Thursday, June 30, 2016

NOTD: Once Upon A Time over Reagan

This is Chick Once Up On A Time over Zoya Reagan:
This looks brighter in real life than it looks here, to me. I put the link to Reagan above, but it's your basic cool-toned fuchsia creme, there are a hundred polishes just like it. Chick is a brand you can't get any more - they seemed to have a knack for coming up with unusual formulas, in a small way, and Once Up On A Time is one that I can't think of that has any dupes, right offhand. It's sheer and it's full of small pink flakie bits. I felt like it's summer now and I wanted a bright pink, so I layered pink-on-pink, but this is a pretty versatile polish and you can layer it over other things and have it come out completely different. This is two coats of OuaT, and I'd had it on for 48 hours by the time I took this, so it's holding up decently well - especially considering that it was one of those slapped-on late-night manis in the first place.



Indi-glow, Jordana's Skinny Jeans

This is Xtreme Wear Indi-glow and Barielle Jordana's Skinny Jeans:
I know I've told this story before, but I was very confused by the whole "Barielle Jordana's" thing for a while, since both Barielle and Jordana are brands of polish. The brand is Barielle, here, and the polish is apparently named after Jordana Jeans, which were a brand of jeans that were popular in the 80s, for those of you who don't remember back that far! (The jeans brand and the polish brand are unrelated, as far as I know.) I thought this was a pretty polish back when I first saw it and when I decided I wanted to try out Barielle's polishes, I remembered this one. And it is super-pretty, a shimmery version of a dark denim color.

Indi-glow is also very pretty but I've had issues with it - detailed here. If you can get it to set, it's great. It a jelly-ish holo(?) glitter, and leans a bit on the purple side, but only a little. It's pretty much another of those night-sky polishes. (I have several of those.)

Added: I actually re-swatched Indi-glow and wrote another entry for it because it was missing from my list and I forgot that I'd actually already done it. The picture was on my list to re-take anyway. The one above is in indirect sunlight in my bedroom, while the one in the new entry is under the new daylight bulbs in my living room. And this is the old iPhone as opposed to the new one.)

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Wavy Blue, Indigo

This is Triple Shine Wavy Blue and Zoya Indigo:
Wavy Blue is the lighter of the two by a good bit - it's a microglitter in a lighter navy shade. I don't think it's bright enough to be called royal blue. Indigo is a much darker metallic blue with scattered holo glitter, so it's basically one of those "night-sky" blues.

Indigo is a current color. The Triple Shine line from Sally Hansen is apparently discontinued. They had a ton of different lines at one point, but they've really pared down the number recently.

Ninja-lish-ious, Bleu Cobalt

This is Pretty Serious Ninja-licious Ninja-lish-ious** and YSL Bleu Cobalt:
Most of the pictures in this batch haven't had focus problems, but this one seems to be the exception. I don't see much more detail noticeable in the larger size anyway, so I'm using the smaller one on the premise that it's easier on the eyes. On the wheel, Bleu Cobalt is the top one of the two dark blues, and Ninja-licious is below that. These look pretty similar but they are really not, past being dark blue. I like them both, but not for the same reasons. Blue Cobalt is very dark and glossy and shimmery and it seems to have a slight duochrome to it. You get a sense of depth when you look at it. Ninja-licious is slightly lighter and it's a glitter, but a really subtle one. The glitter is small and it's all down beneath the surface.

If you're familiar with YSL, you probably noticed first thing that the cap is missing from this polish. This was the way it came to me; however, it came from my sister, who works at an upscale department store, so I have no doubt about its provenance. It's very pretty, and it's something I never would have bought for myself, not at that price ($28, according to the link below). The only reason the cap might particularly matter to me was if I intended to re-sell it, and I don't.

Bleu Cobalt is a current color. Ninja-licious was an LE polish and if it's on Pretty Serious' website I don't see it. (Damn, I shouldn't have looked. I haven't bought any polish since my birthday, two months ago, and I see some new polish in my future.) (This is what I'm looking at. Currently on pre-sale. For one thing, the names! but also the polishes.)

(added: Here's Ninja-licious on PS's blog - only 300 units made, wow. **Also possibly I've been spelling it all wrong - they say Ninja-Lish-ious, presumably because it's in honor of their US shipper, who is named Alicia. I have it spelled right on my spreadsheet and it looks like on the wheel, too, but slipped up when I first wrote this entry. I fixed it at the top but I'm not going back right now and fix every misspelling!) (I also spelled Bleu Cobalt wrong in the title so I'm 0/2 on spelling in this entry!)

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Nail-Robi, Midnight Cami

More dark blues, Color Club Nail-Robi and Essie Midnight Cami:
Nail-robi is a bit odd - I've seen it called a purple, and I'm sure it depends partly on the light, but it looks like a blue to me. It's certainly leans a bit purple, but my bottle looks like a purple-leaning blue creme, not a blue-leaning purple. That's so dramatic a difference that I almost wonder if that's a batch issue rather than just the light. (Other bloggers see this as a blue - it's not just me.)

Midnight Cami is a very dark blue shimmer which hangs around on the verge of looking black much of the time. I've seen people call this polish purple-leaning as well, but I can't say that I see it at all. It seems to me like a straight-up blue. This was one of the first Essies I ever owned - I think I bought it from Ulta along with Mesmerize (a brighter blue which should be up soon) and Status Symbol (which is pink), if I'm remembering right.

I was looking at this commentary on Midnight Cami, which talks about staining, and while I don't remember Midnight Cami being a particular culprit there, I was thinking that that may be why I don't wear blues more often, because they're so prone to staining. I was really surprised at how few blues I have relative to purples and greens. And I love blue, as a color.

Azure, Quick Jeanius

This is two Sally Hansen polishes from different lines, LustreShine Azure and Insta-Dri Quick Jeanius:
We're still in the "slightly blurple" section of the color wheel, although the amount of purple in these two is so small that it's easy to miss. I really love Quick Jeanius, but as you can see Azure comes out on the nail much lighter than it is in the bottle, which was a disappointment to me. Quick Jeanius is a very packed microglitter, although not quite as much as All Wrapped Up (which should be the post previous to this one, although I'm working ahead so I don't have a link yet). Azure is more of a shimmer. (Also you may notice from my tick-marks on the wheel that this was only one coat of Quick Jeanius; two for Azure.)

