Play! for August

I finally remembered to take a picture of August Sephora Play:

Mostly it's eye makeup, which is why the bag looks like it does, presumably:

It's cute. Here's the website page with what each item is. It's what you'd guess, pretty much: eye pencil, eyeshadow, mascara, and eye cream, plus the Lancome "Energie de Vie" moisturizer. Also I just realized that the eye cream on the website is not what I got - that says Algenist and mine is Caudalie. They're both good brands so I don't have a problem with that. And the fragrance sample of the month is Clean. I haven't tried it yet.

(I got another package from Sephora today with my 500-point bonus package in it, and some other stuff. I'll get pictures of that up later.)

VT-100, Stiletto

This is Pretty Serious VT-100 and Jade Stiletto:

I'll talk about the name of this polish below, but VT-100 is really super-pretty. (I run out of superlatives sometimes, can you tell?) It's a green glitter with some gold. - Here's a picture - it has matte top-coat there. Jade looks like a medium green cream but actually it's got a bit of stealth glitter in it. It's a nice Jade color (pun intended, since "Jade" is actually the brand).

I dug in Pretty Serious' blog and I found really fun goodies:

I mentioned this back when I showed BSOD a while back - both VT100 and BSOD are from Pretty Serious' very first polish collection, which is called (can you guess?) Hello World. I knew it was their first collection but I hadn't gotten the name of the collection previously. Here's the post that talks about the names and where they came from - most people who've spent much time with Windows computers in the last 20 years know about the Blue Screen of Death, but VT100 is considerably more obscure. (They spell it VT100 in in that post but I swear my bottle has a hyphen in the name, which is why it's spelled differently further above. I don't have the bottle nearby right now to verify that, though.) But anyway, VT100 - with or without hyphen - is not showing up on their website any more. BSOD is still available. I haven't checked on the rest of the collection.

Veruschka

This is Zoya Veruschka, a Matte Velvet:

This is another emerald-ish color, but this is a dark, almost blackened-looking one. Like the other Matte Velvets, it has a strong shimmer in it that you may not see unless you add top-coat. Some of the other polishes in this line have silver shimmer but this one looks more green to me. (As I keep saying every time I talk about one of these, they are currently discontinued, but Zoya has released some shades for the holidays for the last several years - I'd be surprised if we don't get at least a few. Whether this will be one of them is a mystery, for now.)

Ivanka, Emerald City

This is Zoya Ivanka and SH Xtreme Wear Emerald City:

You know how I kept talking about how other colors that call themselves "emerald" aren't? I'm pretty sure that partly got started in my head because of this $2.21 polish right here. (That's how much Xtreme Wear used to cost at my grocery store, back in 2009 or so, anyway. I don't think it was much more than that the last time I checked, either.) In my head, this is the emerald color of Emerald City, although if you do a search for it you'll probably find it's actually varying shades of green. I think the color of Ivanka could be considered a paler emerald-color, as well - Zoya does actually call it that, although in its picture, Ivanka looks much darker than my bottle is. Ivanka is paler than I expected and a gorgeous shimmery metallic. Emerald City is just shimmery. (I'm pretty sure that Emerald City is discontinued, but Ivanka is current.)

Added: more on Ivanka here.

Ho Ho Holodays, Rikki

This is Lacquer Lust Ho Ho Holodays and Zoya Rikki:

These are both slightly-grayed-out (or more likely, silvered-out) and very shiny medium greens. They look very much alike in the bottle, not so much on the nail. As you might guess from the name, Ho Ho Holodays is a holo and is more slightly more green (and in this picture at least, more pearly) on the nail. Rikki is a metallic - Zoya says it has both gold and silver shimmer. Rikki was in a summer collection a couple of years ago, and of course Ho Ho Holodays was a holiday polish, although it's paler in color than most "holiday" greens. It came in an LE trio with a couple of polishes from other brands - I think that was Serum No 5 Yule Light Up My Life (which is glow-in-the-dark, as most of their polishes are) and Polished by KPT Naughty and Nice (which is a thermal) -- the idea being that each brand did the thing that they did best, as I recall. Lacquer Lust is still around and they still have lots of holos, but not this one. Rikki is still current - follow the link above for that.

