Sunday, September 29, 2013

Violet & red-violet wheel

I find the color "violet" vaguely confusing. Maybe it's because I'm from Texas and I had never seen a violet growing in the wild until I first went to Ohio to visit my in-laws. (My mother-in-law looked at me like I was insane when I saw one on the ground at the park and said, "What's that?" I had no idea that was how they grew.) Anyway, for whatever reason, I have trouble with the difference between purple and violet. I suspect I'm not the only one. But when a purple starts having noticeable red tones, then I know that's a red-violet. (I also tend to use the term blue-violet for blue-leaning purples, mostly because that lets me avoid the word "blurple" which I think is just an ugly word.)

So this wheel starts with some fairly neutral purples but then shades very much into red-violet.
(more under the jump)

Blue-green link post

As I said about the green post, this really should go with the nail wheels, but I didn't think of it at the time I was doing the first few, so I'm gradually catching up with these on the ones I've already posted. It's as much for my own use as for anybody else's.


layers:
Zuza and T-Teal and Glee:


From other blogs, about Mermaid's Tale and dupes: 

Saturday, September 28, 2013

Stash additions

Apparently I got so involved in the whole nail wheel business that I forgot to post this lovely picture:
...which is recent additions to my stash, many of which I have worn already. I think I've worn everything except Mermaid's Tale and Girls on Film, at this point. I've had Quick Jeanius on for several days now, and before that I wore F*ck and Run over Unforgettable Heart. (Next time I want to try it on its own, actually - maybe I'll do that next!)

For the record, here is what's in this picture (by columns going left to right, since that's basically how I arranged them):
  • (1st column) Quick Jeanius - which as noted already, is navy-blue shimmer with some purple in it
  • (2nd column) Baby Bellini - very similar to the other Cocktail Colours, sheer and shimmery
  • Mermaid's Tale, blue and green glitter, I think this is supposed to be a dupe for some Lippman - is it Mermaid's Dream? I am too lazy to look it up right now (Later: Oh! It's actually a near-dupe for Across the Universe, apparently.)
  • (3rd column - all Nostalgic Nail Lacquers) Girls On Film - pink and purple glitter in a paler pink base
  • As If! - black, white, and pink matte confetti of various sizes, in a clear base
  • F*ck and Run (I'm not editing myself there, that's how she spells it) - red jelly packed with red & pink shimmer
I guess I should say for the record that while I purchased all of these on my own, as I always do, I did get a free upgrade to full-size on the Nostalgics even though I paid for minis for a couple of them. I don't know that she has any idea that I'm a blogger, anyway (and I am a pretty damn obscure blogger, at that), so I'm really guessing that that was just because she's clearing out these colors. Anyway, I am happy enough with them that I just placed another order, which you will of course hear about in great detail later. (It's only a couple of bottles, and sale ones at that. I've been relatively good lately.)

Another nail wheel coming soon.

Friday, September 20, 2013

Green

This is mostly for my own benefit, although other people may be interested, you never know! It just occurred to me that I should have been doing this as I went along with the nail-wheels, so I'm going to do link posts for the nail wheels I've already posted and then hopefully do this for the rest of them as I go along. (I have 8 wheels completed and a 9th one started, and I'm not anywhere near through all of my polishes. But I've only posted maybe 5 of them, I've lost track.)

So, this is not necessarily everything I've ever had to say about every green polish, but it's things that I want to be able to find again later, at least:
Green nail wheel (which I shouldn't have buried under the picture of the purple-and-confetti mani, but you live and learn)
Greens in my stash (from April)

Rikki and Irene is not a combination I put on the nail wheel, but I really liked it so I want to remember that! Also Ivy League and Zuza (at the very bottom of that entry, and which I came up with to tone down Ivy League, since it's too yellow for me). Also Maisie over Ivy League - which was pretty but had the disadvantage of taking many coats of Maisie to have much effect. And right before that I did Maisie over Emerald City.

And here's the green tag for this blog, in case you should feel impelled to search further.

(This is NOT an affiliate link - I'm just adding it because I happened to see it: Zoya greens. I'd like to have every one of those.)

