I'm alive.

I've started buying polish again, and also destashing stuff I don't wear/don't like/didn't close properly (and so on). So hopefully I'll manage to get some more substantial posts up, eventually, too. I'm working on updating pages like the stash list that don't show up as a blog post. also. Fingers crossed!

Several Topic Tuesdays

Today's #topictues is "the last polish you purchased" but that's something I have already showed you guys (Generally Hazzardous) so I'm going to go back and talk about some other topics from the backlist of topics I skipped in past months. (Back on the topic of what I've bought: I hadn't considered this, but I haven't bought any polish in a month or so. I've been doing that, lately. I buy a bunch of stuff all at once, and then I go, "oh, this is ridiculous" and I contain myself for a while. I've gone as long as three months at a time without buying anything. So I guess I can expect another binge in August or so. Just in time for the Nordstrom sale!)

Here's a few more where I don't have very long answers:

• first polish you would buy if you lost your entire collection (this was a topic from early May) - I can't think of anything specific. I would probably go somewhere nearby - Walgreen's or H-E-B or someplace - and just pick from what they had in stock. I certainly don't think I would want to wait for mail order.
• what brand you would choose if you could only have one (no indies) (from March) - definitely Zoya - reasonable prices if you wait for sales & promos, a big back-list and a lot of fun finishes
• most-used polishes (other than base & top-coat) (this one is from April) - I think it would have to be China Glaze Travel In Colour. I love shifty top-coats. I've worn a number of different ones in recent years: Bubblegum Punk, for a while, and for the last year or so it's been Zoya Leia. But I think Travel In Colour is probably the all-time champion. (I'm going on the assumption that "other than top-coat" in this topic is referring to something like Seche Vite and not a top-coat with color in it.) I can't think of one single polish that I've worn as much as I've worn the different color top-coats. Another candidate would be Zoya Chloe and other similar flakies. I love to layer, have you noticed?

Generally Hazzardous:

An old Topic Tuesday: total polishes

I saw this in somebody's YouTube videos, and I somehow missed it before (I think it was maybe back in February), and that was how many polishes do you own, total? I can answer this pretty easily because I have a spreadsheet for all my polishes that I maintain pretty obsessively. And let's see, the answer at the moment is 619 regular-size bottles and 95 minis, so that's a grand total of:

714

I knew I was hovering around 700, so that's not any more than I expected. Note that I saw this topic on the title of a video, but I did not watch anybody else's videos yet so I don't have a handle on what numbers the YouTube people were coming up with. I suspect that they mostly are higher than that unless they've done a lot of destashing. (But destashing was a huge trend on YT nail channels last year so it may be smaller for some people than I'm guessing.) However, I think I can say pretty confidently that my 714 is a number larger than a lot of people's, in general, and way smaller than others.

When I started keeping the spreadsheet - maybe four or five years ago - I was at a couple of hundred, so my collection has grown a lot - and I got there mostly without buying entire collections. Normally I pick and choose - Dollish Ultimate Fandom is the only thing where I ever ordered a full set, and that was minis. (I have a full set of China Glaze polishes from one holiday season, but I got that in a blog giveaway.) It's like being a picky eater - I'm also a picky orderer. It's really rare for me to buy more than a couple of polishes at a time out of a collection.

Note that the reason I said 714 was the answer "at the moment" is that my birthday is coming up, and there's stuff here (in this very room where I'm sitting) that's meant to be part of my birthday present and so I know it's here but I haven't opened it yet - and thus it's not on the spreadsheet yet, either. My husband will get me some kind of a surprise present, he always does, but for the most part I pick out and order myself whatever I'm most wanting when my birthday is coming up. In practice, this works out, because while it means most of my gift is not a surprise, it also means get what I want and I release myself from feeling terribly guilty about however much money I spent. I haven't looked, so I'm not sure how many polishes are over there - I think maybe 9 or 10 polishes and some other stuff that is not polish. I know there's a Clinique gift in there plus whatever Clinique purchase I made to get the gift, and there's a Boxycharm box, and Zoyas from the Earth Day promo, and a second round of Starrilys. (I'm also due to get a Pretty Serious preorder that was delayed, and I got a notice that that will finally be along in the next week or so - whether that will be in time for my birthday or not doesn't really matter. I've forgotten what's in there exactly but I believe it's another four or five polishes at least.)


(For the record, this week's actual topic is your most expensive polish. I'm pretty sure mine is a Lynnderella that I paid a little over $20 for.)


I don't have a display rack or a storage system that's very photogenic, so I'm not going to attempt to post pictures of the whole thing. However, here are some pieces of my stash.

Part of my Zoyas:

These are actually pretty recent - all of my purples sorted into a box:

and greens:

The stash project lives on!

Red is not necessarily red.

Here's an example:

I've been reswatching some of my reds, and several of the reds that I would have said were very traditional reds came out quite pinkish-looking - or maybe it would be more accurate to say they're magenta. Note the difference between this one - Sinful Sugar Sugar - and the fire-engine red on the swatch below that. I guess if they weren't right next to each other it wouldn't be so obvious, but still, it's a very significant difference..

Over two years ago now, when I started my big stash-photographing project, I started out with a post about red glitters, and then one called "Red is red" where I said that while all reds aren't necessarily the same, a lot of people never notice the differences. I was deliberately oversimplifying at the time but I don't think I was truly wrong about that. A lot of people will never notice the subtleties of nail polish, of any color, but do we nail junkies really care about that? For the most part, I'd say the answer is no. That's what makes us nail junkies.

(The chattering about my stash below is probably very tl;dr but I feel compelled to write it all down anyway.)

This week's Topic Tuesday topic was, show how you organize your stash. I looked at that a week ago and went, well, mine's a mess so I'm not talking about that - but I think actually that started something percolating in my brain. Those who have followed me for a long time have seen me go through multiple stash reorganizations over the years. I can't seem to quite settle on one way to do it. We live in an apartment so putting up a lot of shelving is more trouble than it is worth. I have a big collection of deep plastic containers of various sizes that I've mostly used for nail-polish storage, but I've gone back and forth between organizing my polishes by color, by brand, and even by season. I like the concept of "by season" because to a large extent that's really how I wear polish - but organizing my stash that way has been a bust. I have enough trouble remembering where I put a particular polish even using a much simpler system and the seasonal idea just made that worse. I think by brand is probably the easiest way, as far as finding things goes, but every time I've tried that I end up going back to doing it by color. And I think I'm giving up on seasons too and just going back to colors, again. It just seems to match up with how my brain works better. (And I've outgrown the collection of boxes, for the most part, so I'm going to Helmer-type drawers instead.)

