Scents

Cologne? Perfume? this is about the scents that you wear on your body, in any case.

I'm super-picky about scents. If I'm wearing perfume, I like something very, very light. My sister gave me a bottle of Givenchy perfume a few years ago when she was working at Neiman's, and that's basically all I've been wearing for the past two or three years. (Apparently I got it for Christmas 2015, so it lasted for three years.) But it's finally empty, so I'm going to have to find something else.

This is EauDemoiselle, and I've poked around and I can't really find this exact perfume any more. If you pay any attention to perfume, there's this trend lately where all the perfumes have different versions, and that's what seems to have happened to this one - I see versions on Sephora's website called "Angelic" and "Extravagant" which come in similar-looking black bottles (but are considerably more expensive than what I remember thinking this was). So I'm probably going need to find something else, because I don't think I'm willing to pay $150 for more of this, even if it turned out that I like these new versions.

(I've poked around some more and I see some "tester" bottles - which is probably what this one was, too, I've guessed - for pretty reasonable prices on eBay. Am I willing to do the eBay crapshoot? I'm going to have to think about that. The seller does have a good rating, and it might be less of a crapshoot than trying something new, actually. When I buy something I'm sure I'll show it here!)


Meanwhile, there's my husband. Rob didn't always care much about cologne but over time he's gotten where he wears it. Last year I bought him a bottle of John Varvatos stuff, and he used that up a while ago and since then he's been using some of those rollerballs and other samples that I had. He used that little Black Orchid rollerball I talked about a while back, and then I had an old Nirvana Black one that I never remember to use, too - Rob doesn't seem to care whether it's men's or women's as long as it doesn't smell too super-floral or sweet. Our anniversary is in May and so I got him a bottle of D&G Light Blue, because I knew it was something he had had before and liked, while the Sephora VIB sale was going on. We'll see how long this one lasts.

Marc Jacobs Runway set

This is a Marc Jacobs set called "Fall 2018 Runway Edition"...

It's two polishes, Lapis of Luxury & Plum Fiction.

This is the back of the box (as you might guess).

I showed the Lapis of Luxury manicure yesterday, but here's the swatch:

It's blue-violet, very shimmery and maybe also a bit shifty. I like the MJ "Enamored" formula on the polishes I've tried - I had at least a couple before this.

And then here's Plum Fiction:

It's very much a plum color, a dark shimmery red-violet.

This is everything I got with my Neiman Marcus coupon, including a couple of samples:

(I'll talk about the Clinique "cheek pop" later on. The scents, I don't much bother with, because it's not like you can smell them through the computer.)

NOTD: Lapis Of Luxury

This is Marc Jacobs Lapis Of Luxury over KL Polish Yzma:

This mani is a little ragged, because Yzma was a little frayed before I slapped this on top of it, but I really love the color. Yzma is sooo dark that it's really too dark for my taste, that was why I decided to add something on top. I don't really love the ones that look black. Neiman Marcus sent out those $25 off a $50 purchase coupons again (try NM25) and I can't resist those. This is from a set of two "fall 18 fashion week" polishes from Marc Jacobs - I got that and then I bought a Clinique blush. I've done the swatches on the polishes so I'll get the pictures of those up soon.

Bleu Cobalt

This is YSL Bleu Cobalt, although obviously it's missing its trademark cap:

If I didn't know where this came from I would worry about the missing cap, and wonder if it was really Saint Laurent, but I do know its provenance, generally - I got it in a box from my sister, who was working in a department store at the time. I assume it's real and the cap just got lost somewhere along the line. I would say it might have been a tester, but if it was it never got used at all. (My guess is that my sister got it for free or nearly so, although I never asked. She sent me boxes of random-ish stuff like this at the holidays a couple of times, things that presumably had been marked way down for one reason or another. As I understand it, that was just a perk of working there.) Anyway, lovely shimmery deep blue. The polish below it is Essie Starry Starry Night - reformulated version - and the base color there looks pretty much identical. In the bottles they look pretty identical as well, although on the nail of course SSN has that glass-fleck sort of texture, or whatever it is in the new version. (In the original it was supposed to have been actual diamond dust, right?)

