Stash: clear top-coats

I'm pretty sure I posted some other stuff from my stash labeled top-coats (or possibly "top coats" or "topcoats", because I never can decide whether it has spaces or a hyphen on any given day), but this is not glitter top-coats or shimmery ones, but the clear kind like Seche Vite. (I actually have three bottles of Seche Vite - two of which were from a BOGO sale - and two of NYC matte top-coat. And I think there's a bottle of Grand Central Station or something in my backpack that didn't get into the picture.)

This is just what I've got, and I'm not trying to do an official comparison. There are a lot of those around: a quick search found this, this, this, and this. For matte top-coats, there's this and also Karen's long series of them. (Which doesn't mean I won't get around to doing my own wear-test eventually; in fact I think it's a good idea! Just not today.)

At the top:

• Manicure Extender - You can tell if you're a Gelous user that this is the same company - all their products seem to use the same bottle with different-colored caps. I've only used this a couple of times, and I can't say I noticed any miraculous results. I can't find any reviews of this online, although I found a couple of pictures. I think this is actually discontinued - it's not on Sally Beauty's website any more. You may be able to find it online somewhere else, though, if you feel the urge to try it, because it was around only a few months ago.

first full row:

• NYC Matte Me Crazy - it's more a satin-finish than a true matte, but on the other hand it's super-cheap. As I said before, I have two bottles of this stuff. (I like satin-finish.)
• Sally Girl Matte (the mini) - this one is more matte than the NYC, so it's nice to have.
• NYC Extra-Shiny Top Coat (my bottle says "Long Wearing" and the number is 271 instead of 271A as on the MUA picture, so I don't know, maybe it's an older formula?) - I can't say I wear this much, and it's not one of my favorites, but I haven't had a horrible experience with it either, (Read the MUA reviews at the link to see why I say that.)
• Vinylux Weekly Top Coat (CND) - I don't have any Vinylux polishes, although I keep meaning to get around to trying them. I bought this because I'd heard people say it helps extend the life of other brands of nail polish too, only - my usual problem here - I haven't really remembered to try it much. It seems fine as far as I can tell, but I don't recall having any exciting results.
• Miracle Gel Top Coat (Sally Hansen) - I bought this in a two-pack with a bottle of polish, and I've only worn it once. I did get about four days of wear from the that mani, though, and that's awfully good by my standards. (Here's a couple of reviews of the polish itself, too.)
• Revlon Colorstay Sealing Shine (the oldest formula, or at least I think it's the oldest) - When Colorstay first came out, it only came in two-packs with a top-coat. You couldn't buy either the color polish or the top-coat by itself. The colors weren't terribly interesting, which is why I only ever bought a couple of them, but the top-coat was pretty good.

bottom row:

• Gelous - I've actually been using Gelous a lot lately, in an off-again, on-again way. I don't really buy into the massive hype about this one, but as a specialty thing I think it's fun to play around with. Don't expect it to really be like a "gel" any more than any other non-gel top-coat.
• Seche Vite - Even more than Gelous, Seche Vite has a lot of fans; if you read a lot of the online reviews, you'll probably come out thinking it's the best thing ever. Personally, I'm on the fence - it does a good job, it's fine, but it's smelly and expensive and the last third of the bottle is rarely useable (or only useable with Seche Restore, which basically exists specifically for that purpose). I won't pay full price for it again, but as I mentioned above, I did give in & get more when faced with a Sally Beauty BOGO for it recently.
• HK Girl (Glisten & Glow) - I like this one a lot. It's pretty similar to Seche Vite in texture and dry-time (and for that matter, the bottle, which seems exactly the same) but it's not quite as smelly as SV - or at least I think so on some days! - and doesn't seem as prone to goopiness at the bottom of the bottle. One unusual thing about HK Girl is that you can buy refill bottles for it - I can't think of any other top-coat where that's the case.
• Hardwear (Butter London) - I usually forget to use this, and I've had it for ages (I bought it at the same time as the base coat, which is almost empty). It's not that I don't like it, it just gets lost in all this other stuff. It's a nice big bottle, and reportedly is not prone to the SV-type goopiness issues

Hall of Fame (because I don't own a bottle of this right now): Insta-Dri, which is just a very good top-coat for the price. Also I should say a bit about NYC Grand Central Station, which I mentioned up top - it's technically just a clear polish but does very good work as a top-coat.

Stash: base-coats

Frankly, I picked base-coats to go first before top-coats because I have fewer of them, and therefore it's not so daunting to do. I'm not sure why I have fewer - to some degree this seems like a chicken-and-egg thing, I have fewer because I use them up, but I use them up faster because I have fewer (compared to top-coats, in particular, as you will see). One of the few nail-related things I am quite methodical about is that I always wear base-coat, so I'm sure that's part of the equation. Mostly that's because I don't want to stain my nails any more than I can help, and also because I think it helps with wear, which - unless you're one of those fortunate people who have nails that really can keep a manicure unchipped for 10 days or more - is always a problem.

The selection below is not really representative of what I've worn in the past. Those are the ones, after all, that got used up, as I said. I do think I'm on the second bottle - and probably last, since this formula's discontinued - of Colorstay. Most of the ones I have now are frankly somewhat higher-end than what I've worn in the past, which as far as I can recall, mostly involves Sally Hansen. I've gone through a couple of bottles of Insta... (hmm, Insta-something, I think, but not Insta-Dri, which is polish & top-coat - aha, Insta-Grip!), and at least one of Complete Salon Mani base-coat and before that, I was probably using Hard As Nails for base-coat, because that gets you back to the dark ages before I knew all this other stuff existed.

By the way, I seem to be primarily using Makeup Alley (aka MUA) reviews to link to here. Reviews of boring stuff like base-coat are just not as easy to find as for shinier things!

top row:

• Rimmel Base Coat Top Coat Pro - I think I put this one at top left so that I could get it over with first; I don't really approve of the whole concept of combined base- and top-coat. (It came in a combo-pack with a bottle of nail polish, or I wouldn't have it at all.) MUA reviewers at the link above seem to agree with me here - although I didn't have as terrible a time with it as some of those people. It was just okay.
• Revlon Colorstay - as far as I know, this is discontinued, but I haven't exactly been haunting the Revlon aisle lately, so I could be wrong. (MUA says yes, it's discontinued. But even so, it might well still be findable at various discount places, if you're really moved to go look for it.) Anyway, I've gotten good results with this in the past, and it is (or was) reasonably priced, and so if it's gone, it's kind of a shame. (But Colorstay Gel is not supposed to need a base-coat, right? So I guess that's the reasoning there.)
• Orly Bonder - I like Orly Bonder. I have used it a lot. I can't say I'm in love with it but it works.
• Chick Base Coat - another one that's discontinued. I've liked most of Chick's products I've tried and I expect to like this one too, when I get around to it. (Some of these, I've saving until the other stuff is gone...)

bottom row:

• Nail Foundation (Butter London) - You can't tell it since the bottle is not transparent enough to see, but this bottle is damn near empty. I have used the heck out of this stuff. It's got a high list price but you can get deals on it, and if you find one, I have to say it becomes totally worth the (lower) price. (I'm not sure anything at all is really worth full-on high-end prices, in the end.) Anyway, there are mixed reviews up there but honestly, I have had very good results from this. Also it's in a big bottle with a long brush that's pretty good at fishing the product up from the bottom of the bottle, and that becomes important when you get down low there.
• Get Even (Zoya) - I really only bought this because it was said to be important to keep your ridges from showing on Zoya's matte polishes. I use it on other occasions, too. It's even more gluey and goopy than other ridge-fighting formulas, but it works.
• Bridge the Ridge (from American Classics, the same people who make Gelous) - obviously, another ridge-fighting polish. My aunt gave it to me for Christmas and I haven't tried it at all yet, I'm waiting on some of these others to run out first! It only has a few reviews but they seem positive enough.