NOTD: Sweet Peacock + Blue Majesty + matte

This is Orly Sweet Peacock plus matte top-coat plus NYC Blue Majesty plus more matte top-coat:

(and I think I used some old Colorstay base coat underneath all that, if you want to know)

I remembered from past manicures that Sweet Peacock tended to chip - I don't think it's that polish in particular. It seems to me that every foil/chrome-type polish is prone to chipping. I wore it for a day with matte topcoat and it only had one noticeable chip, but since it was noticeable, I patched it up and put a coat of Blue Majesty on top to help prevent it from chipping again immediately, and then put more (Sally Girl) matte topcoat on top of that. I'm really wanting to mattify everything glittery these days. I like the glitter as long as it's relatively subdued.

I wish I had taken a picture so I could compare. Sweet Peacock mattified did not look exactly like this, but it was similar - just without the dusting of glitter that came from Blue Majesty, and maybe the color was slightly different. If I can remember I'll swatch them on a nail wheel and then we can compare at a later date! (Done. See here.)

Lizard Belly, Crocadilly

This is Glitter Gal Lizard Belly and Essie Crocadilly (a magnetic):

This is the Very Neutral Gray-Green section of my stash. Both of these do generally look more green than they look here, as I recall, but just the same they're both pretty grayed-out. I think Crocadilly is a hair greener but color-wise these are pretty similar, I'd say. But Lizard Belly is a holo and Crocadilly is a magnetic so they don't end up looking terribly alike. I am generally too impatient to get good results with magnetics, but when I've fiddled around with this one long enough I've gotten some pretty decent-looking results. (Never what it looks like in other people's pictures, though. Usually it's more like what you see on my swatch, with a patch here and a patch there with the croc pattern. That can end up looking kinda interesting, just the same.) Basically I don't own many holos because I'm too impatient for them, too. I want them to flare up all the time like they do in the sunlight, and of course they don't. Lizard Belly is a super-cool looking green when it does flare up, though.

Glitter Gal is an Australian brand, and I see that Lizard Belly is still available. (I didn't get mine directly from them, but assuming that they're actually shipping from Australia, I can tell you from past experiences with other companies that it typically takes a week or two to the US.) Crocadilly stayed around for a pretty long time but I don't see it on Essie's website so it's presumably discontinued. It might still be findable if you were determined to have it, though.

Throwback Thursday: Alcatraz Rocks

This is a picture I found buried down at the bottom of an old post about something else entirely! This is OPI Alcatraz Rocks - the picture "gets the texture but none of the sparkly," I said then:

I need to wear this more. In fact I am reallly looking forward to fall because besides the improved weather I will have a good excuse to wear my darker polishes.

Darkest Emerald Luxe, Rain Forest

This is Rococo Darkest Emerald Luxe and Revlon Colorstay Rain Forest:

This is another "emerald" that's not really emerald, as far as I'm concerned. It does look more emerald or maybe teal, in the bottle, but on the nail it's very dark and not at all what I'd call emerald. It's very similar to Viridian, in fact. They both sort of look grayed out and blue-green in my swatches, but this one (Darkest Emerald Luxe) a little less gray than Veridian. Rain Forest, on the other hand, is both a bit brighter and a bit more yellow. Both of these polishes have a lot of shimmer. Rain Forest is not from the current Colorstay collection (which is Gel Envy) but the one before that, so it's been discontinued for a couple of years now. I bought my Rococo polishes from Space.NK back a couple of years ago, and a quick search didn't find much for them, so I'm not sure they're still around, either. Definitely Space.NK is not selling their nail polish any more.

(I'm still mulling over the emerald question, so I googled, and here's a company that sells actual emeralds. That's the color I was thinking of - also the color of the Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz, which is about the same. It's usually got some blue to it but it's brighter than most of these nail polishes with emerald-related names.)