Comparison - Adrenaline Crush, Petra, & Hotel Particulier

I had compared two of these three before - that was Marc Jacobs Petra and Lancome Hotel Particulier. Then I bought Miracle Gel Adrenaline Crush and when I wore it, I thought, Gee, this reminds me of Petra. So here are all three. I would say they are really similar but not quite dupes.

They are also all colors that are hard to put your finger on - pinkish- (or maybe purplish-) brown metallics. I complained loudly when I bought Hotel Particulier that it wasn't the color I thought I was getting - I thought it was going to be much more pink. (Although then I decided I liked it after all and put it in my top five polishes of 2016.) Here is a separate swatch of Adrenaline Crush - I know I wore it but I can't find a picture - and Petra is linked up at the top.

You can see in this picture, I think - at least it looks that way in the bottle - that Adrenaline Crush is a little lighter than the other two - maybe it's a little more pink. But still, they're all pretty close. I was going to say that one thing to think about is that Miracle Gel is cheaper than the other two. But I'm pretty sure Hotel Particulier is discontinued anyway, because it was LE in the first place. (It would be effectively the most expensive since it's $15.50 for a teeny tiny bottle.) Marc Jacobs polishes are $18, as I recall, but you get more polish, and also they do have sales on the website from time to time. That's when I bought mine, when they were having a 50% off sale. So when that happens it becomes $9 and the price difference from Miracle Gel becomes pretty close to negligible, in theory. I suppose you'd still have to pay shipping.

Sephora Play Luxe

As if Sephora Play isn't enough, they are periodically doing "luxe" versions that cost twice as much. ($20 rather than $10.) They don't come on the subscription, you just have to order them. I think maybe I got an e-mail about it, so I'm not sure if they show up on the website if you're not already a Play subscriber. Honestly, if you're not, don't feel too bad about it because I don't think they're worth the extra money. (Is that a spoiler?)

I didn't take a picture of the box, apparently, but you know it's extra-fancy because it's in a solid black box instead of the striped one.

My favorite thing is the iridescent bag, honestly:

I'm not sure you can tell much from that picture, but you can see it better below. It's good-sized flat bag with a zipper. It's big enough that it barely fits in the box - about 7-1/2"  square, but the usable size is only probably about 6". Still, that's not bad. It holds quite a bit of makeup.

And then you get little tarot-card things that tell you about the products:

And here's what was inside:

L-R, it's Diorshow mascara, SK-II Facial Treatment Essence, Hourglass Veil Primer, Amore Pacific Moisture Bound (that's the one in the squarish box at the top), Tom Ford (mini-size) lipstick in Indian Rose, and a Flowerbomb sample that's considerably larger than the usual little sample sprays.

I partially got this because I was thinking it might be the only time I'd ever get to try a Tom Ford lipstick (which is otherwise far too expensive for me), but I'm not crazy about the color, it's too pale - or well, not really that pale, but too mauve, or too neutral, probably the latter. I dunno. I do like the Amore Pacific moisturizer a lot, that's the one I've actually used the most so far. But on the whole I'm pretty underwhelmed. It is somewhat nicer than the normal Play box, but not enough that it's worth twice the price. I am not a person who's heavily into luxury brands, so if you are you might like it more. But I've seen several threads complaining about it on the Sephora forums, so I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Here's somebody unboxing this box:

Hypnotic vs Oui!

My husband gave me Revlon Hypnotic as a little surprise for my birthday - bear in mind that the Zoya Earth Day haul is also meant to be part of my birthday present, and I also have a monster gift set from Sephora that's also a birthday goodie. I actually thought Hypnotic was a pretty good pick - on the whole he has a better track record picking out jewelry for me than nail polish. (I love my red-violets - maybe I should give him a hint for the future that thinking purple was a really good idea.) But I also thought it looked awfully similar to Marc Jacobs Oui! which I bought when they were all on 50%-off sale a couple of months ago. So I thought I would do a comparison right off the bat, instead of just showing one or the other and saying vaguely, "Oh, I should have done a comparison!" like I usually do.

