More Polish 'M

I've showed some polishes from Polish 'M previously (here and here). Here are a couple more polishes that didn't make it into the previous entries.

I keep wanting to call this polish just Lettuce Play, but in fact that's not its full name. (In case you can't read the picture, it's actually Lettuce Play (In The Dirt).)

So here is Lettuce Play (In The Dirt):

It apparently is discontinued. It's really pretty, though, and I don't think you can tell from this picture. It seems to have a variety of glitters and shimmers in it.

Purple-A-Palooza 2:

There is a whole series of Purple-A-Palooza polishes from Polish 'M. In fact, as I write this there are still a bunch of them on Polish 'M's website for $4. Honestly, I have to say I'm not completely blown away by this one, although there's nothing wrong with it - I just don't love it. But I haven't worn it yet, either. (Looking at the pictures, I might try #3 if I was going to try another one.)

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.)

Late Black Friday haul

I bought a bunch of stuff from Nyx to give for gifts on Black Friday, and now that the gifts are given I can post the pictures. The only thing I kept out of this was the darkest color, which is a backup of the one I wear. (Which is the one that used to be called Hunk and is now called Thunderstorm, and it goes on as sort of a medium red-violet, much lighter than it looks from the tube.)

I must have a record somewhere of the name of this blush color, but I haven't found it so far. I did take a picture of the lipstick colors, so I have those. The box set of three is Beach BBQ, Easy Livin', and Neon Lights. The three loose pink ones are Taffy, Gumdrop, and Seashell. (And then Thunderstorm on the right.)

I did swatches on my wrist and I didn't write down what was what, but I think this is mostly in the same order. Presumably Thunderstorm is the bright one on the right - so Seashell may be pale bit that's hard to see on the far side of that.

I gave Beach BBQ to my sister and she really liked it. (I also gave her KL Magic City, which likewise went really over well. I knew she likes red-oranges the same way I like red-violets.) The rest went to other family members and I'm not completely clear on what went to whom, honestly. I should have taken a picture of the whole pile before I sorted it out - there was a lot more stuff than just this - but it was very much at the last minute and it didn't occur to me. I had Colourpop stuff, too, and Clinique, and all my Sephora Play leftovers and assorted deluxe samples. I decided I usually overthink the question of what exact color I give to whom and so I waited til the last minute on purpose (literally, like, 3am Christmas morning) so I had to just do it and not think too hard about it. Luckily everybody seemed to really like what they got!

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.

Nail wheel 20

This is my 20th nail wheel, which feels to me like I've reached some kind of milestone.

1. Darkest Emerald (1 coat) (Rococo)
2. Silver Glitter (1 coat) (Barry M LE)
3. After Party (1 coat) (Icing)
4. Show Stopper (1 coat) (Sinful Colors)
5. Glitter All the Way (1 coat) (China Glaze)
6. Editorial (1 coat) (Color Club duochrome)
7. Miss Universe (1 coat) (Essence Colour & Go)
8. Travel in Colour (C.Glaze) over It's Genius (Essie)
9. Sugar Plum Fairies Gone Wild (SOPI) over Fig (Sinful)
10. Purple Poodle over Domestic Goddess (SOPI)
11. Purple Poodle (3 coats) (Orly)
12. Rich Raspberry (2 coats) (Colorstay)
13. Fall Mood (2 coats) (Colorstay)
14. Rags to Riches (2 coats) (Rimmel Lasting Finish)
15. Posh (Zoya Matte Velvet) (with top coat on tip)
16. Be Merry, Be Bright (C.Glaze) over Posh
17. Poppy Field (Serum No. 5) over In Through the Out Door over Rich Raspberry
18. In Through the Out Door (Pipe Dream Polish) over Rich Raspberry
19. Amethyst Accent (Finger Paints)
20. Rockin' Renaissance (Finger Paints)

More nail wheel overflow

This is another (almost-)full nail wheel - most or all of this is stuff I got in January.