So I started re-sorting polishes - I've got some really large plastic Container Store bins that I'm using for the colors I really have a lot of - and almost as soon as I started that, I started thinking about reswatching things I'd swatched before. There were a lot of bad pictures early on and then I remembered that I had a list of what needed retaking so now I'm working on both of those things more or less simultaneously. (My husband hates tripping over bins of polish, though, so that's giving me an incentive to keep working on the reorg part rather than just leaving them in the middle of the living room indefinitely.) And I'm amassing a bunch of swatch retake pictures (somehow the one above got on that list even though I had done a swatch entry for it before) but mostly those are not repeats, so I'll probably be back to posting those several days a week for the foreseeable future.

(I think it's probably not really true that I'm giving up on the seasonal concept completely. Probably what I'll end up with is a hybrid system - like, put my little collection of pastels together and you have "spring" - same with the very dark polishes for fall/winter. Then there's the very showy glitters which mostly get reserved for the holidays, the oranges and browns for the fall, and so forth. I only stick with seasonal polishes part of the time, but there are a good many that I think of that way.)

Topic Tuesday (a week late)

I didn't know until last night that #topictues was a thing - apparently it's been going on on Instagram for a month or two now. I always say I should look at Instagram more but then I forget to actually do that. I've had an account for years and years but I hardly ever think to post anything, either. (I am @mellificent on IG but I've posted like 4 pictures in the last year, none of which are nail polish. Go figure.)

This week's topic: "sentimental polishes" - I'm pretty sure I have some of these but I'm going to have to think it over some more.

But meanwhile, I thought I'd look at last week's question, which was, what brand do you have the most of? and you're supposed to pick five favorites from each. I have most of this information fairly close at hand because I did favorites for a lot of brands last year. All I have to do is add the new ones I've acquired since then and see if I need to adjust things.

When I did this last year the top brands were:

• Zoya - about 75 (links for this are below)
• Sally Hansen - 40 (but that's all the sub-brands together, and the more I think about that the less I think it's a valid way to count, since Insta-Dri and Miracle Gel and Xtreme Wear aren't much like one another, really)
• OPI - 30 (about 11 of those are minis, but I guess that still counts)
• China Glaze - 24

plus several more right around the 20-bottle mark - Sinful, Square Hue, Pretty Serious, and Revlon

When I look at what I bought since then, it seems that all of the numbers for last year's top four brands are holding pretty steady - I bought some of each, but I also did some selective destashing. In the meantime, I bought more Square Hue and Pretty Serious than I got rid of by far, probably enough to bump China Glaze down the list, for sure, and maybe OPI too. I'm not as interested in looking at those two again anyway, or Sally H., either, so I'm going to go with Zoya, SquareHue, and Pretty Serious for this purpose. (I put the links above for what I said about the brands I bumped off.)

Square Hue

• Akamai (blue-green foil)
• Lake Louise (shimmery light blue)
• Parizska (gray glitter)
• Victorian End (deep shimmery purple)
• Vogue (dark shimmery red)

Several of these are the same favorites I picked for Square Hue last year, which is here:

I bought 9 new SquareHues last year, and I think at least a couple of them deserve consideration as favorites. I think that Parizska, Vogue, and Lake Louise still belong solidly in my favorites. Y2K is a nice polish but I don't love it enough that I think it needs to be in the top 5. I added one that I slighted before instead, which is Victorian End, a deep purple, and then to make a fifth added a new one: Akamai. (Runner-up from the new ones was Limeña, a nice coppery-red.)

Pretty Serious

• BSOD (glittery royal-blue jelly)
• Elliott (bright blue packed with microglitter) (still available, for now)
• Ichi Hanami (cherry-pink shimmer)
• Party By The Pool (glittery dark-blue jelly) 
• Poltergeist Puddle (shimmery-shifty blue-leaning purple)

(Lots of blues, I'm not sure why. But they're all different.)

Here's my previous top 5, but several of those are discontinued. I haven't bought any of the "new" Pretty Serious polishes since they redid the labels and the website, but I bought a bunch of stuff while they had the closeout sale going on for the old bottles. (If you aren't on their mailing list, you may not know that they're in the process of discontinuing some more stuff. They are not going to have as large of a back-catalog as they have traditionally had.) However, since I don't have much that's current, it's hard for me to kick all the discontinueds off my list - there won't be much left and I really don't think there's much in more recent hauls that I would want to add, really. I'm going to go with a variation on the old top 5. I kicked off Kashmir and Swatch & Learn, because I'm not feeling them so much right now, and added a couple of different ones.

Zoya

• Alice (periwinkle Pixie Dust)
• Carter (purple Pixie Dust)
• Dream (indigo scattered holo)
• Leia (shimmery top-coat)
• Zuza (turquoise-green shimmer)

For Zoya, I picked a top 10 last year, so I needed to look at that plus the new arrivals since then and pick 5 out of that new pool. Here are the new arrivals. Here is the old top 10. (In fact here is the whole kit and caboodle, should you care to look.). I also realized that I had a couple in my 2016 favorites that weren't here and should be.

I had trouble getting this down to five - the ones it pained me especially to cut were a couple of the new ones - Destiny and Mimi, and then Jem and Carly off the old list. But I didn't have Leia on the old list and it's become my total go-to layering polish, so it needs to be in the top five for sure.

Here's Mimi, for the record:

It's a glass-fleck and I adore those in general, that's probably why I'm attached to it in particular. But it's also a really beautiful color. But I also have Carter already in there, and it's purple, and Alice is a lighter purple, so three purples seems like overkill. I put in poor unappreciated Zuza instead. (I've just remembered lately how much I love Zuza.)

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..