(And now it's time to go to bed - I've had an Ambien, and when you start seeing patterns on what's supposed to be a plain white background, then it's time to go to bed because it's kicking in. 'Night.)

Stash: shimmers & duos (aka the last big stash post)

Here's the last big installment of shimmers, as well as some duochromes - and this is the last full installment of this stash run-through. Now I'm trying to figure out what I missed. (Several of my coppery polishes seem to be MIA, which leads me to think they're all together somewhere.) But meanwhile, here are the things from the bottom of the bin - which is not to say they're my least-favorites, by any means. There are some things here that I really like a lot.

top row:

• Slightly Unstable (Paint Box Polish) - the name of this polish refers to Bellatrix Lestrange, and it's from a Women of Harry Potter collection. (To call Bellatrix "slightly unstable" is seriously understating the case, but maybe that's the idea.) Paint Box calls this polish black with a green shift, and I guess they should know, but it reads as a blackened green, with shifty tendencies and scattered holo bits.
• Rory (Zoya) - pink with an orchid or mauve tint, and an extremely heavy shimmer, almost a foil. It's got a certain similarity to last year's "liquid metal" finishes, to my mind. It's pretty but a little pale for my taste.
• Peonies Gone Wild (Bonita Salon) - this is a bit like a darker version of Rory, really - very shimmery, darker pink with hints of violet.
• Ruby Without A Cause (Sephora By OPI) - a shimmery wine that's supposed to have a duochrome to it, but it never seems to show up on the nail. Rather frustrating.
• Hipnotic (Finger Paints Magnetic) - a pinky-wine shimmer. I did get this one to work, for the most part, which puts it ahead of most of the magnetics I've tried!

middle row:

• Curse Your Sudden But Inevitable Betrayal (Dollish Ultimate Fandom collection) - My favorite line from Firefly becomes a marsala-ish red-brown shimmer with some green duochrome shift, here. (The color of a dinosaur, I guess?)
• Stone Cold Karma Luxe (Rococo) - this is one of those sort of mushroom-colored nudes, it looks like a plain old tan color but it has hints of mauve that show up from time to time. And of course, a lot of shimmer.
• (upside down) Razzmatazz (Orly mini) - I'm not sure what I was looking at when I called this a shimmer. It looks to me now like more of a microglitter. It's another pinky-red and the shimmer is more or less tonal.
• Vaclavske Namesti (SquareHue 11.14, the Prague collection) - SquareHue does some beautiful shimmers; this one is purple with brown leanings.
• First Flight (SquareHue 01.15, the 1900 collection) - The good people of SquareHue have this labeled as a "high-gloss creme" which is odd because it's full of shimmer. I don't know what somebody was thinking. I thought this was too light and would look awful on me, but it turned out I really loved it. It's a very cool light gray, almost pearly-looking.
• As Long As You Love Me (essence Beauty Beats) - Is it necessary to say I'm far too old for the whole Justin Bieber thing? This had a picture of Bieber on the display but I wasn't paying any attention to that when I bought it. And the name didn't ring any bells for me (although I checked YouTube earlier and I did actually recognize the song). As for the polish itself, it's a medium-gray shimmer fairly similar to the one above, except maybe slightly darker.

sideways:

• Azure (SH LustreShine) - blue with a purple shift, I'd call this. It looks like it's got both shimmer and microglitter in it when I look close. A beautiful color. (I finally bought this when I found it on clearance; I never would buy them before that because I thought they were overpriced. I usually won't pay $9 for Essie or OPI, much less for Sally Hansen. Yeah, I know, I'm cheap.)

bottom row:

• Nightlife (L'Oreal Jet-Set, and the review is from Epinions in 2001, which amuses me no end) - a really dark purple/blurple, it's so dark it's hard to tell which it really is. I think it has at least some purple in it, though.
• (upside-down) Grape Going (SH Insta-Dri) - this has lost its label, or maybe it never had one, but I'm pretty sure this is the correct name. It's purple with blue and pink multichrome,
• Ultra Violet (Milani Color Statement) - purple that leans to the red-violet side, with pinkish shimmer
• (upside-down) Taffeta (SH Satin Glam) - a red-violet shimmer with a satin (semi-matte) finish. I have never tried this because I got a bad bottle with no brush (and didn't notice until far too late to return it) but I can't bring myself to throw it away, either. One of these days I'll get around to trying it, even if I have to pour it out of the bottle to do it.
• Royal Highness (Bonita Salon) - Seems to have more or less the same formula as the other Bonita above, very heavy on the shimmer, but this one is sort of a medium orchid.

Stash: blue & green frosty stuff

This is possibly the frostiest installment of my shimmers:

top row:

• unlabeled lime-green shimmer
• Ivy League (Xtreme Wear) - yellow-green with heavy shimmer, far too yellow to look good on me. The only way I'll usually wear it is layered with something more neutral. The link compares this with Zoya Midori (which is apparently similar in color but not so shimmery).
• Emerald City (Xtreme Wear) - I used to wear this a lot, but nowadays when I have so many other greens I don't think to wear it often. For that matter, this is probably the first green I ever owned, very likely. I would call it a true emerald.
• (upside down) Cabo Cruise (WnW Fergie) - what I remember offhand about this is that it was very bright blue, and that (unsurprisingly given the color, really) it stained like crazy, even with basecoat. I wore this once and I've always been afraid to wear it again because of that. 

bottom row:

• Who Are You Wearing? (OPI) - a great dark vampy blue-violet with heavy shimmer.
• Midnight Cami (Essie) - shimmery midnight blue, a great color
• Charge It Up (Sinful Magnetic) - a pretty shimmery blue-gray. I'm not big on magnetics but this is a pretty color in any case!
• Intrigue (Revlon Brilliant Strength) - cornflower-blue shimmer - I don't have anything else remotely like this. (mani from early 2015)

This is the end of the pictures I have, I believe. There's still a few more shimmers I haven't taken pictures of - and then I have to go back and figure out what I missed! I've been putting links back to these posts in my stash list, and it's looking reasonably close to complete, so I'm starting to think that part might not be too bad. (Knock on wood.)

