1435/St. Clair

This is KL Polish 1435:

I'm sure Kathleen explained what 1435 meant at some point, but I don't remember. Anyway, this is a dark, grayed-out blue.

Then I went to the other end of the light-dark spectrum and got St. Clair:

This seems like it might be similar to some other periwinkle-ish blues in my stash. I'll have to see what I can dig out to compare it to.

Mother Of Dragons/Winter Is Coming

It's Game of Thrones Day, I guess! KL Polish's "Winter Reign" collection wasn't all GoT-themed but the two I bought were.

First we have Mother of Dragons:

KLP calls it "a metallic brassy green polish with gold glitter." I'm inclined to put it into that category I've always called "funky greens" but it's different from anything else I have.


Then for Winter Is Coming, I did my pictures somewhat differently than I usually do, because I have a comparison.

I didn't think when I ordered Winter Is Coming about Kleancolor White Metallic, which I bought back before the holidays. Here is the swatch comparison:

I don't really think they are dead-on dupes, but they are close enough that I don't think most people would be able to tell the difference. (I haven't tried Winter Is Coming on my nails, yet, though.) The other side of the coin is that KL Polish has always prided themselves on being 12-free, and Kleancolor, despite its name, has a reputation for being anything but. I checked their website and they're not representing themselves as being anything-free. (They do say they strive to have "the Kleanest quality products at wallet friendly prices.")

Caramello/Last KL polishes?

I did a KL Polish order when they had a one-day promo a couple of weeks ago, and I got five polishes:

L-R, this is Winter Is Coming, 1435, St.Clair, Mother of Dragons, and Caramello. They did a "special edition" for Caramello and Zoey.

The website already looks pretty picked over - lots of polishes are gone and presumably won't be back. The only things that I don't have, are still available, and that I'm particularly interested in having are To The Stars and maybe Havana Nights. If they're still there by the time the prices go down again I might get them. Basically the ones above were all the ones that I was pretty sure I wanted to buy. (I'm not sure I really will wear Caramello, but it's their best-selling color and I wanted to try it.)

It's a bit more brown than I expected - it really is the color of a caramel candy (I think I'm imagining those little Brach's squared-off caramels that used to be in every grocery store here). I held this swatch up in front of my hand and it doesn't look quite impossible, at least.

January Zoya promo

Zoya usually has some good promo at the beginning of each year, and this year it was you pay $15 S&H and you get four polishes, four wide brushes, and I believe it also included a "big flipper" bottle of Zoya Remove. (I've done several Zoya orders recently and they're all blending together in my mind at this point.) I picked out one newer polish, and several older ones, this time around. My four polishes:

Arielle

Zoya's description: "dusty plum, rose and mauve fusion with a delicate sheen of frosty, silvery shimmer. A Victorian rose shade for an antique aristocratic look." My description: dusty rose shimmer. (I do see a hint of mauve there, but not the plum.)

Devin

Zoya: "steel blue with hints of multicolored shimmer in a dense foil finish." Me: this is like a silvery version of FeiFei (which is steel blue with gold).

Selene

Zoya: " a true teal with a micronized metallic pearl finish. A unique shade with an aqua fleck that resembles deeper layers of ocean water." Me: I'm withholding judgment on this one, but in my living room it looks green. (The lighting in my living room has sometimes turned out to be, um, quirky, when it comes to identifying nail polish colors.)

and Troy

Zoya: "Troy is a liquid pewter with a foil finish and an edgy touch of black and gold. Densely pigmented, smooth application." Me: "pewter foil" is pretty much right on the money. This is the one I was most interested in right off the bat.

Comparison: Space Glam vs Small But Mighty

I was in CVS late one night picking up a prescription and I picked up a couple of new Sally Hansen. I think I had heard that they had a new Strength formula ("Mega Strength") but I hadn't seen it.

I knew this one looked like something I already had, but I didn't quite figure it out til I got home.

Essence had this little limited edition "Out of Space Stories" line a while back and I bought this one at Ulta - it's Space Glam. They are not quite true dupes but they are real close. I would say that Space Glam is a hair warmer; Small But Mighty is cooler. But I don't think anybody but us crazy nail polish people will notice the difference.