I doubt that either of these is easily obtainable, since Quick Jeanius was a seasonal limited edition and the whole LustreShine line is discontinued.

All Wrapped Up

This is China Glaze All Wrapped Up:
Disclaimer: I did get this polish for free from a manufacturer/blogger giveaway. So there.

I do love the formula of this - there were three polishes like this in different colors in the collection in question - and I had never even bought a China Glaze at the time I received this, so I guess you could say this made me more pro-China-Glaze. But on the other hand I am still not a particularly huge China Glaze fan and almost certainly will never have a gigantic China Glaze collection like several bloggers I know of. (Like, say, HannahEveNailsIt on YouTube. I thought of her because of all the bottles behind her in her videos, but there are a number of others I could come up with if pressed.) Anyway, this is a really, really packed microglitter in a slightly purple-leaning blue color. I guess it has a clear base but it's so packed you can't honestly tell. It comes out as a texture-like finish, although I've always worn top-coats with it. If you have Glitter Food and you're putting on this polish, it might be a good time to pull it out, because I remember this being very thirsty for top-coat.

This was from the 2013 holiday collection, I believe, so I doubt that it's easily obtainable.

(added: I talk more about this polish and the two other similar polishes from the same collection, here.)

Just to clarify: I have nothing against China Glaze. But my polish collection started with what I could buy in the (very large and well-stocked) grocery store, and both Kroger and H-E-B have always carried OPI but not China Glaze. So my first foray out of the world of drugstore brands was OPI, because of that. And I still don't have a huge collection of OPIs, either. (I have more Zoyas than either CG or OPI, because Zoya has such good sales. So I suspect what it comes down to is that I'm cheap.)

Monday, June 27, 2016

Cornflower blues

I'm at the place on the color wheel where these polishes ought to go, so this is just a reminder that I've already talked about these way back in April.
Even if you're looking at all of my posts, I don't expect anybody to remember back that many posts ago, considering that I've been posting bottle pictures daily (once or more often twice - and occasionally three times, although that's usually by accident) for a solid two months now. I can't even remember what I've posted - you ought to see the chain of lists I've got set up to keep track of it. And right now it's all on paper, even though the whole point in the beginning was to have it all connect up online. But I'm on a roll with the posts and I suspect if I stop I'll never get started again, so that end of it is just going to have to wait.

Right now as I write this I've got 58 posts so far for June, 54 in May and a mere 31 in April, because I didn't really get going full-speed with this for the first couple of weeks. In fact I notice that I've just passed my post total of 2014, meaning this will probably be by far my most prolific year for blog posts. I hope it's not driving everybody who sees the post notifications insane - although I suspect that anybody who was seriously annoyed is long-gone by now.

Lest you think this is actually going to go on forever, bear in mind that the bulk of my polish collection is on the cool side of the color wheel. I have lots of reds and pinks, yes, but relatively few oranges and no yellows whatsoever. (I do have a good many metallic golds, to my surprise, but that's as close as I come.) And for that matter I have far, far fewer blues than I did purples, so the blue section is going to seem extremely short by comparison. I have more blue-greens and greens than I do actual blues, it turns out.

Sunday, June 26, 2016

Pacific Blue

This is Xtreme Wear Pacific Blue:
This is another one of those polishes that's famous in the nail-polish world - in this case it's because Sally Hansen changed the formula without telling anybody, and a lot of people adored this polish as it was and were very upset about them changing it. So you might can still buy "Pacific Blue" but it's not this Pacific Blue - this is the old one. I don't think it's as dark here as it looks on the wheel - it's more of a periwinkle blue, closer to the bottle color. (For example, see here.) It's also a one-coat wonder. (There are a bunch of those "one-coat wonder" videos and this polish - in the "old" formula - is on almost every one of them. If SH had been trying to make people mad on purpose they couldn't have done a much better job.)

Frozen, Not So Blueberry

This is Orly Color Blast Frozen and Revlon Not So Blueberry (which is a scented polish):
These are both very shimmery polishes - Not So Blueberry is presumably so-named because it's not so blue, it's more of a blue-violet. Frozen is also well-named - and it's a Disney tie-in, as you might guess. (Note that it's at the very bottom of the nail wheel in this picture, and Not So Blueberry is above that.) Frozen came in a duo with Free Spirit - I think it was called the Sisters Duo or something like that.

I'm not sure that either one of these are available any more, but I'm not 100% sure. I don't see the regular scented polishes in Revlon's line-up - I think they must have been replaced by the Parfumerie line. The duos still show up on Orly's website but they say "available at Walgreen's" and I haven't seen these there in a while.

Saturday, June 25, 2016

Super Star

This is Sinful Colors Super Star:
This is purple glitter and cyan-blue microglitter, I believe. I haven't worn this enough, I really need to start.

This is apparently from a past SC holiday collection, although I'm pretty sure it's a core color now. The interesting thing is that I have about three of these colors (also Ice Dream and Gilded) - I had noticed a certain amount of similarity to the formulas but I didn't realize they were actually from the same collection.

Friday, June 24, 2016

One Lifetime With You

This is Dollish Polish One Lifetime With You (a mini):
Wow, I suspected this had faded a bit, and I was more right than I knew - at least according to Dollish's own pictures. But it's still really pretty! It was in the lavender ballpark and it still is, it's just a paler one. It's the base color that seems to have faded, so I would wear it over a similar color. It's got mostly small glitter in various shades of purple and blue, and maybe some shimmer as well. The name refers to The Fellowship of the Ring - it's Arwen's line from the movie and it's also the color of Arwen's dress in that movie. (Unless the dress is from the second movie, I forget.)

