Oranges for Halloween

I've been talking about orange polish off and on all month, since I've been trying to wear mostly Astros Orange as long as the playoffs are going on. I'm not going to specifically talk about baseball* but since it's Halloween I thought this was a good time to talk about the oranges I've been wearing and the ones I haven't. The Astros version of orange is a brighter orange - but I'm also a Texas Ex (aka Longhorn) and I also went to a high school that had an orange color-scheme, so I've always been very aware of the differences between bright orange and the Longhorn version, which is usually more of a burnt orange. I've learned over the years that I can wear orange pretty well if it's a red-leaning orange, but burnt orange is less flattering to me (although mostly passable) and anything that leans very far toward yellow-orange makes me look really bilious. So while I own quite a lot of orange polishes, one way and another, they're a carefully-curated set of oranges that avoid anything too yellow-toned. I didn't do any new swatches for this but I'm going to pull some of my old ones and talk about the differences.

I've been doing a lot of layering, but most of my Astros manicures have been things layered over a couple of red-oranges. Zoya Destiny works really well. By itself it's almost a coral, which is why I've mostly been using it layered. You can see on the wheel below that it looks almost pink. The more coats you put on, the more orange it looks on its own, though. This is two coats on the swatch here, but three coats probably work better for my purposes.

Mostly I've worn Y'all Come Back Ya Hear on top of it. though.

The Zoya on the left here is Autumn, which is a very burnt orange and I didn't try to use that, but you can see that Y'all Come Back, next to it, looks very pumpkin-orange - maybe just a hair of red-orange to it, but not much - and furthermore it's a "sorbet" (as OPI calls these jelly-like polishes from the Texas collection) so it layers really well. You can get this pretty opaque on its own but I usually don't bother, I just layer it over something. Together with Destiny it's pretty much perfect for my purposes.

I also used Square Hue Nani as a base:

It's not as coral as Destiny but it's definitely a bit red-leaning, also.

I layered VIP here (above) on top of Nani, and as I mentioned at the time, I eventually put Colorstay Fall Mood on top of that.

I put it on with a dry brush, and just kind of spread it around lightly without covering up the orange. I like this technique. Fall Mood - which is from the previous iteration of Colorstay, not the current one - is a sort of hard-to-classify metallic bronze color. (The polish on the left here is Orly Flagstone Rush, which is a bit more orange-brown and probably would have worked fine for this as well. I was also thinking that Princess Penny would probably have worked well.)

The Astros have been in the playoffs so long that I've started over completely with the orange layers at least twice. I started with Destiny first, then Nani, then Destiny again. I did the Destiny thing the same way as the first time, with Y'all Come Back Ya Hear on top, but then a couple of days ago I switched it up and put Zoya Kaufda on top of it.

Kaufda looks more red-orange here than I usually think it is. It's sort of a hybrid orange-coppery shimmer. It's lovely, and went well over the layers underneath. It darkened it a bit but it still looks plenty orange enough. (I'm still wearing this mani but it's chipping now. I will probably just try to patch it up and get it to last a bit longer rather than start completely over again, though.)

The other polish in the picture above is called Candy Cane Cordial and it's a holo glitter, it's nice. I didn't come across that one and I didn't find Orly Retro Red, which is a matte red-orange that I was really intending to use the last time. Despite the name, it reads pretty orange and it seemed like it would work. Here's a picture of it:

Many of these polishes are discontinued, I should note. Zoya Destiny is still current and so was Autumn, last I checked, but Kaufda is not. Kaufda and Y'all Come Back Ya Hear are polishes that might be findable from beauty supplies and so forth, though.

*Yeah, ok, I can't completely not talk about baseball. Did you see that crazy game on Sunday night? I thought I was going to pass out before it was finally over. And now it's two games in Los Angeles today and tomorrow, and if we win either one of them we win. Yike. But Verlander's pitching tonight, so I'm hoping for the best. Maybe we won't have to go to game 7 at all. (Knock on wood.)