What I've worn in 2017

I have a list of every polish I could figure out that I wore for the first time in 2017 - I feel like there are things missing, but in some cases I think it's just polishes I bought and haven't actually worn. Although I've added a couple that got left out the first time. And the polish descriptions are from memory so may not be entirely accurate!

I was looking at the number of KL Polishes and the number of Colourpops that are on this list (those two together because I believe they're manufactured by the same company), and I would like to note here that Colourpop still has Pixi-lated and the other pastel colors marked down to $3. It's fair to assume they are not coming back once they're gone.

A England
Saint George (dark green holo)

By Terry
Moving Mauve (berry creme)

China Glaze
Let Your Twilight Sparkle (iridescent blue topper)
Pearl Jammin' (pale blue/almost white, pearly)
Where's the Party Canon At? (pink glitter topper)

Colourpop
I Wand It That Way (iridescent glitter topper)
Pixi-lated (medium-blue creme)

Deborah Lippmann
Fools Rush In (dusty lavender creme)
Good Girl Gone Bad (dark red glitter)

Enchanted Polish
Fairy (topper)

Essie
Peak of Chic (silver glitter)
Splash of Grenadine (bright pink creme)

Ever After
I Wanna Be a Part of It (purple glitter in a silver base)

Femme Fatale
The Necromancer (purple holo mix)

Finger Paints
Wood I Lie To You (berry creme)

Formula X
Aura (red glitter in a black base)
Marine (marine-blue texture)

ILNP
High Tide (blue-green holo)

Insta-Dri
Cerulean (crayon blue creme)
Expresso (brown shimmer)
Cherry Fast (cherry creme)

KBShimmer
So Jelly ("unicorn pee" shifty pigment in a red jelly base)

Kiko
497 "Pearly Indian Violet" (very dark blue-leaning purple)

KL Polish
Chloe (olive creme)
Das Esspensive XXV (champagne glitter)
Mozart (purple creme)
Ocean Drive (blue-green holo mix)
Prince Cornelious (red-brown microglitter)
That's What She Said (rose-silver metallic)
Zoey (dusty pink)

Lollipop Posse
...And Further (holo glitter mix)

Miracle Gel

Adrenaline Crush (plummy-brown metallic)

Misa
When U Say My Name (brown shimmer)

Morgan Taylor
The Last Petal (blackened pink)

Marc Jacobs
Oui! (bright shimmery pink)

Miracle Gel
Adrenaline Crush (purple-brown metallic)

OPI
Rich Girls and Po-Boys (bright sky blue creme)
Turn On the Northern Lights! (dark blue with shifty tendencies)

Orly
Feel The Funk (berry pink holo mix)
Just Breathe (lavender creme)

Pretty Serious
Fairy Lights (white shifter)
Fire In the Sky (flakie top-coat)

Revlon
Hypnotic (bright shimmery pink)

Square Hue
Lengha (dark brown shimmer)
Nani (red-orange creme)
Odhani (blue crelly)

Superchic
No Rest for the Wicked (green holo)

Wet n Wild
Lavender Out Loud (dusty lavender)
Peri-wink-le of an Eye (periwinkle creme)

Zoya 
Anaka (deep "glam pink")
Destiny (red-orange Pixie Dust)
Mimi (purple glass fleck)
Olivera (blue-green duochrome)
Stevie (medium purple Pixie Dust)
Vespa (pale-green Pixie Dust)


Some examples - Cerulean

The Last Petal:

Fairy Lights:

Super Star

This is Sinful Colors Super Star:

It's a metallic blue base with purple glitter - really different from anything else I have. I like it.

I did post about this one previously - back in June 2016. But anyway, I would consider this a pretty good winter polish, so maybe this will prompt somebody to remember they like it, too. (It's a discontinued polish, but might be still findable.)

NOTD: Feel The Funk over Kiko 497

I kind of feel like this picture is not exactly what you saw in real life, but I'm posting it anyway. This is the Kiko manicure I posted a couple of weeks ago, with Orly Feel The Funk and Matte All The Things.

