Bubbly, Hit The Goldmine

This is Butter London Bubbly and Pop-arazzi Hit The Goldmine:

You can see that Bubbly is a very small mini (I think they called this one "nail art size") and it's a very straightforward gold glitter in a clear base. The glitter is sparser and also larger than the other gold glitters I have. Despite the name, Hit The Goldmine doesn't seem to be as straightforward - it has a sort of a tan-colored base and more of a mix of glitter colors, I think - gold and maybe brass or copper? It's hard to sort out. It's more interesting to me, though. I don't think I've worn either of these but I usually get into more of a glitter mood in cooler weather, so hopefully I'll work them in before too long.

Is the brand Pop-arazzi or just Poparazzi? I'm not sure. I think I like it better with the hyphen so maybe I'll go with that for now. Anyway, you can buy these at CVS. The Butter London came from a limited-edition set and I don't think this is available now, but it's really not very unique anyway. If you're in need of a sparse gold glitter for some reason, I'm sure you can find one around. (Although actually glitter seems to be somewhat out of fashion at the moment, still, they're around.)

Glitz

This is Orly Glitz (along with Milani Gold Glitz which I've already shown once):

The reason I'm showing Gold Glitz along with Glitz is that I swatched them together. Glitz (the Orly one, that is) is just a gold metallic. Very gold, very shimmery. On the tip of the same nail, I added Gold Glitz (the Milani). I don't think I've ever done a manicure like this but I actually think the gold-over-gold thing would be really nice around the holidays.

As near as I can recall, Orly put a whole bunch of metallic/foil polishes out around the same time, quite a few years ago now. I'm not sure if Glitz was in the same collection as Rage (which I have and I'll probably show soon, but I imagine many people are already familiar with) but they are definitely similar formulas. I poked around online and didn't find an answer about that immediately. Note that there is also an Orly polish called "Glitz and Glamour" which is not the same thing - I think it's a more brassy gold. (Neither Glitz nor Glitz and Glamour seem to be current colors.)

All About You, I Only Shop Vintage

This is Sinful Colors All About You and Sephora by OPI I Only Shop Vintage:

I showed Pyrite in the last entry, and while All About You doesn't look nearly as gold in this picture as Pyrite (below it) does, I think it's actually closer than you might guess. It also seems more like a flakie to me than a conventional glitter. I Only Shop Vintage is much more unique - there may be similar polishes out there, but I've never seen one that I can recall. It's maybe a sort of caramel-colored base with a ton of gold shimmer. It does actually come out looking quite vintage-ish.

I'm not looking it up but last I knew All About You was still available. And of course anything S-OPI is not. (Somebody needs to dupe this one, though.)

Added: Nouveau Cheap has All About You in her top 10 SC polishes as a topper - she agrees that by itself it's nothing special.

Pyrite, Gold Glitz

This is Pahlish Pyrite and Milani Gold Glitz:

As I mentioned a couple of entries back, I just can't wear yellow and so I don't own any yellow polishes at all. I do have a number of metallic gold ones, though, so those are standing in for yellow on my color wheel. And since Pyrite is seemingly the most yellow-gold one, I'm starting off with it. It has a smoother texture than most of these polishes - I think that Pyrite is actually a flakie rather than a regular glitter, and thus smoother. As you can see, it's also more of a true metallic gold than most of them. It's really beautiful. Gold Glitz is also very beautiful, but it looks like it has bronze pieces mixed in with the gold, and a more textured finish.

A Dragon Is Not A Slave

This is Paint Box Polish A Dragon Is Not A Slave:

As you might guess, this is a Game of Thrones themed polish, and it's still available. It looks more green in PBP's swatches than it does in mine - it's a green base with gold holo glitter.

I think the general meaning of the name is pretty obvious, but if you want to know where in the TV series it comes from, you can find the scene on YouTube by googling that phrase. (I don't usually try to link things like that because individual videos seem to come and go.) It's disturbing, though, so be warned.