Windsor Mews, Odette

I posted a version of this picture back in March in an NOTD post, but this is more or less the proper place in my ongoing color wheel for these two grayed-out purples, NailsInc Windsor Mews and Zoya Odette:

(I cut Tickle My France-y out because it's more of a tan, really, although on the wheel in this picture it looks almost pink. It's clearly not purple, in any case.) Windsor Mews is a paler grayed out purple, and Odette is a somewhat darker one. Interestingly, you know how I always say I hate pastels on me? Windsor Mews seems to be the rare exception. Maybe I can't wear pastels unless they're really gray? I don't know. (Although I can think of one more piece of evidence for that theory, and that's Square Hue First Flight, which is a very pale gray which I also liked on me.)

I didn't check, but these are both relatively recent polishes and not LE, so they should still be available. Although it doesn't say so on the bottle, Windsor Mews is part of the NailKale line, which seems to be pretty hard-to-find in the US. (I caved in and checked - it's not available at Sephora, or not on the website, at least; but it is on NailsInc's US website. Added: I had a bad link there and that's now corrected. Nails Inc has it labeled as "midnight navy," for some reason!)

Into the circular file: Convergence

This mini of Chirality Convergence is something I've enjoyed but it's gone away now:

I didn't want to call this "destash" because it's not like I have something like it and I'm getting rid of it because I don't want/need it any more. I don't believe I have anything remotely like it. I'm getting rid of it because it's clearly just not usable at this point. Apparently I didn't close it properly at some time in the past, so I'm in no way blaming the nice lady of Chirality for this. You can't see what it really looked like on the nail but you can see the color, here, anyway. I imagine I have another swatch of it someplace, if I can dig it out. When it's not such a mess it's a lovely plum holo, I really liked it. And for the record, I believe you can still get this one on their website.

Added: There's some nice swatches if you scroll down here.

NOTD: Enchanted Forest over Agro

I was poking around the box of green polishes, which is pretty large and hasn't been newly swatched yet, and I came up with China Glaze Agro, which I hadn't worn in a while. As PolishAholic notes, Agro has kind of a funky finish - I like the color but I wasn't in love with the finish, myself. And so I grabbed something to put on top of it, and the something was Nyx Enchanted Forest, which is a fairly sheer green glitter that's somewhat on the blue side, as I recall. And it took Agro's more olive-green color and pulled it right over into emerald. It came out really beautiful; I got compliments.

Not a great picture, but I think you can get the basic idea. With two coats of Agro and two coats of Enchanted Forest, it came out noticeably glittery, but not in a terribly flashy way.

I think that Agro is still findable if you were determined to have it - it's from the first Hunger Games collection, about, what, four years ago now. Nyx nail polish has never been easy to find, since I've been collecting; this is the only one I have. I don't have the bottle in front of me but I think it's from the Salon line. I poked around and Nyx's website doesn't even show that line any more. So finding that one might be very dicey.

New iPhone is finally due to arrive, woo! (However, you'll probably continue to see pictures from the old one for a good while.)

Blood Of The Mountain, Victoria

I've long used the rule that for nail polish (unlike for, say, book titles), you capitalize every word in its name, but somehow "Blood Of The Mountain" bothers me more than others do. Nevertheless, by my own rules this is Pahlish Blood Of The Mountain, and NailsInc Victoria.

(I just realized that the Victoria bottle doesn't say NailKale, it just says NailsInc London, even though it came from a Nailkale gift set. - But maybe that's just because it's a mini. The large size seems to be labeled differently.)

I have never loved Blood Of The Mountain, and I just found somebody's post about there having been a defective batch of it a while back. I'm going to have to poke around and see if I might have bought it around the same time she did. (It's dull and I've always thought it looked entirely too much like dried blood for my taste.) Victoria is described as "dark cherry" and that seems accurate. I've only worn it once, I think, but I liked it.

Red is red.

Most reds look pretty much alike, at least at a glance.

Oh, there are differences. There are cremes and foils and glitters; there are orange-reds and blue-reds and neutral reds. But the fact is that when they're on your fingers, 99% of people who notice your nails at all will think (or say), "Red fingernails" - and not look beyond that.

This is not so true with clothing as it is with fingernails. Red is unequivocally my best color, where shirts and dresses are concerned, enough so that people usually comment on it when I wear red. And on the much larger scale involved with a shirt or a dress, then I think the exact color of it matters more. For me, that's blue-leaning reds rather than orange-reds, particularly. I'm not saying these things don't matter at all with nails. Blue-reds look better than orange-reds on my nails, too. I'm just saying the impact is a lot more limited.


Anyway, the fact is that I have way more reds than I need, no matter how you look at it - especially since I don't seem to actually wear red nails that much these days - and it seems like a good idea to look at the various red polishes and decide which ones I like best rather than just start indiscriminately getting rid of them. I talked about red glitters a couple of weeks ago, and there are a few more here, although these are more of the top-coat kind. In fact, let's start with those.

Some of this set give the lie a bit to my all-reds-are-alike, theory, because they are more varied. I think I would be inclined to put a red base-coat under at least some of these, anyway, and that would pull them back to red a bit, anyway.

L-R: Sparkling Fire (LASplash), Ruby Queen (NYC Crystal Couture), Alexa Lace (NailsInc), Poppy Fields (Serum No5)

Ruby Queen and Poppy Fields both have red jelly bases, which is what makes them look alike here. The glitter mixes are not the same, though. Ruby Queen has red and purple glitter, in various sizes; Poppy Fields has red, gold, and some scattered small dark pieces that look black. (Ooh, scroll down to the bottom of this entry for Poppy Fields over Chanel Taboo, which is awesome. I may have to try that over something dark, to see if I can get a similar effect.)

Sparkling Fire is a small glitter in a clear base that goes on pretty thick. The entry I'm about to link to is in Spanish, but shows it layered over red, and it looks gorgeous. I'm really tempted to try that idea this coming week.

Alexa Lace is part of an Alexa Chung series meant to look like various fabrics. This is mixed-shaped matte bits, and over a pale base, it really can look like lace. I think maybe it needs to be applied somewhat more sparsely than I've done here to get the full effect, though.