I find that this happens often with holo glitters - maybe it's the defects of my own lighting, or maybe this is just what holo glitters do. In any case, Feel The Funk definitely looks much different over a lighter base; here you can see that it's still quite dark, even if the holo glitter makes it looks bumpy. I liked the actual result a lot.

Adrenaline Crush

This is Miracle Gel Adrenaline Crush:

Lovely metallic, sort of a bronze, I guess? - not really a rose gold but not too far from that.

This is the polish that I mentioned having bought from HEB with a coupon, and I couldn't remember at the time what it was that I had bought. Miracle Gel is pretty expensive, and I usually won't buy it without a coupon or a markdown, even though I do like it. It's in the same price-range as OPI, which I don't generally buy a lot of either - the tradeoff is that OPI has more of a range of colors and finishes, while Miracle Gel lasts far longer on me. I have more OPIs but maybe I should make a point of collecting the Miracle Gel colors that I like, when I get a chance.

(As I've said before, other people act like they get much better wear than I do from OPI. My nails are weird sometimes.)

Gray's Anatomy

This is Wet n Wild FastDry Gray's Anatomy:

I guess this is named after the old textbook, not the TV series, since the spellings are different (the TV series is Grey's Anatomy) and also because this polish has been around a long time, although so has the TV series so I'm not sure it's that old. But anyway, this is a gray with shifty tendencies - similar to a lot of newer "oil slick" polishes but maybe somewhat more subtle. I found a comparison to Lippmann Wicked Game, if that helps you out any.

How old is it? I found a Scrangie post that's from very early 2011, so it may have been as early as 2010, actually. She talks about FastDry being a new line at that time, and as I discussed a week or so ago, this line seems to be discontinued now. But since it was around for some six or seven years, it's probably still findable at the usual Amazon/eBay-type places. Possibly it's slightly more expensive than it used to be (which was $1.99, I think) but probably still not as expensive as Wicked Game, I'm guessing.

(How old is Grey's Anatomy, the TV series? Apparently they are in season 14, which means they quite a bit older than the polish - but not nearly as old as the textbook, which dates back to 1858 and is on its 41st edition, according to Wikipedia.)

NOTD: Kiko 497

I bought a bunch of Kiko polishes a year ago when they had their Black Friday sale (it was buy 3 get 3 free, and I noticed they had the same sale again this year) and I have to admit I haven't worn them much. It's not because I don't like the polishes - I think it's mostly been because I sorted my polish by brand, like six months or more ago, and the ones that were on the bottom of that pile are just now starting to re-emerge. (Kiko was one of those brands, and so were a lot of my indies.)

So I finally found some of the Kikos and I thought it was time that I tried a couple more of them. This one is #497 or "Pearly Indian Violet" and it's supposed to be a near-dupe for Chanel Taboo. I don't have Taboo so I don't know about that, but I do like it.

It's very dark and vampy, sort of like (the inevitable comparison) OPI Lincoln Park After Dark, and I didn't think about comparing those two directly until now, but I'm pretty sure LPAD reads more red than this one. I think the closest thing I have to this is another, less famous OPI, and that's Who Are You Wearing? It's more blue-leaning than LPAD, but it also seems more shimmery than the Kiko. If I can put my hands on all of these, I'll do another round of comparisons.

I can't resist trying out layering things, so I did a couple of nails with Orly Feel the Funk and mattified it. Since the Kiko is now starting to wear, I may patch it up and try some more layers.

NOTD: ...And Further (over Carter)

This is the polish I mentioned having on preorder, Lollipop Posse ...And Further, over Zoya Carter. I just slapped it on over what I was already wearing, and I really love it.

It's from a Magician's Trio set of polishes. In the books and series "The Magicians" there is a Narnia-like series of books-within-the-books, so to speak. Or, well, within the series if you're watching it instead of reading... Instead of Narnia, the world is called Fillory, and the series of books (which is not just fictional but exists only as a title and a description even within The Magicians) is called Fillory and Further. Thus the name of this polish.