Sparkling Seaweed, Dear Rus #601

Here are two more green glitters, LASplash Sparkling Seaweed and Dear Rus #601 (also known as Shuffle Green):

I doubt that either of these are easily available in the US, at least. Dear Rus is a Korean brand, I believe, and to my knowledge they don't have a US distributor now that Llarowe is gone. And LASplash doesn't even have any nail polish on its US website right now. There was a whole collection of these "sparkling" glitters a few years ago, though - I have a couple other ones besides this and they are very pretty. Here this looks like a slightly-greener twin to This Is Tree-mendous, although I'm not sure it's as easy to get opaque as that is. And #601/Shuffle Green is a bright green mixed with gold. I would have said these were more like top-coats but actually both of these look fairly opaque with two coats. I would probably put something green underneath them just to be safe, though, myself.

This Is Tree-mendous

This is China Glaze This Is Tree-mendous:

This is another opaque packed microglitter - there were several of those in this set. (Put A Bow On It was one and I think there was also a blue one.) They do take at least a couple of coats to get opaque - it looks like this is two coats, on my wheel - but it's doable. They come out pretty textured so you can either leave them that way or you can get out your Glitter Food or your Gelous and prepare to feed the glitter. (I'm being flip but they do look awesome with top-coat.) You can see that it's a slightly paler green than your average Christmas green (and it looks like it may have some gold in it but I won't swear to that) but it's really pretty on the nail. I like all three of these a lot even if they are kind of a pain to get on and off.

This is another one of those polishes (13 of them in all!) that I got from a blog giveaway sponsored by China Glaze. They were a past holiday collection so to my knowledge these aren't available any more.

NOTD: Feifei, matte

Zoya Feifei is one of their really sparkly glass fleck polishes, this one in a steel blue-gray color. I didn't want things quite so sparkly so I mattified it.

This is three coats. I'm not sure if it's the matte top-coat or what, but I remember this looking more blue and less gray when I've worn it before. It's pretty but I can't really get excited about it. Note that I had had this one for a solid 72 hours when this picture was taken - there's some tipwear but it's not too bad, considering.

Rock Candy, Mermaid's Dream

This is Julie G Rock Candy (which is a "Gumdrops" textured polish) and Deborah Lippmann Mermaid's Dream:

Note that there are a lot of mermaid-themed polishes around, and I had to look to make sure I hadn't done this one already (I haven't; I was thinking of Mermaid's Tale and probably also of the fact that I wore Mermaid's Dream, back in June). I pointed out a couple of entries back that Rock Candy was pretty similar in base-color to Chimera, which I was talking about there, even if it's completely different in texture or lack thereof. Mermaid's Dream, on the other hand, has a pale-green base but has glitter that is more or less that same greeny-blue as those two - I imagine that's what caused me to put them next to each other on the wheel.  I haven't worn either of these a whole lot (and in fact I'm not entirely sure I've ever worn Rock Candy at all) but I still like them. They're interesting, unusual colors - although the success of Lippmann's collection of Mermaid polishes has probably made them less unusual than they used to be. (In fact, I know I have several other polishes with not the same colors but almost exactly the same kind of formula as Mermaid's Dream - this sort of sludgy metallic-ish base with flecks of another color floating in them. It doesn't sound all that appealing the way I described it but it seems to work quite well. Sinful Colors has done several polishes like this, as I recall, presumably in response to the original mermaid collection which mostly is similar.)

I'm writing this at 3am (again) and I don't have the energy to look, but I know that at least some of the Gumdrops polishes from Julie G/Jesse's Girl were still current, although I'm not at all sure this is one of the current ones. And I can't swear to it but I'd bet Mermaid's Dream is still available.

Small Dim Summer Stars, Two-Timer Stars

This is Rescue Beauty Lounge Small Dim Summer Stars and Maybelline Express Finish Two-Timer Stars:

Let's start right off by saying neither of these are going to be things you can necessarily find very easily. Maybelline quit making polish in these bottles at least five years or so ago, I think, so that one might be the harder-to-find one of the two. RBL is out of business but they've been out of business for less than a year so it might be possible to find those around. The other thing here (besides the "star" theme in the polish names which is completely coincidental as far as I know) is that you might look at these two bottles and say "I thought you were showing greens" and I wouldn't really blame you for thinking they aren't green. Actually I think one is green and one isn't, but it might not be the one you think. The darker one of the two looks pretty green on the nail but I think the base is actually black or at least charcoal. It has various colors of glitter, but the green does seem to predominate, at least on my sample nail here. So that's the one that I'd say is not a true green - it's here because it looks green in some lights, although not so much in others. Two-Timer Stars, on the other hand, is actually green, in my opinion, although admittedly it's so pale it's hard to tell. It's really what I would consider a top-coat - you're never going to get this opaque with any reasonable number of coats.