1. Katherine (Zoya)
2. Silver Glitter (Barry M LE)
3. Show Stopper (Sinful Colors)
4. Afterparty (Icing)
5. Intergalactic Space (Orly) (1 coat)
6. As Long As You Love Me (Essence Beauty Beats)
7. Miss Universe (Essence Colour & Go) (3 coats)
8. Glitter All the Way (China Glaze) (3 coats)
9. (blank)
10. Chita (Zoya)
11. Chupacabra (ModLacquer)
12. Goblin (ModLacquer)
13. Darkest Emerald Luxe (Rococo)
14. Agro (China Glaze)
15. Rags to Riches
16. Fall Mood (Colorstay)
17. Gossamer (
    Jin Soon) 
    over Stone Cold Karma and Chita
18. Stone Cold Karma Luxe (Rococo)
19. Rich Raspberry (Colorstay)
20. Purple Poodle (Orly)

(detail under the jump)

Nail wheel overflow: Take Ten and more

Here's a nail wheel that I haven't posted before:

1-10 are the ten polishes in the OPI Take 10 mini set that was around at the holidays. 11-20 are just assorted Christmas gifts and new purchases from around that time:
1. Pirouette My Whistle
2. Alpine Snow
3. Bubble Bath
4. Tickle My France-y
5. You Don't Know Jacques
6. Cajun Shrimp
7. Big Apple Red
8. German-icure by OPI
9. Malaga Wine
10. Lincoln Park After Dark
11. Pyrite (Pahlish)
12. Blood of the Mountain (Pahlish)
13. Sunset Flare (Serum No. 5) (2 coats)
14. Chyna (Pixie Dust) (1 coat)
15. EmpoweRED (Rococo)
16. EmpoweRED Toner over EmpoweRED  (multiple coats - 4?)
17. Believe in Believing (Pipe Dream Polish) over China Flower
18. Poppy Fields (Serum No. 5) over China Flower
19. China Flower (Revlon Parfumerie)
20. Pink Pineapple (Revlon Parfumerie)


1-4:

It's hard to tell a lot on these very pale ones, but Pirouette My Whistle appears to be white and silver glitter (more specifically, I think, white hexes and silver microglitter) in a clear base. Alpine Snow is almost-white, where Bubble Bath is actually very pale pink, I believe. And Tickle My France-y is a nude pink, or you might possibly call it a pale mauve - and since mauve seems to be trendy this spring for the first time in ages, that's a distinction that might be important in some circles!

5-8:

Then we have the famous You Don't Know Jacques, which I guess you would call a dark taupe, and Cajun Shrimp, an orange-red, and Big Apple Red, a more classic red. And last in this bunch is German-icure by OPI, which seems to be on its way to becoming another OPI classic. It's sort of in that "chocolate cherry" range. (Look at Polishaholic's swatches down toward the bottom of this entry - she looks at a couple of possible dupes there, too.)

9-12:

The two darkest of the OPI set were Malaga Wine - which is actually darker than it appears here, I think, a nice glossy burgundy - and Lincoln Park After Dark, which a lot of people will already have, I know. (Although OPI junkies will have most or all of these 10 already, I imagine.) Then we move into other brands - these two were my post-Christmas purchases from Pahlish - Pyrite and Blood of the Mountain. I am already on record online as not being a huge fan of Blood on the Mountain - the holo-ness of it just doesn't come out unless you get out into really full daylight, and the rest of the time I thought it looked a bit more like dried blood than I'd like. (I guess I should let that be a lesson to me, right? Don't buy a polish with "blood" in the name and then be surprised when it turns out to actually look like blood.) I do really adore Pyrite, though - it's a gold foil in varying shades, giving it a really antique look on your nails. Highly recommended, and as I think I mentioned the other day, there are only a few left on Pahlish's website.

13-16:

Okay, 13 is from the Serum No. 5 Glowmelon collection, meaning it's supposed to glow in the dark. I never have seen any evidence of that myself (partly because I don't much care!), but it does really do a nice "sunset" glow in the sunlight, which is good enough for me. It has enough pink to it that I can wear it without it making me look excessively yellow. 14 is Zoya Chyna, the Pixie Dust. It glitters a lot more than is visible in this picture, and the glitter is dark red. It's beautiful. Next we have the Rococo EmpoweRED duo. 15 is the red on its own, and 16 has multiple coats of toner - I think it was 4 coats, maybe. You do see a visible difference in the colors between 15 and 16, but it takes a lot of coats of toner to get there.

17-20:

I decided to try a couple of things over China Flower, because that was what we had handy. First is Believe in Believing, a Pipe Dream Polish, over China Flower. Believe in Believing is various large fuchsia glitters in a pink jelly base. Poppy Fields has largish square glitters and smaller glitters in a red jelly base, and I believe it also has a sprinkling of black glitter - perhaps to represent the stamens of the poppies. Then 19 is Revlon Parfumerie China Flower, a red that perhaps leaned just a bit pink, and then 20 in Pink Pineapple. They smell very nice - not too strong at all.