Anyway, back to the polish itself - I swatched it on the wheel, and while it's purplish, it's not this dark of a purple - it was grayed-out and pretty sheer, at least on the first coat. So I'm pretty sure that what you see here is the purple base of Carter and the holo glitter mix of And Further. But it's lovely, and furthermore, when this picture was taken, I'd had it on for several days already. Very few things last that well on my nails, so I'm always entranced when I find something that does. (Although again, it's very probably something in the combination of the two polishes, not to mention all the base- and top-coats I was wearing along with them, that's responsible for the nice wear.) I'm still wearing this now, and it has one substantial chip and some tip-wear. But I put Carter on a week ago and slapped And Further on top of it four or five days ago. So that's awfully good however you slice it.

Prince Cornelious

This is KL Polish Prince Cornelious, from the fall collection:

I notice that KL Polish website calls it a bronze, but I've been thinking of it more as a red-brown with a lot of metallic sheen to it. In the bottle it almost looks like there's some gold in there - and actually I just went back and watched Kathleen's video about this collection to see what she said, and she called it a red-brown-bronze with some gold in it, so I guess that's fair. (Link for that is down at the bottom of this post about the set, and also this one from when I wore it.) It's really beautiful, in any case. I don't think the swatch here looks that great, really, but on your nails moving around it does. I think the microglittery colors you can see swirling around the bottle are more representative of what you actually get.

(I had to hunt around to find this picture, I had forgotten I never posted it and filed it away. No wonder I keep thinking I'm running out of pictures!)

Ruby Without A Cause

Here's Sephora by OPI Ruby Without A Cause:

These are long-discontinued, of course. (With the demise of Formula X that means this was two house-brands ago, for Sephora.) It's a pretty color but not something worth pining over - right on the line between red and pink, with some duochrome flash that rarely shows up on the nail.

Added: another picture, because the color in this picture looks more like the real thing to me:

Ultra Violet

I'm a little behind - I just now remembered to check to see what the new Color of the Year was, and in case you didn't know either, it's Ultra Violet - a deep blue-violet. This is totally up my alley. (I liked Greenery, last year's color, but it's not terribly flattering on me. Same with the pastels from the year before that.) So I'm going to see what I can come up with for nail polishes to match.

(Links are not affiliate links, for the record.)

Here's a really awesome one, Zoya Isa:

which I actually just talked about lately, as it happens. It's a bit deeper than Ultra Violet is supposed to be, I think, but it's definitely in the ballpark.

One of my favorite purples ever (and I love purples, so that's saying something) is also in the ballpark, Poltergeist Purple:

As you'll see if you click over to the link above, it is on the new PS website but it's apparently not currently in stock. I named this my favorite polish of 2016, in fact - it has a blue-violet base but it shimmers and shifts off in several other directions as well. It's seriously cool.

(Hmm, if you're into holos, PS has a new one that's in this color range, Carina.

I've had wear problems with this brand (below), myself, but other people love it, so I'm guessing it's just me, and this is an awesome color, in any case:

Here's Violet Femme on Picture Polish's (Australian) website (I looked and Live Love Polish doesn't have it), but it is a current color. I did order this directly from the website several years ago, and it went fine when I tried it, for what that's worth.

(I saw somebody else's list of Ultraviolets, earlier - here - but it was all more expensive brands. I'm looking for things that are more reasonably priced.)

These aren't colors that I have, but Do You Have This Color In Stock-holm? looks pretty close. Or Essie Sexy Divide (which I've never even heard of). Or Grape Pop from China Glaze.

Mojito

This is Pretty Serious Mojito:

This is of course #5 on the wheel, and you can see that it looks pretty opaque, but then since it's over a white background it's hard to be sure. I haven't worn it so I can't say for sure either, but clearly I need to at least experiment around with it some. I think it has a green flash (thus the name), but you can't see that here. If I remember to experiment, I'll report back. Or maybe I'll actually wear it!

I don't think you can get this polish any more. I bought it in the clearance sales when PS was clearing out their old stock, and I haven't bought anything so far since they've been back from their hiatus. (Nope, not on the new US website, at least.)

Many, many samples

I got sidetracked by Pinterest or something last night and then got sleepy before I got around to doing an entry here. Oops. I need to go back to doing them ahead, obviously. I kind of ran low on pictures but I've got more now so I have no excuse.