More info:
from a collection called "Dragons Are a Girl's Best Friend"
Seller's description:
"A Dragon Is Not A Slave is a vibrant green jelly with fabulous gold holo hexes that are absolutely brilliant! This polish is inspired by Rhaegal, one of the Khaleesi's dragons from Game of Thrones. Two to three coats of this beauty will ensure no visible nail lines, but come on. Who's going to notice your nail line?"
Pointless Cafe's swatches

Hipster Chick, unlabeled

This is Chick Hipster Chick and an unlabeled yellow-green metallic:

Hipster Chick is the yellowest polish I can imagine myself actually wearing. The unlabeled polish looks lime in the bottle but is much more yellow on the wheel, and I would never consider wearing it without something much more neutral underneath it. (But I haven't ever worn it and probably I should just put it in the destash box.) Hipster Chick I really like, though. Probably it helps a lot that it's actually more neutral than it looks - that is, it leans yellow but much less so than the unlabeled one next to it on the wheel. And it's got scattered holo glitter in it.

By way of explanation for my attitude about yellow and yellow-leaning colors... I've mentioned this before and undoubtedly will repeat it again later: yellows make me look yellow. I don't wear yellow clothing, I don't own a single yellow polish. They're just unflattering on me. Some yellowish-greens have slid into my collection over the years but I don't own much in the way of yellow-oranges at all. Metallic gold seems to look ok, but that's different, somehow - in fact I'm intending to substitute the metallic golds for yellow on my trip around the color wheel since that's the only thing I own that's even close. That should start in a couple of days, in fact, since I only have one more yellow-green to go after this one.

Re availability: Chick Polish hasn't been heard from in ages that I know of. I really liked them, so I'm sorry that they're apparently gone. These unlabeled polishes came from a set that was called "Color Theory" but I think that what they are is L.A.Colors, so if by some chance you're in love with this polish, that's a place to check.

Editorial, Cutie Colada

This is Color Club Editorial and Rimmel Cocktail Colours Cutie Colada:

These Color Club minis never seem to come labeled, but I have two identical bottles like this (which came from different sources) and they were both said to be Editorial so I'm near-100% confident that that's correct. It's supposedly a very-near dupe for Chanel Peridot (although I'm too cheap to buy Chanel polishes so I can't speak to the truth of that). It's a green-gold duochrome, anyway, and very pretty. I think it's discontinued, though - I don't see it on the website.

Cutie Colada is really a top-coat - some of the other colo(u)rs in this line can be near-opaque after a couple of coats, but I'm not sure this one would ever get there. But it's really cute over other greens, I've found. This was an LE line so I think these are probably pretty hard to find these days. (Although they were pretty widely sold even in the US so you might find some lurking out there somewhere, who knows.)

(I shouldn't have looked at Color Club's website - now I'm coveting the Oil Slick colors.)

Optical Illusion

This is SpaRitual Optical Illusion:

I bought this specifically as a Halloween polish - it's the only SpaRitual polish I own. It was listed as a dupe for one of those funky Halloween greens like China Glaze Zombie Zest, which are older and now harder to find. (I know I've used the phrase "funky greens" several times already to describe green polishes, and part of what I mean is that they're the kind of green you might trot out at Halloween, those sort of mossy and/or yellowish greens that are just not your average green color, you know? I don't really know a better way to describe it than that.) This polish is super-sheer - you can see how yellowish it looks on the nail and I think that's at least a couple of coats. I seem to remember it taking four to five coats to even approximate the color you see in the bottle.

(Added: later re-swatched this as part of a "thinking about destashing" series.)

NOTD: Scrangie over Y2K

This is RBL Scrangie 2.0 over Square Hue Y2K:

I don't especially love Y2K by itself but man, it makes a great base for other stuff. It's not a "real" black like, say, WnW Black Creme - it's just short of that, it's probably a dark charcoal color, I'm guessing, but it's so dark it could be something else and you really couldn't tell. In any case, if you want a dark, moody base in a less noticeable way - without it being full-on black - it's really good for that. And this is the first time I've tried Scrangie 2.0 with undies but I really like it this way. Scrangie (2.0, that is, because there's also an older RBL Scrangie polish) is also sort of an indeterminate color but it's meant to be that way, as I understand it, it's sort of an oil-slick effect. It looks green in some light and brown in others, but either way it's really pretty.

I couldn't decide earlier in the week whether I wanted to do one last summery manicure or start in on the fall colors. Sometimes when I'm feeling indecisive I ask my husband for color suggestions, and that's what I did and he said pink (to my surprise). So I wore Starry-Eyed For Dear Daniel, mattified like I had done once before. It's a pretty rosy pink, very sparkly when it's worn with a regular top-coat.