13&14 bonus:

I think I mostly wanted to post this picture of the orange Serum No. 5, Sunset Flare from the Glowmelon group. It has a lovely pinky-peach tinge that wasn't showing up in the larger picture.

Nail wheel - black, white, gray

Blacks, grays, and a couple of whites:

1. Bad Chick (Sinful Colors Nail Art, which is why I painted it in stripes)
2. unnamed white creme (Color Theory set)
3. -
4. Wet Cement (Sally Hansen Xtreme)
5. -
6. Gray By Gray (Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure)
7. -
8. Is That Silva? (OPI magnetic)
9. The Symbiote (Chirality holo)
10. unnamed gray creme (Color Theory set)
11. Steely Gaze (Hard as Nails)
12. Gray's Anatomy (Wet n Wild/Fast Dry)
13. Slick Black (Sally Hansen Triple Shine)
14. Starry Night (Sonia Kashuk)
15. Black Illusion (L.A. Girl holo)
16. Jet Black (Hard as Nails)
17. Black Creme (Wet n Wild/Wild Shine )
18. unnamed black creme (Color Theory set)
19. Vibe (old Hard Candy mini)
20. - 

I've added a couple of things in the blank spaces since this picture was taken, so eventually I need to go back and take more pictures of the top side of this wheel, where it was incomplete!

One thing I noticed is that almost everything on this wheel is drugstore polish. I think I just don't think it's worth spending money on higher-end for blacks, and I barely buy whites at all. I just haven't gotten around to it with grays, I think, because I do actually like grays. It might be worth noting also that Sally Hansen makes some great grays, which is why there's a lot of those here.

It's barely worth posting the whites, but here you go:



At least you can see the striper. The other one is barely visible at all. (Note that #3 is blank - you can tell the difference between 2 & 3, but just barely.)

I don't seem to have gotten a picture of 4, but as I said, I'm going to have to take new pictures of that part of the wheel anyway. (6) is Gray by Gray, which is a dark gray with an almost-indigo tinge to it.

(8) is Is That Silva? which is the Bond magnetic - I didn't try to use the magnet on this. It's pretty on its own, anyway. (There's a picture of it where I did use the magnet here.) (9) is the Chirality holo - you can see the holo effect in both these pictures, above and below).

(10) is another of those unnamed/probably L.A. Colors polishes - I've never remembered to look & see if there's an L.A. Colors that matches this. It's quite pretty, actually. It's most similar to (12) which doesn't show up well in either of these pictures. (These must be older pictures - later on I got a rhythm of taking 1-4, 5-8 and so on. Or maybe all those blank spaces threw me off.)

(13) is apparently Slick Black, which you notice is not very black at all without a base coat under it. (14) is Starry Night, which is black with little sparkles; (15) is the L.A. Girl holo.

 (16) is what Jet Black looks like with just one coat. I used it a lot in these wheels and it gets pretty opaque, but it takes a good three coats to get there. (Compare with the WnW next to it, although I can't swear that's one coat, because I don't have consistent notes on this wheel on that.)

(18) is another unnamed - I'm not sure if it has a little sparkle in it or if that's just dust - I'm going to have to go inspect this wheel later and see if I can tell! - Possibly it's dust, actually, because (19) is Vibe, which I'm pretty sure is a straight-up black creme. I'll report back if I figure out anything different.

And yay, that is the end of my original set of wheels. From here on out it's all things that I've added since last September, but that's several more wheels worth by now!

Colors for Valentine's Day: a nail wheel

Pinks and reds, the classic colors this time of year. Obviously I'm not suggesting that everybody has to wear pink and red from now til Valentine's Day, because (a) you would tell me to go stuff myself and you'd be right to, and (b) I'd hate it if everybody did it, and it's not something I do myself consistently. I do it when I feel like it, but this year, I've been out of the pink mood and haven't worn it much in months, or red either, and now they're both starting to sound appealing again.

Now I have to admit that I like pink and red partly because they look good on me. I wear pink and red tops a lot, and I have a ton of pink and red nail polish because of that, too. But red looks good on almost everybody, and everybody can probably wear some shade of pink, too. So I did a nail wheel with some representative polishes from my stash. I only did a few reds, because even though it's not actually true that all reds look alike, still, there's not as much variety of reds as there are pinks. Also, I found out the hard way that very pale pinks just don't show up well on a nail wheel, so I just skipped them this time around except for the one confetti polish. But I tried to hit a range of colors in between there!