Cremes part 1:

These are out of nail wheel order (because the OPI bottle was rolling around and so I put Chinoise on the end to stop it), but since you really can't tell any difference there, I don't guess it much matters, does it? The nail wheel order is, L-R, Bird Fling and Via Della Spiga (both Square Hue), Chinoise (RBL), Challenge Red-y (Nicole by OPI), and then Big Apple Red (OPI mini). I don't think it's visible in the picture, but looking at the wheel in person, the two Square Hues and Chinoise are distinctly more pinky-looking on the first coat. I take that to mean they have a little more of a violet undertone. Big Apple Red maybe has the tiniest bit of that going on as well, But Challenge Red-y just looks completely neutral as far as I can tell.

added: better picture of Via Della Spiga here

Then you go into the slightly more orange-leaning ones, which are the first couple here, especially:

The picture just doesn't pick this up, but I think the first three of those all lean just slightly toward the orange. L-R, this is China Flower (Revlon Parfumerie), Sooki (Zoya), EmpoweRED and its toner (Rococo), and Jolly Lolly (L'Oreal).

added: better picture of China Flower, better picture of Sooki

I put the toner next to the EmpoweRED bottle because I don't know where else to put it - it's not a regular polish at all. It's supposed to blacken the red - which is why I bought it, because I have a thing about blackened reds - but it doesn't actually do a very good job of it that I've ever been able to tell. Jolly Lolly isn't actually a creme at all; it's a full-on jelly, from the Miss Candy collection a couple of years ago. Except for Jolly Lolly, these are the obvious de-stash candidates because I don't think the orange-reds are good colors for me, as I said. Although I'm most likely to hang onto the Rococo pair as a curiosity. But China Flower and Sooki are not for me, for sure. I might bring myself to part with one of the two near-identical Square Hues, too. (I don't think they're actually dupes, though - Via Della Spiga looks maybe a hair brighter.)


This is metallic-ish things plus the Pixie Dust:

L-R: Razzmatazz (Orly mini), Sugar Sugar (Sinful Colors), Chyna (Zoya Pixie Dust), Karina (Zoya), Unbreakable Heart (Hard As Nails). 

Razzmatazz is technically a glitter, I guess, but it really isn't terribly glittery. It has a bit of a metallic sheen but not enough to really make it a glitter. It seems it's trying a bit too hard to be everything to everybody, really. It's pretty, though. It leans pink and has just a little bit of sparkle to it.

I should have put Sugar Sugar and Karina next to each other to compare, but they look awfully similar on the nail wheel. They both are just a hair darker than most of these, and they both have a significant amount of glitter in them but somehow come out looking more metallic than glittery. Chyna, the Pixie Dust, has more tonal glitter in it than most of its Pixie Dust siblings - they tend to be more silvery.

Unbreakable Heart belongs more with the rest of the real metallics, which are the ones below:

L-R: Knees Up (Butter London), Bet On Red (Milani), Just Be-Claws (China Glaze), An Affair In Red Square (OPI)

Knees Up is the one I am least likely to ever give away, even though I don't wear it a lot, because it's the stand-out, a full-on foil. It's really gorgeous. But the rest of these are all very pretty, too. An Affair In Red Square is a classic, of course, and it's been in OPI's core collection for years (OPI's Russia collection was the Fall 2007 release, says Scrangie.) Bet On Red is really pretty and I'm still sort of sad that Milani discontinued this line. But Just Be-Claws, from China Glaze's holiday '13 collection, is virtually a dupe, so I'm set for the foreseeable future there.

Christmas glitters compared

As I've mentioned, I started going through my stash and swatching everything onto nail wheels so I can compare. The first thing I did was red glitters - and I'm working on more reds but haven't gotten pictures of that yet. I also compared a couple of red-violet jellies. Now I have Christmas-themed and/or multicolored glitters - I know nobody really cares about this in January, but if I wait until next fall I'm most likely to forget about it completely, so January it is. I've seen these called "ugly sweater" polishes but I actually like them, which is why I have a fair number of them. If you're careful about how you apply them they can be really beautiful.

I did show one more of these back in December and it wasn't there in the box when I did this round of swatching so I didn't go hunt it down again - I knew I already had pictures, anyway. That was Twinkle Lights from Nine Zero, with Christmas glitter in a silver holo base. None of the ones I'm about to show you have that silver base - that was why I went and bought that polish, because it was different. So there's certainly no issue of dupes there - in fact there's no real issue of dupes here at all, although there's one pair that does look a bit similar on the wheel.

R-L, this is Unicorn Farts (Funky Fingers), Bling Tree (Sally Girl), Yuletide Treasures (Pahlish), and Yule Light Up My Life (Serum No 5) - on the wheel they go from bottom to top. You may not be able to get your hands on any of these particular polishes, but there are always lots of similar polishes around every year for the holidays. Indie polish-makers in particular love this kind of thing. (For example, still on KBShimmer's website right now there is sELFie, a mixed glitter in a green base, and Holly Back Girl, in a crelly base.)

Note: I wandered over to Serum No 5's website looking for something else and I noticed that Yule Light Up My Life is currently still available (as of late August '16). Just in case somebody happens to be interested...

Added: I almost forgot that I had a second set. These are smaller glitters and they're not as obviously holiday so I think you could use them for other purposes if you cared to.

This is Out Of Space Convertible from Different Dimension, and Holiday Spirit from Sation. I actually like both of these quite a lot. I had swatched them on either side of Punk-ish Purple, so I tried some glitter on the tip of it, too - I'm pretty sure that one was Holiday Spirit. Out Of Space Convertible has a dark base, making it much more elegant looking. Good party material for Mardi Gras, maybe. (I do have a Mardi Gras polish, though, which I will show swatches of soon!)

Here's the wheel picture above turned sideways and cropped so it's larger:

They do look slightly fugly, I have to admit. I think these really look best over a color. The green on the right is Lodgepole Pine (Square Hue) and I slapped one of the glitters on the tip, and I'm not entirely sure now whether it's Yuletide Treasures or Yule Light Up My Life. Those two are pretty similar on the wheel, except that Yule Light Up My Life has more smaller-size glitter pieces, and of course, like most Serum No.5 polishes, it's glow-in-the-dark. (I am basically uninterested in that particular effect so I haven't really tried to see whether it works. I know it's said to but I can't say I've ever noticed it.) As far as the other two, Unicorn Farts is not really a Christmas polish, per se, but I stuck it in with these. I will say that I have heard of problems with the big glitter pieces in this polish curling up (aka tacoing) but I didn't notice it this time - they seemed to lay entirely flat as far as I could tell. And you can't really see much of Bling Tree here - especially since the big white pieces are almost invisible on the near-white wheel. I think it'd be cute with the right base but I didn't get around to trying it in real life yet.