Because Accio Lacquer seems to have gone to the great beyond (or at least forgotten to renew their URL), I snagged some of her pictures that were at Dollish's link:


CE39, Royal Invite

This is Layla Ceramic Effect CE39 and Sally Hansen Diamond Strength Royal Invite:
Both of these are very blued-out purples, but the Layla is much more gray. (These are about the last purples I have that really read as purple. After this I think everything reads more blue.) I like both of these a lot, but Royal Invite is the showier one - it's very shimmer-packed. (I googled, and I came up with Karen's Royal Invite swatches, which don't look much like mine at all.)

Layla is a Italian brand and I don't think there is a regular US distributor. Nail Polish Canada carries Layla, I found (and they do deliver to the US, I checked on that), but they only have a few CE shades and this is not one of them. I had a little trouble navigating Layla's website but I don't think CE39 is a current color anyway. And Royal Invite was an LE color in the first place, as I remember, but apparently Diamond Strength as a line is discontinued (going from the list of SH sub-brands here). So yeah, good luck getting your hands on either of these.

Interestingly, given that I show Karen's swatches above for Royal Invite, I'm pretty sure I bought my own bottle of Royal Invite (although it's entirely possible that I only did so because of her swatches). But I'm pretty sure she did send me the Layla polish - in fact, I think she sent me both of the Layla polishes that I own. I don't know if she had a secret source for Laylas or if she was just getting them from Llarowe, and I am trying to resist the impulse to mine her website for the answer to that question right now.

Blue Rouge, Lotus

Lynnderella Blue Rouge and Zoya Lotus:
Blue Rouge is a mixed blue and purple glitter, the usual sort of Lynnderella thing with multiple sizes of glitter. You can see that I got it very close to opaque with only a couple of coats, but when I've worn it I've worn something similar underneath it. (I mentioned a couple of days ago that Purple Haze might look good under it.) Lotus is also a blue-toned purple but obviously it's very different, it's both grayed-out and really full of various colors of shimmer, in red, pink and gold. Both of these are quite beautiful in their very different ways.

Blue Rouge is not a current color as far as I could find. Lotus is current.

Thursday, June 23, 2016

NOTD: Mermaid's Dream

Deborah Lippmann Mermaid's Dream, semi-matte:
I put Matte Me Crazy on it, so it really should be more matte than it is - it's an old bottle and I think it's separating! Anyway, this is a great summer polish and I tend to forget to wear it.

No More Waity Katie, Cosmic

Here we have more of the betwixt-and-between colors, Butter London No More Waity, Katie and Formula X Cosmic:
I think that NMWK was originally in honor of the British royal wedding ("Katie" is now the Duchess of Cambridge, of course). This is a very odd color, but I like it. It's hard to even tell it's purple here, but it is, it's just very grayed out. This polish is also a microglitter that's a bit gritty, almost a texture, although I do generally wear it with top-coat. It's interesting and elegant, I think - although your mileage may vary depending on how you feel about gray.

Cosmic is a weird, sort of shifty blurple thing. I don't think I've actually worn this, I keep forgetting. But Vampy Varnish's swatches are making me think I should try.

I don't think either one of these is currently available, although I could be wrong.

Added:
2016 Cosmic mani

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Isa, Nightlife

This is Zoya Isa and L'Oreal Jet-Set Nightlife:
I'm not convinced these "blurple" colors (or dark blue-violets, if you prefer) are photographing accurately. They seem to keep coming out a little too blue on the wheel. I feel like the colors you see in the bottle are somewhat more accurate here. Isa is what I'd call a true blurple, though - poised right between blue and purple. Zoya says it has an aqua flash to it, which may be what the camera was picking up. Jet-Set Nightlife is an older polish, definitely, because L'Oreal doesn't use this bottle shape any more, but I don't think it's tremendously old, either. Maybe late '00s. It's got a lot of shimmer in it as well, you can see that from the bottle, but it does go on very dark. The shimmer shows up on the nail but not as heavily as it would look from the bottle. This leans comparatively more red - I might call it a very dark grape color.

Punk-ish Purple, Purple Haze

This is Miracle Gel Punk-ish Purple and Rescue Beauty Lounge Purple Haze:
These are both blue-leaning purples, but Purple Haze is much more grayed-out. These are both cremes. Purple Haze was one of the first RBL polishes I bought, and I think I just wasn't ready to pay that much for a polish - or at least, if I was going to pay $18 (I think that's what it was at the time) I wanted it to be all rainbows and sparkles or something. I complained a lot about it later, although I think I was always pretty fair about saying that my expectations were clearly just too high. (Nowadays, I just don't buy any creme and expect magic. Cremes by themselves are not my thing, just like pastels are not my thing and holos are not my thing. I'm slow, but I do finally figure out what I like.)

Punk-ish Purple is kind of unexpectedly awesome, though. As cremes go. And it does have that nice Miracle Gel formula that lasts really well.

Looking at Purple Haze and what's next to it on the wheel, I'm thinking I need to try Blue Rouge over Purple Haze - that looks like it has definite possibilities.

Punk-ish Purple was a fairly recent MG release so I imagine it's still available. RBL, as I've said repeatedly lately because apparently I own a lot of RBL purples, is out of business.

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

On A Trip, I Don't Bite

This is Megalast On A Trip and Sephora by OPI I Don't Bite:
This is two very different takes on blue-violet. On A Trip is a creme in a lovely blue-leaning violet, while I Don't Bite is a grayed-out near-metallic - you might even call it a glass fleck. I've seen swatches where it even looks like a frost, but it didn't come out that way in my swatches. Neither one of these polishes is available, I'm fairly certain: SOPI is out of business unless you can find a stray bottle still hanging around in a Big Lots bin. And On A Trip was one of those seasonal limited editions that they love to do with Megalast.

