State Of The Art (and the full favorites wheel)

This is Formula X State Of The Art, which was on my 2016 favorites list:

It's an odd slightly-bleached-looking green (that maybe leans a little blue). The bleached effect may or may not be my imagination, because after all, those bleached-out colors were a thing a couple of years ago, and this is not a new polish. In fact I'm pretty sure it's discontinued.

I think this may be the only creme out of the 19 polishes on my shortlist for 2016. Which probably tells you a lot about my taste in polishes. And in fact I'm pretty sure this is one of the ones I cut out at one point and then put back in again.

Here's my previous post, which pairs it with Glee.


(Here's a picture of the wheel with all these polishes, because I don't think I've actually written down the full list anywhere. Note that there's actually only 19 polishes, #2 below doesn't count!)

Let's see, let's make it easy - starting from the most easily identifiable polish on this wheel, the white one, and going clockwise:

1. Leia (Zoya)
2. (half Leia, half Sparkling Garbage, over black)
3. Sparkling Garbage (Orly)
4. Ivanka (Zoya)
5. Who Ya Gonna Call (Salon Perfect)
6. Locavore (Rescue Beauty Lounge)
7. State Of The Art (Formula X)
8. Starry Starry Night (Essie)
9. Dream (Zoya)
10. Lake Louise (Square Hue)
11. Excuse Me I Blurpled (KBShimmer)
12. Alice (Zoya)
13. Aster (Zoya)
14. Poltergeist Puddle (Pretty Serious)
15. Purple Fiction (China Glaze)
16. We'll Never Be Royals (Color Club)
17. Vogue (Square Hue)
18. Verismo (Jin Soon)
19. Hotel Particulier (Lancome)
20. Small Dim Summer Stars (Rescue Beauty Lounge)

I commented when I first showed this about the lack of warm colors, and I talked above about the lack of cremes. I also notice that there's a complete lack of OPIs, which tend to have a big presence on other peoples' favorites lists. I do buy OPI polishes from time to time but I don't have near as many as a lot of polish people do. That also goes to some degree for Essie and China Glaze, of which I have one of each here. I think of those three and Zoya together to some degree - they're the big commercial salon brands, right? I think I just don't find most of their new releases terribly interesting and I don't find that their formulas are as magical (on me, anyway) as a lot of people seem to think. I definitely am partial to Zoyas, but I didn't buy a huge number of Zoyas this year, either, it's just that a lot of what I bought ended up here. (I think I bought ten Zoyas, six from the Earth Day promo and four on Black Friday. I think I bought two China Glazes and only the one Essie - oh, and also the set of four Essie minis, I forgot about that one. And offhand, the only OPIs I can remember buying in 2016 were the pair of Hello Kitty ones - I know I did think about putting Starry-Eyed For Dear Daniel on this list. It narrowly failed to make the cut.)