Also I dumped out the tote-bag that I carry to work the other day, and I found this at the bottom:

This is Destash (which I won't be destashing). (If I was going to do one more summery manicure, this might be a good candidate. Which I still might, who knows?)

Throwback Thursday: Intergalactic Space

This is actually Zoya Katherine (a jelly) underneath, and then Orly IGS on top.

I think this was just one of those manis where I was experimenting. (I did this so much I had a special name for it at one point: Playing with Polish. I mostly forgot to use it, though, so I finally gave up on that.)

Kaboom, Ivy League

This is Salon Perfect Kaboom and Xtreme Wear Ivy League:

As you can see, there's a big line across the bottle of Kaboom, indicating that the polish inside isn't moving around too much. In fact, I barely got enough out of this to swatch - I'm not sure if I actually threw this bottle away after I took the picture, but clearly if I didn't, I need to. Kaboom is meant to be a dupe of Floam, which is sort of a legendary polish, and, when I poked around, seems to actually be available again (via the link above). It's been mostly-not-available for years, every time I looked. (If I remember my nail polish history right, Ninja Polish bought the rights to the Floam name and formula from the person who had originally come up with it the idea, so what Ninja Polish sells is as close to the original Floam as you can reasonably get.) Kaboom also shows up as available, so check your local Walmart for that. I've got this in with the greens, but if you look really close you will see it's not truly green, or at least it skirts around the edges of green - it's got little textury bits of two colors, sort of a neon blue-green and a neon chartreuse, or yellow-green. It's temperamental but it's lots of fun, which I guess is why it's still around. Both Floam and Kaboom have this same basic mix, although it's hard to say if individual bottles will really look exactly the same.

Ivy League is an old Xtreme Wear color (not current, I checked) and it's a metallic lime that's really too yellow to be flattering on me, although I have compensated over the years by wearing it over a base of some darker green.

Play! box for September

Here's the latest and greatest Sephora Play! box:

At least, it's great in my opinion, mostly because it has a big honkin' (1 full ounce) Dr Jart moisturizer, and I also like the Living Proof hair mask. The silver wand thing is an Anastasia clear brow gel, which is something I've never tried. (I am very resistant to doing anything to my eyebrows - I think they look just fine on their own, thank you. But if I'm going to give in on that point, something clear seems like a good place to start.)

The Tory Burch scent is also very nice. The other things are the pink Sephora lipstick which you can see the color of - I'm not crazy about that color, really - and another Kat Von D black Tattoo Liner, which I already have. But y'know, that's ok - I'll either use them or give them away, one or the other. My makeup tray is starting to seriously overflow with lipsticks, in particular, so that one might be an especially good candidate for "give."

Added: now that Sephora's website is up again (it was down on Sunday night when I originally wrote this) - it turns out that I didn't get exactly the same products that are on the website for the September box. The substitutions are fine with me because the ones I didn't get are both products I already have - the Sud Magnolia fragrance and the Ole Henricksen Sheer Transformation. I like both of those but I don't need more of them, so I'm happy to have something else to try. (I got one substituted product last month, too, but so far I haven't had that "everybody else got better stuff" feeling that I used to get from Ipsy. I don't mind substitutions if it's something truly equivalent.)

Agro

This is China Glaze Agro:

This is from the Hunger Games tie-in collection for the first movie, which they changed to "Capitol Colors" or the "Capitol Collection" or something like that after it became controversial. This one was meant to be for the Agriculture District (which as I recall was District 2, but I could be wrong). Anyway, this is a metallic in a nice golden-olive sort of color which I really like. It sounds like a warm color from that description but I don't find that it looks bad on me.

Now that everybody is used to hearing about The Hunger Games it's hard to think back and remember that this was controversial, but if you think about it, a nail polish which is in "tribute" - you might say - to a dystopian series about a world where children are forced to fight to the death... honestly, I'm a bit surprised that China Glaze and/or their corporate overlords didn't see that controversy coming, but evidently they didn't. It did make somewhat more sense to have the nail polish tied into the frivolous world of the capitol, and Cover Girl continued that approach with their collection for the second movie, as well.

This is not a current China Glaze color, but it was very widely available at the time and a quick search on Amazon leads me to more than one listing for it, so you can still get your hands on this one if you want it.