Stash: darker shimmers

Not all of these are especially dark, really, but a lot of them are and I couldn't really see too much else of a theme here. (It's been so long since I sorted these out that I don't really remember what my criteria was at the time.)

top row:

• Viridian (Illamasqua) - depending on who you ask, this is either an emerald or a teal - or somewhere in between, which is probably more the truth of the thing. It has definite blue undertones, but it does read as emerald in some lights.
• The Darkest Emerald Luxe (Rococo) - this bottle looks like it badly needs shaking, in the picture above, so you might refer to Karen's picture instead. This is sort-of-similar to Viridian, above, but even darker and not quite as shimmery. (I think I wrote a whole entry once about polishes that call themselves "emerald" but aren't, really. Both of these were featured in that entry, as I recall.)
• Rags To Riches (Rimmel Lasting Finish Pro) - green with a heavy silver shimmer, as I see it - almost a metallic. I can't think of anything else that's like it. Prone to brushstroke problems, unsurprisingly.
• Agro (China Glaze) - slightly yellowed green with a lot of shimmer amounting to metallic. This is the only yellow-green I can think of that's reasonably flattering on me. The yellow's pretty subtle; I imagine that's why. This was the District 11 polish in ChG's original Hunger Games/Capitol Colors set.

second row:

• Teal The Cows Come Home (LynB) - a sort of a light teal shimmer - to the point that it might be better to call it aqua instead. This was a one-batch LE, I believe. (another link)
• Pitter Patter (Butter London) - a very dark purple shimmer. I think this one was also a genuine LE, for the birth of Prince George back a couple of years ago. (I wondered if they would resurrect it for his new sister, but I looked a couple of days ago and it hadn't reappeared, so I guess not!) (Added: a new link to a swatch, because my old one was not there any more)
• Vice (Urban Decay) - a dark red-violet with heavy shimmer (mani from 2014)
• Victorian End (Square Hue) - another dark purple with heavy shimmer, although none of these three manage to be quite alike. This one is maybe a little lighter than the two above.

third row:

• Fig (Sinful) - I think Fig tends to look more pink in the bottle than it actually is. It's red-violet, definitely.
• Lilith (Zoya) - fuchsia with very noticeable blue flash. It's awesome.
• Buffy The Violet Slayer (Wet n Wild FastDry) - some of the pictures of this one look red-violet, and others look blue. It's definitely got some blue flash in it.
• Amethyst (Colorstay Longwear) - medium purple shimmer, more or less neutral, I think. That doesn't sound as interesting as this color really is. Let's put it this way: I like it enough that I bought a backup when they were closing out that version of Colorstay. There are not many colors I own back-ups of, but this is one of them.
• (above) I Knead Sour-Dough (OPI) - frosty marsala-red shimmer, maybe a bit plum-leaning, but subtly so. (more swatches)
• (below) Forbidden Fudge (SH Nailgrowth Miracle) - a very neutral dark brown (which is why I like it) which shimmers in a warm gold/bronze sort of way. (Also, I love this blogger's comments about the name.)

bottom row:

• Kierra (Zoya) - sits interestingly somewhere between red and purple. Sort of a wine-color, but on the purple side of that, if you see what I mean. I haven't worn this lately, but when I first had it I wore it a ton. Great fall color.
• Peru-B-Ruby (OPI) Another of my old favorites - this is another one I had a backup bottle of. A bright-but-cool fuchsia with a lot of tonal shimmer. Apparently a dupe for Chanel Tentation.
• It's Genius (Essie) - grape purple with copper shimmer, but that sounds more interesting than this color really looks. I usually refer to it as raisin-colored. I agree with all the MUA commenters who said it's a shame it doesn't look more like it does in the bottle (but I wear it occasionally for all that).
• Burgandy Scales (Funky Fingers) - I'm pretty sure that's meant to be "burgundy" but that other spelling is what my bottle says. (I tried fairly valiantly to sit on any comments about spell-check, but obviously I didn't entirely succeed.) This is not a bad polish, as crackles go. I like it over the bright red at the link. It does read as a pretty true burgundy, I think.

(I still have these polishes out; if the sun ever comes out again - which at this point seems unlikely because it's been raining for days and days - I'll try to do some wheel swatches of some of these purples and burgundies.)

Stash: assorted shimmers & metallics

The next installment of shimmery stuff:

top row:

• Blue It (Xtreme Wear) - dark blue, in that shiny-shimmery formula that a bunch of the older Xtreme Wear colors have. I looked at Sally Hansen's website and most of the colors I'm thinking of seem to be discontinued now, which isn't particularly surprising - there's something subtly old-fashioned about these. But it's pretty, anyway.
• Black And Blue (Complete Salon Manicure) - this name only makes sense to me if I think of it as "blackened blue" although it's really more of a teal. (Lacqlustre says at the link that it has a purple shift, but I have to admit I haven't been able to see it. Maybe I need to get it out in another light and look again.)
• Quirky Smile (Misa) - I bought my first Misa polishes recently, and I made sure to include this one in my order because I'd heard so many people say they loved it. It's beautiful, and I also so far love Misa's formula. It looks much bluer in this picture than Black And Blue, next to it, but it's still very much a teal. 
• (just below those) Slate (RGB) - a beautiful slate-gray with a lot of multicolor shimmer.

middle row:

• Flagstone Rush (Orly) - one of those metallics Orly does so well - this one is sort of orange-brown. I've worn this a lot; it's surprisingly flattering on me. I would have thought this was too warm-toned for me.
• Rich In Heart (Sinful Colors) - this is more the kind of brown I am unsurprised looks good on me - darker and cooler. Apparently (see the link) it's a dupe for OPI Midnight In Moscow.
• Kaufda (Zoya) - I decided at one point that I needed a Zoya copper, and I decided from their descriptions that this might be more flattering on me than, say, Zoya Penny. And I have liked it and worn it a lot, although I've never gotten around to trying Penny or any of the other Zoya choices to compare. You can see in the swatches at the link that it's more reddish, though.
• Steely Gaze (Hard As Nails) - another gunmetal sort of gray, in the same ballpark as Slate, above. (It doesn't have the sort of multichrome effect that Slate does, so it's less interesting but also much, much cheaper.)
• (upside down) Gray's Anatomy (WnW Fast Dry, I think, although these labels are almost always illegible after a while) - a dupe for Lippmann Wicked Game, apparently, which appears to be almost identically sheer and multichrome. I haven't tried out Wicked Game, but it definitely looks the same in Scrangie's pictures. I like Gray's Anatomy a lot, though. (I think Peace Love and OPI is also similar, although Gray's Anatomy is maybe somewhat paler.)

bottom row:

• Just Be-Claws (China Glaze) - super-shimmery cherry red, very pretty (S&L swatches)
• An Affair in Red Square (OPI) - I'm well into my second bottle of this, although I haven't worn it in a while. Blue-toned red, maybe not as shimmery as the one above, but still gorgeous just the same.
• I'm Not Really A Waitress (OPI) - I've been hearing about this color for years, but had never bought it, and lo and behold, somebody gave it to me for Christmas last year. Unfortunately I'm suffering from a bit of red overload and haven't tried it yet. This is from a 1999 collection and is still in production, which tells you something right there. It's slightly deeper and has burgundy undertones, as I see it.
• Bet On Red (Milani) - another slightly-darker, shimmer-filled red. This one is beautiful, too.