So here's Oui:

I thought immediately that Hypnotic looked just like this. But I also thought that if anything Oui would be lighter, and that proved to be the case:

They do look very similar in the bottle, don't they? Berry-colored and super-shimmery, and I think the formulas are very similar, as well. But they're definitely not dupes. On the wheel #11 (on the bottom) is Oui, and Hypnotic is #12, just above that. And Hypnotic is very definitely darker, and slightly more purple. Oui is slightly more pink.

(Also, I don't know what it is about those Revlon bottles, but somehow I always end up with nail polish on the black part of the cap. I suppose it's just that they're dark and reflective, but it happens every single time. This one is brand-new and somehow I managed to do it once again, on the very first use.)

Petra

This is Petra, the second of the two Marc Jacobs polishes that I bought recently:

This is a sort of pinkish-brown metallic, and I pointed out when I first showed my new Marc Jacobs purchases that this polish is actually really similar to Lancome Hotel Particulier. I'll repeat the picture that's at the bottom of that entry, that shows the two of them next to each other:

Hotel P on the left (with the name upside down), Petra on the right. This is two coats of Hotel P and only one of Petra, as opposed to the top picture, which is two coats. I compared them again in person after I added the second coat of Petra, and Petra is if anything actually darker than Hotel P in the end. (Both pictures were taken in the same light, and if you compare the two pictures you can get a pretty clear idea of the differences.) They're quite similar, but they are definitely not dupes.

Oui!

This is Marc Jacobs Oui!

This is a bit of an in-between color - it looks pink in some pictures and more purple in others. I thought at first glance that it was more of a fuchsia - I think maybe the base is more to the pink or magenta side and it's the shimmer that pulls it more purple. Also, while it's not a full-on jelly, it has a jelly-ish base. I would say that three coats are optimum, and that translucent, jelly-like base is the magical thing that sets this polish above other similar colors. It seems to glow, in certain lights.

I just bought this recently so I almost said "it's definitely current" without looking; however, I did look and this color is actually not showing up on Marc Jacobs Beauty right now. I don't know if that's just because they had the 50% off sale recently and it just dropped off because it's out of stock, or if it's actually discontinued. It is still showing up on Sephora, though. (And back to the subject of the color: Sephora's website calls it "magenta violet" - I'm not really sure that clarifies things any further, though!)

Marc Jacobs Enamored

You know how I kept saying I'd been buying too much stuff, lately? I think I've posted all the rest of it, and this is the last of the nail polish binge. I hope I can restrain myself for a while after this. But Marc Jacobs' website had a 50% off sale on polish (which was still going on when I wrote this, but now appears to be over). I almost talked myself into buying enough to get free shipping (which was $50, I believe) but sanity prevailed and I only bought two polishes in the end.

As is usually the case with high-end stuff, it came extremely well-packaged:

These are the shiniest boxes (short of actually being chrome or something) that I ever remember seeing. You can see the reflection of the bubble-wrap in them.

"Enamored" is the name for the whole polish line, apparently. Here's the polishes I bought:

And here's the back side of the box, which has a little window where you can see the polishes:

Oui! is on the left, the pinky-purple one, and Petra is the metallic.

The cap on the bottle is just as shiny as the box. Here you can see my ceiling fan, my phone, and - I think - an extremely distorted reflection of me.

As you might guess, the big cap comes off and there's a more standard cap underneath. I actually really like this bottle shape - it's easy to hold. And in case you missed it on the box above, it's 13ml (or 0.43 oz.), so a reasonable size.

Anyway, I do really like these polishes. I was going to save the swatches for later, but I do have to show you this much: Petra is actually really similar to Lancome Hotel Particuliere:

This is only one coat of Petra, I think with two it would probably look even more similar. I do really like HP, though, and I had complained about how small the bottle was, so now I have a backup of sorts! (I don't think they're actually dead dupes - but they seem awfully close.)