So even though I already had this near dupe to the Sally Hansen, it's still useful to know this since the Essence line is presumably discontinued now.

Death Serum + a NeVerMind bonus

This is the last one of the NeVerMind polishes I ordered, Death Serum:

It's a black jelly, which is something I didn't already have.

So I ordered Azazael and Death Serum, and I got those plus a mini matte top-coat, with a note:

If there was a delay I wasn't particularly aware of it, but I'm not going to turn down matte top-coat, which I go through a ton of!

(this is my three-full size NVMs, Azazael, Death Serum, and Le Fay, which was the Polish Pickup polish)

China Glaze fall Ready To Wear

I'm not sure the above is the exact name of China Glaze's fall collection, but it was something across those lines. I was poking around on Polish Pick, a month or so ago, and I saw that they still had the fall China Glazes, which I had not gotten around to buying any of. I went back and looked at some YouTube swatches, and I finally ordered three of them. I may not wear them for ages but I'm glad I got them just the same.

These all have fashion or shopping-related names.

I made sure to get a picture of the label of this one to verify how it's spelled!

So here's Aut-umm I Need That:

This is the one I knew I wanted from the beginning. Dark brown with... stuff in it. Shimmery-shifty stuff.

Then I also got Swatch Out:

This is officially a copper color, but it almost looks like it's somewhere between copper and gold, here.

And Pay It Fashion Forward, which I wore like a month ago (I'm very behind on getting pictures up - as usual!):

Deep purple shimmery thing. I don't think I got very good wear on this, if I'm remembering right, but that is probably bad prep on my part rather than anything wrong with the polish.

There are more polishes that I could definitely have bought from this collection. I just picked my top three and I may get more if they're still around later. I think that Mustard The Courage was the one that got the most buzz but that's totally not my color. (That said, I did order Caramello from KL Polish since it will be my last chance and it's their bestselling color. I'm not sure it's as mustardy as MtC but it's definitely somewhere in that ballpark. We'll see how I like it!) I liked Central Parka but I have similar things. If I buy more it might be one of the mattes, next.

Here's Jess's swatches:

This is just a random picture that I ran across - just a bunch of China Glazes:

So Jelly on the right of the front row, maybe? I think this was probably when I was doing favorites a year or two ago.

NOTD: Who Wonder

Another manicure I've worn in the last few weeks while I was in pink mode for Valentine's was China Glaze Who Wonder, one of the Grinch polishes which I had waited to wear for this very purpose.

It's just a sort of a shimmery fuchsia, nothing terribly unusual, but it's pretty.

This one was labeled "day 8" on Instagram:

Here's my swatch picture from back before Christmas, for completeness' sake!

Tarte Life of the Party set

I bought this from Sephora a couple of weeks ago. I also saw it on Tarte's website for the same price. (It was still on the Tarte website as of yesterday but not Sephora.)

It's called the Life of the Party set, and it's five of Tarte's clay formula blushes and bronzers inside a little clutch purse. It was originally $42 (now selling for $25) and they call it a $132 value. The catch - that is, the reason I assume it's still in stock even after being on sale for some time - is that it's extremely light. I'm pretty sure I saw Kathleen Lights (or Tati or somebody) talk about it on YouTube. However, since I am extremely, ridiculously pale myself, I thought it sounded like it might work for me. And I would never have talked myself into trying it if it hadn't been for the clutch, which is big enough to hold a phone and a lipstick and a credit card. That's totally a thing I feel the need to have occasionally, something to carry just those three things.

(Also with handy mirror.)

As far as the actual blushes, they are actually working pretty well for me.

These are limited edition colors, I believe - the first two are Flamingo and Passport.

Then we have Pool Float and Sandy Cheeks (weird name, but whatever) - I usually prefer my blushers to be more berry-colored, but actually this one works surprisingly well. And Sandy Cheeks is a good highlight. The fifth one is visible on the far right, is Tan Lines - I guess it's meant to be the bronzer of the bunch?