Stash: purple & green shimmers

I've already done a lot of these stash posts and some of them (like the last one with the topcoats) had a lot of polish in each entry - and really I like the ones like this with fewer polishes per picture, since I'm basically googling every polish individually. It's time-consuming, although as I said a while back, I'm learning a lot from doing it. I'm researching my own stash as I go, and it's totally worth doing. But I've been working on this since January and I'm... probably more than halfway finished, but I'm not anywhere near finished. I'm hanging in there, and hopefully I really will finish, eventually.

So I'm sure there are a few exceptions, but mostly what's left now is one broad category: shimmers. It's a very broad category, though. (I'm avoiding counting. I don't want to know exactly how many I've done and how many are left. And I'm not going to start counting "shimmers part ___" either. Ugh. But it's safe to say there are going to be quite a lot of parts, if I don't just play out completely before that.)

Let me get the bulk of one gripe out of the way before we start: even though there's not that many polishes here, this installment is particularly rife with unlabeled or illegible bottles. This is very annoying. If it wasn't for my spreadsheet I wouldn't know what was what half the time. Some brands have extremely tiny type - Zoya has shrunk theirs recently, but there are plenty of other offenders. And then this bottle of Orchid is mostly illegible because it's labeled in black type on dark polish, so who knows what it says? The specialty Revlon here may or may not be labeled at all - I can't tell. There's a bunch of teeny-tiny type and maybe the name is in there somewhere or maybe it's not. (I seem to recall that it is, but honestly, I couldn't find it again.) And like I said, this is an especially annoying bunch, but these problems are very common, on the whole. I know I'm not the only middle-aged polish junkie - maybe you young things that still have good eyes can read some of this stuff that I can't. And I honestly don't think I should have to give myself a headache to read a polish bottle in the first place.

So the list below the picture is my best educated guesses (with help from various sources) about what these polishes actually are. About half of these actually have readable labels.

top row:

• Mistletoe Kisses (Virago Varnish) (link is to Jessface90's YouTube liveswatch of this collection) - a gray-green almost-foil with extra scattered sparkle (this whole collection is gorgeous, Jess is making me wish I had bought more)
• Topaz (Revlon Chroma Chameleon) - medium-green foil with green-gold flash (I have to say I honestly wasn't nearly as impressed by this one as I expected to be) (mani from 2013, in an entry where I also complain about the tiny type!)
• Crocadilly (Essie Magnetic) - dark gray-green, which luckily I like because I could never get the magnet to work properly. BJU's instructions at the link say that she got better results applying it after topcoat, so if I remember I might try this again. I partly bought it in the first place because I liked the magnet pattern, which is a criss-cross sort of design. But it just worldn't work for me.
• Irene (Zoya) - sort of a mossy green with a bit of brownish flash. I know that doesn't sound that attractive (at least it wouldn't to me, if I hadn't tried it) but somehow it works. This is one of my favorites, in fact.

bottom row:

• Plum Attraction (Revlon) - a pretty red-violet shimmer, not quite dark enough to be called "plum" in my mind but close to that, I guess. Definitely more in the RV-fuchsia ballpark than the red one.
• Suri (Zoya) - beautiful, shimmery royal purple
• Island Couture (Orchid) - no googled pictures of this one, since it's a store brand, but it's a nice color. I remember it as being more just shiny than shimmery, on the nail. You can see that it's quite a bit lighter than Suri. Aside from Orchid-brand being next-to-impossible to find in the first place unless you live in Texas, I think that this one was a non-core color, too. A lot of the colors that pop up on displays seem to turn up as core colors later, but this one never did, that I saw.
• Empty Stocking (Ulta Wicked Wonderland set) - the link is to Karen's pictures, and I got my set from her in the first place. (I really try not to spend much time wandering around in Ulta, generally, it's dangerous.) Very dark, vampy purple. I'm not sure who decided it was a Christmas color, I certainly wouldn't have thought of calling it that!
• Bottle Green (Gosh/Oh My Gosh - I read somewhere that only the minis are labeled Oh My Gosh, like this one, but I don't think they sell this brand around here so I can't verify anything) - a blackened teal. The only picture I could find that appeared to be the right color was from Pinterest, in this case.

Stash: topcoats (of the glittery or shimmery kind)

I just put "topcoats" on the title, first, and then I thought, "No, people will think I'm talking about Seche Vite again." Not that kind of topcoat, but the decorative kind. Although this is not everything I have that could fall into this category, by any means. (I might get some arguments about some others, if anybody cared about this enough to argue.) Most of these were either intended to be used as a top-coat or they're so sheer that I've decided they're not much use any other way. I'll try to distinguish which is which as I go along.

The rows are really wonky here, but more or less top to bottom and left to right. I think armed with brands and links you should be able to work this out!
Sideways across the top:

• Enchanted Forest (Nyx) - I think you could make this one opaque eventually, but why? This is very pretty on top of something else, and much less work. It looks green in the bottle, but comes out more blue than I expected without a green under it. I need to experiment with it some more.
• Cutie Colada (Rimmel Cocktail Colours) - the colors for this line really don't seem to have much relationship to the names. This one is the green one. It's almost like they assigned the color-names at random. According to the piece at the link there, Rimmel also claimed that these are one-coat polishes, so apparently somebody was, well, just nuts. I put these in this category for a reason; these are very sheer - this one in particular. The other two I have can be built to opacity, probably, but this one really can't. It's very pretty, though. This is apple-green, with blue-green duochrome shimmer.

starting to the right of those:

• Tiara (Orly mini) - super-shiny silver microglitter, sort of like tinsel, really.
• (upside down) Baby Bellini (Rimmel Cocktail Colours) - this is the same link as above, since PGS is reviewing the same three that I own, and this is the purple one (are bellinis purple?). It's considerably more opaque than the one above, although it's still pretty sheer. From a distance, I think I'd call this a grape color, although close-up you can see the purple base and duochrome flecks.
• (upside down) Pirouette My Whistle (OPI mini) - you know, I haven't gotten around to trying this, and I think it's because in my head I had it classified as something like Tiara, above - but looking at Holly's link, here, that doesn't seem to be what she's saying. If it's matte, then I suddenly become a lot more interested.
• Blue Majesty (NYC Crystal Couture) - blue jelly with cyan glitter, yum.

next partial row, on the left (two rather old polishes, as it happens):

• Two Timer Stars (Maybelline Express Finish) - a very pale-green frosty shimmer. On its own it's practically invisible unless you put on many, many coats, which is why I call it a top-coat. But I've worn it in manicures in the past where it looked really cute layered over things (although I couldn't tell you what that was, offhand!)
• Jailbait (old-formula Hard Candy) - I wore this one as a topcoat just the other day. (By the way, be careful about googling indiscriminately for this one, you can end up in some really unsavory places!) It's kind of the same as the one above, as far as being super-sheer. I can't imagine trying to wear it by itself, really, although I don't think either of these was released specifically as a top-coat. Was wearing really sheer colors really in for a while, at least if you were 15 or so? I suppose it's possible. I don't know exactly how old either one of these is - I don't think that my bottles are all that old, but it's possible that the shades, at least, are in the 15-20 year old range. We know Hard Candy was all the rage in the late 90s, after all.