Verismo

This is Jin Soon Verismo, which was on my 2016 favorites list:

It's a really gorgeous blackened gold. I talked about it back in October, but I have a new picture, so eh, here we are again. It's from Jin Soon's Operetta collection - the colors were taken from old Erté designs for opera costumes. It's still a current color, and I'll refer you to the link above for a couple more references. I really don't know of anything else that's remotely like it.

Slate

This is RGB Slate:

This is the only RGB polish I have, and apparently it's discontinued. (There's a pretty similar shade, Gunmetal, on their sale page, currently.) Vampy Varnish says that RGB started out with ten colors and Slate is one of the original ten. I wore this recently under Butter London Knackered, and I think I've maybe worn it one other time. It's pretty but it's the kind of thing I tend to skip over in favor of something showier. I really should get over that.

NOTD: Knackered over Slate

This is Butter London Knackered over RGB Slate:

I started to say this is my first manicure of 2017, and it is, but the application of it spanned two years - that is to say, I started it in 2016 (like, in the last hour or so of 2016) and finished it in the first hours of 2017. I was dawdling around watching Anderson and Kathy on the New Year's Eve show, and Knackered is pretty sheer so by the time I put on NailKale basecoat, a coat of Slate (which as you might guess is gray), three coats of Knackered, and BL's PDQ topcoat, midnight Central had long-gone. (Really, if you think about it, that's a pretty meaningless bit of trivia, because in half the world it was already 2017 by the time I started anyway - but on the other hand, how often does that happen?) Knackered is from BL's Overcoat line, and it's pretty sheer, which is why I did three coats. It's sort of an oyster-shell color full of holo glitter, as you can see pretty clearly in my picture. It's got a lot of duochrome stuff going on, too, but to me it looks sort of blue-gray in the bottle, which is why I arrived at layering it over gray. I've seen this layered over purple, I think, but I would also think blue would work well. - Also, this is a current color, I checked. (I didn't check on Slate, but it seems like the kind of thing that would be a core color. So I'm guessing it might well be current as well.)

NOTD: Hotel Particulier

I was being pretty snippy about Hotel Particulier when I showed it a week or so ago, but it turns out I do really like it.

If you enlarge these pictures you will be able to see a good bit of tipwear, but I had already had it on for a solid 48 hours before I took these pictures, so that's reasonable.

The way the bottle looks all metallic in these pictures doesn't bear much resemblance to the actual color on the nail (nor does the bottle picture that Lancome was showing on their website, which was the main thing I was being snippy about). On the nail it's sort of a purplish-brown microglitter - more brown than purple, though. It's very pretty, but then I'm already on the record as being a particularly big fan of browns this season, anyway.

For comparison, here's the picture I took before (and the only bottle picture I've seen or taken that looks anything at all like the polish):

And here's the picture on Lancome's website:

There's also an eyeshadow with the same name:

Both are currently available on Lancome's website. (They're probably LE, though, so don't expect them to stay indefinitely.)

Darkest Emerald Luxe, Rain Forest

This is Rococo Darkest Emerald Luxe and Revlon Colorstay Rain Forest:

This is another "emerald" that's not really emerald, as far as I'm concerned. It does look more emerald or maybe teal, in the bottle, but on the nail it's very dark and not at all what I'd call emerald. It's very similar to Viridian, in fact. They both sort of look grayed out and blue-green in my swatches, but this one (Darkest Emerald Luxe) a little less gray than Veridian. Rain Forest, on the other hand, is both a bit brighter and a bit more yellow. Both of these polishes have a lot of shimmer. Rain Forest is not from the current Colorstay collection (which is Gel Envy) but the one before that, so it's been discontinued for a couple of years now. I bought my Rococo polishes from Space.NK back a couple of years ago, and a quick search didn't find much for them, so I'm not sure they're still around, either. Definitely Space.NK is not selling their nail polish any more.

