Shopping Frenzy, Lilith

This is Sephora by OPI Shopping Frenzy and Zoya Lilith:

These are pretty similar and they are apparently both discontinued. S-OPI is discontinued altogether, of course, so if you were really determined it might be easier to get your hands on the Zoya. (For a long time Zoya hardly ever discontinued anything, but in the past couple of years they seem to have given up on that, and a bunch of the older/presumably lesser-selling polishes have gone by the wayside, including Lilith.) Anyway, these are not true dupes, you can see that from the swatches, but they are both fuchsias that seem to have some blue flash - in Lilith's case, quite a lot of blue flash. I would count both of these among my favorites.

Peru-B-Ruby, Riley, Mad Women

OPI Peru-B-Ruby (from a long-ago South-American-themed collection, I think), Zoya Riley, and Miracle Gel Mad Women:

I'd still call these in "raspberry" territory, but the first two, at least, can read as red some of the time. Peru-B-Ruby is an old favorite of mine - and I found a note where I'd talked about this previously, saying it is a dupe or near-dupe for Chanel Tentation. I don't own any Chanel polishes at all so I can't testify as to that personally, but the link above has a comparison. I'm pretty sure it's long-discontinued, although there are some bottles for sale on Amazon, if you're in love enough to pay those prices. (This was my second bottle and it's still pretty full, so I'm good for the foreseeable future, anyway.) Unlike Peru-B-Ruby, which is pretty shimmer-packed, Riley is just a plain old creme, and once again I failed to be captivated by it. It seemed like I would like it but apparently not; it may be bound for the destash box. I do like Mad Women; it wore well and it's a pretty interesting color. (It seems to me like it might have a just a hint of blue shimmer to it, although I haven't found anything to back me up on that.)

Notes:
OPI current polishes here (Peru-B-Ruby is not there)

February Sephora Play

I more or less took March off from blogging (except for a few NOTD posts), so I'm playing catch-up. Here's the February Sephora Play box, and I also have March coming up. (They don't show up until after the middle of the month, so it'll still be a couple of weeks before April turns up.)

February is called Now & Later:

The copy on the booklet cover: "This month: lip tips, hairstyle savers, purse essentials, and more how-tos for looking your best all day -- and night."

The perfume sample this month is Black Orchid; below that we have Bumble & Bumble Pret-a-Powder. The little silvery box contained a black Lancome pencil, seen below. Then there were two lippies, BareMinerals "Pop of Passion" and a MUFE lipstick. I like the BareMinerals one (which is an oil-balm formula) more, mostly just because I like the brighter color more. The lipstick is Copper Pink, which is much more muted and I wasn't too crazy about it. (Oh, and the other item is a Tarte mascara.)

Juicy, Flirt, Peonies Gone Wild

I started a new swatch project in January and almost immediately got bogged down on getting the pictures up. I did a post weeks ago that was a couple of pictures like the one below - wheel and bottle pictures, from a wheel full of raspberry-leaning dark-pinks and reds. I started doing a second post to follow up on that and one picture was as far as I got. But I decided that one picture at a time was probably the best way to go, anyway, so here we go and I'll hopefully get more of these up, gradually.

Here we have Zoya Juicy, piCture pOlish flirt (I'm using their capitalization scheme, just this once), and Bonita Peonies Gone Wild.

(I'm going on the assumption that you can read enough of my scribbling on the wheel proper to figure out which is which there. They go clockwise, which here translates to bottom-to-top.) Juicy (which I believe is discontinued - here it is on Amazon) is sheer, although not actually a jelly, and a bit more neutral than these other two. Flirt is more or less just a very bright fuchsia creme. I wore it once and had wear issues; I need to try it at least once more before I make a destash decision, because it is a really nice color! Peonies Gone Wild is a fuchsia and a heavy shimmer, and I believe I had it on my favorites-of-2014 list. I think it must have been LE, though - I bought it from RiteAid when we were in Ohio and I don't see it on Bonita Salon's current colors. I think must have been from a spring or summer of 2014 collection - I seem to recall a floral-themed display.

Added:
Juicy apparently had pigment problems - scroll way down here for more on that.
Some previous discussion of Flirt and Juicy here.
More about Peonies Gone Wild: very bad 2014 mani here; somebody else's swatches here and here.

Late March manicures

You really can't see what I'd like to show you about this polish combo in this picture, but it's all I've got:

This is Formula X Cosmic (which was on clearance) with Jin Soon Gossamer on top. You can see that Cosmic looks pretty shimmery and purple in the bottle, but it's not really visible on the nails. (I had read reviews that said exactly this before I bought it, so I shouldn't have been surprised.) It goes on just as a dark blurple with maybe a slight shimmer. Gossamer on top of it actually did a good job of faking the look I wanted from Cosmic alone - that's the part you can't really see. (Jin Soon's website is here but I'm pretty sure that Gossamer is discontinued because I bought it from a clearance sale at Space.NK or somewhere back a couple of years ago.)

