Stash: shimmers & duos (aka the last big stash post)

Here's the last big installment of shimmers, as well as some duochromes - and this is the last full installment of this stash run-through. Now I'm trying to figure out what I missed. (Several of my coppery polishes seem to be MIA, which leads me to think they're all together somewhere.) But meanwhile, here are the things from the bottom of the bin - which is not to say they're my least-favorites, by any means. There are some things here that I really like a lot.

top row:

• Slightly Unstable (Paint Box Polish) - the name of this polish refers to Bellatrix Lestrange, and it's from a Women of Harry Potter collection. (To call Bellatrix "slightly unstable" is seriously understating the case, but maybe that's the idea.) Paint Box calls this polish black with a green shift, and I guess they should know, but it reads as a blackened green, with shifty tendencies and scattered holo bits.
• Rory (Zoya) - pink with an orchid or mauve tint, and an extremely heavy shimmer, almost a foil. It's got a certain similarity to last year's "liquid metal" finishes, to my mind. It's pretty but a little pale for my taste.
• Peonies Gone Wild (Bonita Salon) - this is a bit like a darker version of Rory, really - very shimmery, darker pink with hints of violet.
• Ruby Without A Cause (Sephora By OPI) - a shimmery wine that's supposed to have a duochrome to it, but it never seems to show up on the nail. Rather frustrating.
• Hipnotic (Finger Paints Magnetic) - a pinky-wine shimmer. I did get this one to work, for the most part, which puts it ahead of most of the magnetics I've tried!

middle row:

• Curse Your Sudden But Inevitable Betrayal (Dollish Ultimate Fandom collection) - My favorite line from Firefly becomes a marsala-ish red-brown shimmer with some green duochrome shift, here. (The color of a dinosaur, I guess?)
• Stone Cold Karma Luxe (Rococo) - this is one of those sort of mushroom-colored nudes, it looks like a plain old tan color but it has hints of mauve that show up from time to time. And of course, a lot of shimmer.
• (upside down) Razzmatazz (Orly mini) - I'm not sure what I was looking at when I called this a shimmer. It looks to me now like more of a microglitter. It's another pinky-red and the shimmer is more or less tonal.
• Vaclavske Namesti (SquareHue 11.14, the Prague collection) - SquareHue does some beautiful shimmers; this one is purple with brown leanings.
• First Flight (SquareHue 01.15, the 1900 collection) - The good people of SquareHue have this labeled as a "high-gloss creme" which is odd because it's full of shimmer. I don't know what somebody was thinking. I thought this was too light and would look awful on me, but it turned out I really loved it. It's a very cool light gray, almost pearly-looking.
• As Long As You Love Me (essence Beauty Beats) - Is it necessary to say I'm far too old for the whole Justin Bieber thing? This had a picture of Bieber on the display but I wasn't paying any attention to that when I bought it. And the name didn't ring any bells for me (although I checked YouTube earlier and I did actually recognize the song). As for the polish itself, it's a medium-gray shimmer fairly similar to the one above, except maybe slightly darker.

sideways:

• Azure (SH LustreShine) - blue with a purple shift, I'd call this. It looks like it's got both shimmer and microglitter in it when I look close. A beautiful color. (I finally bought this when I found it on clearance; I never would buy them before that because I thought they were overpriced. I usually won't pay $9 for Essie or OPI, much less for Sally Hansen. Yeah, I know, I'm cheap.)

bottom row:

• Nightlife (L'Oreal Jet-Set, and the review is from Epinions in 2001, which amuses me no end) - a really dark purple/blurple, it's so dark it's hard to tell which it really is. I think it has at least some purple in it, though.
• (upside-down) Grape Going (SH Insta-Dri) - this has lost its label, or maybe it never had one, but I'm pretty sure this is the correct name. It's purple with blue and pink multichrome,
• Ultra Violet (Milani Color Statement) - purple that leans to the red-violet side, with pinkish shimmer
• (upside-down) Taffeta (SH Satin Glam) - a red-violet shimmer with a satin (semi-matte) finish. I have never tried this because I got a bad bottle with no brush (and didn't notice until far too late to return it) but I can't bring myself to throw it away, either. One of these days I'll get around to trying it, even if I have to pour it out of the bottle to do it.
• Royal Highness (Bonita Salon) - Seems to have more or less the same formula as the other Bonita above, very heavy on the shimmer, but this one is sort of a medium orchid.