(I'm still mulling over the emerald question, so I googled, and here's a company that sells actual emeralds. That's the color I was thinking of - also the color of the Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz, which is about the same. It's usually got some blue to it but it's brighter than most of these nail polishes with emerald-related names.)

Ninja-lish-ious, Bleu Cobalt

This is Pretty Serious Ninja-licious Ninja-lish-ious** and YSL Bleu Cobalt:

Most of the pictures in this batch haven't had focus problems, but this one seems to be the exception. I don't see much more detail noticeable in the larger size anyway, so I'm using the smaller one on the premise that it's easier on the eyes. On the wheel, Bleu Cobalt is the top one of the two dark blues, and Ninja-licious is below that. These look pretty similar but they are really not, past being dark blue. I like them both, but not for the same reasons. Blue Cobalt is very dark and glossy and shimmery and it seems to have a slight duochrome to it. You get a sense of depth when you look at it. Ninja-licious is slightly lighter and it's a glitter, but a really subtle one. The glitter is small and it's all down beneath the surface.

If you're familiar with YSL, you probably noticed first thing that the cap is missing from this polish. This was the way it came to me; however, it came from my sister, who works at an upscale department store, so I have no doubt about its provenance. It's very pretty, and it's something I never would have bought for myself, not at that price ($28, according to the link below). The only reason the cap might particularly matter to me was if I intended to re-sell it, and I don't.

Bleu Cobalt is a current color. Ninja-licious was an LE polish and if it's on Pretty Serious' website I don't see it. (Damn, I shouldn't have looked. I haven't bought any polish since my birthday, two months ago, and I see some new polish in my future.) (This is what I'm looking at. Currently on pre-sale. For one thing, the names! but also the polishes.)

(added: Here's Ninja-licious on PS's blog - only 300 units made, wow. **Also possibly I've been spelling it all wrong - they say Ninja-Lish-ious, presumably because it's in honor of their US shipper, who is named Alicia. I have it spelled right on my spreadsheet and it looks like on the wheel, too, but slipped up when I first wrote this entry. I fixed it at the top but I'm not going back right now and fix every misspelling!) (I also spelled Bleu Cobalt wrong in the title so I'm 0/2 on spelling in this entry!)

NOTD: Verismo

I'd been eyeing Jin Soon Verismo (I keep wanting to put an extra "i" in this, "Verisimo", but I checked and this spelling is correct) for a while now, and I finally went ahead and got it. I also got a mini of Formula X The Fix, which is one of those pink treatment formulas that everybody's been coming out with ever since Dior Nail Glow came out, what, a couple of years ago now.

Jin Soon's page for this says it's adapted from costumes for the opera Rigoletto (and Sephora's page mentions Erté, which makes sense since he did in fact design costumes for Rigoletto among others).

They call it blackened gold, but it comes out looking more coppery to me. (Which is fine with me because I love copper colors.) I've had this on for a couple of days now, and it's wearing very well. Of course, for what it cost, it ought to. Jin Soon is not an inexpensive brand.

Rococo and more

I don't think it's news to anybody that the more expensive the brand, the fancier the packaging:

There are two bottles of Pahlish in that picture, and they're just with the rest of this stuff because they showed up in the mail the same day. The rest of this all came from Space.NK Apothecary, and it was all half-price, but even for half-price you still get all of this beautiful but moderately excessive packaging, of course. Anyway! Half-price Rococo and Jin Soon and Lipstick Queen! Why am I complaining?

For the record, the two Pahlishes (which were not on sale, if I'm remembering correctly) are Pyrite and Blood of the Mountain. (I think Blood in the Mountain has sold out in the past, right? So I was lucky to get hold of it at any reasonable price.) Then the square Rococo box is a duo, EmpoweRED or maybe it's just Empowered, but anyway it's a red polish and a toner which is supposed to darken it. I have been obsessed with blackened reds lately so I wanted to try that. Then we have a Jin Soon, which is Gossamer and was a Space.NK exclusive, I believe. (I can already report on that one, and in fact you are probably going to get sick of hearing about it because I am in love. It's an iridescent topper and it's awesome.) Next there's the single Rococo, which was Darkest Emerald Luxe - which is a blackened emerald or a teal, depending on who you ask. And in the purple cracker was a Lipstick Queen lipstick, a very nice lip brush, and another Rococo, which was... I keep forgetting the name, I think it's Stone Cold Karma. (I'm wearing that one right now - with Gossamer on top of it, of course!) The lipstick is "Nude Sinner".