The Reign Of Studs, Eternal Beauty

This is L'Oreal The Reign of Studs and Color Club Eternal Beauty:
These two are a fairly similar blue-leaning purple in color, but other than that are almost completely unalike: Reign Of Studs is a texture and Eternal Beauty is a strong linear holo. L'Oreal released this in a set called Gold Dust - I've wondered since I've had it if "The Reign Of Studs" was some joke I wasn't getting, but if you look at the polish names here there are some more odd ones - "I Like It Chunky" - really?? My guess is that that line was just named by somebody with a really odd sense of humor.) The Color Club set with all the holos was probably their best-selling line in years - many of them are still current colors. My gripe with those names is they don't give you any clues as to the color at all. "Eternal Beauty" could be anything, and most of the other color names are equally vague. Anyway, super-strong holos and they are gorgeous. I like both of these polishes, really, even though I gripe about the names. (They're just dark enough that they don't trip my "too pale" trigger.)

(Note: there's a link missing above - where I said "if you look at the polish names" it was supposed to link to some display pictures that I was looking at. I haven't succeeded in tracking down the original page I was looking at, at the time, but here is a different one that shows the same collection.)

Monday, June 20, 2016

Makeupwithdrawal, Excuse Me I Blurpled

This is Rescue Beauty Makeupwithdrawal (named after a blog) and KBShimmer Excuse Me, I Blurpled:
Note how blue both of these look on the nail wheel - I've got to say that I think that may be the light, I don't remember either of these looking quite that blue. They're definitely both in serious "blurple" territory, though. Excuse Me I Blurpled is blue and purple glitters in a blurple base, and it's one of my favorites. Here's Makeupwithdrawal's post about the collection that her polish came out in - it was a blogger collection, as you might guess. This is so beautiful in the bottle because it's all shimmer-packed, but I have to say that my experience so far is that it doesn't show up nearly as well on the nail as I was hoping. (That's whole collection is gorgeous - I said that about another collection a few days ago, too. RBL had really been on a roll for the last year or so before they closed, as far as I'm concerned.)

Neither of these polishes are available, apparently. Rescue Beauty is out of business, and Excuse Me I Blurpled is not on KBS's website.

(Added: I had this on my "photos to retake" list and I have done half of it. Here's a better picture of Excuse Me I Blurpled - which also, incidentally, ended up on 2016 favorites list.)

Lillibet's Jubilee

This is Zoya Neeka, which I've already talked about, and Butter London Lillibet's Jubilee:
This is a full-out almost-chrome metallic, which is something that BL does quite well. I bought it in a "Royal Purple" set with Pitter Patter and No More Waity Katie (which ought to be coming up very soon). It refers to the Queen's Jubilee several years ago - "Lillibet" for Elizabeth, see. Anyway, I've seen this referred to as "lavender" and "lilac" both, because nobody including me seems to ever know the difference between those two - I think that's because both lavender and lilac come in various purple tones, botanically speaking. This is definitely slightly on the blue side, but it's hard to tell - in many lights this will read as a silver. The purple is there but it's pale enough that it tends to disappear. Beautiful polish, though!

Sunday, June 19, 2016

Pretty Gritty, Electrique

Apparently this is the leftovers from that wheel with the bad focus - this is Rescue Beauty Lounge Pretty Gritty and Pahlish Electrique:
I know these polishes don't look much alike, but actually they do have something alike, and that's very heavy metallic (gold/coppery) shimmer. Pretty Gritty is from the RBL+R29 collab with Refinery29 - these were awesome polishes, I wish I'd bought more of them now. And Pretty Gritty was my favorite - in fact I called it my favorite polish of 2015. It's sort of a grunged-out, greyed-out purple with that strong metallic shimmer - and look at the pictures elsewhere and notice that it's not nearly as brown-looking in most lights as it is in my picture above. I do think the brown-tones are in there but they're not nearly as strong as this makes them look. Electrique is an almost-neon purple with, again, tons of metallic shimmer. It does lean a little blue. I remember shaking this like crazy before I took this picture and I almost wish I hadn't, because it had separated in a really interesting way - the whole bottom of the bottle was pure white. I've never had one do that before that I can recall.

Neither one of these polishes are anything that's likely to be easily available. RBL is out of business and the Pahlish polish was part of a monthly LE series, I believe.

Added: I poked around in other people's swatches and there appears to be a lot of difference in what color people's swatches looked like. Somebody described it as a crelly which does make sense as far as the white base, although this isn't really what I think of as a crelly at all. Compare the picture above to the picture I took when Karen gave it to me a couple of years ago.

Who Are You Wearing? Amethyst Couture

This is the blackened-purples department (although both of these seem to lean blue-ish) - OPI Who Are You Wearing? and Color Show Amethyst Couture:
Amethyst Couture is from a collection that's pretty legendary in nail polish circles; the Maybelline Brocades. This whole set is crazy textury glitters - I only ever got my hands on two of them. This one is a very interesting polish, and if you think that's damning it with faint praise, well, you'd be about right. It's fun but I don't really love it, to be honest. It's too... muddy-looking. I'm not saying people were mistaken about going crazy over them, because they are really different from most things that drugstore brands come up with, especially. But they only ever made a very small run of these, and I think half the craze for them was just the thrill of the hunt, really. (Or maybe if I'd just gotten my hands on the red one I'd know what the fuss was all about. I do like this one, but I don't wear it much. The other one I have is the black one, I think it's Black In Mirrors.)

Both of these polishes are pretty definitely unavailable. Apparently Who Are You Wearing was from OPI's 2007 holiday collection, and it hasn't become enough of a classic to stay in the main collection all this time. If you scroll down on the link above, there's a comparison with Russian Navy, which is more blue, and also Essie Midnight Cami, which I have and which I wouldn't really put into the blue-violet category at all. It's much more blue. (I'll probably get around to that one in the next couple of weeks, I'm guessing.) Anyway, Who Are You Wearing? - basically a straight very-dark blurple except for some shimmer. It's so dark I don't think the shimmer shows up all that much, though.

Saturday, June 18, 2016

NOTD: Hyped

Let me say right off the bat that this picture does NOT do justice to Hyped at its best. I'd had it on for a couple of days by the time I took this picture, and it's looking pretty ragged:
On the other hand, it also would not be fair to you, my readers, to skim over the fact that this polish has wear issues. This is three coats plus base-coat (Bridge the Ridge, I believe) plus Seche on top plus a slapped-on touch-up before I left the house, because that was all I had time for. (Actually you can see on my pointer finger where I touched it up, because it's more satiny - which is how Hyped goes on, left alone.) I painted my nails late at night and by the time I got up it was showing tip wear. Seriously - I guess from all that thrashing around in bed! By the second night almost half of the polish on one nail (on my right hand) had flaked off. It seems to me like all neon-ish polishes have wear and/or application issues, though. This one also went on streaky, took all three coats to get reasonably past that, and also (you can see it on the index finger above) wanted to pull.