This, though, is not a new picture, this is a months-old picture that for some reason I never got around to posting, I think because I felt like I had to list everything in the picture and I didn't wanna.

And, guess what, I'm not. I'm not sure I could, completely, now, because this is all scattered to hell and gone. But anyway, this is a lot of Sephora deluxe-type samples, including but not entirely composed of the sun protection set they do every summer. Some of this stuff I've been using and some my husband has been using (because he can't even go out the door without sunscreen and a hat, doctor's orders) and some is put away to go in my Christmas-gift sets.

A couple of things I would point out, though:

• a thing here that I didn't much like: the Amore Pacific cushion stuff that everybody is so in love with. I think it's just me, you know? - I'm super-picky about the textures of things and I didn't like that one. I need to give it another try, though.
• a thing here I loved loved loved: the Ren Evercalm Day Cream. I'm still using up the nice-sized tube over on the right above and I am going to be upset when it's empty - and it's getting close. Do I love it enough to pay $45 for a full-size one? I'm not quite sure. If Sephora would just have the small size for a 100-point bonus I would be a happy happy girl, though.

Also, to change the subject back to nails, I mentioned having a new polish and I had mentioned that I was getting an LE polish in the mail. I have both of them in front of me now, and I don't have swatches yet or anything but at least I can mention what they are:

The one I bought at H-E-B the other day was Miracle Gel Adrenaline Crush. It seems like sort of a bronze metallic, with maybe a hint of holo in it.

And the indie that was on presale was from the "Magicians' Trio" from LollypopLollipop Posse, which is a brand I was not familiar with before but am seriously into now. The one I got is ...And Further (which in The Magicians refers to Fillory and Further, the Narnia-like set of books about a magical kingdom. I put it right on top of the Carter mani that I was previously wearing, and it's quite beautiful. Lollipop Posse has HEDWIG-themed polishes, which just seems awesome to me. (Note that by that I mean "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" not Hedwig, Harry Potter's owl. Harry Potter polishes are everywhere in the indie world, but Hedwig-the-musical, not so much.) I think I am going to have to buy some of those.

Teal Of Fortune

This is WnW FastDry Teal of Fortune:

This was one of my favorite polishes, fairly early on in my nail polish obsession. It might have been the first Wet n Wild polish I ever bought, because for a long time I was very snobby about it and thought that no good polish could be that cheap. It's a lovely teal-ish color. I think it has a jelly base or it would probably be darker. (I think of teal as being slightly darker than this, but this is dark enough that I'm really just nitpicking in this case.)

My spreadsheet says I bought this at Walgreen's in 2011, although I'm fairly sure the spreadsheet itself is not that old so that means it was just an educated guess. That sounds about right, though. I'm pretty sure it cost 99 cents or maybe $1.99 at the most. Apparently (see here) the FastDry line is now defunct, but their WildShine polishes still retail for 99 cents, according to that page. Actually I happen to know, because I bought a backup bottle of Black Creme just the other day, that my grocery store (H-E-B, that is) sells WildShine for 93 cents. And they had a 25% off coupon going at the time, and my final cost was 70 cents. I bought some other polish, too, although I can't remember at the moment what it was, and the coupon also worked for the shampoo that I had gone in for in the first place. That's why I love H-E-B so much.

NOTD: Carter, matte

This is Zoya Carter, two coats with matte top-coat:

Actually I used two coats of top-coat - the first one was an old Revlon top-coat that I just grabbed randomly. Then after that dried I used Matte All The Things for the second coat. And it's still a little bit bumpy, even after all that.

I'm not sure when the last time I wore Carter was. I always love it when I do wear it, though.

Eyeshadows - Colourpop & more

I'm sure I've mentioned before that I haven't worn much eye makeup in a long time. I developed a really major sensitivity to mascara, and I've played around with eyeliner a little, but it just doesn't ever seem to stay on. But eyeshadow seems to do alright, to the extent that I've tried it, so I decided it was time to do more experimenting with that.