Red glitters compared

NOTE: Zoya has a sale on til the 13th, in case you don't already know. Four bottles for $15 S&H, I believe. The promo code's on their front page.

This is the start of what is presumably going to be a series - I'm going through my stash and comparing things. Theoretically this may cause me to thin out my stash some but I'm a hoarder at heart so don't hold your breath there.

I came up with six red glitters from my stash, and actually, none of them are dupes, although several of them are close. Some of them are the same ones everybody else has (Ruby Pumps), some are discontinued (Hard Candy Stop), and some are indie (I Know You Are But What Am I?). If you're just starting a collection, you certainly don't need six, but a nice subtle (or not-so-subtle) red glitter is a good thing to have. Red's a color most everybody can wear, too.

Here's the whole side of the wheel. (You can see my new-and-last RBLs at the top, which I'm not sure I've really talked about, come to think of it. I'll have to remedy that...)

I tried out a couple of things that didn't turn out to be proper red glitters - I'll talk about that as I go. Here's all the polishes in question:

L-R: Echarpe de Seda (Jade), Stop (Hard Candy), Delilah (Zoya), Bad Santa (Ulta), Ruby Pumps (China Glaze), I Know You Are But What Am I? (Black Cat), and at the end, Aura (Formula X), which is a red glitter in a black base so it's not a proper red glitter, really. But it sure is pretty, and the glitter looks identical to some of these others, so it felt like it fit here.

The polish on the far left on the nail wheel above (next to the blue RBL at the very edge of the picture) belongs in the same collection as the Jade polish next to it, but I didn't put the bottle in because it so obviously didn't belong with this group, upon swatching. The collection is "Special Glitz" and the pinker polish is Vestido de Gala (which for those who want translations, apparently means something like "party clothes"; Echarpe de Seda means "silk scarf") - but Vestido de Gala is clearly much too plum-toned for this group. I have tons of other plum-colored things which I'll get around to showing later, and it will undoubtedly make an appearance later with all of those. (With all these swatch comparisons and bottle shots, this is going to be a long-drawn-out process. I've already resigned myself to that.)

Here are close-ups of the wheel (although I'm not sure they're much more help than the picture above):

So the two reds here are Jade Echarpe de Seda and Hard Candy Stop. These Jade polishes are tiny holo glitters and they are great. I don't know if they are still available at all here in the US, but I really do like the whole Special Glitz collection and I recommend them if you can find them. The bottles are tiny but they are not super-expensive, I think maybe $6. Hard Candy Stop I bought ten years ago or so, and they've changed the entire collection since then so I doubt that this is available. Stop is pretty, but it's just a standard glitter and I don't think it's worth paying megabucks for on eBay, which is likely the only place you'd find it (although I haven't actually looked).

Here we have Zoya Delilah, Ulta Bad Santa (which is long discontinued), China Glaze Ruby Pumps, and Black Cat Laquer I Know You Are But What Am I? I'm putting links to the three that are not discontinued. (For the record, these are not affiliate links. I will tell you that Zoya is slow - sometimes very slow - when they're having a sale, but reliable, in my experience. I've ordered from Sleek Nail before and had good service, and they have really good prices on China Glaze. I have not ordered directly from Black Cat, but I've heard nothing but good things about them.)

As I said, none of these are dead dupes - of the three that are easily available, I'd say Delilah's a bit more neutral; Ruby Pumps is slightly more pinkish; I Know You Are But What Am I? has a much bigger glitter load. All of them read as red, though.

The latest from Zoya

Here's the latest round of Zoya polishes.

(I just took a picture of the box because I think the box is pretty.)

They had a series of one-day deals, and I snapped up the one I saw that looked like the best deal to me. That was buy a mini Color Lock system for $20, get three polishes of your choice free and free shipping. I would probably not have paid $20 for just the Color Lock box by itself - it's minis of the top-coat, base-coat, and drying drops, plus their remover which I am already on the record as not liking. (It's already in the pile of samples to give away. I think the scent of it is too strong, is my only problem with it. It gives me a headache.) But I did want to try the Anchor and Armor system (and the drops) so I'm happy to have them, and when you lump all those items together, it's a very good deal. So here are the  color polishes I got:

In case you still can't read that (and their print is really tiny), it's Aurora, Ivanka, and Isa. Frankly, I never would have thought to buy Aurora, but I watched a bunch of people's "favorite Zoya polish" videos lately, late one night, and more than one person had it as their very favorite. I am not hugely fanatical about holos but I decided to give it a try. (I might have gotten Dream instead, which as I understand it is the same formula, basically, but since I also wanted Isa I didn't want to end up with two dark blues in the same batch.) The one I am impressed with so far is Ivanka, actually, because it doesn't look like what I thought.

I had the impression it was emerald green, but it's lighter and somewhat more blue-leaning than I was expecting, which as far as I'm concerned is a good thing. I have tons of emerald greens already. (I'm not sure if I misread, or forgot what I read, or what. Wouldn't be the first time.)

Here they are on a wheel:

Isa has some hidden glitter down in the depths that doesn't show up here. It's really beautiful, but I don't know how much that will show up in action. Anyway, I'm happy with what I bought.

(I didn't get a picture of the Color Lock set - if the sun comes out tomorrow I'll add that in.)
(A bit dark - the sun came out, but the angle was bad or something - but you can get the idea, anyway.)

Oh, you want to hear something funny? (or, well, I think it's funny at least!) - I am plotting another January stash run-through. The last... 3 years, I think, I've rearranged my stash completely in the winter/spring and taken pictures - one year I did it by color, the next year by brand, and then last year I did it by finish. And I said I probably wouldn't do it again because my stash has gotten too big. I came up with this new system where I sorted them seasonally and it does work pretty well, but I'm finding that I want to compare things and see if I can get rid of a few things. So I may just go back and do the whole thing by color again. I have so much more polish than the last time I did this that it should be quite different from the last time, and hopefully instructive. I can look for dupes - and then I will convince myself I have to keep them all, undoubtedly. But hey, if I even get rid of a few that'll be an improvement. If I actually do this, I will probably break it down into small similar color groups. It may take forever.

