Misc. purples: I Love You, Electrique, Who Are You Wearing?

These are ones that I reswatched for one reason or another even though there was a perfectly good swatch already so I didn't really need to. If I can remember just why I did that, I'll explain - otherwise I'll probably just point you to the previous swatch!

Sinful Colors I Love You:

The link above is the old bottle, and then I went & bought a backup bottle (see here) but this is the first time I've swatched the new bottle, I'm pretty sure. It looks pretty much the same as the old one, as it should.

Pahlish Electrique:

A medium purple crelly with some scattered copper bits. Since it's a crelly, if you let it sit long enough the whole bottom half of the bottle turns white, but I must have shook it up pretty thoroughly here. It never seems to make a whole lot of difference to the - surprisingly dark - color that ends up on the nail!

OPI Who Are You Wearing? (originally from the Holidays in Hollywood collection back in 2007)

Here is China Glaze Teen Spirit next to Who Are You Wearing, because these seemed somehow alike:

These both have blackened bases and both are some degree of blue-violet, but Teen Spirit is more blue, generally, and much more obviously shifty-shimmery. I suspect that the purple in Teen Spirit is mostly in the shimmer.

All of these are discontinued, I believe - which is not to say that they may not be obtainable somewhere or other. Who Are You Wearing, in particular, has been discontinued for a long time, I believe, so that one is probably difficult - and the Pahlish was a one-month LE several years ago, so ditto. The other two are probably more doable, seeing that I bought both of mine pretty recently.

Ruby Pumps

Here is China Glaze Ruby Pumps, which was in my China Glaze favorites:

It was originally from the Wizard of Ooh Ahz collection, which was released in 2001 and re-released later on. It's just a glitter in a red jelly base, but that doesn't do it justice and neither does this picture - but I hadn't done a post for it before so I thought I'd throw it out there anyway.

(Google it. There are a zillion pictures out there. And I'm 99.99% sure this is still a current color.)

I Love You

This is Sinful Colors I Love You, which was in my SC top 5:

It's glitter in a purple jelly base. I shook this up and so you can't really see where the line is on this bottle, but it's about half empty. Like many jellies, it takes a bunch of coats to get to the bottle color, and I think that's why it so low, because I've used 3-4 coats every time I wear it. The wheel swatch (which is #3 on the wheel) is three coats. I went out looking for a backup bottle of this at least a couple of years ago, and it was already discontinued then. Which is a shame, because I do love this polish. (I poked around and found it on eBay for about $15 and Amazon for $8 including shipping - I'm not sure I need it quite that bad.)

"I Love You" is a bit of a strange name for a polish - it always makes me think of Barney even though it's not actually the right shade of purple for the big dinosaur. There are some other old colors of Sinful Colors that have similar names, though, so I think it was something more like an emoji thing, or something like that, instead of a Barney thing. - Aha, Scrangie has pictures of the whole collection (from 2009), and I have three of them. There's no themed collection name but several of the names are in that vein - I Love You, I Miss You, Call Me Later. All About You and Nail Junkie, both of which I have, are also from this collection.

Added: old post about this polish and a newer one.

Harlow

Here is Zoya Harlow, one of Zoya's Matte Velvet colors:

This is a plummy red-violet. (Scrangie called this mauve, but to me this isn't dusty enough to be mauve.) For comparison, here is Peachy Polish's swatch post also, where you can see the shimmer in it really well. Like a lot of people, I usually end up wearing the matte velvets with top-coat, mostly because it brings out the shimmer. Some of them have silver shimmer and some have tonal, but this one seems to have both.

The original Matte Velvet set of six, including Harlow, came out in 2009, and various parts of it have been re-released in subsequent years, generally around the holidays. It's not a current color but it might be findable at Amazon etc. There was also a newer set of six that was released in 2015 (and re-released this past fall) and those are still showing up on Zoya's website if you're just interested in trying out a Matte Velvet. I didn't buy any of the new set since I have most of the older ones and the colors in the new set didn't particularly seem to be screaming my name or anything - but my impression is that they're a similar formula, just different shades.

(Added: this was in my 2015 top 10.)

Strawberry Fields

This is China Glaze Strawberry Fields:

I posted a swatch way back when for this polish but I didn't really say much about it at the time other than that it leaned coral. (To me this leans much more coral than it looks in the bottle, in fact.) Scrangie calls it a medium pink with gold glass-fleck shimmer, and I suppose it's the gold that makes it look more like a coral. This came out way back in 2009, apparently, and is still available as a core CG color.

I found this "promotional clip" for Strawberry Fields (the song, that is, not the polish) on YouTube, and I thought I'd share since I don't remember having seen it before:

and should you wish to know more about this song, it has a pretty detailed Wikipedia page. (Actually this made me realize that I've always felt like this song was slightly out of tune - even though I do actually like it a lot - and the fact that they were splicing together versions in more than one key during the production process presumably explains why.)

