2015 favorites swatched - and a #1

Getting me to give you a straight answer about my favorite anything is never easy. I had just as bad a time picking a favorite movie from last year. You can't even get me to settle on a favorite color - either I say something like "all of them" or I pick a semi-random color which varies depending on my mood. That said, I did finally pick a favorite polish of 2015:

RBL Pretty Gritty

It's basically a sort of grungy greyed-out purple with a ton of gold shimmer. It's better than it sounds, that's about all I can say. See here and here and here. I can't seem to get a picture of it that really does it justice, but here's the best one I found:

It's subtle, that's the problem. Subtlety is always hard to get a good picture of. And purple is also sometimes problematic, in itself, although I don't think that's the main problem here.

I suppose it would have been politer, in a way, to pick something that's not discontinued as my favorite, but I would be lying if I called something else my favorite (once I'd decided once my favorite actually was, mind you). And Bubblegum Punk - from the same collection - was #2.

The rest of the top five is still available, though.

L-R: Bubblegum Punk, Daphne's Disco Party, Elliot, She's Beyond Kelp! and Pretty Gritty

(Click on link below for swatches & more)


Here's 6-10 (but in alpha order. See over here. I picked 20 and divided them into four groups of five, but beyond that and having picked a #1 and #2 overall, they're not ranked within the groups):

Aurora Borealis, Cinnamon, Harlow, Lichen, Stuck In the Middle

11-15, all of which are all older polishes. Note that two of these are very similar, and I talk about that wayyyy at the bottom of this long post.

Bit Faker, Bat My Eyes, BSOD, Dorothy Who? and Love Potion No. 99.9

And 16-20 (some of which are old and some new, because this was before my attempt to be methodical):

Black Metal Dahlia, Boom, Flake Your Booty, Hot Couture, Ichi Hanami

And swatches:

This is (L-R again) Hot Couture (Color Club), Daphne's Disco Party (Pretty Serious), and Love Potion No. 99.9 (Lynnderella), all over a WnW Black Creme base. First of all, Hot Couture is unrecognizable here from what you see in the bottle, which is the pale pink one in the picture just above that. I've worn it over pale pink polish and it was highly successful that way, but obviously over black, at least, it doesn't read as pink whatsoever. Love Potion No. 99.9 honestly looks nothing in this picture like what you see on the nail, either. It didn't pick up the shine at all. And the small red bits, which are visible in this picture, are not really noticeable at all unless you look close (or rather, they're only noticeable as sparkle). I liked LP99.9 best over purple, really. And Daphne's Disco Party (in the middle - it's part of an ongoing series of "Daphne"-themed polishes) is what it is - matte glitter in various festive colors - pink, yellow, & orange primarily, I think. Daphne is the Pretty Serious mascot, more or less - her picture is on the webpage header and on the boxes the polishes come in. (There's a different drawing on the polish's page - actually I never paid attention to that one before!)

This is Bat My Eyes (China Glaze) and Cinnamon (Zoya). Bat My Eyes is a Halloween polish but I don't think wearing it needs to be confined to that time of year, because it's elegant and festive and would make a good party polish for practically any occasion, really. It's black jelly packed with various metallic glitters. I'd call the overall effect somewhere between bronze and gold. And Cinnamon is a nice metallic medium brown, which sounds boring but somehow isn't.

This is Aurora Borealis (Lucky 13), Bit Faker (Butter London), and Bubblegum Punk (Rescue Beauty), all over WnW Black Creme. Aurora Borealis seems in many ways to be the same colorway as many other flakies - that sort of green-to-copper range - but it's got some kind of extra magic oomph to it, or something. For one thing, it's more finely milled, I think. I don't know why exactly, but it's beautiful. Bit Faker is coppery flakes; Bubblegum Punk is a blue-leaning top-coat that has a cool sort of cellophane look to it in certain lights. (I wore the crap out of this; I sort of wish I'd bought a back-up bottle while it was still available!)

Aurora Borealis was LE and isn't on Lucky 13's website any more, so I ganked one of their pictures off of Pinterest to show you as well:

(This looks like it might have come from a blogger, originally, but there's no name on it to give credit to!)

This is Boom (Formula X) and Flake Your Booty (Painted Polish) over black. Boom is pretty clearly mixed matte periwinkle glitter, there's not much mistaking that one. (My favorite Boom manicure was over a darker blue.) And I'm glad to see that Flake Your Booty shows up so well here because it's sometimes hard to see. It's just a blue flakie, plain & simple - but I've never seen a blue flakie like this one anywhere else. Lots of blue-green ones, but not a plain blue. There must be something unusual about the materials for the blue flakes, I have to think, to account for there not being more polishes like this one.. Somebody actually offered out of the blue (so to speak!) to buy my bottle, which I've never had happen before. (Painted Polish's whole website is down for the holidays right now, but this was LE and I know the initial run had sold out, so presumably this is not available at all.)

Here's Pretty Gritty again, plus Lichen (Cirque) and She's Beyond Kelp! (KBShimmer) - we've already discussed Pretty Gritty (short version: dusty purple, gold shimmer). Lichen is a dark shimmery olive green and apparently it's now retired. I thought I had seen it still available recently, and maybe it was but it's gone now. She's Beyond Kelp! is still available though. It's the brightest imaginable shiny green flakie, which shimmers to blue when the light hits it right. It's stunning.

This is Black Metal Dahlia (OCC), Harlow (Zoya Matte Velvet, with Seche Vite on the top half), Stuck In The Middle (Pretty Serious) and Ichi Hanami (Pretty Serious). Black Metal Dahlia is basically a blackened red, which is why I wanted it in the first place. Harlow is much more purple-leaning, you can see when you get these all together. I think that's even more obvious when it's top-coated. Stuck In The Middle is a jelly with glass flecks, and Ichi Hanami is a bright and sparkly cherry-blossom pink microglitter.

And last, we have three somewhat similar-looking bright blues: Dorothy Who? (China Glaze), Elliot (Pretty Serious), and BSOD (Pretty Serious). I didn't really realize until I did these swatches how similar in basic color these were. Obviously Elliot, in the middle, is not a dupe by virtue of being only a shimmer rather than a glitter like the other two. I don't really think BSOD and Dorothy Who are true dupes, either, but obviously they're pretty close. I think in reality Dorothy Who is noticeably lighter and brighter than BSOD. They look like dupes in the bottle:

but I think that's deceptive also. (And lo, Google has found me somebody who agrees with me that BSOD is darker.)