I know putting the little heart on the wheel is corny, but it was mostly so I wouldn't have to write VALENTINE'S DAY across it. (You may can see that I drew it in green Sharpie first, like the numbers, then I went and doodled around it with a fine-tip Sharpie, because, well, I was bored. All this pink is giving me flashbacks to junior high or something.) -- Maybe my own defensiveness about this is something we should discuss, actually, because sometimes my reaction to pink is weird. As I've already said, I really like pink, I wear pink clothes with great regularity and pink nail polish even more, but I seem to react oddly to an excess of pink. I usually won't wear Strobe Light because it trips that "too much pink" trigger in me every time, and that's maybe partly why I look at my own wheel with the silly heart on it and roll my eyes. Maybe I think pink is best in small doses.

So my issues aside, these are all polishes that came out of my own stash. Obviously, one at a time (or two, if I'm layering), I like them just fine!

1. Purple Poodle (Orly)
2. Santa Red My List (China Glaze)
3. Lilith (Zoya)
4. Alegra (Zoya)
5. Juicy (Zoya)
6. She Loves Me, I Love Him Not (Orchid)
7. Peru-B-Ruby (OPI)
8. Riley (Zoya)
9. Red Carpet (Xtreme Wear)
10. EmpoweRED (Rococo) with its matching toner on tip
11. Dita (Zoya)
12. Japanese Tea Garden with Aphrodite's Pink Nightie on tip (both OPI)
13. Japanese Tea Garden (OPI) with Pink Pineapple (Revlon Parfumerie) on tip
14. Status Symbol (Essie)
15. Redrum (Dollish Polish)
16. Rory (Zoya)
17. Shelby (Zoya)
18. Lara (Zoya)
19. Girls On Film (Nostalgic)
20. English Rose (Rimmel) with Hard Candy Jailbait on tip (I misidentified it earlier as Shy)

A ton of Zoyas here, but I had a good range of Zoya pinks to choose from, and Zoya hardly ever discontinues anything, so they're all still available, far as I know. Not all of these polishes are still in production, though, and I'll note what I know about that as we go down the list. I tried to concentrate on ones that are at least still possible to find. I should note that I did get the one China Glaze free (as I end up saying at least twice a week), but everything else here I paid for.

We're starting with 19, because that's how I took the pictures, I don't remember why!

(19) is Girls On Film - which says "temporarily unavailable" on Nostalgic's website, so its availability is unclear. But there are tons of these confetti polishes around so it's possible that there's a substitute for it from another brand, if not. (Ooh, here's a really pretty candidate!) This is the only one of these confettis in a creamy base that I own, and I wasn't sure about it at first, but it keeps growing on me. (20) is Rimmel English Rose, which is sort of a slightly-boring rose pink that I think of as somewhat old-fashioned, but it's still pretty. I wanted to try Jailbait, the Hard Candy, over something, so I picked the Rimmel, and it looked pretty cute, I think. ShyJailbait is an old Hard Candy color (as you can see, it has a completely different bottle from the ones that are currently available) so if it's still available from HC at all, it probably has a different name. But again, there are lots of topper sort of things like this around. And then coming around to (1) we have Purple Poodle, which is not really purple but magenta, with purple microglitter. This is a current color, as far as I know - I bought mine at Sally Beauty just last week.

Closeup of the wheel:

This is 2 to 5:

(2) is Santa Red My List, which despite its name is pink. (Purple Poodle is not purple and Santa Red is not red. I think there's a trend here.) It has a nice foil-ish finish on it that I like, and this is from the holiday collection, which I have seen around in recent weeks, so it's possibly still findable. (3) Lilith is a duochrome, and actually is not showing up on the Zoya website, now that I said that Zoya rarely discontinues things. It has a blue flash that's interesting, but other than that it's similar to a million other fuchsias. (...and for the rest of this entry I'm going to stop talking about alternatives unless I know something more definite, or this is going to get really repetitive.) (4) Alegra has a similar finish to the China Glaze - it's a packed microglitter - but it reads more as a red-violet on the wheel. Then (5) is Juicy, which is different because it's a sheer. They don't call it a jelly, but that doesn't mean you couldn't play around with it and do the kind of things you can do with a jelly. (Hmm, I might try a jelly fade!)