I wanted to use the clutch so I put the whole tray in one side of a double-sided Z Palette that happened to be mostly empty.

So I am pretty happy with this, but unless you are super-pale like me it's probably not as useful to most people.

Azazael - NOTD + swatch

I showed NeVerMind Le Fay the other day, and I mentioned that I had ordered more - well, here is part of that. Since I haven't actually worn Le Fay yet, this one becomes the fist NVM I've worn - Azazael:

This is ONE COAT, y'all, and it's really pretty to boot - medium rose-pink with golden shimmer.

Here is my swatch picture:

This is a really good Valentine polish - shame it's seemingly discontinued. But it's not like there aren't plenty of other pinks around to choose from!

Empties

I hardly ever use up full sizes of anything much except the most boring stuff like soap and wipes, etc. But I did run through a couple of Cover FX samples so I'll show you those first and then go on to the boring stuff.

This is the Custom Enhancer Drops in the color Moonlight:

Honestly, maybe I wasn't using enough or something, because I kept mixing this into my foundation here and there and I never could really even tell the difference. It's a really pretty color, though, for what it's worth!

And then the other one is primer:

Illuminating Primer, to be exact. I'm really finally starting to get interested in primer and I've been through a couple of samples and bought a couple of different things, but I'm not really to the point where I can tell you the difference between one and another, except for the blue-tinted Nyx ones which I do think does flattering things to my skin-tone. I may have more to say about this in the future, but for now, not so much.


As for the "boring stuff" - actually the topic of soaps and wipes and such is pretty interesting to me but it's not exactly glamourous! This is the only soap I've used up lately:

This is Brandless hand soap, in Cranberry Spice which was a seasonal thing, so you probably won't see this on their website for six months or so. It smelled very nice. I went kind of nuts with the seasonal soaps this year and bought a set of Mrs Meyers ones from Amazon, as well as this, but it was three of them so I haven't managed to finish any of them off, even though I'm pretty obsessive about hand-washing. (They were my old favorite Iowa Pine, and then Peppermint and a spicy one - orange & cloves or something like that, which I really loved.)

I bought these Yes To Cotton wipes at Walgreen's marked down sometime last year:

They were perfectly good wipes but somehow using cotton seems more wasteful to me. I don't know why they were marked down because they're apparently not discontinued. I'm sure I will never buy them again because I'm too cheap to buy most wipes except for baby wipes, which are my go-to for most purposes. (I add in some micellar water if my skin seems to need it.)

These Huggies wipes are my favorite baby wipes:

They say "Natural Care" on there somewhere, I believe. I've tried other brands but I always come back to Huggies!

Ulta drugstore-brand purchases

I went into Ulta a week or so ago - I don't really do into the physical store very often at all - and they had a promo on L'Oreal/Nyx/Maybelline. (It was the little box below, with any $20 purchase of those three brands.)

So, question: I know that L'Oreal and Maybelline have had the same ownership for a while, but the promo got me wondering if Nyx is part of that group as well ...aaaand I just went and poked around on Nyx's website, and I didn't see anything that directly 'fessed up to corporate ties. However, I finally found that if you click on Careers down at the footer of the page, it takes you to the L'Oreal Talent webpage. So I'm guessing the answer to that is actually yes.

Here's what I bought - mostly Nyx, and L'Oreal foundation:

On the True Match Lumi, I bought C3 - I've always thought I was C2.5 on regular True Match - but so far the C3 is working fine. and then the Dewy Finish setting spray, a liquid lip, and a lip pencil.

So the promo was five assorted items (in the box above).

L'Oreal clay cleanser (I have another sample of this from somewhere else, but I'm not sure I've ever actually tried it), lash primer, yet another mascara, a micellar water sample, and a Nyx lippie that looks like it's full-size. Unfortunately that brown looks awful on me, I tried it.