NOTD: Shine Of The Times and more

Before I get off on other topics, I wanted to note that Sally Hansen is apparently discontinuing some more of its former core Xtreme Wear colors - at least, CVS has these for 75% off, among others: Celeb City, Strobe Light, Rockstar Pink - and I think we all know that normally means they're about to be discontinued. I have all three of those, but Rockstar Pink is the one that I'm tempted to run out and grab a backup bottle of. It's gorgeous. (I went through a whole bottle of Strobe Light, but complained about it being "too pink" the entire time - in other words, it set off my triggers for pinks that are overly girly. Rockstar Pink, which leans more fuchsia, did not. And I still have most of my bottle of Celeb City - it's super-bright silver metallic, far too bright for my taste. I like my silvers more tarnished than that.)

Also Walgreen's has WildShine on BOGO50, which I was interested in because I used it to get two new bottles of Black Creme for, what, $1.49. Black Creme is endlessly useful and cheap, and there are other cute colors in this line, too, but if you care about getting the extra 50 cents off, you have to act today, probably.


So, I have Essie Shine Of The Times and Wicked (and something else that I've temporarily forgotten) thanks to the lovely KarenD - more on that later - but I did something that didn't turn out too well while I was experimenting with my new treasures:

This is SotT (two coats) over Wicked, which would be okay if it wasn't for that spot where I apparently bumped things and there's a big spot of Wicked shining through. -- No, actually that's not true, because even aside from that, it didn't look great. I don't know what I was thinking, anyway, I was just in "let's experiment" mode, so I put on a couple of coats of Wicked, but really it was Shine Of The Times that I wanted to try, so I kept going and put a couple of coats of that on as well. I'm not sure why I didn't put ONE coat on and stop to see what it looked like, but no, I had to keep going. I had read somewhere before that it was unusually dense for a flakie and that is definitely true. I think one coat would have been plenty. With two, the red of Wicked was mostly but not completely covered up, and it just looked weird.


I also finally tried I'm Not Really A Waitress, which I got for a Christmas present, so it only took me some five months. I did really like it a lot, though. I didn't bother with a picture, because, y'know, it's red. It didn't particularly look different from any other red. But it's very flattering on me.

This polish has been around for 15 years - it was a 1999 release, wow - so there are soooo many reviews floating around: according to various bloggers, it's a blue-leaning berry, it's a cool-toned wine, it's a metallic red, it's kind of a boring neutral. Or else it's pinker and less neutral (than An Affair in Red Square, which I also have, and honestly I would've said just the opposite). I can't find the review I was thinking about where somebody called it orange-ish, but I swear I've seen that too. Actually Shape magazine says it has reflecting mica flecks so maybe it reflects your own skin-tone? I dunno. In any case, a lot of people love it, that's for sure. And most of the ones who don't love it start out saying, "I don't see what all the fuss is about..." so love it or not, it's a classic.

Stash: dark red strays

I found this picture that I took a while back and never remembered to post. (As I get toward the end of this stash project, you may see several more of these "strays" posts as I pick up what I missed the first time through.)

These look more pink here than they are in real life. These are both fairly neutral burgundy cremes. Here we have:

• Grape Minds Think Alike (WildShine) This is the new bottle but I don't believe this is a new color. I couldn't find anything immediately to verify that, though. WnW sent out a ton of review samples of the new bottles so that's about all I could find, the pictures in the new bottles from this past winter. This one seems a bit more purple-leaning and a bit jelly-ish in texture, but still pretty neutral overall.
• Ramblin' Red (Ma.nish.ma) - I couldn't find any sample manis of this color so I'm linking to Karen's display post. I do remember that I had wear issues with this polish. This is not a brand that's available anywhere I know of near me anyway - I've only ever seen it at RiteAid. This one is very very neutral on the nail, as I recall.