More info:
This ALU link has more about the controversy if you're interested.

More samples from Sephora

This promo is over now, but this set was available last week as a VIB promo along with the extra-points promotion that they were having. You had to be VIB or VIB Rouge to get this, and you had to make a $35 purchase, but as it happened there was a Briogeo hair mask that I had convinced myself was worth the money, so I went ahead and got that, so I ended up with the hair mask + extra points + all of this:

So there was a bag plus 8 samples, I think it said - and actually I'm counting 10 items here including the bag so probably one of these things (the Givenchy sample, I'm guessing) must just be part of the standard 3-samples-with-every-purchase thing. I would call this a really good deal, in any case, because there's five items here that I would call "premium" samples, plus the bag. The little Fresh folder just contains little flat samples, but there are three of them so that's still pretty nice. Basically you get at least the equivalent of your average Sephora Play box (which is $10) plus the bag, which is cute and good-sized and is probably worth $5 or so by itself, plus the Fresh folder and the lipstick samples at the top, which are Estee Lauder.

(Sephora's website is down as I write this in the middle of the night, so I can't find the links directly to them right now, but here's the Briogeo mask - I had a sample of it from a previous month's Play box and I really liked it.)

Nuke The Fridge, Walker Bait

This is Pretty Serious Nuke The Fridge and Dollish Walker Bait:

I'm bound to have taken pictures of the bottles and swatches from my usual angle - like the one below - but I can't find them and when I found the wheel and went looking for the bottles to re-take the pictures I could only find Walker Bait. I found every other green polish I own as well, I'm pretty sure, but not Nuke The Fridge. Naturally.

Anyway...

Walker Bait is an olive-green holo. I've never seen anything else quite like it, although there may be others out there.

It looks more gray from this angle but if you look at the picture at the top you can see the green better in both polishes. And if you don't believe me here's Accio Lacquer for a backup as far as Walker Bait is concerned.

Walker Bait is another Dollish Walking-Dead-themed polish (the other one I have is Look At The Flowers Lizzie, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out there were others), and as far as I know this polish was very very genuinely LE and thus is now a true HTF polish.** I've never been terribly sorry I didn't sell mine on eBay but if anybody feels like offering me wads of cash for it, I'd be willing to think about it. This is also the only full-size bottle of Dollish Polish I have. I thought their minis were a better deal so I bought minis, except for this one which was only available as a full-sized polish.

I'm only talking about Dollish in the past tense because I haven't bought anything from them in a while. They're still around. As you may have guessed by now, their specialty is fandom polishes. (Ooh, Zombieland. I shouldn't have looked.)

The other polish in question here is Nuke The Fridge, which is in the picture at the top, and it's the swatch below Walker Bait on the wheel. (added: Here's a better wheel-and-bottle swatch I did later on.) You can see that it looks sort of similar to Walker Bait, except without the holo part. I suspect that's deceptive. I decided not to worry about the missing bottle picture since this polish is still available and there's plenty of other pictures of it around. (Just the same, when I locate mine I'll be sure to photograph it.) This polish is from the Post Apocalyptic Princess collection and it's more of a funky/shifty green than the swatch picture would lead you to think.

If you're scratching your head about the fridge thing, well, this is an actual Indiana-Jones-themed polish. Those are not something that's thick on the ground out there. (As for the actual reference, if you've seen the last Indiana Jones movie - I can't keep the titles straight any more but I believe that would be the one with Shia LeBoeuf - you will probably remember the sequence with the nuclear bomb and how Indy survives it. If not, well, go check Wikipedia - or YouTube. It's a funny bit and a funny name although tbh I thought the bit itself seriously stretched credibility even by action movie standards.)

**glossary:
HTF: hard-to-find
LE: limited edition

Found item

I found this in a folder of old photos and scans:

Note that this says "2011 Beauty Pick" down at the bottom, so I'm guessing this dates to somewhere around 2011 or 2012, probably before I started this blog (which was in late 2012). I'd forgotten it existed.

(In case there's someone reading who hasn't seen me talk about this brand before, Orchid is a store-brand at the Texas grocery chain H-E-B.)

NOTD: Maisie over Zuza

There's noticeable wear on this manicure, but on the other hand the bottom layers of this had been on for a solid week by this point:

So I call that a big win. I used to love wearing Chloe back in the day for the same reason. A couple of coats of it makes things really wear well, and it looks cool, too.

