I bought some polishes lately from HB Beauty Bar (Nebula, which I showed yesterday, was also one of them), and I have some other assorted stuff I haven't previously shown swatches of. So here goes.
I still have Nebula on as I'm writing this, and this one was my mani last week and I really liked it: Morgan Taylor Sarong But So Right. (I think I called it Sarong So Right on Instagram, but I was incorrect.)
It's really very pretty and glowy. My only gripe was that it didn't wear particularly well, but I have that problem a lot so it may just be me and my very imperfect manicure prep skills, I don't know.
This one I haven't worn yet, but I'm sure I will soon: Essie You're A Gem, which is from a recent collection, Gorgeous Geodes - Essie calls them holographic metallics.
I'm not entirely sure why I picked this particular one, but it's very pretty. Sort of a pale-brown holo, which is not something you see every day. (I know I watched Jess's video about this set before I bought this, so I'll link to it down at the bottom.)
I bought a couple more of the Insta-Dri matte polishes, and I keep thinking I've already posted these, but actually I seem to have only posted the Crayola metallics and not these, so it's just me being confused as usual. This one is Smouldering Teal:
Half the time when I buy matte polishes I end up wearing top-coat anyway (see: Zoya Matte Velvets), but these are not that way. I like these the way they're supposed to be worn, with no top-coat at all.
And then this one is Molten Mauve:
Note that in the bottle it doesn't look at all like what I think of as mauve, but on the nail, it actually does.
Aaand a random LA Colors polish - this one is Teal Appeal.
I've got a couple of OPIs I haven't swatched somewhere, but this is enough for one day, anyway. (I also went crazy and bought a huge box of indies that will probably be here in a couple of weeks, but we'll talk about that one when it arrives.)
These are the little surprise gifts that I got from my husband for my birthday - I think they came from Dollar Tree. As I mentioned before, I had bought a ton of polish here and there recently (most of which I haven't showed here yet) and so I told him not to get anything else except something small. He's always pretty good at picking out little surprises like this.
None of this is anything I have, and these Wet n Wilds are all discontinued so I like collecting that kind of thing. (I'm not sure about whether the nail art polish is still current, but I never buy stuff like that so I don't mind having more, in any case. I'll probably use it for something or other eventually!) So L-R, we have Mega Rocks Jam Session, Wild Shine Rain Check and Metallica, and the the Art Deco nail art polish in Hilite. They all came in blister packs, and the Wild Shine ones were 2 to a pack so I guess he paid $3 for all of this.
Added: I realized just now that I am mixing up two different WnW lines, not for the first time. It's FastDry that's discontinued. Wild Shine has a newer, different looking bottle but is still current, and in fact Metallica is still in the lineup. Rain Check is discontinued, though, and so is Jam Session.)
Jam Session is just a purple glitter in a slightly tinted base:
It seems to have a couple of colors of purple - one lighter, one darker.
I couldn't even read this label, the print is so small. I googled it to figure out for sure what the name was, but you can read it here if you blow it up.
This is L.A. Colors Pink Sizzle and Colorstay (Longwear) Rich Raspberry:
I notice that you can see an orange clearance sticker on the side of the Colorstay bottle - I think I probably bought this at Big Lots when they were closing them out. It's a very bright fuchsia (or berry) creme. Then we have Pink Sizzle, which is a slightly more muted berry color with shimmer. It's one of only a couple of L.A.Colors polishes I own - or rather only a couple unless you count all of those little unlabeled mini polishes I have, which I suspect are also L.A.Colors. (I have a matching mini for the other one - Jewel Tone is the label on the one that does have a label - but not for this one.)
I'm pretty sure I bought Pink Sizzle at Family Dollar for $1, but the Family Dollar by me closed so I don't know if they still carry these. I suspect that even if not you can find them around somewhere.
This is Color Craze Jewel Tone, and Dollish Deadly Nightshade (a mini):
These two glitters have a similar color mix (purple with some blue) but manage to look more or less completely different just the same. Jewel Tone is smaller glitter in a clear base; Deadly Nightshade has larger glitter mixed in (well, I might call it medium-size, really - it's not big glitter) in a tinted base.