2015 favorites so far + a couple of strays

I don't do month-by-month favorites, but I thought I would do one for "2015 so far" - partly just to make it easier on myself assuming I want to do 2015 favorites later! This is just in alpha order by polish name. I limited it to things I wore for the first time in the first half of 2015, not necessarily things that came out this year or even things I purchased this year. I didn't make any attempt to limit this to a certain number of polishes, but I seem to have come out with an even ten. (There were at least a couple more that I almost added, and then decided I didn't like them quite as much as these.)

Aurora Borealis - Lucky 13
Black Metal Dahlia - OCC
Boom - Formula X
BSOD - Pretty Serious
Flake Your Booty - Painted Polish
Harlow - Zoya Matte Velvet
Hot Couture - Color Club
Pretty Gritty - Rescue Beauty
She's Beyond Kelp! - KB Shimmer
Stuck In The Middle - Pretty Serious

These are not all new releases - Black Metal Dahlia's been around at least a couple of years, and I think Hot Couture has too. I'm not at all sure how old BSOD is, but it might have been around a while, as well. A couple more (like Boom and Stuck In The Middle) might have come out earlier last year. And Harlow might have been a re-release last year or might have been new - I've seen conflicting stories on that.

If I had to pick one favorite... I don't know what I'd pick, honestly.  Pretty Gritty, maybe, or Aurora Borealis. I have really been into the flakies so far this year. And She's Beyond Kelp! is awesome as well.


In other news, I found a couple more of my "stray" polishes. (These two were apparently more or less in plain sight all along - or at least, they were lurking behind some other stuff, among the clutter of bottles on my nightstand!)

• I Only Shop Vintage (Sephora by OPI) -  this is a really fine-milled gold/bronze glitter in what seems to be sort of a taupe base, although it's so packed with glitter that it's hard to tell. I always feel like these colors should not be flattering on me, but this one is. (here's a dupe post) (& here's my mani from earlier this year)
• Ruby Queen (NYC Crystal Couture) - a red glitter with some scattered purple pieces in a red jelly base. I don't think I bought this until after the holidays, so I didn't wear it then, and I didn't get around to wearing it at Valentine's Day, either.

Stash: A last round of strays, + a few still MIA

This picture is a bit fuzzy, but here are the last of the strays I have rounded up:

top row:

• Frozen (Orly Color Blast) - This is (as you may guess) part of a "Frozen" tie-in collection. I got mine in a duo called the "Sister Duo" but I believe these were also sold individually. This is pretty much what you'd expect, an ice-blue - but it's very sheer and shimmery. It reminds me of polishes like Sinful Let Me Go, because while it's not the same color, it's similar in finish and sheerness.
• Wicked (Essie) - I think it says a good bit about Wicked that they put it on Uhura in the last Star Trek movie. This is a dark vampy red - various sources have it as a near-dupe for Chanel Rouge Noir and also for some things I already own like Sinful Rich In Heart (which I would never have guessed, it seems more brown) and Revlon Vixen. (Some more info here.)
• Sew Psyched (Essie) - different sources describe this as a greenish-gray or a sage green. (On the other hand I suppose that's what sage green is, really.) And it's got a lot of shimmer. There's dupe link and some more info here.
• Anais (Zoya mini) - I thought this polish was dark green when I got it, but nobody but me seems to see anything greenish in it. Apparently it's actually a very dark gray or brownish-black. (What it comes down to is that it's very dark and shimmery and nobody agrees about exactly what color it is.)
• Mad Women (Miracle Gel) - this is my one-and-only Miracle Gel polish, but I like it and it wore well, by my standards. (I think I managed to make it last something like four days.) This is a fuchsia, I'd call it similar to something like Zoya Lilith because it seems to have some blue flash. But maybe that's just my imagination.

bottom row:

• Gossamer (Jin Soon) - another brand that I own exactly one of. I liked this polish a lot when I first got it, and then I sort of forgot about it. It seems, now that I look at it again, a lot like China Glaze Travel In Colour. I'm not sure if it has exactly the same kind of shift, though. I'm gonna have to remember to try this out again!
• Severine (Zoya mini) - Along with Anais, above, these were two of the three colors in the Zoya Mystery Box from after Christmas this year. As you can see at the link, these were actually colors made for the fall 2014 Peter Som collection. Severine is the most interesting of the colors to me - a sort of dull neutral-ish gold frost.
• Jordana's Skinny Jeans (Barielle) - I first saw this polish on somebody's Pinterest and I thought it was mislabeled, since Jordana is also a polish brand. But no, it's Barielle and it's named after the cult 80s jeans. So it's (naturally) a dark 80s-ish denim blue with a lot of shimmer. It's quite beautiful.
• Spinning Out Of Control (Misa) - blurple shimmer. I haven't tried this one yet, but Misa and Barielle both seem to have awesome formulas and I'm sorry I waited so long to try these brands!
• CE39 (I think - the number is totally illegible, but I decided the last time I wore it that that was correct) (Layla Ceramic Effect) - this is a very pretty dark purple-gray shimmer, an unusual color since grayed-out colors tend to be lighter than this.

=================================

Well, separating my polishes out by finish turned out not to be the easiest thing in the world, but I learned so much doing it that I can't regret having tried. And I finished, more or less, which is kind of amazing! I say "more or less" because there are a few polishes that I still haven't managed to get my hands on for pictures, after all this. The ones I know of, in no particular order, are:

• OCC Chimera
• Misa Dirty Sexy Money
• Zoya Harlow
• SOPI I Only Shop Vintage (mani from early 2015)
• China Glaze Mingle with Kringle (which is said to be a dupe for Zoya Ziv, according to JessFace90)
• NYC Ruby Queen
• Hard Candy Vinyl
• Glitter A-Peel basecoat

Eight out of 400-odd is not bad. I've actually seen all of these pretty recently, I think. They're floating around somewhere; I'll track them down eventually, and when I do, I'll google them as I have been doing with all the others and add them to the big list. And I'll do new polishes as I get them, too.