It's still a gorgeous color, though.

Oh, here is the wheel picture for this polish.

I also have a shade picture, which is even more noticeably ragged-looking than the sunlight picture above (at least on the computer I'm viewing these pictures on):

Jewel Tone, Deadly Nightshade

This is Color Craze Jewel Tone, and Dollish Deadly Nightshade (a mini):
These two glitters have a similar color mix (purple with some blue) but manage to look more or less completely different just the same. Jewel Tone is smaller glitter in a clear base; Deadly Nightshade has larger glitter mixed in (well, I might call it medium-size, really - it's not big glitter) in a tinted base.

It's really late as I write this and I just don't have the energy to look it up, but my guess is that Jewel Tone might be a current color, but Deadly Nightshade is not. I think they sell LAColors somewhere like Dollar Tree nowadays - which is someplace I rarely go. You can usually guess the Halloween colors from the names, and yeah, Deadly Nightshade is one of those. And I don't think it's available any more, although I could be wrong!

Friday, June 17, 2016

Let's Go Crazy, Viola

Yes, that's right, it's a Prince-themed polish - Lippmann Let's Go Crazy and then a brand I'd never heard of, a mini of Initial Lacquer Viola:
I don't know why I completely forgot that I owned a Prince polish at the time when it would have been extra-appropriate to wear it. I don't think I've actually ever worn it except layered with other stuff - so possibly the answer is that I forgot about it at least partially because I've never actually liked it as much as I expected to. It's a neutral purple base with an explosion of colors of glitter in it. Sounds awesome, right? that was why I wanted it, but somehow it's never quite lived up to that. I should either have another go at it and/or pass this polish on to somebody who will love it like it deserves to be loved! (Prince himself is not the problem here, mind. I've been a Prince fan, well, forever, more or less. Since the 80s, anyway.)

Viola is a pale blue-violet base with blue-violet glitter - pretty straightforward, in the Evil Queen mode that I've noticed lately, but a little more blue-toned. Somehow it escaped being named after a queen and got named after a Shakespeare character instead. (Or, it could just be the color. But I like the Shakespeare explanation better.)

Initial Lacquer doesn't seem to be in business any more. Let's Go Crazy, though, is a current color.

Fowl Play, Sansa

This is Orly Fowl Play and Zoya Sansa:
To tell you the truth, I wondered if this was a picture of the Sansa bottle or the Daul bottle. (Sansa is above Fowl Play and Daul is below.) If you look at Zoya's picture of the Sansa bottle, it looks much more purple, but it does have gold shimmer in it so I think it's just my bottle picking up the light differently. Daul looks very different in the bottle but I don't think it looks this dark. I went looking for the bottles late last night and I couldn't find either of them - my stash is still in flux after all of this. Anyway, Sansa is a dark eggplant-purple with gold shimmer - it's one of the set that Zoya called "liquid metal" although I've never thought it looked especially metallic, myself.

Fowl Play is an older polish, although I haven't had mine for all that long. It's still a current color as well. They just call it "iridescent glitter" but most of the iridescent glitter is actually what most people nowadays call flakies - although they did in 2011, too: the evidence is right here but it was a much newer term at the time. It has some other glitter in there as well, but it's mainly flakies. It reminds me of Nfu Oh 51 just because of the flakies and because the general color scheme is fairly similar - they're definitely not anything like dupes. (I almost missed this picture and it occurs to me that I don't think I've swatched #51 either - but the main thing I haven't swatched yet is top-coats and I imagine that it's in that box. Fowl Play is considerably more opaque - apparently it's more similar to OPI Merry Midnight, which is one of those polishes that's on a lot of people's lemming lists.)

Fowl Play was in a bird-themed set (the other one I have from that set is Sweet Peacock). Sansa is not a common girl's name (not in the US, anyway, and I imagine that's changing for very small girls these days!) so I assume it's named after the Game of Thrones character. I started to say that I couldn't think of another Zoya that's named after a fictional character, but actually Zoya #1 is a red named Carmen, which I suppose qualifies! (There are probably some more lurking in there that I just haven't thought of.)

Added, from here:
  • Fowl Play (Orly) - this polish was all the rage back in 2011 when it first came out. I didn't buy it at the time, though... I found this marked down last fall at Sally Beauty, and it's just as awesome as everybody said back in the day. It's a purple squishy base with multicolored bits (seemingly mostly blue and purple) as well as larger flakies. (This probably belongs in the jelly or the flakie category, really, not here, but it does have some glitter, I think.)

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Password Please, Plum Chunky Glitter

This is Butter London Password Please (a "fashion size" or mini size polish) and Orly Color Blast Plum Chunky Glitter:
Password Please alone is the bottom swatch on that wheel, and the one above it is Plum Chunky Glitter on top of Password Please. ("Plum Chunky Glitter"? Apparently Orly decided to just go for the straight-forward names with these glitters. The other Color Blast polishes I have are not like that.) I'm sure I swatched Plum Chunky Glitter by itself, too, but I can't find a picture of it. I'll add it later if I find the picture, but it's utterly boring alone, anyway. Over purple it looks interesting - it's got varied glitters in it that show up best over the dark background, apparently. The Orly page for it makes it look more interesting, too - it seems to be a mix of bright and dull glitters, basically. (Also note that while it's got "plum" in its name and there may be some plum colors mixed in there, the overall color here is not particularly plummy. Or at least it's a sort of a blackened plum.)

Password Please is a pretty straightforward blue-leaning purple. It came in a set (with the same name) that I bought heavily marked down directly from BL. (I swatched all of the set at the time but I didn't swatch Password Please alone.) I know it was sold out there but I googled and found it still available several places for full price, if you really want it badly enough.