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Purple nail wheel

This is the most neutral part of the purples - not predominantly either blue-violet or red-violet. (I may not have that many blues, but I have a ton of purples.)
(List and more pictures after the jump)
  1. Quick Jeanius
  2. Royal Invite
  3. Nightlife
  4. Orbit (1 coat of base, glitter on tip)
  5. Vinyl
  6. Plum It
  7. Who Are You Wearing?
  8. Empty Stocking
  9. Purple Potion (SH Xtreme Wear)
  10. Amethyst
  11. Mira
  12. Celebutante
  13. I Don't Bite
  14. Purple Haze
  15. Winterberry
  16. Harmonie
  17. Eternal Beauty (1 coat)
  18. Lotus
  19. No More Waity, Katie
  20. Lillibet's Jubilee (1 coat)
I think that if these are supposed to be the neutral ones, there are a couple here that don't belong. I really thought that Quick Jeanius would be far too blue for this wheel, because it looks blue in the bottle, but actually it looks right at home. The one that's really more blue than I realized is OPI Who Are You Wearing? - #7. And Purple Potion (9), especially, is too red-violet, and should be on the next wheel. (There IS a Purple Potion on the next wheel, in fact, but it's a completely different polish.) #3 and #5, Nightlife and Vinyl also seem to have more red-violet bases to them, although it's almost impossible to tell after you get a couple of coats on, with the dark ones.

Nothing here has black undercoats and such like I've been doing on other wheels. I did sort of layer the coats, especially on the dark ones, where you could see what just one coat looked like, because in a lot of cases it lets you see what the base color is.

Here's 1 through 3:

4 through 7:
I don't know how well you can see the glitter - I put some on just the tip of #4. The glitter part of the bottle is almost empty.

8 through 10:

11 through 14 (but out of order: RBL is 14, Sephora 13, Ulta 12 & Zoya Mira 11)

15-18, also out of order - 15 & 16 on the bottom, 17 & 18 on the top:

And the two BLs are 19 and 20. Don't let No More Waity Katie fool you into thinking it's gray just because it looks like it here, though. It has a very definite purple cast to it.

Today's mani is from nail wheel 3: Hard Candy Crush on Lava. It's beautiful. Very much in Bad Fairy sort of territory, although I don't think it's anywhere near being a dupe to that.

And the next wheel after this is more purples, but shading more into red-violets. 

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Blue and blue-violet nail wheel

Moving on around the wheel, we've had greens and blue-greens, now we have blues and blue-violets. The lesson here, to me, was how few real blues I actually have. I had to go fairly seriously into the blue-violets to fill the wheel up.

Here's everything I put on this wheel:


And here's just the wheel itself:
  1. Shy (3 coats)
  2. Cabo Cruise (2 coats)
  3. Apple Berry Smoothie (2 coats)
  4. Liberty (2 coats)
  5. Mesmerize (2 coats)
  6. unnamed blue mini (2 coats)
  7. Blue It (1 coat)
  8. Blackout (2 coats - but didn't really need it)
  9. Midnight Cami (2 coats)
  10. Indigo (2 coats)
  11. Montana Sky (2 coats)
  12. Blueberry Fizz (2 coats)
  13. Pacific Blue (1 coat)
  14. On a Trip (2 coats)
  15. Not So Blueberry (2 coats)
  16. Grape Going (2 coats)
  17. Fiji (3 coats)
  18. unnamed purple/blue glitter mini (partly over Jet Black)
  19. Dancer Is the Best Reindeer (partly over Jet Black)
  20. Apple Berry Smoothie (1 coat) over Jet Black 
This is numbers 1-4:
#1, Hard Candy Shy, is so pale I never wear it. Colors like that are why I never buy pastels. The Fergie, Cabo Cruise, is the one that stained the hell out of my nails, to the point that I've been afraid to wear Zoya Liberty, #4, because I've heard stories about it staining, too. (I'll get over it sooner or later, because it's a beautiful color.) #3, Baby BelliniApple Berry Smoothie,* is quite sheer, like all the Cocktail Colours I've tried, but it's really pretty. That's also it over Jet Black as #20.

*The names of the Cocktail Colours make no sense to me. Cutie Colada is green, Apple Berry Smoothie is blue, Baby Bellini is purple. Apple Berry Smoothie in particular confuses me; in my brain that should be the green one.