(Update: I've already found a couple, which are marked out. Hopefully the others are just lurking around somewhere in my boxes as well! And incidentally, if you're asking, why can't I Google without the actual bottle - which is what I thought myself when I read back over what I'd written - well, of course I can, and I probably will if I don't find them, just for completeness' sake. But it's a bit pointless if I've lost the actual polish!)

Stash: formerly MIA metallics

After I did this round of stash pictures, I went through my list to see what was missing, and there was one bunch that stood out, that I knew had to be together. They were polishes that I usually mostly wear in the fall - metallics, mostly, and especially a bunch of copper and bronze-colored things. I had looked around for a stray storage box and not found or remembered anything like that, and I couldn't imagine where I had put them - but finally "fall" rang a bell somewhere in the back of my brain, and I remembered having put these away somewhere where I would (presumably) find them again in the fall. But honestly, I had put them so thoroughly out of sight that it's a wonder I remembered - they were in my grandmother's jewelry armoire, which is stuck back in a corner with some assorted junk in it, and I mostly ignore the existence of the whole piece of furniture. I apparently cleaned out the top drawer last fall, and put these polishes in it. I guess maybe I was thinking that I could use that armoire like a Helmer. Only then I came perilously close to forgetting about it completely.

So, to go by the standards that I started out with on this stash round, we have here some very large glitters (Falloween and I-Space), some chunky glitters (in a clear base for the SOPI and in a jelly base for RIP) and the rest are microglitters that verge on foils.

top row:

• Traffic-Stopper Copper (Sephora by OPI) - bright copper hexes in a clear base. I like this in theory but I haven't really worn it much. (I need to do it over black like P'aholic shows.)
• Falloween (Glitzology) - a crazy fall-themed mix of glitters in a clear base: shards, squares, hexes, and bars, in black, white, orange, purple, and green. I bought this in a blog sale and completely forgot to use it at the proper time of year. I can't really see wearing it in any other season.

bottom row:

• Glitz (Orly) - as I recall, people used to get really worked up about this polish back a few years ago, but I never thought it was all that, especially. Still, it's a nice golden metallic and I've actually worn it a good bit over the years. (Here's a comparison post.)
• R.I.P. (Orly) - this polish was the very first NOTD post on this blog, and it's still a fun polish, although it's kind of a pain to deal with. It's orange glitter in a black jelly base, and it's kind of balky, but on the other hand, I can't think of anything else like it. If I remember to wear it this fall, I'll definitely put Black Creme under it. And I do still like my post-Halloween version that I mention in that post where I got it to look more brown, too.
• Intergalactic Space (Orly FX) - This is mixed glitter in a black base, and I wasn't sure I would like it but I did. (here's a mani from 2014) Among the mix of stuff are scattered larger white circles that come out looking sort of like planets. And like several of these, it does have bronze leanings.
• Seared Bronze (Cover Girl Glosstini) - this is from the Cover Girl Catching Fire collection - it's not available in the Glosstini size any more but I believe these colors are still in the permanent collection. This is a really pretty bronze that's said to be a dupe for Warm & Fozzie.  (Note that I also now have a full-size of this, and that these are being discontinued as of late 2015.)
• Chop Chop Copper (SH Insta-Dri) - the review linked is ALU again, and Michelle didn't actually like it that much, but I do. It's beautiful, and I don't care that it's not all that opaque.

Stash strays: reddish shimmers and some cremes

I'm still gradually getting up the leftovers from my big stash project, which I've been working on for six months - basically any post labeled "stash" in 2015 so far is part of this. I am not noted for finishing big projects, but in this case I was motivated by having an index, which showed up really clearly what polishes are still undone. So here's another small group:

at the top:

• Charlotte mini (Zoya) - this was part of a trio that Zoya sent out with one of their promo sales back in January. I think they were the Peter Som colors that they did for one fashion week or the other last year (apparently it was fall 2014, if I'd just read what I linked I'd know that already!) KG says this is a creme although I thought in the bottle it looked like it had some shimmer. I believe I swatched it (and it was almost invisible on the wheel because it was the same slightly-off-white color as the wheel itself!) but I haven't worn it. I might get around to it eventually but it's just not my kind of thing.

bottom row:

• Free Spirit (Orly Color Blast) - this was a Frozen duo that Rob bought me for my birthday. Again, I thought this was a shimmer but maybe not. Apparently it's a crelly, which is interesting and different, and maybe I should actually get around to trying it out! It's a very bright purple-leaning fuchsia which I have a zillion of, but crellies are more rare.
• Stuck In The Middle (Pretty Serious - I believe this was a blogger collab polish) - this is a fabulous polish (even though it's basically pretty close to that same fuchsia as the one above - you can see that it reads a bit different, though) - it's a jelly packed with shifty glass-fleck sparkle. (PS has recently come out with a second blogger collab trio, which looks pretty awesome too. I'm still wanting Undercover Mermaid, which is the one I didn't get from the first trio!)
• Black Metal Dahlia (OCC) - remember how I kept going on about how I wanted a blackened red? I knew all along that this color existed, but I thought it was discontinued, for some reason. But it's not (or it was and they brought it back, I'm not sure which) and I now have it and... well, it's pretty but it's still not quite the blackened red of my dreams. OCC describes it as "deep maroon with red pearl." (Note that the Temptalia link above has some comparison swatches, too.)
• When U Say My Name (Misa) - this one I haven't worn because it's such a fall color and I'm saving it. (However, I have so many fall polishes I'd probably have to start now to actually wear them all!) This is a shimmery dark brown. The Misas I've tried so far have awesome formulas so I'm looking forward to this one.
• Film Noir (Finger Paints) - this is a matte polish in a dark wine color. Polishaholic notes some application issues, and I had the same problem. I don't have a lot of matte polishes but they seem to be somewhat cranky, in my limited experience. But it's really different and pretty.