(The sun did come out yesterday, so yay! If you've seen the news, you may already know that we had flooding around most of Texas earlier this week. We were probably on the lower end of things - we had maybe 5" of rain the night that other places got closer to a foot. Anyway, I did remember to take pictures of the last big segment of stash, among other things, while the sun was out, so I will have pictures of that eventually.)

NOTD: Nfu Oh 51 over Neeka

Remember how I had on Neeka the last time I was heard from, and it was chipped, and I was griping about that? Well, I patched it up, and slapped a coat of good old Nfu Oh 51 on top of it, and darned if that didn't keep it from chipping for two whole days:

It's actually a nice combination. You can still see that Neeka purple under there, and then the coppery flakiness of #51. There's tipwear just becoming really visible, but it looks pretty good, on the whole. Since that was taken earlier tonight (well, technically yesterday, now), the chipping at the tips seem to have gotten a bit more serious, so I'll definitely have to start over with something else later, but considering how bad it looked in the first place, I call this a win. (I meant to put some topcoat over it, but I never did.)

NOTD: Zoya Neeka

We've had rain, rain, rain, as I've probably mentioned before, and the few times the sun's peeked out I seemed to have had other things to do, so no pictures are forthcoming with the good camera. The current mani is problematic but I'm going to give you iPhone pictures of it anyway:

This is Zoya Neeka, and I put this on this afternoon. I did it a little hurriedly, which might be part of the problem, but I did basecoat and two coats of Neeka (with some dry-time between) and SV on top, and I really don't see any reason why it should be this much of a mess after only 8 hours or so. The chipping is worse than I would expect for that fresh of a mani, but it's the bald spots that are annoying me even more. They are on a couple of fingers on the other hand, too. I just expect better than this from Zoya. (The color is really pretty, though. This comparison with Lotus - which I don't think I've seen before - is instructive. Think of this as Lotus' darker, showier cousin.)

(Hmm, I've never had those problems with Zoya and SV that people talk about, but I'm hesitant to blame the bald spots on SV. Just in case, though, I'mna try to remember to try this again with a different topcoat and see if I get different results.)

Anyway, there haven't been any other NOTD posts this past week because I ended up with TinC over my previous Black Metal Dahlia mani again, and I wore that all weekend, right up to this morning.

I have not one but TWO Ipsy bags (April and May) that I'm trying to remember to take pictures of, so if the sun will come out again that may be the next entry I get up. And I guess next on the priority list after that is the rest of the stash, since I'm so close to being done. I have been really good with the nail polish budget after that flurry of purchases in April, so I don't have anything new to show. I feel like I've done my penance for the RBLs now - it's been almost a month - and in a couple more weeks maybe I can think about buying something. Honestly, I have so much nail polish now that it gets easier and easier to resist. (I'm sorry, nail polish companies. I seem to be in overload mode.)

Stash: blue & green frosty stuff

This is possibly the frostiest installment of my shimmers:

top row:

• unlabeled lime-green shimmer
• Ivy League (Xtreme Wear) - yellow-green with heavy shimmer, far too yellow to look good on me. The only way I'll usually wear it is layered with something more neutral. The link compares this with Zoya Midori (which is apparently similar in color but not so shimmery).
• Emerald City (Xtreme Wear) - I used to wear this a lot, but nowadays when I have so many other greens I don't think to wear it often. For that matter, this is probably the first green I ever owned, very likely. I would call it a true emerald.
• (upside down) Cabo Cruise (WnW Fergie) - what I remember offhand about this is that it was very bright blue, and that (unsurprisingly given the color, really) it stained like crazy, even with basecoat. I wore this once and I've always been afraid to wear it again because of that. 