Rags To Riches, Chimera

This is Rimmel Lasting Finish Pro Rags To Riches and Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics Chimera:

I should have shown Chimera next to Rock Candy, which is the texture that's above it, because they're very similar in tone. Chimera is the top one of the two that are pointing at the bottle, and Rags to riches is under it. They're both sort of vaguely-metallic, lighter greens. Chimera seems to lean slightly blue, and is more definitely metallic. I think Rags To Riches was probably aiming for "dollar-bill green" - it's more towards a spring green, maybe even slightly olive. I can't honestly say I have worn either of these a whole lot. I had it in my head that I would love Chimera but it's a bit paler than I like, and RtR is a bit too yellow-leaning. And maybe that's just me - or maybe that's why neither of these are current colors. (In fact I don't see nail polish on Rimmel's US website at all.)

N-Evergreen, Chupacabra

These are two mini-size polishes, Ulta N-Evergreen and Mod Polish Chupacabra:

N-Evergreen is from a "Wicked Wonderland" set some years ago (that's why it's Nevergreen instead of Evergreen, see) and it's just another slightly blue-leaning forest green glitter. I'm not sure if Chupacabra was actually a Halloween polish or not, at this late date, but it's unlike anything else I have - I think that it's more of an olive-green base but the glitter is more of a forest green. That's as near as I can figure out, anyway. It's just some kind of hella-cool unconventional glitter mix. Halloween is usually when you can find these things so snap 'em up when you see them. (I found a couple of sets of swatches of these and they basically agree that it's brighter green glitter in a black jelly base. Those are here and here. The latter one says the collection was called Cryptid, and that does sound familiar. It also seems to imply a Halloween collection - because "crypt" right? but still not 100% sure about that.) I don't think either of these are likely to be available any more, in any case. I have Mod Lacquer on my indies page but it looks like that link doesn't go anywhere any more.

(Oh, and the cap of the Ulta polish looks so weird because it was sticky and I was so frustrated with it that I actually took some random older polish and polished the cap so it wouldn't be sticky any more. It doesn't look pretty but it helped.)

Tenacious Teal, Moss

This picture is out of whack but it doesn't affect the colors so I'm using it anyway - this is Maybelline Color Show Tenacious Teal and Chick Moss:

In case it's hard to read, the nail pointing straight at the bottles is Tenacious Teal, and Moss is above that. These are pretty similar colors, really - Moss is maybe just a tiny bit more blue-leaning. They're both cremes, but if I'm remembering right, Tenacious Teal has a thinner consistency - I'm remembering it as one of those colors that goes on streaky at first but resolves itself if you're patient. I've worn both of these quite a lot.

Neither of these seem to be current colors; in fact, Maybelline's website isn't showing any greens at all, and Chick has gone out of business as far as I know. (I'm noticing as I go through my stash and check on availability that while there are still plenty of companies making nail polish, there's a noticeable dropoff from the "polish-mania" days of a few years ago.)

Viridian, Boughs of Holly

This is Illamasqua Viridian and Pahlish Boughs Of Holly:

Both of these are part of holiday duos - I started to say "coincidentally" but when I started thinking about the seasonal part of it I decided it wasn't coincidental at all. (The other halves of the two pairs were Illamasqua Glitterati, a glittery red, and Pahlish Yuletide Treasure, a multicolor glitter.) These are both meant to be tree-greens, presumably. You notice they're not nearly the same color - it's that kind of thing that makes me go off on minor rants from time to time about the difference between blue-green and green. Here, I would say that Viridian is blue-green, where Boughs of Holly is more of a true green (and is maybe has some yellow-green highlights to it at that). If you look at winter greenery, some of it is actually a bit on the blue side (there's a reason they call it "blue spruce," after all) and many forest greens are slightly or not-so-slightly blue-leaning as well. Viridian is actually a color-name, and Wikipedia has helpful little swatches. I don't think this Viridian is exactly the same as that viridian but, hey, it's in the ballpark. Viridian-the-polish seems more grayed-out.