I first did basecoat + one coat of Zuza + two coats of Maisie - I don't think I did a further top coat - and I wore that for a few days, and then when it started chipping I patched up the tips with more Zuza and then put a couple more coats of Maisie on top of the whole thing. This is also why I went through multiple bottles of Chloe, of course, and if I keep this up - which I'm tempted to - I'll go through my bottle of Maisie real fast, too. (It's probably about half full, now.) On the other hand, I really have not ever found anything to layer it over that I like as much as Zuza, and I try not to repeat manicures too much. And summer is over and I'm really fighting the urge to swing into fall colors soon. (It's all the way down to 80-some degrees now. Woo, fall.)

And I'm wearing Zoya Teigen now so I guess you'd have to say I gave in on the fall-colors point. It's pinkish-red, or really more raspberry-ish, but it's darker and definitely reads more towards the fall end of things.

Swatch & Learn, CE61

This is Pretty Serious Swatch And Learn and Layla Ceramic Effect CE61:

The Layla polishes all seem to have nicknames, even though they're not on the bottle. I've seen this one called "Ipanema Girl" and also "Golden Green." The Pretty Serious is a blogger collab - if you're not familiar with Swatch and Learn (the blog), you need to familiarize yourself with it, stat, because it's awesome. (When I googled S&L this link came up, I think because I'd looked at it fairly recently, and now I'm wondering how long I can wait til I wear Bat My Eyes. Love that polish.)

"Golden-green" is a good descriptor for the Layla polish. I have put it over a more neutral green base in the past and it does well. Swatch And Learn is noticeably more yellow, as is very clear in the swatch. It's another one of those that I categorize in my head as a "funky green" -  mostly because of the yellow, but also it's the way it shimmers around to to several other colors. It's not flattering on me by itself because it's so yellow, so obviously I need to experiment around some more with layering it over something, just like I did with the Layla polish. (Here's S&L's own blog entry about her polish, which gives a lot more details about how they came up with this.)

We have now finished up my folder of photos labeled "green" and now we're on the "yellow-green" folder. I have no actual yellow polishes of any kind so instead of yellow I'll do golds next. I actually have quite a few golds, and I'll probably throw some other metallics in with that. Then we only have orange to get all the way around the wheel once, although I didn't do the reds in the same format I did everything else, so I'll probably go back at the end and re-do those. But before that I'll do the other things that don't quite fit into the color-wheel progression, like browns and grays and so forth. And top-coats - I still have a lot of polishes to go!

Added: I forgot to talk about availability. CE61 is listed on Color4Nails, but it's out of stock. Layla is an Italian brand and its US availability has always been spotty. Here's the Italian website if you want to attempt to navigate around. Swatch And Learn is still available from Pretty Serious - they are an Australian brand but they have a really good US pipeline, and unless things have changed in the last six weeks or so since I last got anything from them, they are quite fast and reliable. (As ever, nobody's paying/compensating me, but I'm a big Pretty Serious fan and I order from them quite regularly.)

Added (2): I stumbled on some more Layla at FabulouStreet - they have several CE polishes but not this one. They do have a fairly large number of Layla polishes from several different lines, though, so I thought that was worth mentioning.

Throwback Thursday: Sparkle Purple

If you put a whole lot of layers of Kleancolor Sparkle Purple on, you get this, which is pretty awesome:

I'm pretty sure this was at least four layers, though, so it takes some dedication to the goal.

(I scheduled this one in particular for the week of my sister's birthday because purple was her favorite color when we were kids.)

Yuna

Here we have Zoya Yuna:

I had this with the greens, and I do think it leans green, but you can't see it here. Zoya calls it a "warm grey" but they also have green listed as a color family, so I'm not just imagining it. This is what Zoya calls liquid metal, which I just call fine glitter, myself, but I admit that Zoya's version sounds snazzier. (And it does look sort of metallic on the nail.)