Here's another picture where you can see some of the items better:

The pink lippie is "candy slick" - it works pretty good for me. The brown one is Liquid Suede, and so is the pencil. (Added: I forgot to look at the actual color names at the time I posted this - the Candy Slick one is Birthday Sprinkles, I believe, and the brown Liquid Suede is Brooklyn Thorn. I tried mixing the brown here with a Colourpop dark-pink that I haven't been wearing, and I got a color I actually like. So I may give that one a real-life trial later on.)

Le Fay (Polish Pickup January 19)

I keep getting the spelling of this wrong, so here's the official version:

Hmm, I got it mostly right in the title without checking first - I only left out the space. I'm not sure this is the way they spelled it in "Camelot" when I was in high school, though! (I just checked: according to Wikipedia, it is, actually.)

Anyway, this was the only thing I ordered from last month's Polish Pickup. (It's now after midnight on Monday - or technically Tuesday, now - so I have officially gotten through February's PP window without ordering anything. I was sorely tempted, though.)

This is my first NeVerMind polish, although I've already ordered a couple more from the website.

Le Fay:

It's a flakie in a deep blue-violet base, I think. Actually I just found it still on NVM's website (though it's not actually for sale) - they call it "a Velvety blurple (blue-ish purple) with a hint of purple/pink aurora pigment and blue/teal glass flakes." I'm really looking forward to wearing this!

DS Lapis

I read somewhere that OPI was discontinuing the Designer Series - which doesn't surprise me because they haven't been putting out new colors for some time, as far as I know. But once I knew it was going away, it seemed to me to suddenly be very important that I get hold of one, since I never have bought any. So I bought this from eBay.

This is DS Lapis, and it's lovely:

Blackheart Beauty (Hot Topic)

Back in December, we were in the mall and we wandered into Hot Topic - not normally a place I go - and I remembered that they had these polishes in the skull bottles which I've always thought looked cool (hang the polish, it's the bottle I really want) and so I rooted through a big sale bin until I found a couple I liked - they were two for $5. The brand-name on these is Blackheart Beauty.

So I ended up with a navy matte, on the left, and a black holo glitter.

Their names are very descriptive, I guess you'd say. The navy one says - in minute print - BH NAVY VAMP SATIN MATTE NP (I guess "vamp" refers to what the cap says, Vampire Matte. Then the other one is a bit more succinct, it says BLK AB STARGAZER. I think that's their way of saying "black holo" - I know from a past jewelry-marking hobby that AB stands in jewelry for Aurora Borealis, which is a kind of a shifty/shiny coating that gets put on crystal beads (like Swarovski and Czech crystal beads). (See here.) And "Stargazer" is on the cap, you can see it in the top picture. (I'm assuming that both Stargazer and Vampire Matte are collection names.)

For brevity, let's call this one "Navy Vamp":

You can see that it is in fact a satin finish. I definitely don't have a navy matte polish, so that's pretty cool.

And let's call this one "Black Stargazer":

Their descriptive names are quite spot-on (assuming that "AB" means anything to you) - this is a fine holo glitter in a black base. It seems very opaque, too. I've never had any of these polishes before so I'm wondering about wear-time, but they're interesting!

Red and almost-red

I was talking about Everly being an almost-red color, so I had it on my mind, and I pulled some more "almost-reds" out of my unposted file.

KarenD gave me this Studio M polish in a swap some years ago - it's Slammin' Red:

I thought it was headed for the circular file after I tried to swatch it as you see above, but then I put a rather large amount of thinner in it and got much better results, as you see below.

I've always liked this, so I'm glad it will hold on a little longer. Despite its name, I've always thought of it as a fuchsia and not a red.

Zoya Reva is really on the edge of being a true red, but I still think it's not quite there:

I'd call it a deep fuchsia with some strawberry tones - I believe it also has a bit of gold shimmer in there.

Miracle Gel Mad Women is also close but no cigar:

Maybe in a different light it would look red, but I'd call it another deep fuchsia, with a lot of lovely shimmer.

I don't live where there are Meijer stores to check in person, but I think the last time I checked online, I decided that Studio M must be discontinued. As far as I know, the other two here are still obtainable. (Added:  I poked around on Meijer's website, and there is still Studio M polish but there are new bottles and I didn't see anything that looked like these old glitters!)