Oh - also, Cosmic is really really near to being a one-coater. I would have said it was, but it pulled a bit when I put the top-coat on, so I'd probably recommend two coats to avoid that. You can't see it unless you look really close, though.

Before these I had on a couple of different greens, because I was in St Patrick's Day mode. I started with Cirque Lichen, which I really love - it's a shimmery dark olive, I'd call it. I wore that a couple of days, and then when it chipped a bit I added a green glitter on top of that - I have so many green glitters that I pulled three out of my stash without even looking hard, and that's not all of them. I asked my husband if he had a preference (I believe the three were RBL Locavore and Meow Meow, and Nostalgic Patricia) and he picked Patricia, so I patched up Lichen and put a couple of coats of Patricia on top. I really like Patricia so that was a good choice as far as I'm concerned.

After it was too late for this St.Pat's Day, I found this picture from last year of Pretty Serious VT-100 with matte top-coat. I really need to wear that one again, St.Pat's or not.

NOTD: AB/Frogtown

This is Aurora Borealis (from Lucky 13) over Frogtown (Pretty Serious) - it's in shade so it's kind of dark, but you can see the shimmer pretty well just the same!

Frogtown always looks sort of blue-green in the bottle, to me, but it goes on the nail as just green, as far as I can tell - it may have a slight blue tinge but it reads as green. As for Aurora Borealis, it was LE, I know, but you can probably find other similar polishes out there, since flakies are back in fashion these days. It shimmers green/purple/bronze (that's what I am seeing, anyway).

NOTD: Nailkale & more

I've been distracted by other things and haven't posted here much for a couple of weeks. But I'd better catch up on recent manicures or I'll forget completely, and that's the whole reason for this blog's existence, really. I fill in with other stuff, but remembering what I've worn is really the main purpose here, to me.

So when last heard from on the manicure front, I was wearing the remnants of my Valentine's manicure, as detailed here. I did eventually get that off with Dip-It, but what I didn't say there was that it wasn't until several days later, because I put something else on top of it instead, first. I believe I was thinking about jellies - so that the lace stuff would show through, see - but what I ended up with was Excuse Me I Blurpled, several coats of it, which did not let the lace effect show at all. But it did look pretty, so hey. Then a couple of days later when that chipped, that was when I got out the Dip-It.

Here's the Blurpled:

I actually am wearing this again now, over OPI Give Me Space (because I should have known better than to buy a holo, because holos just are not really my thing), and it doesn't look as good over dark blue as it did alone. (It's kind of like when I kept buying pastels because, y'know, pastels are pretty - despite the fact that they just don't look good on me. I keep buying the occasional holo because they look pretty in the bottle, or in somebody's pictures, and then I am always disappointed when I get them. I'm hard-headed, I guess, and it just takes me several wasted purchases to get certain things to sink in.)

(Added: I said I didn't like Excuse Me I Blurpled as much over dark blue, but actually in some lights it looks really gorgeous. I should also know by now never to judge anything only from how it looks in my living room.)

I have been doing a bunch of swatching to nail wheels which I mostly haven't posted yet, and one thing I was looking at were the sort of transitional grayed-out purples.

So this is more or less in order from most-gray to most-purple. The OPI mini is Tickle My France-y, and then we have NailKale Windsor Mews and Zoya Odette. (Interestingly, these seem to be an exception to the pastel thing I mentioned above - they do look pretty good on me despite being pale.) I got the NailKale set for Christmas and hadn't worn it so I did a whole mani with Windsor Mews. Later I added SOPI It's Bouquet With Me, and mattified it. I really liked that. I am all into the matte lately.

It's Bouquet With Me was a "Jewelry Top Coat" - SOPI had a whole line of these - and it's a holo glitter. It's sort of purpleish-pink, which is why I thought of it, I guess. Without the matte top-coat it's too sparkly for me, usually, but matted down it's just fine. (I think I was using Matte Me Crazy this week.)

(On the strength of a couple of tries with NailKale, I like it. The base-coat, especially, does seem to do something beneficial for your nails, and it lasts well.)

After that, I also matted-down Dollish These Are Not The Droids You're Looking For:

(I enlarged this so you can see the gold in this a bit. It did show up more in real life.) I'm not sure if Wet Cement was really the right undercoat for this, but it's not terrible, at least. TANtDYLF is mixed glitters with silver, gold, and blue (C-3PO and R2-D2's colors together, I assume), so I didn't know what to pick. Anyway, I tried it before without the matte and I kind of hated it, so I did like it much better this way. I'll have another try with finding the right undies for it, though!