Square Hue Kalbelia collection

It's been more than a year since I got a Square Hue box - I'm not at all sure how long I'll stick with it, but I was lured back by the changes they made, where you can skip months or you can pick two out of their three monthly polishes instead of getting all three. That's what I subscribed to - Box No.2, they call it. I just went in and picked the two I want for next month. I don't remember what the monthly theme was, but there were two brights and a "straw" color - and that's certainly not my kind of thing, so I got the two brights. (I think it's a coppery red and a plum.)

But that's next month. This year's Square Hue is dance-themed, and June is Kalbelia, which is a folk dance. Here is an example, and here are the swatch card and the polishes in the box (although I had already pulled them out long enough to swatch them, as you can see):

You can see the space in the middle where the 3rd bottle would go. In this case the third polish was a bright pink creme, and I figured I have plenty of those already and didn't need it. You can't see the bottles very well in the picture above, so there are a couple of different shots below. (If you're interested in knowing what these names mean, it's just below; if that doesn't interest you, the swatches are there, just skip the next few paragraphs and scroll down.)

First of all, Kalbelia is the dance, we've covered that (I didn't know the name but I do remember having seen that type of folk-dance before - I couldn't tell you where!) and I do actually know what a lengha is - like a lot of my general fashion knowledge, it's one of those things I learned from Pinterest. It's spelled various ways but basically in this case it means the skirt like the one above, which is tight at the waist and then flares out. You hear the term "lengha choli" and that is the name for the whole outfit - the choli is the top and the lengha is the skirt. (I can't believe I actually found a use for the time I spent looking this up one day a year or so ago!)

I did not know "odhani" but apparently it is also a garment - it means "wrap" but it seems to often mean the headcoverings that you see in Indian fashion, which are wrapped around the body and up over the head.

The garment names don't really seem to have much connection to the colors themselves - an outfit could be any of these colors, presumably. (For the Kalbelia dance, it may be traditional to have them be dark with bright embroidery, as in the picture above, but I'm not at all sure about that part. The videos I watched all seemed to have a color-scheme something like that, anyway)

In this case, Odhani is the blue - which is a crelly - and Lengha is a taupe/brown shimmer:

One way I can tell this (the blue, that is) is a crelly is because the color looks noticeably different depending on which side of the bottle you look at. It was darker on the back, here, and lighter on the side. I think that's because crellies tend to separate. (For a fairly extreme example, see this one.) You might notice that these colors are (coincidentally!) a little similar to two of the three Wet n Wild ones, I just got, but you'll also see in the swatches below that they are both darker. Definitely not dupes.

Here is Odhani:

See how much paler Odhani seems in this picture than the one above? But actually the swatch does seem to match this one quite well. At the top of the wheel you can see Periwinkle Of My Eye, and it definitely looks considerably lighter, although both are grayed-out blues and are certainly fairly similar.

And here's Lengha:

You could think of it as a darker version of the nice taupe from the Wet n Wild collection (again, visible at the top of the wheel). But it also has really pretty shimmer to it.

Wet n Wild lip products

Yesterday I showed new Wonder Gel polishes that I got, but I didn't show the picture of the whole haul, so here's that:

This is something I ordered late one night a couple of weeks ago, so this pre-dates the two Sephora orders I showed last week - and price-wise, this was much less of a splurge than that was. Wet n Wild had a bunch of stuff marked down, and I was interested in some of the limited editions (Unicorn Glow!) and trying some lip products out. And of course I ordered several colors of nail polish while I was at it. (They have free shipping over $35 so I was trying to hit that mark. I also got an extra 10% discount that came in an e-mail, so with Wet n Wild's very reasonable prices I got a lot of stuff for barely over $35.)

Here are the lip products:

I really like the ombre one (the double-ended one) but I like them all pretty well. I never end up wearing matte lipstick like this Megalast by itself - it makes my lips feel too dry - so I end up using it as a basecoat, more or less, and this is a good color for that. (I've been doing this a lot with that Kat Von D I got last summer and it works really well.)

So the idea on the ombre one, in case you haven't seen this before, is that you use the purple like a regular lipstick and the pink only on the inner part of your lips - where you pucker, basically. I had seen pictures of this concept and I thought it looked interesting, but it's probably not really meant for somebody my age, any more than that highlighter is. Still, I think I'll enjoy playing with it. The color is called Mutually Beneficial, as you can see below.

I noticed that this product had some really bad reviews, but they all seem to be talking about how much they hate the other color combinations, not the quality of the product. I think most people bought the paler ones, which is the last thing I would buy. You can look at the picture above and see exactly what colors I like on my lips - I like things that lean at least a little purple, for the most part - berry and fuchsia colors and things like that. The middle item, the one that looks really purple is a lip gloss that was a limited edition color, and I took a guess that it would probably look much less purple in real life and I was correct. (It's called Violet in Furs and it was all of 99 cents.) The Megalast color is Back to the Fuchsia.