Glitter All The Way, Locavore

This is China Glaze Glitter All The Way and Rescue Beauty Locavore:

I knew I hadn't seen Locavore in with the greens and so I started poking around and found this in with a bunch of multicolor glitters (in the computer folder, I mean) - but since Locavore is pretty definitely green I thought I might as well throw this in here. Glitter All The Way is from a China Glaze holiday collection some years ago; presumably it's meant to be a holiday glitter mix but it's so heavy on the purple and green (with some gold and I think also an extremely small scattering of red) that it comes out looking like Mardi Gras instead, and that's how I've always used it. Locavore is mixed greens and gold, and considerably more sparse. I really love Locavore on a green base.

(I was going to say that probably neither of these is easily obtainable, but Glitter All The Way was available on Amazon when I looked. Many beauty supplies seem to keep lots of old China Glaze & OPI colors in stock, so I don't know why I'm surprised. I'm pretty sure it's not a current color, though.)

(And I'm really tempted to go buy myself a backup, now that I know that I can. I'm trying to resist.)

Added:
Update: I did buy the backup. I'm weak - but also I really do like this polish and I was dreading running out of it eventually!
Here's a Rikki/Locavore mani and a Glitter All The Way/Mingle With Kringle mani

Look At The Flowers Lizzie

This is Dollish Polish Look At The Flowers, Lizzie:

This is a Walking Dead reference, and if you've watched any Walking Dead, well, it's just as perverse as you might guess. (You can probably find the scene in question on YouTube by googling the polish name, but the scene by itself is not self-explanatory. I had to get my husband to explain what was going on - or rather why that was going on - because I quit watching Walking Dead before the point where this happened.) Anyway, it is really a pretty good match for the colors of the meadow greenery in that scene. It's very sheer and probably needs to go over a pale-green base of some sort. (The two above this on the wheel look like possible candidates.) I do actually like this polish and I wasn't sure I would. But it was part of an LE set a couple of years ago and so is probably not easily obtained.

Na Prikope, Sew Psyched

This is Square Hue Na Prikope and Essie Sew Psyched:

These are both very grayed-out greens - in the bottle they both look olive, but that doesn't show up so much on the nail. (But I'm not sure they actually look as dark as they appear on my nail swatches, either.) "Army green" is maybe the best term for them. The Square Hue is from the Prague collection and apparently it's the name of a street in the Prague shopping district, near Wenceslas Square. Sew Psyched is a classic Essie color that's still current. The main difference between these two is that Sew Psyched has some shimmer to it and Na Prikope doesn't.

Prototype

This is a prototype from Virago Varnish:

I think it said "Prototype 003" on the label if I remember right, but since thise was never actually an "in production" polish, as far as I know, there were presumably only a handful of them to begin with so the number doesn't matter much except to the maker. It's really pretty and I'm guessing the only thing that kept it from being a regular color is the wackiness of some of the shard glitters in it.You can see in the bottle that it has holo glitter in it, and some of it is bars and shards and it's definitely different. It's something I pull out at the holidays but don't look at again for the rest of the year because it's just a little... much, for everyday wear.

Sweet Peacock layers

Here's some new swatches based on Orly Sweet Peacock - the polish page for SP is here, but this is mostly based on a mani from a while back. As I said then, I did Sweet Peacock with matte top-coat for a couple of days and then I decided I wanted a bit more pop, so I added Blue Majesty and mattified that. I didn't get a picture of all the stages when it was on my hands so I thought I would recreate it with nail wheels.

Below we have Sweet Peacock (the center one of the three blue swatches) by itself at the very bottom of the nail and with matte top-coat at the top, and below that NYC Blue Majesty over SP (same deal, matte top-coat at the top, but without it at the bottom). I think both of them look really nice.

Then we have a bonus combination of SP with Never Too Rich:

I really like this one as well. it's interesting. I feel like it would be especially good as a holiday polish.

Here Today Aragon Tomorrow

This is OPI Here Today, Aragon Tomorrow:

I knew I hadn't seen this polish lately, and I was digging in a box of papers (I got an extension on my taxes so I still have to finish that, ugh) and I found this bottle at the bottom of the box. Surprise! Actually I'm lucky I ever found it at all, considering. And good timing, because this is an awesome fall polish. Obviously it's very dark - I would call it a blackened green. (Nail Polish Canada's page for it says it's discontinued - I wouldn't have thought that.) This is from the Espana collection, which was... a couple of years ago, I think? I can never keep track. I would call this one of OPI's classic colors - which is why I assumed it was core. (Note that there was also a suede version of this, but clearly this is not that, this is the regular one.)

