenapoleone  (Square Hue Milan collection) - I show the back of the Square Hue bottles because the front is solid white and you can't see the polish. This one is another matte black. (Apparently they are very "basic" in Milan, or so Square Hue thought - the three polishes in this collection are black, red, and tan.)
• Wet Cement (Xtreme Wear) - Just what it says, really, a cement-colored light gray.
• You Don't Know Jacques (OPI mini) (which really should be with the tans in another picture) - this is pretty much a famous polish in the nail world, but in case you're not already familiar with it, it's a fairly dark taupe.

third row:

• Veruschka (Zoya Matte Velvet) - again, has hidden shimmer, but otherwise looks like a deep forest green
• Moss (Chick) - a nice medium green with maybe a hint of blue. I really like Chick polish and I'm sorry that they seem to be gone.
• Here Today Aragon Tomorrow (OPI - Suede finish) - I still haven't worn this but I'm sure I'll get around to it between now and St. Patrick's Day, at the latest. It's lovely in the bottle and I only hope I like it as much on my nails! - I'm also laughing at Michelle of ALU saying (jokingly) that matte polishes are "so last season" on that linked page - in 2010. Matte polishes have proven to have a lot of staying power, haven't they?
• Tenacious Teal (Color Show) - this is pretty similar to Moss, I need to compare. I think it's a little more blue, but it still does not read as teal to me, it reads as green.
• 2 more unlabeled minis - the bottom one is probably a true green creme but I think the top one is more of a frost

bottom row:

• Sky (old Hard Candy) - I always thought this was "Shy" as the font's almost unreadable! Apparently this pastel blue was the polish that started the whole HC craze - I've lost the link where I read this, but it said that Alicia Silverstone went on Letterman in 1995 wearing Sky and matching blue pumps*, and said so on the show. This also apparently was one of the very first HC polishes, if not the first. I've never really liked it on me, to tell you the truth, but that's just me and pastels, we don't mesh. (I think they're pretty, but they don't look good on me.)
• Pacific Blue (the original pre-reformulation Xtreme Wear) - periwinkle blue and a one-coater. I don't know what they were thinking when they changed this! (Of course it's now a lot more famous, so maybe they did it on purpose!)
• Mesmerize (Essie) - I think this and Status Symbol were the first Essies I ever bought. I still don't own a lot of them because they're a little above my preferred price point and they never seem to be on sale, but I do love these original two. Mesmerize is a royal blue. (more swatches)
• Nail-robi (Color Club) - very dark navy with more than a hint of purple, quite lovely
• Cynthia (Zoya) - probably not really a creme, think it has some scattered glitter. But it reads mostly as a creme.

Ha - Hard Candy got a whole nostalgia piece on Buzzfeed. (And it does say that Sky was the first color.)

*The Alicia Silverstone story as I related it above may be two different stories conflated - the HC Wikipedia page says that Sky was created to match the founders's shoes, which makes much more sense, really. I was looking for video of this 1995 Letterman appearance, and I did find a still photo on Tumblr, with a caption that said that she was wearing Sky on her toenails, not her fingernails. I'm thinking that she was not necessarily wearing matching shoes at the time!

I couldn't find any swatches of Hard Candy Vibe, but I do have wheel pictures that I took myself - so here you go - it's #19. (20 must be Fetish, with the wax finish - the rest all look about the same.)