It's really late as I write this and I just don't have the energy to look it up, but my guess is that Jewel Tone might be a current color, but Deadly Nightshade is not. I think they sell LAColors somewhere like Dollar Tree nowadays - which is someplace I rarely go. You can usually guess the Halloween colors from the names, and yeah, Deadly Nightshade is one of those. And I don't think it's available any more, although I could be wrong!
One of the new Sinful Colors, slightly blue-shifted and lobstery as usual in this light:
It's really pretty - blue-green with purple flakes which are not visible there. I put it over a black base - it was one of those ones that I have a bunch of with no name and no brand, the ones that I have long been theorizing are actually L.A. Colors. I may test this and go buy the L.A. Colors black and see if it's the same, because I liked the way this went on - it was a near-one-coater. And this is three coats of the SC over it.
Update: this was a bitch to get off. I'd recommend foil (or the peelable basecoat, if you're thinking ahead) for this.
Today's nails: Pink Sizzle, the L.A. Colors one I bought last week. It's a very dark, slightly-frosty rose pink. I really like it.
I actually tried putting the crackle/shredded polish on my thumbnail on top of this, just to see what happened, but they're too close to the same color and if it cracked you couldn't even really see it. So I finally just put another coat of Pink Sizzle on top of that. I'll have to try the crackle again on top of black or something where I can see it.
I was supposed to be in a "no-buy" period, which lasted for a while, but which I've obviously been caving in on lately with the Llarowe purchases and such. So then I told myself that I could buy single polishes of brands I don't already have - this occurred to me after I saw the L.A. Colors at the store the other day and realized I had never tried that brand at all. I was really thinking of low-priced and maybe mid-priced brands when I said it. But I might've walked myself into a corner a bit with that. Assuming my goal is to not buy a lot of nail polishes, well, that may not be so great because there are a LOT of brands, let's face it. And I was thinking from the beginning that sub-brands counted as different brands, too, so that left it open for, for example, the "In a New York Minute" brand from NYC - I had tried the base brand of NYC but not that one. And of course I've owned Maybelline in the old days but not the new Color Show stuff. Most of the mid-priced "salon" brands I've already tried a good bit - Essie, OPI, Orly, Zoya - but there's at least one big exception there, and that's China Glaze. I have never owned a single one. I'm gonna have to pick out one really great color and try out China Glaze. As far as the high-priced brands, well, I do have a couple - a Butter London, a couple of RBLs - but this absolutely does not mean I can buy a Chanel, tempting as it is sometimes!
(This is what inevitably happens with things like no-buy periods - I behave myself for a while and then I go on a big binge. I am very predictable that way.)
Hmm, I wrote most of an entry and managed to lose it. I hate it when that happens.
I am now wearing Gimme a Grape Big Kiss, which is one of the two scented Color Clubs from the "Wicked Sweet" collection that I got from Llarowe. I was seriously worried for a while that the scent was going to be a problem, because it made me cough while I was putting it on, but once it dried and I put top coat on, the scent died down to a tolerable level. You can still smell it, but only if you put your nose right up to it. Which is how it should be, as far as I'm concerned. Otherwise it would be totally obnoxious. The very faint grape candy scent is pleasant, though, and I am totally in love with the color, which is not actually grape (as I think I said in the last entry) but rather a red-violet. It's quite sheer, and took four coats to get it really opaque, but it was totally worth it.
I bought 2 new nail related things on two different shopping expeditions in the last few days:
A couple of fliptop Sterilite storage containers from Wal-Mart for 96 cents each - they are what I think of as a half-shoebox size - tall and squarish, perfect for nail polish. I put all my purples in one and all my blues and greens in another. That left enough room in the shoebox sized box that I was using before to put all the reds and pinks there in with space left over.
A color called Pink Sizzle by L.A. Colors from Family Dollar, which actually cost a dollar. I don't have any L.A. Colors, and I figured it was time to try one out. Pink Sizzle is a dark pink that has a sort of rosy tinge to it, it looked a bit different.
Yeah, yeah, I know, it's not the most interesting shopping in the world, but it's what I got.
(And I'm just going to post this before I manage to lose it again.)