(I was poking around in old entries looking for #tbt candidates, and I noticed that I was looking for this polish in late 2014! I wonder if it was really buried in that box for a year and a half.)

Throwback Thursday: Butterflies & Rosebuds

This is Julie G Butterflies & Rosebuds, and considering that colors like this are supposed to be very trendy for fall this year, I thought I would start my Throwback Thursdays off with it.

(I've been digging around in the old pictures, you might can guess!)

Irene, Leaf Him At The Altar

Zoya Irene and Sephora by OPI Leaf Him At The Altar:

These are somewhat yellow-leaning greens - and both discontinued, for the record, but you should be able to find others that are fairly similar. Leaf Me Him At The Altar is a medium metallic green; Irene is mossy with golden-brown shimmer. I really do like Irene, in particular, a lot, and it's surprising because I was just sure after I bought it that it would be too yellow for me. For some reason it does not seem to read terribly yellow on me, even though in the bottle (and even on the wheel swatch) it does look fairly yellow-ish. Go figure.

Added: I had the name of the S-OPI polish wrong - I sometimes fail to double-check myself properly when I'm tired. I had "Leaf Me At The Altar" which doesn't really even make sense. It's Leaf HIM.

NOTD: Black Diamond, matte

This is Pretty Serious Black Diamond, two coats with no undies other than base-coat:

It's pretty much opaque with two coats (I did do a little dabbing in a couple of spots), but I think when I wear it again I'm going to put Black Creme under it, just because you can't get this kind of polish to wrap around the tips & sides like I'd like. Considering the type of glitter - i.e., definitely on the chunky side - it does go on relatively smooth, but I did use a coat of Glitter Food under the matte top-coat. If you really like your polish to have a super-glass-slick finish, I would say you might want two coats of Glitter Food (or Gelous, or whatever). But one did well enough to suit me.

I never posted a picture or anything last week, but what I wore all week was Pretty Gritty - by itself for a couple of days, and then after it had (inevitably) chipped a little I patched the tips up and put Jin Soon Gossamer on top. (That's my #1 manicure extending trick, if you haven't figured that out already: use the original polish to patch, then add a coat of some sort of topper - my favorites for this are Gossamer, Travel In Colour (China Glaze), or Bubblegum Punk (RBL), something that changes it up just a little without being too drastic.)

Mistletoe Kisses

This is Virago Varnish Mistletoe Kisses:

It's kind of an odd name for this color - it's not the color of any mistletoe I've ever seen - of course mistletoe doesn't even grow around here, as far as I know, so it's not like I'm any expert. I live too far south for a lot of the traditional holiday greenery. (If the pictures on Wikipedia are anything to go by, the colors do vary, apparently.) Anyway, it's a pretty color - sort of silvery medium green with almost a blackened tinge to it - and it's nice to have something different from the usual holiday greens. This was a holiday polish a couple of years ago, so it's no surprise that I don't see it on Virago's website.

Goblin, Kale

These are both minis, Mod Lacquer Goblin and Chirality Kale:

Goblin is fairly similar in some ways to the last polish I showed, Slightly Unstable, in that it's a green duochrome with some scattered holo glitter and a brown flash. But it's a brighter green than that one, so it looks a good bit different. Kale is a slightly more grayed-out green, and it's a holo. It was really the first holo I fell in love with. It's still available, but Mod Lacquer is apparently out of business.

Slightly Unstable

This is Slightly Unstable from Paint Box Polish:

This is the kind of thing I usually refer to as a "funky green." You sometimes find these in Halloween collections, but this one is from a Women of Harry Potter collection, and it's meant to refer to Bellatrix Lestrange, although to my mind calling her slightly unstable is like calling Donald Trump slightly self-centered. (Sorry, that's the first comparison that came to mind.) It's definitely got a slight duochrome to it - brown, maybe? and I think also a little bit of holo glitter.

Lodgepole Pine, Meow Meow

This is Square Hue Lodgepole Pine and Rescue Beauty Lounge Meow Meow:

The Square Hue polish was from this past January, so it's the Adventure Series and I had "Hike Banff" on my spreadsheet so that was presumably that month's theme. (All Square Hue polishes are LE but check their website if you fall in love with something because they do sell off their leftovers, as I understand it.) And then the RBL was from an Italian-themed collection - it was meant to be the color of a cat's eyes, as I recall. Anyway, it's another beautiful green glitter but I seem to have a lot of green glitters, somehow. Lodgepole Pine stands out more in my collection because I don't seem to have many dark-green cremes. (I bet these two would look very nice layered.)

