Vestido de Gala, Slammin' Red

This is Jade Vestido de Gala and Studio M Slammin' Red:

These two are not dupes but they're pretty similar, similar colors and similarly packed glitters. Vestido de Gala is a bit more purple. Slammin' Red maybe looks red in some lights but you'll never convince me it's a true red. (I got my Jade polishes from Llarowe so I don't know if there's a US seller for those right now. If you live where there are Meijer stores, that's where you get hooked up with the Studio M's - they have a whole range of these glitters - I just looked and they're still showing up on their website.)

(I did some musing about the translation of this Spanish phrase over here, so scroll down & read it there if that interests you!)

Not that it's hugely different, but here's what I said about them a while back. I'm repeating some pictures that I posted previously, but I like this format where there are only a couple of polishes per post, I'm using these pages as references, so gradually I hope to do all of my polishes in this format. (I'm trying not to post more than a couple a day, though.)

Also note that I got this from KarenD, and here's her post with comparisons between several Studio M glitters.

He Loves Me I Love Him Not, Alegra

For a while Orchid was trying to do funny polish names - I guess riffing off of OPI, thus you get names like He Loves Me, I Love Him - Not! (I think that was how it was punctuated, anyway.) More recently they seem to have given up on that idea. And then with it, another bright microglitter, which is Zoya Alegra.

They seem more alike on the wheel than they do in the bottle, although you can also see that the Orchid polish is considerably more glittery. Alegra is sparkly but not quite so packed. Both of these are super-pretty colors, which I haven't worn much recently because I haven't been wearing pinks all that much. (By the way, I haven't been going on about the fall fashion shows here, because I've mostly been doing it on Twitter instead, but let me give you a tip here: don't pack all your fuchsia/magenta-type colors away when summer is over, this year. These colors were all over the fall fashion shows.)

NOTD: Rikki + Locavore, Cor Blimey + TinC

This was my Easter manicure - grass-green with multi-colored glitter. I liked this one a lot so it may get trotted out again at some point in the future.

My fingers are at a slightly odd angle, which makes my nails look shorter than they actually are, I think. They're pretty short because I cut them down to match the shortest one (the ring-finger) but they're not cut right down to the quick or anything.

Anyway, this is Zoya Rikki, which is the grass-green part, more or less, a fairly pale green metallic, with RBL Locavore on top. Locavore is mixed small glitters - I'm pretty sure I saw green and gold and purple, at least. This is the first time I'd tried Locavore, and I did really like it - although I did end up matte-ing it down, as I usually do these days.


And since Easter was a week ago, here's the one that followed it - first Butter London Cor Blimey, and then Travel in Colour on top of that later on.

I made a mess of this manicure - for one thing it was very slow to dry, which might have had to do with the weather, I don't know. But anyway, you can see the color, which is a very dark purple. It doesn't read as black, though, which is always nice. I did put Seche Vite over this - on its own it's got a definite satin-tone to it, not quite matte but close.

I wore that for a day and then I put Travel In Colour (the China Glaze color-shifter topcoat) on to cover up most of the mess - but then I liked it so much that after a couple more days when that had chipped I did the whole thing over again:

Travel In Colour did its usual thing, which is to shift it towards pink, so that it ends up more of a red-violet. Plus this bottle of TinC was very thick - so much so that I was wondering if I hadn't shut it tightly enough at some point - which made it turn the whole thing much lighter. But I really do like it this way, so it worked out.

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.