stair-stepping down, on the right:

• Groupie (Orly mini) - this is the set I bought mine in - Star Light Star Bright - although that's an eBay listing in the link so who knows if that will stay around. I bought mine straight from Orly, though. I can't find any swatches of this online. I know it's vaguely gold - what I'm not sure of is whether it actually looks like a metallic or a shimmer on the nail. In the bottle it looks like more of a shimmer. If I remember to try it out I'll report back.
• Gilded (Sinful Colors) - this was a holiday polish, and not specifically sold as a topcoat, but it's super-sheer - if you look at the link you see LacqLuster complaining about its sheerness! - but I really wouldn't think of wearing it as anything else. It has a gold shimmery/microglitter base and bigger scattered reddish pieces, although I don't really think they're bright red. It's quite lovely, though, and I wore it several times last fall in different combinations. In fact I see that I put it in my top 10 of 2014, which I had already forgotten. (Here it is over red.)
• (upside down) Travel In Colour (China Glaze mini) - this one was intended to be a topcoat, specifically a color- (or colour?) shifting one. This came as a mini with the Holiglaze collection, and as far as I know was only ever released as a mini. I liked it so much that I went and bought a lot of 3 more bottles of it on eBay. It's shimmery and in my experience it shifts everything toward pink, although it doesn't look pink in the bottle and I think it has other colors in it as well! (I've always wondered about why they released it with the British spelling in the US. I've never heard any sort of answer to that, though.)

second row from bottom:

• Mist You (Sally Hansen Salon) - I think Karen may have sent me this polish, so I don't really know how old it is. It seems rather like it may have come from that decade-or-more-ago era of sheer polishes being fashionable, but I'm not sure. (I think they quit making this polish line several years ago, anyway.) Anyway, pale, sheer, what I would definitely call a top coat, and that's all I've ever worn it as.
• Pearl Wisdom (Orly) - this was one of the first topcoats that I got really enamored with. I actually have a couple of bottles of this. Apparently it either pretty obscure or it was extremely LE (or both), because the only pictures I can usually find of this are things like old blog sale listings or non-English-language beauty supply places. Maybe all these older sheers are from the heyday of the French manicure? that seems possible. I do think that these were actually meant to be top-coats or at least used in a French mani, maybe, because they are just too sheer for anything else.
• Purple Pizzazz (Confetti) - totally reads as pink, despite the name. In the bottle, it looks like pale purple (lilac, I guess?) but this does not translate whatsoever to the nail. (Do they even make Confetti polishes any more? I haven't seen them in ages.) It's pretty, anyway, it's just not purple.
• Firefly (Jesse's Girl) - this is the white squarish bottle on the far right, if you're confused. Since you can't really read the white writing over the more-or-less-white polish, that makes it hard to distinguish. I only have a few Jesse's Girl polishes but I love the ones I have. This is sort of in the same ballpark as Travel In Colour, a shimmery color-shift sort of thing.  The link calls it gold. I don't see that looking at my bottle, but it does seem to verge on metallic

bottom row:

• Disco Ball (Xtreme Wear) - sheer holo glitter in a clear base. I used to wear this one over everything, back a few years ago. I went through about a bottle and a half of it before I got tired of it. (I think they still make it, and it's still cute. And last I looked, it was still two-dollars-and-change, too.)
• Diamond Love (Orly) - another sheer one that I believe was in the same collection as Pearl Wisdom, above. I didn't ever warm up to this one, though. It's sort of textured and bumpy-looking, but not in a good way.
• Sparkle (Sally Girl Snowman) - holo glitter, similar to Disco Ball, above.
• Added: Crystal Glitter (Jordana) - I managed to miss this one the first time through - holo glitter in a clear base
• unlabeled sheer pink mini with holo glitter (I haven't been trying to look these up as I've gone along, but I've been saying for ages that I think they're actually L.A. Colors polishes - I did look this one up, though, and it does seem to correspond to L.A. Colors Tinsel, if you look at the link)

Stash: more microglitters and foils

This is where the big gap was between the first set of stash pictures I took and the second (when the sun came out again after a long rainy week), and I messed up in that somewhere in there and at least one of these have been seen previously, and I'll note that. But hey, that's not exactly the end of the world. (I could probably talk about the same polish again and nobody would notice - possibly including me. I didn't this time, but it's certainly possible that I'll do just that before this is over.)

on top:

• CE61, aka Ipanema Girl (Layla Ceramic Effect) - bright green with gold flecks, fairly sheer

second row:

• Steel Guitar (Orchid) - metallic steel gray 
• Rikki (Zoya) - silvery pale green - I like this one a lot but I like it better with something darker underneath it; however, if you don't have my aversion to light colors this is probably unnecessary! I also recall this being pretty sheer, so that's another reason for an undercoat, though.
• Editorial (Color Club - although actually this is unlabeled; in fact I have two of these minis and neither is labeled) - supposed to be a dupe or near-dupe for Chanel Peridot. See the link for comparisons. Holly says they are close but not quite, but I can't tell much difference from her photos. (Hmm, in fact one of the bottles I have may be that very bottle, because I think I got one of them from her, in a blog sale.)
• Hipster Chick (this is the repeat)
• Leaf Him At The Altar (Sephora by OPI) - pretty similar to Rikki, above, right down to the sheerness. I need to compare, if I can remember to! Silvery leaf-green, in any case.

bottom row:

• India (Zoya) - burgundy with a bit of multicolor shimmer. I loved this in the bottle but was not so captivated when I wore it, to tell you the truth, and I'm still not sure why.
• Two Cent (Sonia Kashuk) - metallic copper is something I can be relied on to love, and this is no exception
• Fall Mood (Revlon Colorstay Longwear) - this one is considerably paler than Two Cent, and thus I don't love it so much, because as I mentioned above, pastels and I don't mix. However, it's not quite pastel enough that it looks bad on me - and I bought it on clearance, anyway, so eh.
• Rage (Orly) - this is one of those polishes that everybody but me seems to adore - but, more or less for the same reasons as above, I don't. This is even paler than it looks in the bottle. I looked at the descriptions and said, "Rose gold? I should be able to wear rose gold!" but somehow, not so much. I did try it over a darker undercoat and that helped.
• VT100 (Pretty Serious) - this is new(ish) and I don't think I've worn it yet, but it looks pretty awesome in the bottle. Apparently it's also named after an old computer terminal, which warms my little geeky heart. (Wikipedia's picture does not show the display as green, but that's what it reminds me of - those old green-display terminals. Raise your hand if you're old enough to remember those!) This seems to be more of a microglitter than a lot of these. (Later mani here)

Stash: microglitters vs foils

Because I honestly can't decide what is what, here. Many of these I think it would be fair to call foils, but not all.

top row:

• Blackout (Revlon) - huh, either this is mislabeled or I'm confused, or maybe it's just that this is an older polish than I'd realized, because I haven't found anything online that matches this at all. It's a very dark blue, not a black as you'd be inclined to think. But y'know, just because it's not online doesn't mean it didn't exist. I have to remind myself of that occasionally. Added: Huh, I'm going to have to go back and see if my bottle says Top Speed - you can't see in this picture one way or the other - but Kaz of Pretty Random (the same Kaz who makes Pretty Serious polish), who is a big vintage polish collector, has a picture of Top Speed Blackout that looks like it might be it. The cap matches and everything.)
• So Blue Without You (China Glaze) - this one I would call very definitely a foil, in bright blue. (more swatches)
• (above those) unlabeled blue mini (from a set sold as "Color Theory" - I've long theorized that these are actually L.A. Colors polishes, but I don't know enough about that brand to be really sure)
• Racy Green (Milani High Speed) - shimmery teal green. This is supposed to be a one-coater
• Celeb City (Xtreme Wear) - chrome silver, really too shiny for my taste - but it's pretty.
• The silver Ulta mini that has clearly been around the block a few times is Twisted Tinsel, according to my spreadsheet, although the print is so tiny I'm not sure if I've ever been able to really read it! - Silver foil, almost as bright as Celeb City, above.

middle row:

• Not So Blueberry (Revlon Scented) - this is, guess what, not really blue. It's lavender foil and it does smell like blueberries, but not overwhelmingly so.
• Royal Invite (SH Diamond Strength) - pretty similar in color to Not So Blueberry, really - somewhere between blue and purple, but not dark enough to be what people usually mean by "blurple" - more in the lavender-to-periwinkle range.
• Rendezvous With You (China Glaze) - from the fall 13 collection, a sort of grape foil finish, a darker base with lighter shimmer. This is a bit of a grayed purple.
• Purple Rush (Milani High Speed) - dark purple with lighter purple or maybe red-violet flecks, I haven't been able to decide. Something in it reads on the red-violet side, anyway! It's pretty, and like Racy Green above, it was from the LE fast-dry one-coat line.
• Sugar Plum (Milani Color Statement) - this is from the newer Milani line in the round bottles, and it's really pretty. It's right on the purple/pink line, so maybe you'd call it raspberry? but most people would probably tell you it's hot pink. It's a red-violet base with fuchsia shimmer. I wouldn't especially call this one a foil.

bottom row:

• Once Upon A Time (Chick) - this is really almost a top-coat, because it's pretty sheer. You can build it to opaqueness but I found I liked it best for layering. It's sort of a strawberry-pink, I would say - pink with some hints of orange. (I notice that I called it "rhubarb" back when I first got it last fall.)
• Elfin' Around (China Glaze) - red-orange foil. Inexplicably part of their Christmas-season set in 2013 rather than being in the fall set where it would be much more at home. (more swatches)
• Kimber (Zoya) - pink foil-like finish. I've talked about this one lately and how I always wear it with Reva because for some reason it sets off my "too pink" trigger. (I've never understood why I have such a trigger at all because I like pink. But I definitely do.)
• Santa Red My List (China Glaze) - the same foil finish as Elfin' Around, but this time in fuchsia. Go figure. (mani from 2014)
• Karina (Zoya) - I see this mentioned as a Ruby Pumps dupe, and while they are not actually dupes - see the link for that discussion - they are certainly in the same ballpark. (I've been using that phrase a lot lately. Maybe it's just because I'm ready for baseball season!) Karina is more of a foil, though. (layered mani from 2012)

Stash: microglitters pt 3: red & red-adjacent

("Red-adjacent" meaning a few oranges on one side of the spectrum and some purple-leaning things on the other!) The picture is a bit out of focus, sorry! but I do think it's sufficient to my purpose here - plus, by the time I realized it was out of focus, the polishes were scattered and I just wasn't quite motivated enough to find them all again.

top row:

• Reva (Zoya) - like the many other polishes Zoya puts out like this, this has a fairly sheer base and a ton of microglitter, although it doesn't have that grainyness that would make it into what I would call a "packed" glitter. Here I think the base is red and the glitter is maybe pink and coral and gold? It's hard to tell. It definitely leans a bit orange in some lights.
• Sugar Rush (Julie G Gumdrops) - a red-orange texture (I'm using the same link for both these Julie G polishes because there are texture dupe comparisons galore there, including both of these, and that's a super-useful link that I have referred to over and over in the last couple of years. Thank you Polishaholic!)
• Hot Cinnamon (Julie G Gumdrops) - Hot Cinnamon is supposed to be the red one, but it actually leans quite noticeably toward the orange side. (And there is also another more yellowy orange one than these two. I don't know if Julie was really feeling her oranges at the time or what!) (Oh well, I have Zoya Chyna for my fire-engine-red texture needs, anyway!) (mani from 2013)
• (upside down) VIP (Jade) - another link in Portuguese, but you can get at least the sense of it from Google Translate and the pictures. VIP is from the Special Glitz line, they're jellies with holo glitter, and this one is red-orange. I have three of these and I love them all.
• F*ck and Run (Nostalgic Lacquer - named after a Liz Phair song) - this is sort of in the same ballpark as Reva, above - a reddish-pink with hints of orange. That's not to say they're dupes at all, though - this one is a jelly, so much more sheer and reads more red than Reva, I think. Does well with something under it, or on its own it's buildable to something like opaqueness, at least!

2nd row:

• Bad Santa (Ulta) - first of all, this is my favorite name of all time for a bright red. And luckily, it's super-pretty, too. No real surprises there, bright Santa-suit red with lots of MG - in the picture here it looks like the shimmer might have some gold in it, although I can't say I remember noticing that in past wearings. (On my all-red nail wheel it's #20, for another view of it. If there's gold I can't see it there.)
• Stop (old Hard Candy mini) - I notice on the nail wheel above, I refer to Stop as a red creme, which it is not - if I hadn't seen glitter in it I wouldn't have put it here, and that link is to Makeup Alley where their reviewers agree. It's apparently sort of a subtle glitter, at least.
• Delilah (Zoya) - before I had a million reds, Delilah was my go-to red glitter. I don't wear it as much nowadays, but it's still just as pretty!
• Ruby Pumps (China Glaze) (that's the same link as the last one, since they're both in there) - I bought Ruby Pumps just mostly because I'd heard so much about it, but... really it didn't blow me away, it's too similar to things I already had. That's not to say it's not gorgeous, though. Maybe a hair darker than Delilah, although I'm not sure it's noticeable on the nail.
• Chyna (Zoya Pixie Dust) - pretty similar in color to the rest of these - bright red, pretty neutral (not orange- or purple-leaning at all that I can tell) - but in a texture. The Pixie Dust texture is very similar to the Julie G ones above, although it's not in those comparison photos because it didn't come out until later!