Both of these were more-or-less LE polishes, although the Illamasqua duo was around for a lot longer and so might be more likely to be findable if you were determined. When I talked about Glitterati back in April I noted that it was still listed on their website, although it also said it was sold out. The Pahlish duo was a one-month thing and so is more genuinely hard to find, I imagine. (The other half of that duo is shown here.)

Enchanted Forest, Shake Your Money Maker

This is Nyx Enchanted Forest and Deborah Lippmann Shake Your Money Maker (who, you may notice, appear to buy their bottles from the same source):

This is definitely an iPhone SE picture, because the old phone never did this: it cut the nail wheel right out of the picture. (I talked about this before - it's not actually the phone itself doing this but Evernote, and I eventually figured out how to turn it off.) These are both blue-leaning green glitters, although obviously the mix is very different. Enchanted Forest is a small glitter in a sheer formula, and SYMM is clearly one of DL's signature big glitters - gold plus a green somewhere in the forest-green-to-teal range.

The wheel labels aren't legible at all here, but Enchanted Forest is the one pointing straight at the bottles here, and SYMM is above that. (The China Glaze bottle here is Agro, which I'll talk about later. I don't think it's even on this part of the wheel, so I don't know what the point of this picture was supposed to be.) Enchanted Forest is very obviously blue-leaning on the wheel, although I often wear it over greens, which of course makes it look different. I've worn SYMM a few times and it's pretty - I need to remember it when fall gets here - but I wear Enchanted Forest more.

Neither of these seem to be current colors: current Nyx colors; current Lippmann glitters. (If those glitters were just a little cheaper I would be in deep trouble. Superstar! Flash Dance! Bad Romance! But I don't even wear the glitters I already have that much.)

Dear Tiffany + an unlabeled polish

This is AbsoluteNY Dear Tiffany and an unlabeled polish:

We're on the green end of blue-green here, although if you compare these to the polishes surrounding them, they're also definitely blue-leaning. Dear Tiffany is really what I would call "mint green" - again, slightly blue-leaning but not very. The unlabeled polish is more obviously green but still leans just a hair blue, also.

Unnamed glitter, Racy Green

This is an unnamed Accessorize glitter, and Milani Racy Green:

Two coats of the Accessorize glitter came out very much cyan blue, more than you would expect looking at the bottle. It's pretty but I've never worn it much. Racy Green is a polish I did wear quite a lot back when I first had it - as you can see it's much more green on the nail than it looks in the bottle. (This is why I keep talking about blue-to-green being a very confusing transition. There are so many examples like this that I can't quite tie down as one color or another.) The polishes I had from this line were all really pretty metallics. I don't know if they really all were, but the ones I remember were.

I'm pretty sure both of these polishes came to me via the blogger community, in one way or another. I bought the Accessorize polish from somebody's blog sale, and as I recall they just called it "teal glitter" or something like that. And I'm pretty sure that the Milani came to me from Karen even earlier, way back before I had ever paid any particular attention to the brand. She sent me a couple of Milani polishes in a swap. Accessorize is or was a line of accessory stores, I think, although I don't ever remember seeing one. (Still is, apparently, and the closest one to me is in Dallas, which is not at all close, so I guess that explains it. They don't appear to have any beauty items at all these days, going from their category list on the website.) Milani is still around but this polish line is not, I know that. So not easily obtainable nowadays, for either of these. Neither of them are anything particularly worth hunting down anyway, in my opinion.