This is 5-8:
5 and 7 - Essie Mesmerize and Xtreme Wear Blue It - are pretty much the only things I own that are what I think of as middle-of-the-road blues - royal blue would be the conventional name for that, I guess! Everything else is either superbright cyan blue or a very dark blue or a blue-green, it seems - including #6, which looks royal blue in the bottle, but went on cyan.

This is 9-12:
I should have tried Montana Sky (#11) with a base of something to see how it did. I guess I'll have to try that sometime soon and report back! And as I said at the time I wore it, the blue Gumdrop one (12) is very silvery and pale - I really should have put it back at the beginning next to Shy.

13 through 16 is where we start segueing into blue-violet:
I thought at first that Pacific Blue, #13, was more periwinkle than I've found it actually is - it does have maybe a hint of that, but only a hint. Putting it next to On a Trip (#14) probably makes it look even more blue. 15, Not So Blueberry, is an outright blue-violet shimmer. And 16, Grape Going, is a duochrome with a strong blue flash.

And here's 17-19:
Fiji is another very blue-violet one (it's also quite sheer), and then we finish off with two purple-and-blue glitters, which look very similar on the nail, actually. Not quite dupes, but close.

Next up is the more neutral part of the purples.

Monday, September 16, 2013

Metallic nail wheel

I started off the nail wheels like I was going to go around the color wheel, and that is eventually my intent, but I stopped after doing green and blue-green in order to do all the metallics. It occurred to me later that I could have done the metallics according to their underlying colors - that is, I could have treated copper and rose-gold as pink, brass and gold as yellow, bronze as (I guess) yellow-green, and silver as gray. (This would incidentally have given me the advantage of having something to put on the wheel for yellow since I have NO other yellows whatsoever.) However, that's not what I did. I lumped all the metallics together with the few glitters that didn't fit anywhere else, instead.
  1. Gold Rush over Jet Black
  2. Tiara over Jet Black
  3. Trailer Trash
  4. Celeb City
  5. Luna
  6. Tiara
  7. Twisted Tinsel
  8. Gold Rush
  9. Traffic Stopper Copper over I Only Shop Vintage
  10. Traffic Stopper Copper over Jet Black
  11. I Only Shop Vintage
  12. Rage
  13. Glitz
  14. Funky Monkey (4 coats)
  15. Crush on Lava 
  16. unnamed copper shimmer
  17. Holiday Spirit over Jet Black
  18. R.I.P.
  19. Party of 5 Glitters over Jet Black
  20. unnamed silver glitter over Jet Black
Mostly these are two coats.

A lot of these have a black base, and as noted, I used Hard as Nails Jet Black a lot. It's not my very favorite black, and it's also my oldest, so I figured it was a good candidate to use here. It's mainly not my favorite because it takes 3 coats to be opaque, which makes it a bit of a pain to use here, but eh. In at least one case it smeared and became not-opaque again while I was dabbing glitter around on top of it. (See #10.) But anyway, it's black enough to get the idea.

Somehow the end of the wheel kept merging with the beginning, on many of these. I guess that's why it's a circle, right? Anyway, this is 1, 2, 19, and 20:
The gold one is an older Cover Girl polish, as is probably pretty obvious. I think it might be the oldest polish I have nowadays, although I'm not sure about that.

I was trying to be all organized, and I took some pictures with the bottles all lined up (don't get used to seeing this!) - this is #1-5:
I have to say that Trailer Trash - which is the Hard Candy, another older polish - is probably my favorite-ever silver, because it's a toned-down silver. It doesn't look that different than Celeb City, next to it, on the wheel, but I like it far more. Celeb City is always too blindingly metallic for my taste.

This is #6 (Tiara again) through 10, plus Jet Black, which as I mentioned before is all over this wheel:

11 through 15:

and 16 through 20:

I prefer the pictures where you can see the bottles AND the wheel, although I know it's a bit more difficult to sort out. This is 9-14 again:

And 14-18:
A couple of comments here: (1) I only own two multicolor glitters, in the Lippmann Happy Birthday sense: one is Party of Five Glitters, which is 19, and the other one is Sation Holiday Spirit, which is 17 and which is a much smaller glitter and which I like much better. It's beautiful. Party of Five Glitters doesn't really do that much for me. (2) I know last year I kept thinking Orly RIP really had copper glitter rather than orange glitter, but I suspect I was looking at it in direct sun when I said that because it looks very orange in these pictures. And (3) is that that unnamed glitter is much pinker than I thought it was. The colors in that set overall don't always look like you'd expect. (And I forget to wear them much, so I haven't actually tested nearly all of them out.)