GinZing

I bought new moisturizer: Origins GinZing:
I've always been wary of scent, when it comes to moisturizers that go on the face - I guess I think of it as an irritant. For years I only used Clinique moisturizer, and it's always been unscented and I think it's also just partly that I think that's how it's supposed to be. But really, if you're using essential oils in moisturizers, those are going to have scents naturally, right? And I don't think that there's necessarily anything wrong with that. So I've been experimenting around with moisturizers with scents for the first time. I had a sample of Korres Brightening Sleeping Facial that came in a Sephora Play box (that name makes it sound like it's a mask, but it's really what I would call a night cream), and I also had a smaller sample of Ginzeng. The Korres is rose-scented and the GinZing is citrus-scented. In both cases the scents are very light. I did buy some additional sample sizes of the Korres rose products, but they are very expensive - plus I didn't actually need night cream right now. What I'm running low on is day cream. And then I found out that Origins was having a F&F sale, 20% off plus free shipping, and so that made it irresistible. (I tweeted about that sale at the time, but I believe it ended on the 13th, so it's too late for the rest of you now!) It was $22, which is way cheaper than the last full-size moisturizer that I bought. (That was LaFresh, which I do really love - it was $40 for the same amount. I like their night cream even more than the day cream, so I'll probably keep using that when it finally runs out, I imagine. It has lasted a long time and I've barely made a dent in it, so that makes it seem like more of a bargain, too.)

I'm not sure if GinZeng boosts my energy, exactly, but it smells divine and it works for what I wanted it for, and it doesn't seem irritating at all, so I'm happy. Just so you can see, it's not orange-tinted or anything, it just looks like every other moisturizer I've used lately:
(I had just changed the sheets and I noticed that the pattern on my sheets matched the bottle, so I couldn't resist using it as a background.)

There was still some LaFresh moisturizer left in the bottom of the nearly-empty container, so I used a trick I learned from Sephora Play - I mixed it with foundation. It does double-duty, and I really love the lighter texture that you end up with.

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Sugar Plum Fairy, Grape Going

This is Julie G Sugar Plum Fairy, a texture, and SH Insta-Dri Grape Going:
Julie G did two rounds of textured polishes that I know of, the candy-colored set that I think came out in the spring (of whatever year that was, 2013 maybe?) and then a holiday collection, probably later the same year. As you might guess from the name, Sugar Plum Fairy is from the holiday set. I had been to Ohio and bought at least one of the first set for myself, but (since we don't have RiteAid in Texas and Julie G isn't available anywhere else) Karen sent me several more, including two of the holiday set. This one is probably my favorite. It's a nice blue-violet with sparkle. I like all the Julie G textures, really. Most of the polishes from the two "Gumdrops" sets are still available through the Jesse's Girl website (they make Julie G) - I'm a little surprised that they're still there, but actually the texture trend has proven to have more legs than most people thought, hasn't it?

Grape Going is a nice blue-to-purple duochrome. (On the nail wheel it looks strangely similar to Eternal Beauty, next to it. But we'll get to Eternal Beauty soon - let's just say for now that that's a bit deceptive.) It does not seem to be a current color - here's all the Insta-Dri colors on the website.

Pitter Patter, Prince Street

This is Butter London Pitter Patter, and NYC In a Minute in Prince Street:
I said we were done with the redder purples, but naturally there are some strays - actually Pitter Patter looks almost wine-colored next to Prince Street, which is bluer. (If you put it next to a true wine-color, it would look very purple, though. See here for evidence of its purple-ness.) Pitter Patter was a special release for the birth of Prince George, and unlike some of BL's other LEs which have gotten re-releases, to my knowledge this one was a true LE and hasn't been seen again since.

Prince Street was a polish that I bought because I had a 50-cents off coupon at CVS, so I figured what better use than on a 99-cent polish? (This is the nail where there's the big smear on the wheel and you can't really read the name too well. I inevitably do this at least once when I do a lot of swatching. I usually figure it's better to just leave it a bit messy than to try to take it off and make it worse in the process.) Anyway, this is a nice medium purple, slightly on the blue-leaning side, slightly sheer (although whatever info I had about how many coats this is is under the smear). It's a purple like many other purples, basically, but then again the price is fabulous.

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Savita, Pitch Purple

This is Zoya Savita (which is a Matte Velvet polish) and Models Own Pitch Purple (which is a Hyper Gel polish):
So basically these are close to the opposite ends of the shine spectrum - that is, Savita is on the matte end of things (although to be more accurate, I would really call it a satin finish, not quite completely matte) and Pitch Purple is on the super-shiny end. I have to say, though, that I usually end up wearing most of the Matte Velvets with top-coat, because they all seem to have a gorgeous shimmer in them that you can't see if you leave them matte. I swatched several of them with top-coat on the tip so that you could see the effect, but apparently I didn't do that with Savita. Luckily for us, Scrangie did swatch them with top-coat, back in the day (2009) when these polishes were first released. (At least, that's when I think they were released. They've been re-released numerous times over the years.) This is the only HyperGel polish I have, and for that matter the only Models Own polish I have, but I really like it. It's a British brand and it used to be available through Llarowe, but Llarowe doesn't carry other polishes any more and I'm not sure if there's a steady US supplier these days. I imagine there are ways to get your hands on them, though. Anyway, this is a pretty similar color to Savita - look at the base of the Pitch Purple nail, where you can see the underlying color) although Pitch Purple is darker and more blue, and without the shimmer of Savita (which you can't see here anyway).

Savita is not considered a current color, because the Matte Velvets are all always LE. However, as I mentioned above, they have been re-released more than once, always in the fall, so if you are interested keep an eye out along about November. (I have all of the colors that Scrangie showed in the link above, and a couple more besides.)

I think it's becoming pretty clear that my stash project is getting into the blue end of the purples, now. I made a folder on my hard-drive called "blue-violet" and one called "purple" and these were in the purple folder, but when you compare it to the other purples they are pretty clearly more blue (compare the ones above it on the wheel, for example). I think I've finally run out of red-leaning ones - I sure had a lot of those. The blue-violets won't take nearly as long to get through, I think. (I love blue-violets but they're not at all as easy to find.)