Give Me Space, Blue It

This is OPI Give Me Space and Xtreme Wear Blue It:

I think I would call these both royal blues, although Give Me Space is just slightly darker than Blue It. In my mind they're not quite dark enough to be navy, although this kind of distinction is always a matter of opinion, for sure.  Anyway, Give Me Space is a holo - it came out in last year's holiday collection so you might possibly be able to get hold of it still. Blue It is... well, there's this old Xtreme Wear formula that came in a variety of colors, that I always have trouble describing, although I know it when I see it. (Xtreme Wear was my favorite polish brand around 2009-2010, when I was unemployed, because it was cheap but it still had interesting colors.) Anyway, I guess I would say that this finish is a frosty shimmer that almost looks metallic - very 00s. You don't really see this finish around any more. (You can't get Blue It any more, I checked. I was pretty sure that would be the case before I looked, though.)

Blackout. Alcatraz Rocks

This is Revlon Blackout and OPI Alcatraz...Rocks (a Liquid Sand):

I think that Blackout is an old Top Speed polish, but the lettering has chipped off of the front and I can't be sure. I don't think that with that color cap, it would be from the main collection. I tried Google and it's failing me here also. (Google is way helpful for polishes made in recent years but very spotty earlier than that. The degree of helpfulness in the nail polish arena seems to coincide completely with the rise of the polish blogger, as far as I can tell.) Anyway, Blackout is another shimmery, very dark blue, although it doesn't seem to quite look black most of the time. Alcatraz Rocks is the star of the Liquid Sand line (OPI's version of textures) as far as I'm concerned. It's a medium (or medium-dark) blue that's maybe just slightly purple-leaning and slightly grayed, and it has a relatively subtle multicolor glitter to it. It's great.

Isa, Nightlife

This is Zoya Isa and L'Oreal Jet-Set Nightlife:

I'm not convinced these "blurple" colors (or dark blue-violets, if you prefer) are photographing accurately. They seem to keep coming out a little too blue on the wheel. I feel like the colors you see in the bottle are somewhat more accurate here. Isa is what I'd call a true blurple, though - poised right between blue and purple. Zoya says it has an aqua flash to it, which may be what the camera was picking up. Jet-Set Nightlife is an older polish, definitely, because L'Oreal doesn't use this bottle shape any more, but I don't think it's tremendously old, either. Maybe late '00s. It's got a lot of shimmer in it as well, you can see that from the bottle, but it does go on very dark. The shimmer shows up on the nail but not as heavily as it would look from the bottle. This leans comparatively more red - I might call it a very dark grape color.

Aphrodite's Pink Nightie, Japanese Rose Garden

These two OPI pink polishes are 10 years old or more and didn't come from the same collection, but I started wearing them together years ago and have ever since.

The two-toned swatch is both polishes at the tip (Aphrodite on top, naturally) and Japanese Rose Garden alone at the base. Shelby is the polish swatch above it, so you can see that it's darker and maybe a little dustier than Shelby and Look At My Bow. Maybe a little more pearly, too, it's not a straight creme, I would say. Aphrodite's Pink Nightie is pale and sheer as well as shimmery - it is a color you can easily imagine as a sheer frothy nightgown. But, as we've established, I'm picky. Japanese Rose Garden alone trips my "too-pink" meter and Aphrodite, of course, is too pale. But together, they split the difference, somehow, and become something I like. (I can't say I wear this combination a lot, these days, but I do trot it out occasionally.)

(Note that I had the name wrong on one of these polishes in the title, initially - for some reason my brain wants to call the darker one "Japanese Tea Garden" rather than Rose Garden. But I have corrected that.)

I'm experimenting with indoor lighting for these pictures, so you may notice some changing backgrounds, etc.

Notes:
It turns out that Aphrodite is a current color. I was just sure both of these were discontinued, but apparently not! Aphrodite apparently was originally from the "Greek Isles" collection in 2004. Japanese Rose Garden was of course from a Japan collection but I don't know the year offhand. I can't feel too sad about it being discontinued, since I'm sure there's something plenty similar among OPI's masses of pinks.

Also: verification on the name, although I don't think it's really needed:

(but, y'know, I have the picture, so what the heck.)

Hue Left A Message, As If, Continuous Cranberry, Jailbait

This is Finger Paints Hue Left A Message?, Nostalgic Lacquer As If!, Colorstay Continuous Cranberry, which I'm using here as a base, and Hard Candy Jailbait. (The order of the bottles came about because everything kept wanting to roll to the right, here, therefore the square bottle is keeping the others stable!)

On the wheel, these start below Always Sheer Bliss, which is the nail that looks white - under that is Hue Left A Message over Continuous Cranberry, As If! over Continuous Cranberry, and Jailbait over Continuous Cranberry.