A couple of other Space.NK notes: they might still be having a sale because I got an e-mail about it a couple of days ago, but I haven't checked in to see what if anything is still in stock! Also, I feel like need to say that while I found some complaints on Facebook about their shipping, my experience was fine. I got it in a reasonable time, well-packaged (actually everything in the picture was inside much more padding inside a box), and correct, so I have no complaints whatsoever other than that the fancy packaging bothers me a teensy bit. But it's not by any means the most overpackaged merchandise I've ever seen. Not even close, so my griping is just blather, to a large extent.

I don't have pictures of my recent manicures, but for the record, the two Gossamer ones were the one that I mentioned above, Gossamer over Stone Cold Karma, and before that, I put Gossamer over the Chita + topcoat mani, and it was gorgeous. On the evidence of what I've tried so far, I'd say Gossamer shows up better over darker colors. You can see it over Stone Cold Karma, but you have to look closely. Also, I should say that Stone Cold Karma is basically a nude, although it's darker than my (super-pale) skin tone, but it looks good on me and that was a bit of a surprise. (Darker may be why it looks good on me. I usually don't like light colors on me at all.) I'm not sure why I even bought that set in the cracker since nudes are not usually my thing, but I actually like the lipstick, too. So that was a big win, overall.

(I thought I already had pictures of the individual bottles, but I haven't been able to find them. I'll get those up eventually.)

Not blueberry, and an Ulta trip

(Wednesday)
I like Not So Blueberry much better than I expected, partly because it's, well, not so blue at all. It's a blue-leaning medium-purple microglitter that reads more like a foil, really. I guess calling it blue-violet would be pretty reasonable, although it's on the violet end of that, even. It looks like it would be sheer, but two coats would have been plenty, if I had been patient enough to let it dry. I messed up the finish and added a third coat to compensate - although in my defense, it took quite a long time to dry. (It's probably extra-humid here at the moment, although, y'know, I live in Houston, where it's always humid. We've had pretty damp weather for this time of year, just the same.)

I don't have pictures yet, and probably won't post them when I do, come to think of it, since I might as well leave Karen a bit of a surprise, even though she knows exactly what she's getting, for the most part - but I've spent a fair bit of time this week finding the items for our swap. First of all, my HEB store had a BOGO sale going on on their Orchid brand, so I got four bottles for the price of two. Then I went running around to several other locations to see if I could find one elusive color, which I never did find. (Karen did not ask me to do this, you understand; I just got intrigued by the hunt.) Then Karen realized that I had said that my HEB store had the Skyfall Magnetics and she asked me to see if I could get some for her, so I went back to the first store again, which is the one that's right down the road from me. When I did, I realized why they had the BOGO coupon sale when none of the other locations had had it: it was actually supposed to be this week's sale, not last week's. For some reason, they had started it early. Which I'm terribly glad about because I would have been very frustrated if I had bought those Orchids only to have them go on sale immediately afterwards!

(Friday)
Yesterday I ventured into Ulta, which I don't do much because it tends to overwhelm me. So many choices! I snapped a rather blurry picture of the Butter London display, and a much better picture of the CK one:

Calvin Klein makeup was all the rage when I was a teenager/young adult, so it makes me rather nostalgic. I had some and I wish I could find pictures to show you - I tried googling and so far have found nothing. But I don't remember them selling nail polish back then. It's possible they did, though.

All I ended up buying at Ulta was a couple of Essence polishes, a pink and a purple, and some shampoo for fine hair that was marked down. (My hair has always been fine, and seems like it's gotten even more so since it started turning gray. Getting old(er) sucks, y'all.)