Closeups, which overlap a bit with the last one:

2 and 4 look pretty similar in this picture, but looking at them in real life (2) the China Glaze reads more as a reddish-pink, while (4) Alegra reads much more towards purple.

 6 to 9:

(6) is Orchid She Loves Me, I Love Him Not, which is a very packed microglitter. It's very pretty and sort of violet-leaning, and if you like it you may need a swap-buddy in Texas, since Orchid is only sold at HEB and HEB is only in Texas. (Maybe they'll have a sale soon and I can stock up!) Anyway, (7) is OPI Peru-B-Ruby, which is an almost-red but leans pink, and it's nice and shiny and pretty and I think still available. (8) is Zoya Riley, which is a deep raspberry color that's a bit different - notice in the wheel pictures that Riley actually reads darker than either of the reds here. And (9) is the Xtreme Wear, Red Carpet, which is a nice, fairly sheer, glittery red, which looks like it has a hint of violet in it at 2 coats but turns more obviously red with more coats. I believe I'm on my second bottle of this one.

Here's 5-8 getting darker and darker.

10 and 11:

OK, so I wasn't sure about this Rococo duo and how well it worked - it's called Empowered or EmpoweRED, and it's a really pretty red along with a toner you use to darken it. I tried doing skittles, and it definitely does make it darker. I did my whole hand with the red and left my thumb plain and did 1, 2, 3, and 4 coats of toner on successive fingers, and you can tell the difference. It just isn't a dramatic difference. I've been on a quest for the perfect blackened red, and this isn't it, but still it's pretty. My pictures of the skittles didn't come out but let's see if you can see it on the closeups below. By itself it's on the light side of red; with a lot of toner, it's more on the dark side (*insert your own Star Wars joke*). (But you can't see much of this effect, at least on my monitor, so you'll have to take my word for it, but it's there.) Oh, and then as an afterthought to this picture, we have (11) Dita - which is actually a pretty awesome color, it's somehow the most tasteful bright pink you can imagine. Zoya calls it a "saturated purple-toned berry-red creme." In some ways, it is the perfect bright pink.

It annoys me that you can't see the toner effect here, because you could when I took the picture!

12 and 13:

12 and 13 have the same base: OPI Japanese Tea Garden, which I noticed was for sale on some fairly major website I was cruising lately, so it is still available. I'm not so sure about Aphrodite's Pink Nightie, which is what is on top of it on (12). (But again, frosty pale pink, there are probably a million of them.) I think I mentioned this a month or so ago when I was doing my original pink wheels - these two polishes were one of my very early experiments in layering, and I still think they go really well together. But Pink Pineapple looks pretty good over it in (13), too, so eh.

12 and 13 are visible both in the last close-up picture and in this one too. But I think you can see them a bit better here:

(14) is the aforementioned Strobe Light (mentioned wayyyy up at the top), in this case over another classic, Essie Status Symbol. Bottle picture coming up:

In my experience, you can stick pretty much any pink under Strobe Light; it's so flashy nobody's going to notice the difference. Strobe Light is actually over ONE coat of Status Symbol; then I went, "Oh wait, it needs another coat! and just put the second coat over the bottom half where there was no glitter. I wouldn't do this on a real mani, but on the nail wheel it looks surprisingly ok. Status Symbol was still an Essie core color the last time I looked, but they have other colors that are very close, too. (Watermelon springs to mind.) (15) is Dollish Redrum, which may not be findable - there are other pink holos around, but none with as fun of a name.

Next we have this very girly trio of Zoyas - if you're not already acquainted with Rory, Shelby, and Lara, and you like pale pinks, you should be:

Rory is a microglitter, and slightly more purple. Shelby is paler than Lara. Shelby is really too pale for my coloring; I mostly wear it for layering. (Rory looks great over it!)

I happened to go leafing through my spoons while I was taking pictures yesterday, or I would not have remembered that those three all came from the same collection:

Beach & Surf has to be one of Zoya's all time best-selling collections. I seem to recall almost buying the whole dozen at one point, but I settled for these six. (The other three are Reagan, Carly, and Kimber.)

Aaand that's actually it, because we started with 19. I can't imagine that anybody who hates pink has gotten this far, so I won't apologize again for the pink overload. If you do like pink, maybe this has given you some ideas!

