Stash: cremes pt 3: cooler pinks and reds

I should probably say right off the bat that I have been bored with pinks and reds for a while now, generally. I've been trying some out in the run-up to Valentine's Day, but it's hard to get me excited about either. In fact I said in the last installment of my creme series that I need to stop buying reds - and that appears to go for "hot pinks," too - look how many of these are really, really similar. But for the most part none of these are recent purchases, either. (Of this bunch, I think I bought Flirt and Rich Raspberry - the latter on clearance - last year. The rest are all older than that.) And because of that I don't have as much to say about these as I have about others.

There were pinks in the last entry, and while I wouldn't go so far to say these are necessarily "cool" pinks - they call it "hot pink" for a reason, after all - still, these are generally less orange-toned than the ones in the last entry, shading into violet in many cases.

top:

• Japanese Tea Garden (OPI) - nice slightly-dusty rose pink, a bit of a "mom color" possibly but pretty. I think this was from a collection way back in the early 2000s.

2nd row (curving around below that):

• Gimme A Grape Big Kiss (Color Club) - I know this says "grape" in the name and so you'd think purple but it's just not - I do think it's grape-scented, though. (I guess opinions vary on that because at the link they call it a purple neon.)
• Hi Sweetie (Clinique) - I got this mini in a Clinique Bonus last year, it's a nice medium rosy pink, nothing to get excited about
• Reagan, Lara, Shelby (Zoya) - all released in the Beach collection a couple of years ago and boy, they look like an ombre manicure to me! I don't think I realized at the time how much they are just different intensities of the same pink. Mostly I haven't worn them much, especially the paler two, but I think even Reagan, the darkest one, has mostly gotten ignored in favor of even brighter pinks.

3rd row:

• Hasty (Jet-Set Shine) - most of my older L'Oreals have gone by the wayside - I don't think this one is quite as old as all that, though. I probably haven't worn this in ages.
• Flirt (Picture Polish) - this is a gorgeous color but "piCture pOlish" and I don't seem to have any chemistry - I mean that rather literally. I have two bottles of their polish and I have had wear issues with both of them and they are just too expensive to keep experimenting with. Other people seem to love them, so I'm guessing this is just one of those things where my particular body chemistry and their formula don't mesh.
• Hot Stuff (Orly mini) - Very bright pink - I always really liked this one on my nails.
• Ultimate Pink (essence Colour & Go) - another hot pink, what can you say? "Ultimate"? I don't know about that.
• Rich Raspberry (Colorstay) - the last two pinks I bought (this and Flirt) are awfully similar - this is maybe a bit more violet-leaning. I don't think I've tried this one.

4th row:

• Dita and Juicy (Zoya) - these look similar in the bottle but in fact could not be more different, because Juicy is sheer. If you look at the old reviews they talk about streakiness and even fading. so it's possible this isn't the original color. (Honestly, I don't remember it ever looking different than this, though.) On the other hand, Dita is sexy - think Dita von Teese - and I think it reads darker on the nail than in the bottle.
• Raspberry Rush (Color Club) - to me this one is more purple than Gimme A Grape Big Kiss (above) - I'm starting to really wonder if more than one of these have fading issues, though. Or the picture is just not picking up the violet, which is also possible.
• Continuous Cranberry (old-version Colorstay) - we're starting to get more towards red here. (The picture at the link is one coat, and I think it built to a darker color than that, more like the bottle color.)
• Riley (Zoya) - Zoya calls this raspberry but I thought it read mostly as red on the nail. I wanted to like this color more than I actually did. Also I have notes that say it had chipping issues.

bottom row:

• Malaga Wine (OPI mini) - slightly darker red. I've only ever worn this as a layering polish.
• No 8 (Sephora mini) - this isn't something you can find swatches of easily. This was Sephora's polish line before there was Sephora by OPI, but it really hasn't been gone all that long. This is another darker red.
• Challenge Red-y (Nicole by OPI) - this is a very neutral red. I did get this from the Kellogg's production that she talks about in that link - thanks to my husband, who eats a lot of Special K.
• Posh (Zoya Matte Velvet) - as I've said before, I don't really think I should have put these polishes in with the cremes, since it's got definite if subtle shimmer. Every time I've worn this, I've ended up wearing topcoat, but god it's beautiful with topcoat.
• Vixen (Revlon) - oxblood red, one of the older vampy colors, I think, dating back to the 90s (although of course even then it was taking off from Chanel Rouge Noir aka Vamp). I bought this back a few years ago but I haven't worn it a lot.

I think there's one more dark red creme that didn't get into my pictures, and that's ma.nish.ma Ramblin' Red. It's very much oxblood in the Vixen/Vamp range of things. But it also had bad wear problems.

I used to wear tons of pink and red - in 2012 my default was "Chloe over (random hot pink)" and I think I overdid it, because I slowed down on them in 2013 and ground practically to a complete stop on them in 2014. I did start buying some reds late last year but I didn't wear them much, even then. I guess I did wear some pink and red in 2014, because one dark pink (Julie G Butterflies and Rosebuds) and red Zoya Posh, both shimmers, ended up on my "shortlist" for my favorites of 2014, although neither of them were in the top 10. I checked and I did wear a couple of reds in December in the leadup to Christmas, too. So it's not like it was a complete boycott on my part.