More goodies from Sephora

I mentioned way back here that I didn't get a July Sephora box because they "oversold" them, so they said, and they sent me 500 points instead. Then they put up this Kat Von D set for 500 points a week or so ago, and I decided to go ahead and get it. I knew I liked her eyeliners and there are two of them in this set, and I'd never tried her lipsticks, so that seemed like a good deal. Here's what showed on Sephora's "Beauty Bazaar" where it shows the available bonuses:

And here's what it looked like when it arrived:

Here's what was inside:

The little bag is in the bottom although you can't really see it here. The other items are minis of a studded lipstick (in Cathedral), a liquid lipstick (in Vampira), a Tattoo Liner (in Mad Max Brown) and an Ink Liner (in Trooper, which is black). That works out well since I already have the Tattoo Liner in black. I think the Ink Liner draws a heavier line than the Tattoo Liner, so that will be fun to play with. Eyeliner is about the only eye makeup I wear much these days.

Here are the two lipsticks swatched on my stupidly pale wrist:

The lighter one is Cathedral and the dark one is Vampira. I was a little worried that Vampira would be so dark as to look ridiculous on me but I actually think it looks fine. You can see around the edges of that swatch that it has berry undertones and that's usually pretty flattering to my skin-tone.

Then I found a Sephora Favorites lip set that said "limited edition" and seemed like a really good deal at $28, considering it has two full sized products in it - a Lancome Juicy Shaker, which is $21 normally, and a Smashbox Always On which is $24, plus four other mini-sized products. I figured I'd decide which ones are good colors for me and put the rest in my stash to give gifts from later.

I didn't have time to swatch these yet but I do have pictures of everything. This box is so adorable:

And inside it looked like this:

You can see the products on the box, but for the record, they look pretty much exactly the same as they did on the box:

Besides the two full-sized ones I listed above (which are the two on the right), the brands are Too Faced (the Melted liquid lip), another KvD studded one (in a different color, luckily), a Nars pencil, and the Fresh Sugar lip. (I didn't write down colors but if you click through to that Sephora link, I believe they're listed there.) I went ahead & ordered this since it said it was LE and you never know how long those sets will last. I'm still trying to decide what I'm keeping and what I'm giving away, out of all this - I'm keeping the Melted for sure, and the Kat liquid lip from the other set, and maybe the Juicy Shaker, I'm still thinking that one over. The Smashbox one is not my kind of color, and I already had that same Nars lip pencil so those two can definitely go. Anyway, some are staying, some are going, that's what I intended from the start. (Added: I was right, this set sold out within a couple of weeks. Lately there has been a different one that I think was called "Give Me Some Bold Lip" but that one may be sold out now too. I'd keep an eye out, if they're selling that well they might come up with a different set between now and Christmas. Anyway, for the record, I eventually I kept three from this set - the Melted, the Sugar Rosé, and the Juicy Shaker. I do really like the Juicy Shaker but it seems like it disappears from your lips really quickly, so I probably wouldn't buy one for full price!)

I also took a picture of my usual quota of samples:

Two are fragrance samples - the one on the left is a men's cologne but it smells AWESOME, I was tempted to steal it for myself. The Juliette Has a Gun one also smelled really nice. And then that's some Sephora-brand foundation samples, I believe it was. And then a Briogeo curl product, which was one of those free-with-a-$25-purchase premium samples. (Everybody knows to check the "weekly specials" on Sephora's front page, right? That's usually where they put that kind of thing. If you're buying stuff online from Sephora and not taking advantage of those you're missing out.)

Chita, Mistletoe

This is Zoya Chita and Julie G Mistletoe:

These are both textures - Zoya's from the Pixie Dust line, of course, and Julie G's from the Holiday Gumdrops collection. They look pretty similar as far as the texture, and it looks like they may both have silver glitter in the mix. Chita looks like it's a darker color and Mistletoe looks brighter, but actually I seem to remember Chita reading brighter on the nail than it looks in this swatch.

Both of these are still available:
Chita
Mistletoe