I'd love to hear feedback! Tell me your theories about why pink is so polarizing. Tell me your favorite pinks. (Two that come to mind that I don't own that everybody seems to love: Xtreme Wear Rockstar Pink and Katy Perry's Teenage Dream. Both glitters, so that may be why I have resisted thus far.) Beat me up for subjecting you to all this pink, if you like...

(And to repeat my disclaimer: nobody's paying me anything to say all this. There is not so much as an affiliate link in this entire entry. I did get the one China Glaze for free, but it was a straight-up blog giveaway and not given to me for review, even!)

More belated HoliGlazes: a nail wheel

All China Glaze nail wheel, so HERE'S THE DISCLAIMER: these are the polishes that I got free from polish insomniac and China Glaze.

These are 2 coats unless otherwise stated. There were 13 polishes; I tried various things over black (mostly the glitters) and tried out a few other combinations to fill up the wheel.

(I don't recommend trying to read my writing on the wheel - there's a list under the jump)

1. Santa Red My List
2. Just Be-Claws
3. Travel in Colour  (1 coat) over Just Be-Claws
4. So Blue Without You
5. Bells Will Be Blinging
6. Bells Will Be Blinging over So Blue Without You
7. Mingle With Kringle 
8. Be Merry! Be Bright over Mingle With Kringle
9. Be Merry! Be Bright
10. This is Tree-Mendous - green microglitter (2 coats)
11. Put a Bow On It - fuchsia microglitter
12. All Wrapped Up - purple (or maybe blurple?) microglitter
13. Your Present Required
14. Your Present Required  (1 coat) over (unnamed) black
15. Bells Will Be Blinging (1 coat) over black
16. Be Merry! Be Bright  (1 coat) over black
17. Travel in Colour  (1 coat) over black
18. There's Snow One Like You (3 coats on tip)
19. Travel in Colour  (1 coat) over Elfin' Around
20. Elfin' Around - orange-leaning red shimmer

I did this wheel right after I got these polishes in mid-December, but then it was close to Christmas and things were chaotic and I kept losing it (the wheel, I mean) and finding it and losing it again. Somewhere in there I kept track of it long enough to take pictures, but actually as of now it's missing again. I'm not too worried about it; it'll turn up eventually.

I didn't take bottle pictures because I'd already taken several - here's one, and here's Jessika's thumbnails, too. But I did take some detail pictures of the wheel, so you can see better.

These are turned every which way, and I'm not going to worry about that - I'm assuming you can manage to read the numbers, even upside down!

So here we have the white texture at the very top, then we have Travel in Colour, the color-shifting topcoat, over Elfin' Around, and then 20 is Elfin' Around alone. Near as I can tell that result is normal - Travel in Colour seems to shift everything I've tried it on towards pink. Then we go back to #1, which is Santa Red My List (which, oddly, is very pink). 2 is the actual red in the bunch: Just Be-Claws. And 3 is Travel in Colour over Just Be-Claws, which is, again, shifted to pink. (I'm not wasting any more of my Travel in Colour mini on that combination, since it looks almost exactly like Santa Red My List!)

4:  So Blue Without You; 5: Bells Will Be Blinging; and 6 is those two layered (which I wore as a mani before Christmas; it was terribly festive!)

(this picture is blurry but I still think you can get the idea)

7, Mingle With Kringle, features under a glitter fade with another of my Christmas manis

8 is Be Merry! Be Bright over Mingle With Kringle and in 9 it's alone. I tried Be Merry! Be Bright over something purple the other day, I think it was, and I decided I was going to save it to wear again closer to Valentine's Day; that was the kind of vibe it gave off, for all it has that very Christmassy name.

This is the microglitters, which I love:

10 This is Tree-Mendous (2 coats); 11 Put a Bow On It (here it is with top coat, and you can see that it appears much more fuchsia than in the picture above); and 12 All Wrapped Up

13 is Your Present Required; then the next 4 are over a black base: 14 is Your Present Required, 15 Bells Will Be Blinging, 16 Be Merry! Be Bright (which I like)

This overlaps with the last one, but 17 is Travel in Colour  over black, and then we come around to where we started with the texture, There's Snow One Like You. That one is problematic, and I've been casting around for a way to wear it. It's very thick, and it has hex glitters in it, which makes it seem even thicker.

Nail wheel weekend: Dark-reds-plus-OPI

(This is wheel 13 - list after the jump)

I got a little messy up there with #3 but on the whole I think I do a decent job with these!