bottom row:

• Who Are You Wearing? (OPI) - a great dark vampy blue-violet with heavy shimmer.
• Midnight Cami (Essie) - shimmery midnight blue, a great color
• Charge It Up (Sinful Magnetic) - a pretty shimmery blue-gray. I'm not big on magnetics but this is a pretty color in any case!
• Intrigue (Revlon Brilliant Strength) - cornflower-blue shimmer - I don't have anything else remotely like this. (mani from early 2015)

This is the end of the pictures I have, I believe. There's still a few more shimmers I haven't taken pictures of - and then I have to go back and figure out what I missed! I've been putting links back to these posts in my stash list, and it's looking reasonably close to complete, so I'm starting to think that part might not be too bad. (Knock on wood.)

Stash: darker shimmers

Not all of these are especially dark, really, but a lot of them are and I couldn't really see too much else of a theme here. (It's been so long since I sorted these out that I don't really remember what my criteria was at the time.)

top row:

• Viridian (Illamasqua) - depending on who you ask, this is either an emerald or a teal - or somewhere in between, which is probably more the truth of the thing. It has definite blue undertones, but it does read as emerald in some lights.
• The Darkest Emerald Luxe (Rococo) - this bottle looks like it badly needs shaking, in the picture above, so you might refer to Karen's picture instead. This is sort-of-similar to Viridian, above, but even darker and not quite as shimmery. (I think I wrote a whole entry once about polishes that call themselves "emerald" but aren't, really. Both of these were featured in that entry, as I recall.)
• Rags To Riches (Rimmel Lasting Finish Pro) - green with a heavy silver shimmer, as I see it - almost a metallic. I can't think of anything else that's like it. Prone to brushstroke problems, unsurprisingly.
• Agro (China Glaze) - slightly yellowed green with a lot of shimmer amounting to metallic. This is the only yellow-green I can think of that's reasonably flattering on me. The yellow's pretty subtle; I imagine that's why. This was the District 11 polish in ChG's original Hunger Games/Capitol Colors set.

second row:

• Teal The Cows Come Home (LynB) - a sort of a light teal shimmer - to the point that it might be better to call it aqua instead. This was a one-batch LE, I believe. (another link)
• Pitter Patter (Butter London) - a very dark purple shimmer. I think this one was also a genuine LE, for the birth of Prince George back a couple of years ago. (I wondered if they would resurrect it for his new sister, but I looked a couple of days ago and it hadn't reappeared, so I guess not!) (Added: a new link to a swatch, because my old one was not there any more)
• Vice (Urban Decay) - a dark red-violet with heavy shimmer (mani from 2014)
• Victorian End (Square Hue) - another dark purple with heavy shimmer, although none of these three manage to be quite alike. This one is maybe a little lighter than the two above.

third row:

• Fig (Sinful) - I think Fig tends to look more pink in the bottle than it actually is. It's red-violet, definitely.
• Lilith (Zoya) - fuchsia with very noticeable blue flash. It's awesome.
• Buffy The Violet Slayer (Wet n Wild FastDry) - some of the pictures of this one look red-violet, and others look blue. It's definitely got some blue flash in it.
• Amethyst (Colorstay Longwear) - medium purple shimmer, more or less neutral, I think. That doesn't sound as interesting as this color really is. Let's put it this way: I like it enough that I bought a backup when they were closing out that version of Colorstay. There are not many colors I own back-ups of, but this is one of them.
• (above) I Knead Sour-Dough (OPI) - frosty marsala-red shimmer, maybe a bit plum-leaning, but subtly so. (more swatches)
• (below) Forbidden Fudge (SH Nailgrowth Miracle) - a very neutral dark brown (which is why I like it) which shimmers in a warm gold/bronze sort of way. (Also, I love this blogger's comments about the name.)

bottom row:

• Kierra (Zoya) - sits interestingly somewhere between red and purple. Sort of a wine-color, but on the purple side of that, if you see what I mean. I haven't worn this lately, but when I first had it I wore it a ton. Great fall color.
• Peru-B-Ruby (OPI) Another of my old favorites - this is another one I had a backup bottle of. A bright-but-cool fuchsia with a lot of tonal shimmer. Apparently a dupe for Chanel Tentation.
• It's Genius (Essie) - grape purple with copper shimmer, but that sounds more interesting than this color really looks. I usually refer to it as raisin-colored. I agree with all the MUA commenters who said it's a shame it doesn't look more like it does in the bottle (but I wear it occasionally for all that).
• Burgandy Scales (Funky Fingers) - I'm pretty sure that's meant to be "burgundy" but that other spelling is what my bottle says. (I tried fairly valiantly to sit on any comments about spell-check, but obviously I didn't entirely succeed.) This is not a bad polish, as crackles go. I like it over the bright red at the link. It does read as a pretty true burgundy, I think.

(I still have these polishes out; if the sun ever comes out again - which at this point seems unlikely because it's been raining for days and days - I'll try to do some wheel swatches of some of these purples and burgundies.)

NOTD: Black Metal Dahlia

OCC Black Metal Dahlia is a polish that I liked the look of a couple of years ago when I first saw it, but I had some idea it was discontinued at the time. So when I found it available at Nordstrom a few weeks ago, well, I had to order it.

(I was all excited earlier this year about Sephora Flash and their free shipping for $10 a year, but I tend to forget that Nordstrom's also has a large - and slightly different - selection of polish, and their shipping is free all the time.)

Anyway, not a great picture, as usual, but I like this a lot - it's the sort of blackened-red that I've been wanting to get my hands on for ages - but it still has that problem so many reds have: it chips. But considering that I washed my hair while I had it on, it didn't really chip too badly. I counted 3 smallish chips and some very slight tip-wear, most of which is not noticeable in the picture above.

I mentioned in the last entry that I'd had it on with TinC, before this, and that combination was a little less prone to chip. Travel In Colour did its usual thing and turned this into a really dark pink - it's really pretty. In fact I patched up the chips from last night when I wrote the paragraphs above, and put a coat of TinC on it again to help seal it up.


Oh! another thing: Karen e-mailed me today to say I'd won a prize in her big blogiversary drawing, and it was the Essies. So woo! She had a whole bunch of different prize packages and you could pick your three favorites. I don't remember whether I put the Essie one first or second or what, but I know that's one I especially was interested in since I love flakies and I don't have Shine Of The Times. So I'm excited about that.

Stash: assorted shimmers & metallics

The next installment of shimmery stuff:

top row:

• Blue It (Xtreme Wear) - dark blue, in that shiny-shimmery formula that a bunch of the older Xtreme Wear colors have. I looked at Sally Hansen's website and most of the colors I'm thinking of seem to be discontinued now, which isn't particularly surprising - there's something subtly old-fashioned about these. But it's pretty, anyway.
• Black And Blue (Complete Salon Manicure) - this name only makes sense to me if I think of it as "blackened blue" although it's really more of a teal. (Lacqlustre says at the link that it has a purple shift, but I have to admit I haven't been able to see it. Maybe I need to get it out in another light and look again.)
• Quirky Smile (Misa) - I bought my first Misa polishes recently, and I made sure to include this one in my order because I'd heard so many people say they loved it. It's beautiful, and I also so far love Misa's formula. It looks much bluer in this picture than Black And Blue, next to it, but it's still very much a teal. 
• (just below those) Slate (RGB) - a beautiful slate-gray with a lot of multicolor shimmer.

middle row:

• Flagstone Rush (Orly) - one of those metallics Orly does so well - this one is sort of orange-brown. I've worn this a lot; it's surprisingly flattering on me. I would have thought this was too warm-toned for me.
• Rich In Heart (Sinful Colors) - this is more the kind of brown I am unsurprised looks good on me - darker and cooler. Apparently (see the link) it's a dupe for OPI Midnight In Moscow.
• Kaufda (Zoya) - I decided at one point that I needed a Zoya copper, and I decided from their descriptions that this might be more flattering on me than, say, Zoya Penny. And I have liked it and worn it a lot, although I've never gotten around to trying Penny or any of the other Zoya choices to compare. You can see in the swatches at the link that it's more reddish, though.
• Steely Gaze (Hard As Nails) - another gunmetal sort of gray, in the same ballpark as Slate, above. (It doesn't have the sort of multichrome effect that Slate does, so it's less interesting but also much, much cheaper.)
• (upside down) Gray's Anatomy (WnW Fast Dry, I think, although these labels are almost always illegible after a while) - a dupe for Lippmann Wicked Game, apparently, which appears to be almost identically sheer and multichrome. I haven't tried out Wicked Game, but it definitely looks the same in Scrangie's pictures. I like Gray's Anatomy a lot, though. (I think Peace Love and OPI is also similar, although Gray's Anatomy is maybe somewhat paler.)

bottom row:

• Just Be-Claws (China Glaze) - super-shimmery cherry red, very pretty (S&L swatches)
• An Affair in Red Square (OPI) - I'm well into my second bottle of this, although I haven't worn it in a while. Blue-toned red, maybe not as shimmery as the one above, but still gorgeous just the same.
• I'm Not Really A Waitress (OPI) - I've been hearing about this color for years, but had never bought it, and lo and behold, somebody gave it to me for Christmas last year. Unfortunately I'm suffering from a bit of red overload and haven't tried it yet. This is from a 1999 collection and is still in production, which tells you something right there. It's slightly deeper and has burgundy undertones, as I see it.
• Bet On Red (Milani) - another slightly-darker, shimmer-filled red. This one is beautiful, too.

NOTD: Pretty Gritty

I've got a touch of lobster-hands going on in this picture, but at least you can see the shimmer in this polish:

This is Rescue Beauty + Refinery 29 Pretty Gritty, and here's RBL's description of it. I think "dusty purple with a lot of gold shimmer" would be basically correct. It seems to me to be dustier than this picture shows, really. Anyway, I love it.

(I intended to add bottle pictures of both the RBLs I got, but the sunlight persists in staying away, so that's coming later.)

I've been trying to remember to do a "details" section on my nail-of-the-day posts, but this was almost a week ago and I've forgotten what I used for basecoat and topcoat, for sure. I'm pretty sure I'm remembering correctly when I say that two coats was plenty, though.

(What I'm wearing now: Black Metal Dahlia with Travel In Colour on top, which as usual just made it slightly pinker. I'm probably going to do BMD on its own, next.)

Stash: purple & pink shimmers (plus some strays)

top row:

• unlabeled beige shimmer (mini)
• Winterberry (Sinful) - a great taupe-ish purple, leaning somewhat more to the purple side than the taupe. Really a lovely color, which I've worn quite a lot. I'm linking to Nouveau Cheap's dupe post, but for further comparison, I can tell you that I have Gray Area, which is also in that post, and Gray Area is definitely much more neutral. Also, while Winterberry is definitely a shimmer, I don't think it's as all-out frosty as it looks in those pictures. (Also in NC's SC top 10.)
• Purple Potion (Xtreme Wear) - blue-leaning dark purple with blue duochrome flash (I didn't remember this, so I re-swatched it on a wheel to be sure, but the duochrome is definitely there. Actually it looked like the base color was more of a red-violet, but with two coats it darkens and you can't see that any more.
• Harmonie (Zoya) - this is really an old-fashioned frost. I didn't get around to wearing it this year at Easter, but the past several years, I have - it's a perfect shiny spring more-or-less-pastel purple. By which I mean that it's not really all that pastel, as far as I'm concerned, but neither are many of the "pastels" that float around in the spring each year. It's close enough to pass as pastel, without being pale enough that it's hideously unflattering on me.

second row:

• Fiji (Sinful) - blue leaning purple - unfortunately I had to toss this one because I seem not to have closed it properly! I hate it when that happens.
• Just A Little Dangerous (Sephora by OPI) - dark purple with lighter pink/purple shimmer (also here are comparison swatches with Grape Set Match among others)
• Shopping Frenzy (Sephora by OPI) - bright fuchsia with a lot of shimmer - I keep thinking I see a little bit of coral flash to it. I'm not sure if it's got a little bit of orange duochrome flash in that shimmer, or if it's just my imagination!
• Posh Plum (Xtreme Wear) - red-violet with lots of shimmer
• Blackberry (Petites) - I was kind of surprised to find a link for this, but I did. This is a dark violet-leaning red, and a really, really pretty one. (mani from 2013)

third row:

• Germanicure (or maybe it's German-icure, you see it both ways, and my mini is unlabeled)(OPI) - this almost seems like a marsala-type color, now - reddish-brown, with heavy shimmer verging on metallic
• Departure (L'Oreal Jet Set) - this is marked "perle" - I'd sort of forgotten that they used to mark them like that. Jet Set used to be my favorite polish back in the day, although I don't think this was ever my favorite color. It's a sort of nude/pink shimmer. I think as pale colors go, this one's not too wildly unflattering on me!
• Pink Sizzle (L.A.Color) - sort of a medium-pink - I'd call it rose (more of a true rose, not to be confused with "dusty rose" which leans much more gray)
• Unbreakable Heart (Hard As Nails) - a really nice shimmery red, maybe slightly darker than average
• Magenta Mirage (Color Show Shredded) - remember a couple of years ago when all the polish companies were trying to get some mileage out of the last dregs of the crackle trend by calling it something else? Thus, "shredded" - this is actually a really pretty color and I've worn it a couple of times (which is more than I've worn any other crackle, at least). As I recall, it did tend to crack into large pieces like the picture at the link, rather than smaller ones which would really be more what I imagine for "shreds".

bottom row:

• Aphrodite's Pink Nightie (OPI) - I've had this one for years. It's pretty close to being an old-fashioned frost, really, but usually I wear this one on top of another pink (usually Japanese Tea Garden, another oldie) and for some reason I like that combination better than just about any other pale-pink I've tried. (This is apparently from the "Greek Isles" collection in 2004. I might not have bought it the minute it came out, but I think it's probably fair to say that I've had this polish for 10 years or near to it.)
• Strawberry Electric (Revlon) - a shimmery fuchsia with slight blue flash
• "Pink Champagne" (NYC Long Wearing) (**mislabeled** - see discussion below) - fuchsia with heavy shimmer, almost a duochrome flash
• unlabeled fuchsia mini
• Crushed (Xtreme Wear) - bright orange with heavy shimmer. (To me many of these older Xtreme Wear colors seem to have the same finish.)

**I'm putting the question of the mislabeled NYC polish down here because it got so long. I picked up this pretty fuchsia one day, and I remember seeing "Pink Champagne" and thinking it wasn't what I'd think of as that color. I wouldn't have bought it if it had been pale pink - at the time I just shrugged and bought it anyway. I thought it was odd enough that I did check NYC's website at the time, though, and Pink Champagne was pictured as exactly what I was thinking, a very pale pink; from looking at the website, I decided then the polish that was in my bottle looked most like Fuchsia Glamour. I had wondered about it in the couple of years since then, but I hadn't found any confirmation for this in previous searches, probably because I searched badly - I think I tried something like "nyc pink champagne" and that brought up so much other dreck (brands of cheap champagne, NYC vacations, stuff like that) that I couldn't find what I was actually looking for. The other day I finally tried "nyc fuchsia glamour" and found that Imperfectly Painted had mentioned this from the other end - that is, she has a bottle of "Fuchsia Glamour" that's pale pink and was presumably meant to be named Pink Champagne. (Apparently the pale one is something that was a bit more rare a couple of years ago, a flakie.) I also poked around on Nouveau Cheap, where this was discussed a bit but if they posted a definite answer I couldn't find it. I think it's pretty clear that it was in fact a mix-up with the labeling, in any case.