Next up: I go back to the color wheel, and do blue and blue-violet.

Also, for the record, I've had a couple of manicures go by since I last posted. One was Colorstay Rainforest, which is a dark-green glass fleck, and which I totally love, and the other one was an oldie but a goodie, Sinful Colors Winterberry, which I guess you would call a sort of a slightly browned-out purple. It's really pretty, but it defies description, a bit. (Nouveau Cheap says here that it has some taupe in it, which I guess is maybe a better way to say it.)

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Blue-green nail wheel


Here's the original blue-green nail wheel, which had two empty spaces. However, I have already filled both of those up and you'll see them further down.
  1. Racy Green (3 coats)
  2. Zuza (alone on tip, over Racy Green on lower nail)
  3. Henley Regatta
  4. Mermaid's Tale (3 coats)
  5. Viridian (1 coat)
  6. Deeper Dive (2 coats)
  7. Thames (3 coats)
  8. Glee over Teal of Fortune
  9. Glee (1 coat)
  10. Feifei (2 coats)
  11. Feifei over Teal of Fortune
  12. Sweet Peacock
  13. Teal of Fortune
  14. Party by the Pool (4 coats)
  15. Evening Emerald (3 coats)
  16. Black & Blue (2 coats)
  17. East Village (3 coats)
  18. Zuza (alone on tip, over East Village on lower nail)
  19. Maisie (alone on tip, over East Village on lower nail)
  20. Nail Junkie (alone on tip, over East Village on lower nail)
I did a version of 19-20 yesterday - it started out to be 19, actually, with East Village and then Maisie, but I ended up putting a light coat of Nail Junkie on top of that, and it came out really pretty. The problem with using East Village as a base is that it's really sheer, and it takes 3 coats of it to get to anything approaching opaque - really 4 would be more like it, but I stopped at 3.

Here's the filled-up nail wheel, with the two adds (Mermaid's Tale and Viridian, which for some reason are #4 and 5):
They call Viridian an emerald, but it went very comfortably into the blue-green wheel, which to my mind means it's not a true emerald. Mermaid's Tale should and does go here, although its base color is darker than I expected - it looks teal to me. I'll probably put something like Teal of Fortune under it when I wear it, but I think you could make it opaque on its own if you were patient enough.

By the way, I apologize for how hard it is to read the numbers on the wheel. I'm working on that. I think the next one is much better. I decided to try to see how a Pigma Micron pen worked, and the answer was "not as well as a Sharpie." The Pigma pen smeared really badly.

There were a lot of things here that needed undercoats, and I leaned heavily toward picking things that were cheap and easily replaced (in case I run through it all) for that duty - which is why you'll see Hard as Nails Jet Black a lot on these wheels, and here it tended to be Teal of Fortune and East Village and in one case Racy Green. (I liked Racy Green under Zuza, I need to remember that one.)

Here's 1-3:

(Remember that 4 and 5 were already covered above)
6-9 (8 is Teal of Fortune under Glee; TofF appears alone further along the wheel)

10-14, except they are somewhat out of order - L-R & top to bottom, this is 13, 14, 12, & 10:
(Note that Party by the Pool, #14, is a jelly, which is why it took so many coats to get opaque. It's really pretty, though - it has shimmer in it which may be hard to see here. Also, if I had this to do over, I would put Feifei in with the blues. I don't know what made me think I was seeing green in there.)

I usually don't use the pictures with flash, but this one is actually in order and everything, so 15-20:

I was going by how the polish looked in the bottle when I sorted things, but I was a bit surprised that I got this accurate with Black and Blue - with that name you would think it was a blackened straight-out blue rather than a blackened blue-green. But apparently it's more the latter. (Although I guess if you think of a bruise, as the name does imply, then it's maybe pretty accurate, if somewhat distasteful!)

ADDED: one additional comment: I talked up towards the top about Viridian not being a true emerald, but there are two other colors here that are allegedly emerald and aren't: Evening Emerald, the Pixi, just above - although the "evening" part does at least imply that it's a darkened emerald - and also Thames. Thames is maybe a bit closer but still no cigar, as far as I'm concerned.