3rd row:

• Alegra (Zoya) - Alegra came from the same collection as some more-famous Zoya polishes like Ivanka and Charla, yet I don't recall it ever getting that level of hype. It's beautiful, though - I have mocked Zoya's description of it as "expensive-looking" because what does that mean? but actually I do know what they were trying to say, I think - it's rich-looking, somehow. Fuchsia with dark pink sparkle should not looks as classy as it does. (It's maybe a bit darker and/or more purple-leaning than your average fuchsia, I think that's part of the difference.)
• Believe In Believing (Pipe Dream Polish) - actually I don't think this is really a microglitter, but it's in the picture so I'm going to talk about it just the same. Apparently I thought when I was sorting that it was, but appearances can be deceiving! Looks like it has some hex glitter in it, with mixed pinks. There is some microglitter IN there, I think, but it's not only microglitter.
• Fruit Punch (NYC) - I think I may have purchased this in a duo pack along with Grand Central Station, that seems to ring a bell with me. There's nothing really different about this polish, but for the price, does there have to be? Fuchsia with microglitter, really pretty.
• Escharpe de Seda (Jade) (this means "silk scarf") - like VIP above (and I'm using the same link) this is holo glitter in a jelly base. This one was the first one I bought and still my favorite. It's maybe a little more red than these fuchsias I've just been talking about - it's right on that dividing line between red and pink. (In fact, Kelly appears to be comparing it to Zoya Blaze, at that link, which I'm going to talk about below.)
• Pyro Pink (Cover Girl Glosstini mini) - Originally from the Catching Fire collection, although now I believe it's core and available in the normal-size bottle. It's maybe a little paler than the rest of these fuchsias, but otherwise pretty similar. It does have that same lovely glass-fleck-type finish as the rest of this line. (Note that I also now have a full-size of this, and that these are being discontinued as of late 2015.)

bottom row:

• Put A Bow On It (China Glaze) - purple-leaning fuchsia, very packed with glitter. This is the same formula as This is Tree-mendous, which was in the last entry, and I bemoaned my lack of organization. But in fact they are all in the microglitter section, they're just not in the same entry because I separated them by color. The third one is All Wrapped Up, which was in part 1. So - at least in this case - I'm doing better than I thought. (S&L swatches)
• (upside down) Blaze (Zoya - holo) - cool-toned red or raspberry holo, depending who you listen to. I never could warm up to this one - so to speak - and I really don't know why. (Later: Somebody admired Blaze in a Pinterest picture, and I found my bottle and gave it to them. I figured somebody else might enjoy it more!)
• Purple Diamond (Sinful) - sheer orchid MG, needs layering (although, if you look at that link, clearly don't layer it with the semi-sheer L'Oreal that she tried). I'd put it over something like a similarly-colored cream, myself.
• He Loves Me, I Love Him Not (Orchid) - hmm, I wasn't expecting to find any kind of swatch for this, because it's a store-brand, it's obscure. But the store's website came through with a bottle shot, at least. (Although honestly, I think it reads more pink than purple, myself.) And here's a nail wheel swatch - it's #6 there, and you can see it fits in quite well with all the fuchsias.

Stash: microglitters pt 2 - blue to green + metallic

Honestly, this iteration of the stash project is a pain and it's going to take me forever (assuming I ever finish at all) but I am learning so much about my stash it's just unbelievable. Basically, I was stunningly ignorant about nail polish finishes and now I'm becoming a little less so.

I took this picture a while back, and then I had computer issues and I was afraid I had lost this and a lot of other things, but Carbonite came to the rescue, as it's supposed to, and all is well. (If you're curious, I had a corrupted profile. I had no idea such a thing was possible.)

top row:

• Zuza (Zoya) - you could call this either a dark aquamarine or a light turquoise, I guess - it's from the summer collection called Beach and Surf, back two or three years ago (Beach was cremes and Surf was shiny, if I'm remembering right, so this would be the Surf one.) It's very pretty but a bit light for me. I've liked it best when I layered something slightly darker underneath - but you can clearly see there that I've used a good bit of it up!
• Remy (Zoya) - this is the blue polish from Zoya's great Ignite collection from last fall, with its "liquid metal" finish - dark blue with mixed-metal shimmer
• Evening Emerald (Pixi) - a very dark blue-green - not what I would call emerald at all, it's far too blue, although I suppose the "evening" part of the name is meant to account for the darkness of it. Anyway, it has tonal shimmer, maybe a bit lighter blue-green, and it looks really pretty in the pictures and now I'm trying to remember why I was unimpressed by it when I tried it. Time to try again, I guess!
• Rid Of Me (Nostalgic) - here's what I wrote when I wore this a couple of months ago. It's a gorgeous bright blue MG, but very sheer and does need an undercoat. The pictures at that first link show it with an equally bright-blue undercoat and it looks great. Nostalgic Lacquer seems to have gone MIA lately (that same note has been there for months), and I hope it's not permanent, because I really liked their polishes a lot!
• Glacial Springs (Smitten) - this seems similar to Rid Of Me, really, except maybe even flashier since it's packed with holographic glitter. I know I wore it at least once, but I think it was in the middle of a bunch of layers and clearly, again, I need to retry this one!

2nd row:

• Swatch & Learn (Pretty Serious Blogger Collab line) - one of those "funky greens" which reads a little on the yellow side but not extremely so, and it's really packed with several different colors of duochrome shimmer (I think it may be that it's gold shimmer which makes this read as somewhat yellow, actually)
• (upside down) Meow Meow (RBL) - really packed dark-green small glitter, very pretty
• Chita (Zoya Pixie Dust) - this looks a bit lighter in the picture above than I really remember it reading in person. It's basically a matte forest green with some silver sparkle - maybe it's the silver that makes it look lighter here. Like all the Pixie Dusts, if you don't want the texture finish it looks great with top-coat too. (mani w/topcoat from 2014)
• N-evergreen (Ulta Wicked Wonderland set) - another glittery forest green, very pretty. This one leans a bit more blue.
• Kissy (Sinful Colors) - most notable as a near-dupe for Zoya Charla, but very pretty in any case. Dark blue-green which reads also as a foil.

3rd row:

• Rainforest ("old" Colorstay) - very dark green with maybe a hint of yellow - I think maybe the glitter in it is more like a lime green, going from VV's picture in the link. She calls it "murky" green which I have come to think implies yellow tones as well. It's prettier than all this makes it sound - in fact I had already gone through most of a bottle by the time I figured out they were discontinuing the "Longwear" version of Colorstay early last year, and I bought two more bottles as backups from various clearance sales, I like it that much.
• Stiletto (Jade) - medium green, similar to several medium green cremes I have like Chick Moss - the difference is that this one has scattered glitter in it, despite the fact that it's labeled "cremoso" which sounds like it ought to mean "creme". The text at the link is in Portuguese (which makes sense since Jade is a Brazilian brand) but the little insert picture clearly shows some glimmer in it. Otherwise I might think I was imagining it! (Note that when you google "jade stiletto" you get some polish swatches but you also get stuff like this, which made me laugh.)
• Hipster Chick (Chick) - you can see the whole line there, with Rocker Chick, Biker Chick, and Punk Chick (I sort of wish I'd bought Rocker Chick too, while these were still available). Hipster Chick to me looks a little less bright than it does in that picture. It's like the closest thing you can get to a "neutral" lime green - which is probably why I like it. And it does have scattered holo sparkle. (mani from 2014)
• This Is Tree-mendous (China Glaze) is one of several packed microglitters from the 2013 holiday collection. (I have to note here that I think it says a lot about the organization - or lack thereof, more like - of this stash project that three polishes with exactly the same finish ended up in different batches.) Anyway, green packed MG, maybe a bit lighter than a traditional holiday green, and like many polishes with this kind of finish tends to flake after a day or so. It's really beautiful while it lasts, though. (mani from 2014) (more swatches)
• Slick Black (Triple Shine - missing its cover that says so, which I did find again after I took the picture, of course) - this is a black with a glass-fleck appearance. (I never know exactly what to make of that term "glass-fleck," because while I suppose it's possible that they are putting glass glitter in nail polish, most of the time I doubt it! Anyway, whatever it's made of, it's beautiful.)