I had bought a couple of Sephora Collection eyeshadows, and I had some odds and ends of stuff that came from Ipsy and Sephora Play, but everybody always talks about the Colourpop eyeshadows so I decided I would try some of those. I don't think buying big palettes is a good idea at this point, but I bought a Z-palette from Sephora, and then when Colourpop was having their 20% off sale, I bought Kathleen Lights' four-pack of shadows, and a few other singles, and some brushes. The brushes were a pencil brush and a flat brush.

This is the four-pack:

(I watched the video about Kathleen's new palette, and it's very pretty, but I think it's just overkill for my needs right now. Probably even the four-pack was overkill, really.)

So here's what's in my Z-palette so far:

(Super Shock shadows have the white edge visible around them, but Colourpop's pressed shadows don't.) The ones at the bottom are Colourpop pressed shadows in Snake Eyes and Double Date, and then the pink one is Lord & Berry Pink Ribbon, which I had bought on sale a while back, and then there are two brown Sephoras and one little Balm shadow in the corner. The one at top right is a stray Pacifica that I already had, called Ethereal. Then Kathleen's four shadows are at the top left - the pale one is called Glow, I know, and, well, actually, here are the color names:

But they're not in that same order. Cornelious is the one above Glow, in the palette, and Kathleen Lights is the sort of caramel one. So that means the darkest one of those four is Blaze. And then the other dark one, the fifth one with the white pan, is just called "3" and it's also an Ultra-Glitter. I almost didn't buy those because the word "glitter" scared me but as far as I can tell so far they don't really look unacceptably glittery on the eye. (Maybe if you put it on really heavily, I don't know about that yet.)

So anyway, I figured all that was enough to go on with. You can see the colors I'm going for to start with - shades of brown & copper, and then pink/lavender and nudes, basically. I'm experimenting with that and if I use those enough then I'll get more fancy and try some different colors. (I bought the double-sided Z-palette when Sephora was having their VIB sale, so I have room to expand.)


I'll put Kathleen's palette video down below because I am just fascinated by that red-brick color she has on her lids. But I seriously doubt that that would work for me.

A few more pictures - the Sephora shadows are Coffee Break and Tiramisu:

They were clearly made to be removable, which is nice. I had more assorted eye shadows and things that seemed to difficult to pry out of their containers. I just did the easy ones for now. I may get ambitious later and try to get my MAC blusher out of its plastic prison, but I want to be sure I'm not going to break it if I do!

Here's the two brushes:

The Balm eyeshadow was one of those "Nude Dude" shadows:

You Dew You

I think I mentioned that I'd bought another Unicorn Pee polish - that would be KBShimmer You Dew You:

This is You Dew You over black (probably Black Creme, but it's been a while so I'm not entirely sure of that). You can really see the coppery-reddish tone of the pigment here - it's supposed to shift around but you don't see that here. In my living room light it seems to shift to green at a steep angle, and I think there's also supposed to be some gold. There are a lot of flakies (the ones with much larger flakes, that is) that have a shift like that, seems to me, so I'm not really sure what's supposed to be so rare and magical about it. But in any case it's really beautiful so I'm not seriously complaining.

This collection went in & out of stock on KBS's website but it wasn't there when I looked this week. If the pigment is really as rare as all that I'm guessing it won't be back.

(KBShimmer also sent along this nail polish charm as a freebie.)

NOTD: Pumpkin Spice/When U Say My Name

I feel like I should get this manicure in while it's still November because on Dec.1st we all go full-on Christmas (as if that hasn't happened already) - this is Xtreme Wear Pumpkin Spice over Misa When U Say My Name:

This doesn't do justice to Pumpkin Spice, really, but neither did the try I had at it last year so oh well. Maybe it's not just me. Last year I put it over Zoya Cinnamon but this year I used the Misa, which is darker, so that may have helped a bit. P-Spice (the Xtreme Wear version, I mean, of course, not the Sinful Colors one that was out this year or any of the others that I'm sure exist) always looks coppery to me but everybody always says it's actually orange - maybe it's the dark jelly base that confuses me.

Pumpkin Spice  is long-discontinued but I know there are bottles still out there floating around because I bought one last year. (As you'd expect, though, you probably have to pay a premium for it. I wish I'd bought about a dozen back when it was $2 and change, but it's a little late now!)