The middle one, As If! is the easy one here - it's black, white, and pink matte glitter, with some scattered black (and maybe white) bars included. It was, naturally, part of a Clueless set - see here. (I think it does well over the dark red base.) Hue Left A Message? is small glitter in sort of a dusty rose color - it's very pretty. (It does build to opacity - I think I swatched it that way somewhere but I haven't tracked that picture down. I'll add it later if I find it!) Hard Candy Jailbait is an old-school hard-to-find polish - it's a very pale pink or possibly actually lilac (but I've always thought it was pink). I only ever wear it as a top-coat but I found this picture of it alone. This polish is probably about 10 years old, I'm guessing; it's one of my older ones.

Here's a close-up of the same portion of the wheel, so you can see these a bit better.

Added:
As If mani from 2013

Departure, Pink Pineapple

I think I've run out of dark reds, finally, so we're on to pinks. I don't have a lot of super-pale pinks but I've amassed a few assorted pale-to-medium things over the years. This is Jet-Set Departure and Revlon Parfumerie in Pink Pineapple. Note that I wrote "China Flower" on the wheel, but that's the only other polish I have from this line. This is definitely not China Flower.

Departure is about the only true mauve I have in my collection. I'm not sure how long I've had this polish - possibly 8-10 years, I'm thinking. I used to be really into L'Oreal Jet-Set and Revlon Top Speed and I used to have a bunch of them, but most of them are long gone - when I only had a small collection of polishes I went through them very fast! I know L'Oreal doesn't use this bottle style any any more, and I guess they have also discontinued Jet Set altogether. (Here's their nail polish page.)

Pink Pineapple is presumably pineapple-scented, although I don't remember noticing it when I swatched it. Maybe it only is noticeable after it dries? (That seems to be what this page is saying.) I do know that the scents haven't ever bothered me on these polishes. This is just a nice, very pale pink creme. I tend not to wear such things much - I should try layering it or something! (Also I think these bottles are adorable, for what that's worth.)

Notes: 
Swatches of Pink Pineapple and several other Parfumie shades here.

INRAW, Life Of The Party

In case you're not familiar with the abbreviation, INRAW = I'm Not Really A Waitress, OPI's classic red. Also here we have Essie Life Of The Party. It's hard to find dependable information on these things, but I think that both of these date back to the late 90s. (See the bottom of this entry for a bit more info on dates)

I don't think you'd quite call them dupes, but they are pretty similar. I think of them as "funky reds" - I never could decide whether to buy INRAW because everybody's descriptions of it differ so much. Both of these are kind of darker, kind of oddly pinkish, kind of metallic(ish). Google around and you'll probably find other descriptions applied to INRAW, especially (because it's been out there all this time, whereas Life Of The Party has been discontinued and is newly rereleased, in the anniversary group with Starry Starry Night). I like them both and I was tempted to go buy Life Of The Party in a full-size, but I talked myself out of it. Since I have I'm Not Really A Waitress (which I never did buy for myself: I eventually got it as a gift), I don't really need another polish that's so similar.

Makeup Alley page for INRAW
Daily Varnish review of the Essie Retro Revival collection, including Life Of The Party (she makes the comparison with INRAW as well; she says that Life Of The Party is a little newer than INRAW - it dates to 2002, where INRAW was released in 1999)

Today's nails - Chita

I did this late last night and it's not the neatest manicure I've ever done, but it's not awful. This is two coats of Zoya Chita, plus two coats of top coat. I don't really remember what I was thinking when I decided it needed top coat, but anyway, it still looks pretty and sparkly - and it's still got a bit of texture to it even after two rounds of Grand Central Station, so I think it's fair to characterize it as a top-coat-eater. But I like it. (I should say that now that I look at this picture, I think it looks a bit more greyed-out here than this polish really is. It's a pretty straightforward forest-green.)

My Zoya package came with some random person's name on it, and a city-name I didn't recognize (Zoya is in Cleveland, right? so I'm sure it's some suburb of Cleveland) and I was thinking, "Oh, god, did I order something else that I've forgotten?" But no, it was just the Zoya order. (The other two were Chita and Katherine. I'll have pictures of the latest acquisitions in the next few days, I'm sure. Which reminds me, I've been posting every day so far in 2014, but don't expect that to continue indefinitely. In fact, I may take tomorrow off, but I'll try to get something up for Monday,

at least.)

I found a picture of my hand on a piece of scrapbook paper, labeled "2010" - and I had green nails then, too, so I thought I would post a bit of that picture for you to see:

I'm pretty sure that's Emerald City - you saw it in the row of Xtreme Wear bottles a week or so ago, if you've been paying attention. (Maybe sometime in March I'll do a list of good St. Patrick's Day polishes, because that certainly is one.)