Friday, January 1, 2016

Top 20 of 2015

I took the polishes I said were my top 20 in a previous entry, and tried to rank them. I swatched them on a nail wheel, which I will take pictures of if we ever get a sunny day again. (I might even try artificial light if the weather stays this gloomy!)

What I came up with for a ranking was 4 sets of 5. Within the sets of 5 they're in alpha order. If you've read my past favorites posts, you know that my criteria is a little different from most people, since the polish only has to be one I used for the first time in 2015; it doesn't have to be a newly-released polish.

We're starting with the bottom 5 - although these are all polishes I wore and loved this year:
Black Metal Dahlia (OCC)
Boom (Formula X)
Flake Your Booty (Painted Polish)
Hot Couture (Color Club)
Ichi Hanami (Pretty Serious)
While new or old wasn't the criteria here, it happens that the majority of these are new-to-me but not new in 2015. Ichi Hanami - and I think Flake Your Booty - are the only ones of these that are actually 2015 polishes.

When I got down to the top 15, I pulled another five out, and this time I did deliberately pull out older polishes. I think I did this last year too (it's down at the bottom of this entry - I just called it "honorable mention"):
Bat My Eyes (China Glaze)
BSOD (meaning "blue screen of death") (Pretty Serious)
Bit Faker (Butter London)
Dorothy Who? (China Glaze)
Love Potion No. 99.9 (Lynnderella)
I really am crazy about all of these. Dorothy Who, in particular, might have been a serious candidate for #1 favorite if I had decided these were eligible. (In any case, it's awesome, and it's in the permanent collection, so if you haven't tried it you really should! Bat My Eyes is not permanent, to my knowledge, but it's still been pretty widely available. The rest of these may not be so easily found, though.)

So this leaves a top 10 composed of polishes that I believe to be newer - as far as I know they were all released in late 2014 or in 2015. I'm hedging because I'm not 100% sure of that, you understand, but since it's not my main criteria anyway I didn't go looking for answers on that. I did poke around some about what is available and what's not, and that's noted below.

Here's the bottom half of the top 10 (again alphabetically):
Aurora Borealis (Lucky 13)
Cinnamon (Zoya)
Harlow (Zoya Matte Velvet)
Lichen (Cirque)
Stuck In The Middle (Pretty Serious)

So that leaves a top five composed of 2 Rescue Beauty Lounge (both from the same collection, the Refinery 29 collab), 2 Pretty Serious, and a KBShimmer duochrome flakie:
Bubblegum Punk (RBL+R29)
Daphne's Disco Party (Pretty Serious)
Elliot (Pretty Serious)
Pretty Gritty (RBL+R29)
She's Beyond Kelp! (KB Shimmer)
All three Pretty Serious polishes from the top 10 are still available, and so is the KBShimmer (which is from last summer's collection, I know). RBL, of course, is out of business, so your only hope of finding those is alternate channels like eBay or possibly Amazon. Zoya Cinnamon was a fall color, so it should also be available - Harlow, likely not. Lichen was still available the last I looked. Aurora Borealis was an LE, so pretty definitely not available - but there are similar things around.

(I just did a Google Shopping search for RBL, and apparently they are still pretty widely available right now on eBay, and the prices aren't completely outrageous - yet. They were mostly running about $25-35, that I saw.)

I'm still undecided about a #1. I'm mulling it over. I'm going to have to do another post, anyway, so you can see my nail wheel, so I'll decide (or not) then. I might decide to leave it at this, I don't know.

One more thing: it occurs to me that all three brands represented in the top 5 are the same type of brand: not full-on indie, not mainstream, but that middle ground in between. And a thing regarding my own preferences, which isn't really a surprise: there are no cremes in this entire list. And only one big glitter, and that one's matte. I think that's pretty typical of me, really - I like the middle ground there, too - shimmers and metallics and small glitters.


A few pictures from the archives for these:

Love Potion 99.9 (over a purple base, I think):

Bubblegum Punk alone:

and as a top coat (which is how I like it best):

Zoya Cinnamon:

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