Added: I forgot to say anything about When U Say My Name, which is a pretty dark brown shimmer that I don't think I've worn before. I almost hated to put a topper over it. (Still available on Misa's website, if you're interested.)

NOTD: Chloe

This is KL Polish Chloe.

This is a dark olive creme, and it's really beautiful, but I sat and admired it for a while, and then I put something on top of it. (Honestly, I do better with Kathleen's cremes than with I do with most cremes - at least with Kathleen's I usually wear them alone for a day or so before I start playing around with the colors. Other brands, I usually go straight for the layering polishes.)

I don't have a picture of what I finally did, but I put Zoya Rikki on it. Rikki is a light-green metallic, but it's sheer enough that I thought the dark olive would show through, and it did. I really like the combination; the dark base gives Rikki a lot more character. And Rikki is also really really shiny, and so I put Matte All The Things on top - this polish is so shiny that even matte top-coat can't hold it down completely, but at least it toned it down a bit.

Private I

This is Sally Hansen Diamond Strength Private I:

Diamond Strength is a discontinued line, and for the most part the polishes in this line were very uninteresting so I can't be terribly sad that it's gone. However, they did put out a few LE collections a few years ago that I liked. This one is a plummy glass-fleck, and it's really beautiful. The flecks don't show up well on the swatch in this picture, unfortunately. Maybe I'll try to reswatch it at some point.

I took a few days off from posting over the weekend - I've been posting every day for so long that it felt very weird. I should also mention that I didn't buy a whole lot over the whole Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend, and I don't think any of what I bought was nail polish, for a change. The only thing I bought yesterday was a big pile of towels from JCPenney's, because they were cheap and they've always had good towels. (I know that's a boring purchase but somehow I'm very picky about towels and I don't like paying a mint for them.) And Friday I bought a bunch of stuff from Nyx, mostly meant as gifts. It seems like I bought one other thing but I can't remember what the heck it was. And I know I already had one polish on pre-order that hopefully will be here before too long.

Free of puppies and kittens

I just happened to look at Zoya's website, to see if they had any deals posted (they didn't; if there are any going on they must have gone out in an e-mail). It looked like this, with the box above down in the corner of the front page:

I've been watching the news just now - which is depressing as hell as usual - so I appreciate the unexpected laugh.

Logan

This is Zoya Logan, from the Ornate collection (which was a holiday collection several years ago):

Zoya says about it: "a full coverage, yellow-toned forest green with dense, foil-like yellow-gold and blue-green duochrome shimmer! Rich color, a sparkling finish and a subtle duochrome effect make this green very special."

I've sort of been saving this for the holidays, so I guess that means I'll finally get around to wearing it soon!

Barry M Silver Glitter

This is a polish from the British brand Barry M, a limited edition polish just called Silver Glitter:

I assume this isn't findable, or certainly not easily findable, at the very least. I bought it from a blog sale a couple of years ago; it was apparently a gift-with-purchase type of thing from Boots stores one holiday season. (Americans aren't familiar with Barry M, usually, but we're getting to know Boots these days, since Boots and Walgreens now have the same ownership and Boots products are now sold at Walgreens as well as at Target.)

Anyway, nice silver glitter (shown here over WnW Black Creme) - it's clearly meant to be a top-coat but it still goes on reasonably thick. I have a lot of silver and gold glitters, both, and this would be a good thing to do a comparison of, over the holidays. I'll have to start digging glitters out of my collection!

(Since tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the US - or rather today, by the time you read this - I decided I should wear something very seasonal. Then I had to decide what that meant,exactly, and I came up with an earth-tone other than orange, like brown or copper or both. I ended up wearing Misa When U Say My Name, which is just a shimmery brown - very pretty on its own - with Xtreme Wear Pumpkin Spice on top of that, and matte top-coat. I'll try to get a decent picture of that!)

Knackered

This is Butter London Knackered:

It's one of those shifty sheer things that I tend to wear as a top-coat - it looks in the swatch like you might possibly be able to get it close to opaque, at least, but I won't swear to that. I'm not 100% sure I've ever worn this, actually. But it's interesting. It almost looks like it's got a blue-violet undertone, although it's hard to be sure. And it has some bits of sparkle in there, too.