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Nail wheel Sunday? - greens

"Nail Wheel Wednesday" has much more of ring to it, but that's Karen's thing, anyway, and while I'm sure she would let me borrow it, I'm probably never going to be consistent enough to do a specific thing on a specific day. That would just not be me, let's face it. But I do have some nail wheels done and I can't stand not to show them off.

Before I go back to nail wheels, let me say that the reason I wasn't heard from all week was that I had the same polish on all week. Morning, Moneypenny did last very well, even if it looked like random blobs of color that got even blobbier as the week went on! Meanwhile, my order from Nostalgic came in, so now I have on As If! over On a Trip, because purple seemed like it'd be a good contrast (and it is). Here's a blurry picture from the car:
(In case anybody ever worries about all those pictures taken in my car - let me reassure you that I do take them at stop lights, at the very least, not when I'm in motion. There are several very long lights on my way to work, that's usually when you get these. Or sometimes they're taken in the Starbucks drive-through, or when I'm about to get out of the car. Can you tell I don't do much advance planning on this?)

These are the first nail wheels I've ever bought. I got them from some random seller on Amazon, 10 for really-really-cheap and they shipped for free - from Hong Kong, so it took them a while to get here but I didn't mind waiting. (If I remember to look and see who I bought them from, I'll let you know!)
As I said last time when I put the preview up, the writing on the wheel itself is basically for my own edification (especially for later when I can't find the separate list I made) and I pity anybody else who attempts to interpret all of this, considering that I can barely read it myself. Here's the list, starting with the two-tone one on the far left. I got a bit more methodical about keeping track of coats after this wheel, but I think these are mostly 2 coats unless otherwise noted.
  1. Two-Timer Stars (partially over Leaf Him at the Altar)
  2. Cutie Colada
  3. Ivy League
  4. unnamed lime green
  5. Cutie Colada over Ivy League
  6. Rock Candy
  7. unnamed green
  8. Tenacious Teal
  9. Ipanema Girl
  10. Rikki over Ipanema Girl
  11. Emerald City
  12. N-Evergreen
  13. Symbiote (actually gray)
  14. Lizard Belly (3 coats)
  15. Kale
  16. Irene
  17. Crocadilly
  18. Rikki over Leaf Him at the Altar
  19. Rikki
  20. Leaf Him at the Altar
Symbiote (#13) is not actually green, it's gray, but it's hard to tell with some of these - Lizard Belly in particular looks gray in the bottle, and apparently I couldn't tell the difference between Kale and Symbiote in the bottle, either. I decided just to leave it here.

Here's the wheel and all the green polishes - I think Symbiote had been banished back to the gray box by the time I took this.


Overall, I was experimenting around with whether to layer half of a nail like I did on #1, or give it a separate whole nail like I did on #5. I've finished four wheels now and I'm inclined to think what I did on the very first one works the best. But you'll see it both ways in the next several wheels.

I did bottle pictures (below), and I attempted to line them up by the correct portion of the wheel, which was sometimes more successful and sometimes less so!

Here are 1-4, the lightest greens. It's hard to see the numbers on some parts of the wheel, but #1, again, is the two-tone nail. #5, to the left of the texture, is #2 over #3. #1, the old-style Maybelline, is pretty definitely intended to be a top coat.The Cocktail Colours all seem to be "buildable sheers" and I have mostly actually been wearing them over another color. Over Ivy League, Cutie Colada mostly just adds shimmer. On its own, it's quite pale. And the Maybelline is almost invisible on its own until you build up several coats.

This is 6-12, mostly the brightest ones. There's one more number than there is polish because #10 is layered, Rikki over Ipanema Girl - you'll see Rikki alone later. You can see that #6, the Gumdrop, is much more silvery-gray than the rest of these. 7, 8, & 12 are slightly more blue- although I don't think any of them qualify as full-on blue-greens. The Layla, # 9, is very bright - I'd call it more or less a Kelly green. Emerald City - fittingly - is really the only one that I'd call a true emerald green. (Including Viridian, which is on the next wheel.)
 

This is 14-16 - or actually, 16-14, since going L-R this is Irene - possibly my favorite all time green - and then Kale and Lizard Belly, both holos. I love all of these, actually. 