(I'll do another post later & talk about the remaining items. This is already plenty long.)

Wet n Wild Wonder Gel

I bought a bunch of Wet n Wild products, and I'm going to show the nail polish in one post and everything else in another post tomorrow.

This first one was a new color for spring, but it doesn't say it's limited edition so it might stay around for a while. I was almost sorry I bought this because I was unsure from the pictures how much difference there was between the lavender you can see on the wheel and the taupe, but actually there's quite a lot. They're both grayed-out, definitely, but the lavender is quite lavender and the taupe is quite brownish. So now I'm glad I bought both. (Oh, and this is called Taupe As A Joke, which I feel like is a joke I'm not quite getting!)

Then this is Lavender Out Loud:

Not very loud, but quite pretty. Maybe it's more of a... heather color, really? but whatever.

The third one is my favorite - Periwinkle - no, make that Peri-wink-le Of An Eye:

Yum.

This Is Tree-mendous

This is China Glaze This Is Tree-mendous:

There are three of these microglitters, and I've already shown the other two - that was All Wrapped Up, the blue-violet, and Put A Bow On It, the blackened pink. This has a pretty similar formula to the other two, except that it seems to have a clear base, which makes it paler-colored. However, my swatch here is only one coat, so that made it even lighter. Later I put a second coat on and it did darken up to more like the bottle color.

(I had originally swatched this last summer, and I was apparently feeling more verbose that day so that entry goes on about how it looks with top-coat and so forth, if you're interested!)

Daul

Here is Zoya Daul, which was in my top 10 favorite Zoyas:

Zoya describes it as "a medium red-toned purple base with heavy purple and gold iridescent metallic sparkle. The shiny gold sparkle makes this shimmering purple polish extra bright and lively."

Here's where I talked about it before (a year or so ago). I find this color really confusing sometimes, and if you follow that link you can probably tell I was feeling confused by it that day. It's one of those colors that looks really different on different days and in different lights. In this picture it pretty much matches Zoya's description that talks about purple and gold sparkle. But other times it looks murkier and that's where the confusion comes in. Still, it always looks pretty good, even in the murky mode, so how much can you complain?

Sephora haul

I went a little crazy on Sephora's website last week - twice, actually, so this came in two pieces. Plus, the Sephora collection night mask was on sale for $10 and I bought one in each order without having tried it; luckily it seems to be just what I hoped. I got extra samples with one order, and somewhere in here was a 100-point bonus item, too - that was the Clinique, I'm pretty sure. Anyway, here's everything (except the second night mask, which has already migrated to my bedroom):

I know it's not that much stuff, but the eye gel is an expensive item and the styling lotion wasn't cheap either. I couldn't resist the eye gel though because apparently it's something almost brand-new and it's already the best-selling eye gel Sephora sells. Read all about it here. I had had a sample of the Don't Blow It styler and really liked it - and I'm totally its target customer, I guess, because I hardly ever blow-dry my hair. And then I have so many nice samples because there was a promo where you got three with a $35 purchase.

TBT: various fuchsias

I used to wear bright pinks all the time, especially along about 5 years ago just before I started this blog, and then I got tired of them and didn't wear them much for a long time. But now I seem to be feeling them again, so I thought I'd pull some out of the vault.

I was really big on Zoya Chloe, for a long time, so Chloe-over-pink figured big in manicure pictures early on. This one was labeled "chloe-jetset" and I think the Jet Set color in question may be called Hasty.

I mentioned something the other day about quick-dry polish names, and I actually know a good bit about that subject because a great deal of my stash in the early 2000s was quick-dry polishes, especially Top Speed (which is Revlon) and Jet Set (L'Oreal). I think they still make Top Speed, don't they, but Jet Set has gone into the great polish beyond as far as I know.

Look, here's some old Jet Set polishes - Hasty is the Jet Set Shine one, as you might guess.

This one is a jelly sandwich - Zoya Paloma over Zoya Luna. It's a classic, as far as I'm concerned.

(I guess it's more properly a berry-ish color than a fuchsia, but I'm going to let it pass, because I like it!)

This is what I'm wearing now, and I didn't even remember ever having worn it before - it's China Glaze Santa Red My List.

This is the old manicure - typically messy - but I put it on last night over Expresso because it sorta kinda seemed to coordinate. Anyway, it's a pinky-red metallic and it's really pretty. That's what made me think I was feeling these colors again.

This says "flirt" which I think is a Picture Polish color. I remembered as being darker than this.

Maybe I'll have to give it another try.

One more, and then I'll stop - this is Ichi Hanami. Not a great picture but I really like the polish.