Kaufda

I know I've talked about Zoya Kaufda recently, but apparently it's never gotten a post by itself so I'm rectifying that today.

Zoya described it this way: "Shiny, warm molten copper with rich orange-red undertones and golden frost. A fitting shade to match the changing fall leaves." I say described and not describes because this is a discontinued shade. Which is a shame, because it's a really nice polish that mostly got ignored. Zoya has so many polishes that they just can't all be famous, I guess. I think I picked this out because I wanted something coppery without being too yellow, and this works well with my warm-colors-averse skintone. It really is a perfect autumn shade.

This was around for years, so even though it's discontinued, I imagine it's findable if you decide you want it bad enough. I think it's so old it is just called a "Classic" - which, near as I can tell, means it pre-dates Zoya's 12-a-season release schedule that they have been doing for the last 10 years or so. For that matter, it's Zoya #195, which I think means there's only a handful of polishes still in production that are older than that. The new polishes that are coming out are in the 900s, I just checked.

It just occurred to me that I haven't bought any Zoyas since the Earth Day sale, I'm pretty sure. Nothing has grabbed me. It's not like I don't have a ton of Zoyas already so I don't know why I feel bad that I haven't bought more. (I did have about 80 Zoyas but I gave some away when I went to visit my relatives earlier this month so I'm probably back down to the low 70s.) (Wonder what they're doing for Black Friday?)

CoverGirl stash

This is my most of my CoverGirl stash:

Most of these are microglitters in a range of colors. The outlier is the red one, which is called Sangria and which is a slightly orange-leaning red which seems slightly jellyish. (I don't seem to really wear red a lot, even though it looks good on me. So I haven't worn this one much either.) Also note that the other two minis are the same as the colors above them - I'll talk about those more below but I had the mini Glosstini ones first and then I found the full-size bottles on sale later on. I think that the microglitters are discontinued and that's why they were marked down.

I have one other stray old-school CoverGirl, and it's called Gold Rush:

I've been calling these microglitters, but I've also seen them called glass-flecks.

This picture is not in the same order as the one above; L-R, this is Midnight Magic, Seared Bronze, Pyro Pink, and Violet Flicker. Some of the Glosstinis were released as Catching Fire tie-ins but I don't think all of them were. There were a bunch of these at one time, maybe 10 or 12. Actually there are 9 in this post but Midnight Magic is not there, so it must not have been a Catching Fire release. I think some of them existed before that, though.

As far as favorites, I really like all of the glass-fleck ones but I think I'd have to go with Seared Bronze as the winner out of these..

Liquid latex

I've always wanted to try ombre manicures, so I figured for that I'd need liquid latex to keep from making a gigantic mess. I saw a video that talked about buying it on Amazon - the link for that is down at the bottom. It seemed like a much better deal than just buying a small bottle of it, since the small half-ounce bottles cost as much as (or more than) the whole big jar, most places I've seen.

I had some trouble trying to decant it into a usable form, though. This is how it came - although I had already opened it and made a big mess with it by the time I took this picture, which is why the label has smears on it. (Basically, my ability to make a mess of things is pretty infinite.)

This is ammonia-free latex. Even in this bright color it does work as advertised - that is, it peels right off once it's dried. (Due to the aforesaid mess, I can attest that it peels off right off of a variety of items including my fingers and the table.) Here's a link to the same brand in pink - if you've ordered from Amazon a lot like I have, you probably already know to check the different colors for differences in prices and the shipping costs. This comes in a large variety of colors, some of which were eligible for Prime and some weren't. Amazon also sells another brand that comes in even larger containers, but I figured I'd probably never even use up a 4 oz. jar, much less 16.

I had a plastic squeeze bottle like you use for haircolor - I bought several of them from Sally's when I did that big order a while back. But I couldn't figure out how to get it into the bottle at first. I didn't have a funnel or anything like that (or a syringe, which is Kelly's solution in the video below), but my improvised solution worked - I took a piece of heavy paper torn out of my September Vogue and made a cone-shape, put it down into the squeeze bottle, and poured through that. It worked fine, although of course some sticks to the paper. That seems like a minor issue, though. Then, since that bottle has a pointed tip (although it's not visible in the picture below) getting it from there into the small bottle was easy-peasy.