bottom row:

• All About You (Sinful Colors) - I am amused by the commentary at that link - she really hates this polish! This is a mixed-metals sort of thing, in the gold/brass/copper range, with a clear base and thus it's really more suited to being a top-coat. I haven't worn it the way she shows it, built to opaqueness, either.
• London (Zoya Pixie Dust) - the usual "original" PixieDust formula (and in fact I think this is from the original PD collection) - Michelle of ALU calls it "graphite" but I have always thought of it as "fog gray" which sounds more romantic, at least. Graphite is probably just as accurate, if not more so. It's dark enough that I like it, and since I hate pastels on me, that probably means it's more of a medium gray than a light one.
• Trailer Trash (old-school Hard Candy mini, and I have a full-size bottle of this somewhere too) - fabulous antiquey silver, one of my favorite polishes of all time. I suspect it reads more as an old-line frost than a true microglitter. My favorite use for it is actually to put a really light coat on top of other stuff. I spent an entire winter a few years ago trying this with everything I owned at the time, and it usually looked great.
• Midnight Magic (which is upside down for some reason) (Outlast) - huh, this link says it's a very near dupe to FeiFei, which I also own (and also one of the OPI Bond polishes) - I'll try to remember to compare. I'm not sure if Midnight Magic was actually one of the Catching Fire polishes or if it was already core before that, but it's got that same finish, which is, guess, what, glass-fleck-ish. As is FeiFei. I just hadn't realized the colors were that close. Interesting. (See, I learned something new again. That is why I keep going with this even as I gripe about it.) (mani from 2014)

Stash: microglitters pt 1 - blue & purple

So finally we get to the microglitters - and let's start calling them MGs right now so I don't have to type "microglitter" a zillion times! (If you haven't been following along, I started this little project back in January - attempting to sort my stash by "type" which has proved to be not-so easy and then talking about every one individually - and I am nowhere near done.)

top row:

• Wavy Blue (Triple Shine) - really beautiful royal-blue MG
• Playmaker (Orchid) - I haven't worn this one (although I may have swatched it on a wheel, I'll have to check) and swatches of Orchid-brand are always hard to come by online. It's a fairly similar color to Wavy Blue but its microglitter is less obvious, I think (less "grainy" is how I'm coming to think of that after staring at these a lot lately) and maybe just a bit grayer.
• Super Star (Sinful Colors) - a blue MG with bigger purple bits (mani with a black base from 2014)
• Indigo (Zoya) - a very dark blue metallic with some holo shimmer
• Quick Jeanius (Insta-Dri, an LE color from a couple of years back) - I was holding up the bottle to this in the sunlight and I was amazed by how many different shades of blue were in there. It's lovely, and has some violet leanings, too. (I hate to use that dreaded word "blurple" but it probably does qualify.)

2nd row (which is kind of wonky, as rows go, but hopefully you can follow this):

• Daul (Zoya) - this is one of those purples that tends to read as slightly brownish, to me, but it actually has a red-violet base according to Zoya, with tons of purple and gold shimmer (mani over a dark base from 2014)
• the two Dollish minis are turned sideways: They're Hereeee! from a Halloween collection (see below for far more on that one but it was originally bright blue), and One Lifetime With You (lilac-periwinkle glitter - Mishka, who helped design the Ultimate Fandom set, says the base is lilac, so we'll  defer to her expertise there!)
• then two that are upside down, All Wrapped Up (China Glaze - which is super-packed blue MG with maybe very slight purple leanings) (here's a mani from 2014) and Sugar Plum Fairy (Julie G Holiday Gumdrops - which is more the other way around, a purple with blue leanings, and a full-on texture)

3rd row:

• Jem (Zoya) - Zoya calls this a metallic, but the line between metallics and microglitters is something I seem to have trouble distinguishing. This is also another one that they call purple, but is more in the wine/brown range to my eye - in fact I would have said it reads as pretty close to "marsala" territory but the pictures vary depending on the light. More of them look purple than look brownish, though, I have to admit. This was the breakout star polish from the Mirrors collection back a few years ago, when I first started getting into nail polish enough to notice things like that!
• (upside down) Vestido de Gala (Jade) - I notice that Google Translate renders that name "Gala Dress" which concurs pretty well with what I had figured out, since "vestido" is "dress" - what I'm not sure about is whether it has the same connotation in Spanish of "super-special-occasion" that English gives the word "gala" - in other words, does it imply just "party dress" or is it more "ballgown"? Anyway, as usual I'm overthinking this. I have several of the polishes from this collection (Special Glitz) and they're all exactly the same as far as I can tell - holo glitter in a jelly base. This one is the burgundy one. They're all beautiful. (mani from 2014)
• Chic Peek (Ulta) - another purple that reads brownish - I seem to have a lot of these. I really like most of them, though, including this one. (Note: I changed the link on this one because the other one wasn't working - this new link calls this a neutral taupe/khaki kind of color. Go figure.)

4th row:

• Sansa (Zoya) - the dark purple one in the Zoya Ignite collection, with their "liquid metal" formula. (I haven't worn this yet and I don't know why!)
• Private I (SH Diamond Strength) - dark purple with what may be coppery flecks (be sure and scroll down - way down - at that link because there are some really nice pictures of it there) - PGS says it's coppery, and she's probably right. I haven't worn this in ages so I'm not certain.
• I Love You (Sinful) - sheer or maybe jelly? glitter that builds nicely to a dark blue-violet or blurple. It takes several coats to get there, though.

bottom row (such as it is):

• Purple Gleam (Milani) - this is from Milani's old One-Coat line, and as I recall it does cover well. It's a red-violet, but the glitter is more of a straight-up purple. (more swatches)
• Amethyst Accent (Finger Paints) - I'm linking myself here since mine was actually the first picture that came up in the google results, and that's never happened that I recall before. This is a nice red-violet MG with an almost-foil finish.
• (sideways) Carter (Zoya Pixie Dust) - gorgeous, that's the main point here. I like this with topcoat, although it's still gorgeous without, too. This is maybe just the opposite of Purple Gleam above - it's red-violet glitter in a neutral (dark) purple base. (mani with top-coat from 2014)

I was holding the bottle of "They're Hereeee!" while I was taking these pictures - I remember clearly because I was looking at the number of e's in it - and I was thinking that this used to be brighter blue, but get a load of this:

That was from this entry in January 2014.

And here it is in January 2015 (cropped from the picture above):

That is some serious fading, there. (You can see some pink shimmer in the purple picture, so I guess the blue faded and left the pink? I'm going to have to go look at this again and make sure I'm looking at the right bottle, but...wow.)