Frogtown

This is Pretty Serious Frogtown:

(It's named after an old low-budget movie, Hell Comes to Frogtown. It's part of the Post-Apocalyptic Princess collection, which also boasts other "classic" polish names such as An Uzi From Daddy and Toxic Tiara.) I talked before about how hard it is to pin down some of these colors in the green-to-blue-green range and what their actual color is. Kaz of Pretty Serious has it labeled as green, and sometimes it looks green to me and other times it looks blue-green. Surely she would know, right, because she created it - but I dunno. I keep thinking blue-green. Back when I first bought it in December I was talking about the same thing. Usually when I've actually worn it I've said "green" - see here as well - but the pictures keep coming out looking blue-green. Go figure. Anyway, it's full of microglitter and it's really pretty, so that's what's important, right?

Don't forget these blue-greens...

I accidentally hit "publish" on a picture I didn't mean to actually publish back in June, and so the entry for State Of The Art and Glee is back there. This is just a placeholder, basically.

This is actually not the same picture I used before and the colors look slightly different, so you can compare and contrast, if you're so inclined.

Also: because I don't seem to have mentioned this the first time, I bought State Of The Art on clearance some time ago so it's probably not a current Formula X color. Jesse's Girl seems to have the world's slowest server but as near as I can determine, Glee is not a current color, either.

Zuza, East Village

This is Zoya Zuza and NYC (In a NYC Minute) East Village:

We're kind of in that never-never-land of nebulous blue-greens. (I've seen this kind of lighter blue-greens called "mermaid colors" and I like that term because it's vague enough not to pin you down on exact shades, but it still conjures up the right idea.) Anyway, it's clear that East Village is a little bluer and Zuza is a little greener. East Village is very sheer, as I recall (looks like this is three coats, on my wheel) and a bit shimmery. Zuza is super-shimmery. These are both colors that I feel like are too light to be terribly flattering with my (super-pale) skin-tones, so I tend to wear them layered over slightly darker colors, which helps with that. Zuza in particular is really, really pretty, though. (Actually it's not that East Village is not pretty, it's that dealing with its sheerness annoys me. All those coats!) (added: I wore Zuza alone after doing this post, and I don't know why I thought it was too light, before. It looked just fine on me.)

It's late and I don't feel like checking, but I believe these are both current colors. I looked at NYC's colors not long ago and the "In a NYC Minute" line didn't look like it had changed at all from what it was a couple of years ago. And I'm pretty sure this is a fairly popular Zoya color so I would think it would still be around too.

(Added: I am in fact right about that: Zuza, East Village. What I'm not sure about is where you buy NYC these days - Target, maybe?)

Kissy, Bottle Green

This is Sinful Colors Kissy and Gosh (or Oh My Gosh) Bottle Green:

As you can see, these two don't look all that far apart in color in the bottle, but they are definitely very different on the nail. This is two coats of each. Kissy is very cyan-blue and very packed with microglitter - in fact it's apparently a pretty close dupe to Zoya Charla, which I've never gotten around to buying.

I was going to say that Bottle Green was a creme but I found somebody online saying it was a jelly. (I've now lost that link, sorry.) I clearly need to look at it again. I would call it more or less green, but it's a fairly blue-tinged green. I think "teal" would be a reasonable word to use for this color. Also, as far as the brand-name goes, Gosh is the brand, and as near as I've ever been able to figure out, "Oh My Gosh" is just their name for their minis. (I don't know how well you can read the label, but it says "OH MY" in very big letters and then "GOSH" in a much smaller font.)

She's Beyond Kelp!

This is KBShimmer She's Beyond Kelp! (along with Baphomet's Berserker, which we've already discussed):

I just looked and this is on sale at KBShimmer right now. It's one of those "ultra chrome" flakies, the almost-opaque ones with a heavy shift going on. This one is blue-to-green, basically, or maybe green-to-aqua. You can see the shifty thing going on on the wheel. This is really an awesome polish. (I really ought to get some more of these.)