The small bottle was an old Chick polish bottle that I cleaned out, so it has the advantage of having the cute chick graphic, but other than that any polish bottle should do. I just left the rest of the latex in the squeeze bottle and discarded the original messy jar.

(I haven't tried the ombre thing yet, but at least I'm one step closer!)


Here are the videos I had watched a while back:

Fall Mood

This is Revlon Colorstay Fall Mood:

Around this time last year I compared this polish with another coppery metallic, and the best I could come up with to describe it was "indeterminate fall-toned metallic" - it's somewhere in the pale-copper-to-bronze range, but it also has some little flecks of stuff in it which I think may be what was throwing me off. Anyway, unless you can find it on eBay or somewhere, it's not available, since this is the older version of Colorstay. It really is a lovely fall color, though.

(Note that this is on one nail alone, and on one nail over an orange polish, because that's one of the things I tried while I was doing all those Astros-orange manicures last month. It looked good that way.)

(Come to think of it, maybe that's why whoever named it came up with "Fall Mood" - maybe they couldn't decide quite what it was either!)

Fairy Dust (China Glaze version)

This is China Glaze Fairy Dust (here over KL Porter Miami):

Fairy Dust is just a plain holo glitter topper. If I'd swatched it alone, you wouldn't really be able to see it. I like it over this nice blue polish, though. (I'm sure you can figure this out, but #8 on the wheel is Porter by itself and #9 is Fairy Dust over Porter.)

As it happens, I have another polish called Fairy Dust which I was wearing the other day. That one is e.l.f. and it's also a topper, but in this case it's a flakie. I wore it over the weekend over Mozart, the dusty purple KL Polish. The flakie looked really nice over it. Unfortunately I didn't get pictures, though.

Feel The Funk!

This is Orly Feel The Funk:

It's from the Melrose collection, which I think was last year's fall collection, if I'm remembering right. (Or maybe it was summer. The only ones I have from Melrose are this and Vintage, and neither of them exactly look fall-ish.) Anyway, it's basically a very sparkly holo-laden top-coat somewhere in the range between pink and orchid. I'm looking forward to wearing this. Maybe around the holidays, it seems like that would work.

Where's The Party Canon At?

This is another oddly-named polish, China Glaze Where's The Party Canon At?

This is a My Little Pony tie-in, and so there's probably something in the My Little Pony movie or elsewhere in their canon - so to speak - to explain it, but to me it's sort of nonsensical. (The label does say "canon" not "cannon" which would make somewhat more sense - a pun, maybe? I don't know.) I do really like this polish, though, so understanding the name is definitely secondary. It's small glitters in a magenta-ish jelly base. I notice on other people's pictures, it looks brighter than it does here. I've only worn it layered so far, but it does seem to get perfectly opaque so it can be worn alone.

This is part of a collection that was released a few months ago, but it must not be too severely limited an edition - at least, when I googled, it came up as available on various shopping sites. (I got mine from Sally Beauty.)

I Love You (again)

This is the oddly named Sinful Colors I Love You:

I don't know, is that a Barney callout, you think? It tends to give me that earworm, unfortunately, whether it's intended or not. But I love this polish. In fact, I showed it six months or so ago when I did my Sinful Colors favorites. The reason I'm reswatching it now is because I gave in and bought a backup bottle on Amazon. You can see the line pretty clearly in the picture above - it's nearly halfway empty. I tend to do a bunch of coats, that's why I've gone through so much. I think the swatch is three coats.

I always try to compare, when I buy polishes from Amazon or eBay, to make sure the colors look like they're supposed to, even though I've never had the slightest reason to think anything I've bought has been fake. These look awfully close to identical. (I should have swatched each bottle separately, that would have been the best test, but I didn't think of it in the middle of the night the other night when I did this.)

(Original bottle from Walgreen's on the left, new one on the right.)