Stash: glitter and creme strays

More strays - some glittery top-coats, a couple of cremes, and Pretty Gritty, which is almost a class by itself (I'll get to that below):

top row:

• Black Creme (Wild Shine) - I had a picture of this in the old bottle, but since this is not the same bottle style, I felt like I had to put this one in for completeness' sake. As far as I know, it's exactly the same basic black creme that I talked about back in the very first installment of cremes. (I do have to admit, though, that I particularly wanted the new bottle because of its very small footprint. I wanted to start keeping it out with my "manicure basics" - i.e., base-coat and top-coat and all that kind of thing, and I liked the idea that it wouldn't take up much room.)
• Pretty Gritty (Rescue Beauty Lounge) - I suppose this is technically a shimmer, but it's an unusual one, which is how it ended up in the post with a bunch of glitters. It's a dusty purple with gold shimmer, and it's really beautiful. This is from RBL's collab with Refinery 29.

bottom row (except for the lone nail art polish, these are all top-coats):

• TNT (Formula X) - from the Effects Top Coat line, this is cobalt blue matte hexes of various sizes in a clear base.
• Boom (Formula X) - this is from the same line as the one above, and it's exactly the same idea - mixed matte hexes, but this one is a cornflower-ish blue. (Here's a mani over dark blue.)
• Fairy Snot (Chick) - iridescent top coat, which shimmers in a multicolored way, very pretty.
• Hot Couture (Color Club) - another iridescent glitter similar to Fairy Snot, above, but in a rose-pink kind of base. This looks awesome over paler pinks, that's the main way I've worn it so far.
• Bad Chick (Sinful Colors Nail Art) - I just don't do nail art, as much as I kept trying to persuade myself in the past that I was going to start. So this polish has mostly just sat and moldered. I did use it once, for painting stripes on a 4th of July mani a couple of years ago. There's not really much to say about a white striping polish, anyway. It's white, it has a skinny brush... and it's apparently discontinued, since it was seen at Dollar Tree back a couple of years ago.

(I felt compelled to put in both bottle styles of Black Creme, but I didn't take "completeness' sake" so far as to take pictures of backup bottles where both (or all) the bottles look completely alike. (The only color polishes I have three of are Black Creme, as of last week, and Colorstay Rainforest, because I bought two more bottles when it was on clearance. I also have two bottles of Colorstay Amethyst, and there are a couple of top-coats I have multiples of, but I think that's it.)

Stash: treatment products

I went through everything else in my stash (well, almost everything, there's still more strays coming), and at the end it seemed a bit weird not to talk about the other bottles in my stash - the top-coats and the nail hardeners and other miscellaneous bottles o' stuff. This installment is the things that are neither a color polish nor specifically a base-coat or top-coat, but instead have some other purpose. Base-coats and top-coats are each going to get their own installment, also to come.

top row:

• Green Tea and Bamboo Strength (Sally Hansen Nail Nutrition) - I'm a fan of Sally H's nail treatment products, generally. Nail Nutrition has 2 formulas, Strength and Growth. I've tried both of them and I like both of them. I've mostly settled on strength formulas rather than growth for treatment products generally, because I've given up on trying for grow my nails terribly long. However, I used up a whole bottle of the growth formula before I got the strength one, and I haven't remembered to use the new one as much. The link above is from Makeup Alley and it has reviews of both. I didn't especially think the growth one helped with growth, that I could tell, I just liked the way it made my nails feel.
• VitaSurge Strength Gel (Sally Hansen) - this is a different type of product, a gel with little bubbles of stuff (vitamins, I guess!) which you're supposed to massage into your nail bed. I usually forget to use this, but I like it as far as I can tell from my limited use of it, at least! This also comes in Strength and Growth formulas, I believe, but I haven't tried the latter one, in this case. This does not come with a brush, instead it has a little sponge wand. I usually just use the sponge to spread it around and then massage it into my nails with my fingers. It claims that you will notice results after 5 days, but I would have to remember to use it for 5 days in a row, I assume, to test that claim, and that's just not going to happen.

bottom row:

• Instant Artificials (Salon Sciences) - you can buy this at beauty supplies, but this bottle came from somebody's blog sale, because I wanted to try it out for cheap. Again, I forget to use it regularly, but I like it as far as I can tell. I don't try to substitute it for a base-coat, normally, but I think this one is more like a base-coat than most of these others. (Update: Once I finally started using this, I fell in love with it. I couldn't find any new bottles in Sally's stores (although some stores may have it) but it's available on their website.)
• Beauty Secrets polish thinner - I know the bottle says Seche but what's in the bottle is not Seche. See below for the story about that. This is another one that I don't use often enough to say yea or nay on it, myself. (The link above has a lot of information about how polish thinners work, chemically-speaking, which is helpful.)
• Vitamin E Nail & Cuticle Oil (Sally Hansen) - again, I forget to use it because I usually am using the ones below. But it works fine.
• Cuticle Oil (Chick) - this is by far my favorite cuticle product - although in practice, I alternate randomly between it and Badger Cuticle Balm, which I talk about a bit more at the bottom of this entry. The Chick oil is tangerine-ginger scented and it smells divine. Unfortunately Chick is out of business to the best of my knowledge. (I did buy two bottles while these were on clearance at Llarowe, though, so I'm still good for a while. I'm sure going to miss it when it eventually runs out, though!)
• (upside down) Beauty Secrets Hardener - I have flaky, peel-prone nails, but I'm hard on my nails - as I've said here ad infinitum - and so it's hard to know how much of that is diet or body chemistry or whatever and how much is because I use my nails as tools and then bang them against a keyboard all day. But this product does seem to help, in my fairly limited trials of it. I need to use it more regularly and then I might have a better idea about how much it helps!

(I said at the top that these are not base-coats, but actually some treatment products say that you can use them instead of one. In my experience, you're better off not listening to any such claims, though. Put the treatment product on first and then a base-coat on top of that, and you'll usually get better results.)

As far as the Seche Restore bottle, I bought it from some random Amazon seller, and I didn't open it for a good while - like, a couple of months - and when I finally opened it, it was an empty bottle. I don't know who the seller was anyway, but I'm not entirely sure this should be held against them because I didn't give them a chance to make it right. It's entirely possible that they didn't know it was empty, either - it may well have just been a mistake at the bottler. And so much time had gone by that I just said, "Eh," and went and bought some Sally-Beauty-brand thinner instead, and poured some in the empty bottle. (So I have still not actually tried Seche Restore at all. I gather it's particularly good for those gooey half-empty bottles of Seche Vite.)

I didn't take a picture of my cuticle balms, because they're scattered all over, but I have three different ones, all of which I talked about over here. For practical purposes, Badger Balm is the one I use most often. It comes in quite a big tin and is hella cheap for the amount of product you get.