NOTD + new OCC, OrlyCB & more

Here's the current mani, first: it's Aurora Borealis from Lucky 13 and I've had it on for days now. (I've lost track of how many exactly.)

I put Zoya Cynthia underneath, which is a really dark blue. I didn't have a black handy, but I doubt that it would look much different. AB is what I think I would call a small flakie, as opposed to the bigger flakies that are floating around. It flashes sort of green/brown/purplish.

Here's part of my new stuff:

The "sister duo" from Orly Color Blast of Frozen (the icy blue) and Free Spirit (fuchsia), OCC Black Metal Dahlia, and then Aurora Borealis. I also have the other Lucky 13 that I showed in the last post, which was MIA when I started to take the picture.

I swatched all these onto a nail wheel (including the MIA one):

1. Black Metal Dahlia (I believe this was only one coat)
2. Free Spirit
3. Frozen
4. Aurora Borealis (2 coats) with no undercoat
5. Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey
6. 2 coats Aurora Borealis over Cynthia (same as the mani above)

(The MIA one is no longer MIA, if you're wondering. I found it in my purse.)

I have pictures of a couple of other new things that aren't nail polish, too. This one was my main birthday present because it was fairly expensive. (The Color Blast Duo above was also a b-day present from Rob, a little surprise.)

(The brand is LaFresh. I had a coupon that at covered the shipping plus a bit more - you get 20% off when you sign up for their mailing list - but it still was nearly $40, and it's only 1.7 ounces. This is a sale that's entirely due to the sample of this I got from Ipsy, it's not something I had ever heard of. I love it, and hopefully it will last a good while.)

One more little thing that we bought at Target, because it amuses me - a Funko Pop mystery mini, which turned out to be Rick:

Walking Dead is Rob's fandom, not really mine, but I like the Funko Pop figurines a lot. Here's the mini with the two regular-size ones we already had (the Governor & Michonne)

(I pulled out the ruler and measured - the regular ones are about 4" high or a little less, where Rick is about 2-1/4". I would have guessed a little bigger. He doesn't look as tiny to me as that sounds!)

-------------------------------

NOTD details:

1 coat nail hardener

1 coat basecoat (I don't remember which one!)

1 coat Cynthia

2 coats Aurora Borealis

1 coat Seche Vite

NOTD: Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey

Yes, that's really what it's called. (I don't really know why I continue to find that surprising.)

I took the close-up because I was trying to get a picture of the little moons and stars in the glitter. I don't think you can actually see them, but at least it shows the general prettiness of the thing.

(Actually, maybe you can at that. There's a star or two right above this, on my pinky. All told I got about half a dozen stars and at least one moon out of the bottle by the time I was done with this, without any particular fishing for them.)

This one is under the fluorescent light.

Here is this polish in full sunlight (all these are from the iPhone), but it doesn't do it justice:

It looks oddly like the glitter is sitting on the surface here, which it's not. This is a jelly, and the glitter is mostly all down inside. It was hardly even bumpy, that I noticed.

This is my first Lucky 13 polish (well, I bought two, actually, but I tried this one first) and I'm very happy with it. I'm not sure you'd really call the base of this Tardis blue - the top picture where it looks a bit more aqua is maybe more accurate - but it builds up to something approximating Tardis blue after several coats. (I did three.)

I actually have several more new polishes that you haven't seen yet - I got an Orly Color Blast duo for my birthday, and I have an OCC that just came from Sephora, and the other Lucky 13, too - and a couple of RBLs on the way, that I bought with my birthday coupon, budget or no budget. (As far as my budget goes, the two from Lucky 13 and the one OCC were within the budget, and the ones that were a gift don't count, of course. But I'm going to have to refrain from buying anything else for a good while to make up for the RBLs!)