And finally, this is 17 (the magnetic that doesn't like to work right - I'd be complaining a lot more about that if I didn't also like the color!) - and then 19 & 20. (And this is the one where I didn't get the wheel turned to the right place - you can see 17 & 18 (which is actually 19 & 20 layered together) but you can't see 19 & 20 separately.)

Overall, I think it's pretty obvious that it's the dark and greyed-out greens that I like the best. The yellow-greens aren't flattering on me, and the pure greens I just usually think are too bright, although I wear all of these at least occasionally. But things like Irene and Kale are the ones I love. (I haven't even tried Leaf it at the Altar on myself yet, but expect to see it soon!)

And I really like the nail wheels, overall, just because it's easier to see the differences between colors. I have my boxes sorted by color and these are going in the appropriate box for reference.

Monday, September 2, 2013

Shades of rose

Let's start off with a picture, which I will explain later on:

Let's see, I haven't posted in enough days that I'm having trouble remembering what I've had on since I last mentioned it. I think that after Ali, I looked around at the other pinks I had that looked neon-ish, and settled on a Revlon I hadn't worn in several years, Strawberry Electric. It looked very "electric pink" in the bottle, if not quite a full-on neon. I didn't get around to taking a picture, but here's somebody else's picture that comes pretty close to what mine looked like: The Blahg.

Aside: I nosed around on Revlon's website, and I don't think they have this color (Strawberry Electric) listed any more, although I'm pretty sure it was available not too too long ago. They seem to be changing a lot of colors to one-word names like Scandalous - which I showed here not long ago - and Delicious. I do notice that they still have Cherries in the Snow, though. It's supposed to one of their oldest colors, I read somewhere, going back to the early years of Revlon in the 1930s. This piece talks about Revlon lipsticks, but it includes a picture of an old ad for Cherries in the Snow. I'm pretty sure I have owned Cherries in the Snow somewhere along the line, but I would like to try it again sometime. Although I am totally awash in nice reds these days.

Anyway, I don't think Strawberry Electric is anything like that old but I'm pretty sure it's one that's been around a while. And it's, well, kind of blah, really. I mean, it's okay, but it's just a frosty medium pink, not really what I would call "electric" at all.

So, as I do, I put a coat of Chloe on top of it. Then I decided that the problem was that rosy-pink - which there is nothing wrong with, per se, but which I am just not in the mood for lately - and Chloe was not going to change it enough to make me happy. So I put a coat of Reva on top of it instead. Problem solved (by making it more or less a whole other color, but oh well.)

What I didn't do was put top coat on top of Reva, so that didn't actually last very long. I took that off, and then I got immersed in nail wheels (much more on that to come) and completely failed to do anything about my actual nails for a whole day. I did think to take a picture of my bare nails, though - imperfect cleanup and all:
I will add that I did go back and clean them up better after this - there's a lot of pink left down in the edges, here, if you look closely. If you did look closely, you also saw that something a couple of weeks ago stained my nails quite a bit, although I've certainly had much worse staining than this! If I think of it, I'm going to look back and try to figure out what it was. I know it was before last weekend, so it wasn't Knees Up.

I am starting to get kind of fond of this shorter nail length. I have so much trouble with peelies that it makes life easier to keep them pretty short, anyway. I'm never consistent about it so I'm sure I will let them grow out at least a little, but I may start thinking of this sort of length as the default.

Anyway, I eventually put on Morning, Moneypenny, which was the picture at the beginning. I got much better results than the last magnetic I tried, but still iffy since it's really hard to tell what the pattern is. Is That Silva? is still the only magnetic that I'm prepared to call an unqualified success. (I still have one more that I haven't tried, though - the Finger Paints that Karen sent me. It seemed kind of like a fall color, so I was saving it for later.) Anyway, the color of Morning, Moneypenny is quite nice. It looks like a dark-pink shimmer in the bottle, but the magnet brings out even darker tones, so that it barely looks like a pink at all, in the end.

And I have been playing with nail wheels since they came in the mail the other day, and here is a preview (I wouldn't recommend trying to read my writing, it's a mess):
The translating of that will probably figure largely in the next entry. (I did green first, on the right, and then the blue-green one on the left. And I've pulled out all my metallics to do next.)