1. Pyro Pink (over Chic Peek on tip) (2 coats)
2. Continuous Cranberry (1 coat)
3. Fruit Punch (2 coats)
4. Ruby Without a Cause (1 coat)
5. Glitterati (2 coats)
6. Chic Peek (2 coats)
7. Jem (1 coat)
8. It's Genius (2 coats)
9. Ramblin' Red (1 coat)
10. Vixen (2 coats)
11. ? (pink holo?) (Dollish Redrum?)
12. Pirouette My Whistle (which you can't really see, I know)
13. Alpine Snow
14. Bubble Bath
15. Tickle My France-y
16. You Don't Know Jacques
17. Lincoln Park After Dark
18. Germanicure 
19. Malaga Wine
20. Big Apple Red

So the top half of this wheel is everything that was left over after I did whole wheels of pinks and one whole wheel of reds - this is mostly the darkest reds. And the bottom half is mostly OPI minis from that Take Ten set. I didn't bother to write down what they were on the wheel since I knew I had that recorded already. This is all of them except Cajun Shrimp, because there was room for it on the wheel with the oranges.

11 appears to be a pink holo - possibly/probably the same one that was on wheel 12, and I'm still trying to figure out what that is - maybe a Chirality? I think the Chirality I have is more purple than that, though. I'm hoping as I go through my stash some of these questions will sort themselves out. The only other thing I can think of is that it might have been was that Nicka K that I sent to Karen. But I thought it was more purple than that - and not holo.)

I already posted one picture from the upper part of this wheel but here it is again:

(Note that's probably only interesting to my fellow obsessive-compulsives:) I pulled that up from Blogspot's cache of my previously-posted pictures. What interests me is that when I uploaded it it was oriented as landscape. I'm sure this is the original way I took it but I'm surprised it reverted to that. Oh well, just one of those little technical weirdnesses. I'm not a full-tilt OCD-er but sometimes I do get overly focused on the small things!)

Here's the OPI set in the box - I think many of these are ones that most nail junkies are already familiar with, anyway. (My cousin the cosmetologist looked at them and said something about those just being "the basic OPIs" which sounds about right to me. But as I said previously, I haven't bought OPI much recently, so I didn't have any of them.)

(Also note: I was intending to get some more detail/bottle shots by the time this went up, but if I don't make it I'm just going to let it go up anyway, and add the rest later, like I did with the last one. At least that keeps the entry from being excessively long!)

Nail wheel weekend redux - more about pinks

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a few pictures of wheel 12, which was the remaining pinks, mostly the paler ones. I mostly don't have bottle pictures, still, but at least here's close-ups of the wheel.

The first few were so pale you couldn't see them, so I didn't bother with closeups. 4 and 5 are those unnamed (probably L.A. colors) minis, over Zoya Shelby on the top half. 6 is Chloe over Shelby. 7 is Aphrodite's Pink Nightie, which I showed a picture of in the entry linked above.

You can't really see 8 in either of these pictures, so I won't bother to talk about it! 9 is L'Oreal Departure, an old Top Speed color. (In fact, somewhere among all these pictures I have been taking, I have a picture of what I believe to be my oldest polishes, and Departure is one of those. I'll get around to that one eventually! 10 is Zoya Shelby, and 11 is OPI Japanese Tea Garden. (And actually I'm still not sure what the heck 12 is.)

13 is Rimmel English Rose, which is a dark rose and seems quite dissimilar from anything else I have, really. 14 is Zoya Lara, and 15 seems to be Departure again - I think that was because I decided it belonged over here with the brownish-pinks/pinkish browns.) 16 is ma.nish.ma. Dusty Spring Fields, which I brought home from Ohio last summer because apparently you can't buy those around here (not anyplace I know of, anyway - I've only ever seen them at RiteAid, and we don't have those).

Let's see, 17 is Ulta Chic Peek, which was also on another wheel, I believe. I think I doubled that one up because I couldn't make up my mind where it belonged. Here it is with the raisin colors, just the other day. And it really is hard to put your finger on what color it is - a sort of glass-fleck purple-brown. It's quite nice, though.

(And that leaves 19, which is covered below, and 20, which is still a mystery.)

Here's #19 with the bottle, Nostalgic As If! - I think this is over Zoya Reagan. When I wore it, I tried it over a purple and I liked that a lot. Here the pinks don't show up as much. Aha, here it is over On a Trip. I thought I must have a picture somewhere. (Also, that is the very first nail wheel that I did, in that entry. It makes me happy just to look at it. Apparently I really love green.)