Poltergeist Puddle, Gina Girl

This is Pretty Serious Poltergeist Puddle and e.l.f. Gina Girl (a mini):
I talked about Poltergeist Puddle when I wore it a few weeks ago. I won't try to repeat everything I said then, but basically, this is a "blurple" (ugh, hate that word) with a lot going on in it - there's all kinds of shimmer in there that you can't see that well on the nail wheel. It's more noticeable in the bottle, in this picture. As I mentioned then, this is a current polish, even though it was originally a Halloween release. (Kaz, who runs Pretty Serious, seems to really love her Halloween polishes.)

(Added: much more about Poltergeist Purple)

The e.l.f polish I'm guessing is not available. I rarely see their polishes in stores, anyway, and for that matter, I don't see polish on the website either so they may just have given up on polish altogether. I didn't buy this polish - I think Karen sent it to me somewhere along the line - but I think I must have tried to look it up at some point, because I seem to remember that it was a tie in - aha, it was Disney Villains. I do remember seeing those around a few years ago. It looks like it was from the Maleficent set, and in that case I'm not sure where the name came from - I was wanting to make a connection in my head that Gina was the Evil Queen, that is, Regina from the TV show Once Upon a Time. But while Regina is an evil queen, she's the Snow White evil queen, and Maleficent is the Sleeping Beauty evil queen - so not actually the same character at all. (In this set there's "Maleficent" and there's "Evil Queen" - because the character was never named in the Disney Snow White - although I imagine that the name Regina might well stick to her in future since OuaT is made by Disney and thus is canon of a sort.) Anyway, all that aside, this is a fairly sparse glitter in a slightly tinted base, actually pretty similar to the Essence Evil Queen polish although not dupes in any way. Apparently evil queens equate with purple glitter in more than one person's mind.

Rendezvous With You, Neeka

This is China Glaze Rendezvous With You and Zoya Neeka:
While these two aren't really very much alike, they are both colors that I would consider to be in the "grape" range. They're both a bit on the blue side and a bit dusty, although Rendezvous With You is redder and darker than Neeka. Both of them are shimmers. I frankly think that Zoya's description makes Neeka sound more interesting than it really is: "a greyed amethyst with subtle red duochrome shimmer and bright gold glitter accents." Greyed amethyst is accurate, certainly, but the rest of it just doesn't show up all that well on the nail. Which is not to say I don't like it, because I do - I just think they oversold it a bit. Overall I have to say I like Rendezvous With You more, though, partly because it's shimmery enough that it basically reads as a metallic. These are both pretty colors, though.

Both of these are current colors, too: see China Glaze and Zoya websites (not affiliate links).

Monday, June 13, 2016

Harmonie, Purple Potion

This is Zoya Harmonie and Xtreme Wear Purple Potion:
I have another Purple Potion which I've already talked about, the one in the tombstone bottle, so this is obviously not the same thing - not alike at all, in fact, other than being generally purple and having the same name. I'm pretty sure both these are discontinued. Harmonie is a super-retro lilac frost, but I have grown to be rather fond of it even though that's not my usual thing. It's not too pale, for one thing - I think of it as an Easter-egg color and I usually trot it out around then, sometime in the spring at least, if not often the rest of the time. The Xtreme Wear version of Purple Potion is darker (although not extremely dark) and you can see pretty clearly that it's got a blue duochrome shift to it. (Note that I swatched something else over the tip of it - one of those paler colors below it on the wheel, I think. But you can see PP by itself at the bottom of that nail.)

(added: better picture of Harmonie, here)

Lincoln Park After Dark, Witch Way?

This is a very classic OPI (here in a mini size), Lincoln Park After Dark, and KBShimmer Witch Way?
LPAD is obviously one of those vampy almost-blacks - it's very dark. It's so very dark it's hard to tell much else about it - it seems to have red-violet undertones, but that's about as far as I'm willing to go. It looks black in a lot of lights, which is one reason I haven't ever been tempted to get a full-size bottle. I like my colors to be distinguishable from black. Note this comparison of LPAD vs Essie Wicked - which isn't purple at all, it's red, but you can't really tell here. I have both of these so I will have to try my own comparison (but not tonight).

Lincoln Park After Dark is one of OPI's most iconic colors, it looks like you can get it in a regular version or a gel one, and at some point there was also a matte version. There was also an LE "sister" polish called Lincoln Park At Midnight, which was apparently actually slightly lighter - presumably because how could it possibly be darker without being just a black?

KBShimmer Witch Way was originally a Halloween polish, I believe (and as you might guess from the name), but it's still available on KBShimmer's website. I think a lot of people love this polish, too, and deservedly so - it's a grape-y jelly full of holo glitter. It's awesome. It goes on very light on the first coat (see here - it's the polish that's underneath Evil Queen in the second picture) but it darkens up on successive coats.

Sunday, June 12, 2016

Just A Little Dangerous

We've already talked about the Snow White polish a few days ago, so Just A Little Dangerous from Sephora by OPI is the only subject of discussion here:
I don't know that I have a whole lot to say about it, though. On the wheel it's just above the glitter - if you compare it to Suri, further up, it looks darker and slightly bluer. Here are swatches that compare it with OPI Grape Set Match - to me there it also looks much less glittery - maybe like that polish in color but not in formula. It's basically a shimmer/metallic, instead.

Island Couture, Amethyst

This is Orchid Island Couture and Colorstay Amethyst:
This seems to have been in the batch where all the pictures are slightly out-of-focus (hopefully that was the camera in the old phone and not the new one!) So Orchid is a house-brand, and we've long theorized that it might be made by the people who made Pixel Polish, since many of the colors seem comparable. But a few colors have actually made their way online (not, however, including this one). It might be easier, if you don't live in Texas where Orchid is sold, to find the old (not the current) Revlon Colorstay polishes - they're discontinued but more likely to be findable. These are both slightly shimmery purples, a little to the red-violet side but not too much. Almost - but not quite - boring. Both of these are actually very pretty. And I am definitely going to try to get better pictures of this wheel later on, but for now this will have to do.