NOTD: Destash (+ Sephora-related topics)

I have several things to talk about, but I don't have pictures for a couple of them, so I'm going to talk about the one I have a picture for first, because we all know nobody will read a blog post without a picture in it:

This is a small-size Sheer Transformation that is currently still available from Sephora, in a cute holiday box so presumably it's left over from last year. It's marked down to $10 from $14, and I have bought two of these, because I like this and I decided it's a pretty good deal at that price. (It's cheaper per ounce than even the big 3-oz. size, which is $65.) I had a previous sample of this in a Play! box but it was half this size - i.e., only 0.25 oz. This was the stuff which I was talking about in this entry, that was my original inspiration for the mix-your-own-foundation thing. (I now have enough self-mixed foundation to last me a couple of years, though, so I probably will just use these as regular moisturizer.) (Note that the usual caveat about sale items applies, and these may disappear from Sephora's site at any time. Sephora's like a fast-fashion place that way sometimes.)

I also got samples of Clinique Pep Start eye cream at the same time, and that's because I have Sephora points to spare, and that's because I didn't get a Sephora Play box this month because they "oversold" it. They gave me 500 Sephora points instead, and I'd just as soon have the points as a bronzer I won't use, anyway. (I'm the only person in the world who doesn't use bronzer, it seems sometimes.) So I used the 200 points I already had on two samples of that eye cream, which I already knew I liked.

And then the NOTD that I don't have pictures of is Destash, which is really beautiful but I just couldn't get a decent picture of. In the pictures it just looked red, but it's not - it's fuchsia jelly with a very strong blue glass-fleck shimmer. (My swatches of that are here.) For a jelly it's pretty opaque, too - if you don't mind some VNL you could probably get away with one coat. I used two.

Never Too Rich

Here is Pop-arazzi Never Too Rich:

This is mixed sizes of glitter in a clear base. I was intending to say that it was blue and green glitter mixed together - until I looked at this picture, which looks more definitely green. I have the bottle in front of me right now and I walked around the apartment with it and looked at it in different lights and I'm still not sure. I think maybe the glitter is actually green but it shimmers to blue. It definitely has a lot of holo and iridescence going on, that's for sure. (Here's somebody else's swatch which looks definitely green but it's also layered over green there. So I'm not sure I'm ready to take that as definitive evidence either.) I might wear this and see what I think - if I do I'll certainly report back! For now we'll just call it blue-leaning green.

(Note: see also here, where I swatched it over a blue metallic. It still looks green - but it's awfully pretty that way.)

I have only ever seen Pop-arazzi at CVS and I don't know who makes it. They have some cute colors but I had never gotten around to buying any, and I was pleased when my husband bought a couple as a little surprise on my birthday. (The other one is gold.) He did good, because these are pretty.

Mermaid's Tale, Glacial Springs

This is Sally Hansen CSM Mermaid's Tale, and Smitten Polish Glacial Springs:

These two are not much alike, other than being in the general blue-green range and being glitters. Mermaid's Tale is a dark, almost swampy blue-green, with big glitter pieces. It's very pretty but it's darker than most "mermaid green" colors. Glacial Springs is more the kind of color I'd associate with the idea of mermaids - a bright aqua blue with a bit of green to it. It has holo glitter in it and it's very showy.

It doesn't look like it in my pictures but apparently Mermaid's Tale is most famous for being a near-dupe of Lippmann Across The Universe. YouTube nail-blogger Hannah Eve has done a dupe video which includes Mermaid's Tale; she says it's not quite a full-on dupe but it's close. I deliberately did my swatches here without any dabbing or attempt to get the glitter to show more, that was just a decision I made from the beginning of this project. But on glitters it can make a ton of difference and I think that's probably the case here. If you get it on considerably thicker than I did, then it's probably going to look more like AtU. That's my guess, anyway. Mermaid's Tale is still a current CSM color.

I went to look at Smitten Polish (although I had an idea that Glacial Springs was LE to begin with, so I wasn't expecting to find it and I didn't) and what I found out is that Smitten Polish doesn't exist any more under that name - they have changed their name to Dreamland Lacquer. The FAQ says something about trademark issues. Smitten was a pretty popular indie, I think, but I haven't especially been keeping up with such things lately, so I was surprised to hear about this. (I do have a list of indie polishes that I try to check periodically but unsurprisingly, I'm behind on it. Every list of indies I've ever seen is like that, though - it's just impossible to keep track of, really. I did go through in the last week or so and update a few things but parts of it are probably still very out-of-date.)