Saturday, June 11, 2016

Celebutante, Legend

This is Ulta Salon Celebutante and Formula X Legend:
I have another polish called Celeb City, which is bright silver, and I always get mixed up about which of those is which - but I've been making double-sure to check the labels as I swatched and this is definitely Celebutante. I don't really think there's any particular color associated with celebrities, is there? So it's presumably just a randomly-applied name and that's why I can't remember the difference. On the other hand, Legend is a rather dramatic polish but other than that I can't say that I associate this color particularly with a legend, either. (I'm becoming a critic of nail polish names, now. Great.)

So anyway, Celebutante is a red-leaning purple, with no noticeable shimmer, and Legend is a dark, dramatic grape purple with shifty tendencies - I think I see some blue in there, maybe some other stuff too. I'm not really sure how I ended up with these two next to each other on the wheel, because they're certainly not much alike.

I poked around on the Ulta Salon list and I don't see Celebutante listed. I'm pretty sure I've had this for several years so it's not too surprising. And I rarely buy Formula X unless it's on sale, so the odds are that it's discontinued, because that's usually the only time they mark it down. (I poked around on this page looking for it but there are so many subsets of Formula X that I easily could have missed it. It's late.) (Looks like I had the right idea, though, it was from the Shifters collection - and there are only a couple of colors left in that collection, and Legend isn't one of them.)

Evil Queen, Vice

Is purple associated with evil? These two names sure seem like it. This is Essence Evil Queen (apparently from a Snow White collection) and Urban Decay Vice:
On the other hand, Urban Decay just loves Vice, apparently (it goes well with the whole theme of the brand, I suppose) - they have Vice lipstick and I think there were Vice palettes at one point too, weren't there? I don't wear enough eyeshadow to fool with palettes but I'm pretty sure I remember seeing one, or maybe more than one. (Yup.) I mentioned Vice-the-polish back a couple of entries ago - it's a darker purple, but pretty shimmer-packed, and the overall effect is not as dark as some of my other purples. It leans somewhat red-violet.

And today you get two pictures for the price of one, because I swatched Evil Queen twice. This second one is over KBShimmer Witch Way:
Evil Queen is just a large glitter in a mix of violet-ish shades - a bit blue-leaning, but not overwhelmingly. The base might be just slightly purple-tinted (at least, I think maybe I see that when I squint at the top picture) but if so it's extremely pale. Witch Way matches this very well, but this has to be one coat (of Witch Way), because I'm pretty sure it gets much darker with more coats. I think this would look really well over one of these dark shades, as well. Witch Way by itself is somewhere on this same wheel, so it should be coming up soon.

Oh, and I suspect both of these polishes are discontinued. Urban Decay doesn't even have nail polish listed as an option any more - and actually, they used to say that all of their polishes were LE, but I think all that meant was that they only did one production run of each, because I remember Vice staying around for a while - and I'm guessing this Essence line was also LE in the first place. (It looks like it was a Snow White & the Huntsman tie-in.)

Added, from here:
BIG purple glitter in a clear base - there's a picture here (if you scroll down a ways) over a dark purple - definitely not intended to be worn on its own

Friday, June 10, 2016

Blast from the past

We've already established that I'm disorganized, right? No surprise to anybody there. Well, today I found a 2010 Sephora holiday catalog stuck way up underneath my car seat. Presumably it's been there for five years or so. It mostly just had the usual stuff - it didn't look all that different from what they'd have had for holiday 2015. But I sure would like to get my hands on this S-OPI mini set.
It was $48, which is pretty high for a mini set, but then regular S-OPI polishes were about $10 back then so it's not too bad relative to that. I have a few of these colors, I think, but not near all of them.

Victorian End, Empty Stocking

This is Square Hue Victorian End (from the 1900s collection) and Ulta Empty Stocking (from a "Wicked Wonderland" set of minis):
Both of these are really nice dark purples. Victorian End is a little on the dusty side, and it looks like it leans a bit on the red side, as well. Empty Stocking is the one that says "Ulta" on the wheel, because the name on the bottle is tiny and in black print and it's utterly illegible against the dark polish - I had to go back later and reason out what the actual name of the polish was. It's very dark and I think maybe it leans a little blue, but it's so dark it's hard to be sure. (Compare to Vice, above these two - Empty Stocking looks darker and Vice looks a bit redder.)


Added: If you're curious about how I figured out what the polish name was, it was process of elimination. It's on my Stash by brand list; I think the original packaging had the names listed, but I also remember being able to read these names back a few years ago - at least when the light was good. I still can, off and on, but it's getting harder. But N-evergreen is of course the green, and Bad Santa is the red (I still love that name), and Tilted Halo and Twisted Tinsel are presumably the gold and silver, respectively. So that only leaves Empty Stocking. (I'm not real sure why an empty stocking is purple - because it's dark, I guess? Sometimes people who name polishes are really reaching. - It can't be an easy thing to do.)

NOTD: Ivanka

I slapped on Zoya Ivanka on the way out the door the other day. I'd already swatched Ivanka (but haven't posted it yet; assuming I keep going around the color wheel, it'll be a while on that) so I knew it was going to be really pretty, and of course it is.
It may have been in the glass-fleck-type collection with Daul - I'll check on that when I get a chance. Ivanka has a dark-green base but Zoya talks about "mermaid green" as well, and that's because it has a good dose of blue-green in there somewhere. It reminded me of She's Beyond Kelp! actually - the blue-to-green shifting flakie.

(I'm not saying anything about who Ivanka might be named after, because that would involve the T-word, which I avoid at all costs. It makes my blood pressure go up.)

Thursday, June 9, 2016

Cor Blimey

This is Butter London Cor Blimey (a mini or "fashion size" bottle, as BL likes to call them):
This is a dark purple with red-violet shimmer and a satin finish. It's a nice color. ALU has swatches that are much better than mine.

Added:
Here's a manicure from 2016