Trying the untrieds: Vice

Considering this was taken in the car, this picture is amazingly well-lighted:

I had actually painted my nails in the car, so I'm not going to apologize for the lack of clean-up. This is the kind of thing that happens when you live in one town and work in another - you end up grabbing the nail polish on the way out the door and doing your nails in a convenient parking lot. Totally unglamourous, but it works.

So this is Urban Decay Vice, which I've had since Christmas and never got around until trying until now. And it's lovely, but did I really need another violet-ish dark purple? No, not so much, obviously, or I wouldn't have taken six months to get around to wearing it.

Playing with polish: Ultimate Fandom part 1

Well, so I am in possession of an awful lot of Dollish minis, and I decided to start my experimentation with Look At The Flowers, Lizzie, which is the Walking Dead polish. I did a bit of dabbing onto one hand and I just couldn't get the level of green background color that Mishka got with two coats (scroll down toward the bottom of that entry for her swatches), so I decided it needed an undercoat. And I wanted it to be pale green, which was a problem in that I don't have much in the way of pale greens that aren't bright lime green. So what I ended up using was Mermaid's Dream. It's kind of an unconventional combination but I like it.

I put this on late last night and then I got up and washed my hair and went to work without ever stopping to clean this up at ALL, and it shows, but I'm going to let you see anyway:

This is Butter London base coat, 1 coat of Mermaid's Dream, two coats of Look At The Flowers Lizzie, and two coats of HK girl (which is presumably what I flooded my cuticles with so abominably). I did not stop to do much in the way of dabbing with this glitter, and you can tell that, too. I didn't end up getting much of the pink glitter out of the bottle and onto my nails, but I really don't care, I like the mottled green look that I ended up with. It doesn't look all that great in close-up, but from a distance it's very nice. I gather it's supposed to look like a meadow, and it's really a pretty good approximation of that.

Since this is a multi-fandom collection with a whopping 11 fandoms in question, I thought I would do a bit of a geek-cred test on myself with these. Do I get the reference? For this one, it's a no, or at least a "not exactly." I have not seen the Walking Dead episode in question, because I quit watching after Season 2. But I did watch for two seasons until the gore level got above my tolerance - plus my husband still watches, and he favored me with a fairly detailed recounting of the whole "Lizzie" business. It wasn't hard to figure out from those meadow pictures where the thing was headed, anyway.

Stash: neutral purples

I dumped all of my purples out on the bed, and sorted into a spectrum by what leaned red and what leaned blue, and these are the ones that were in the center. That's not to say they're entirely neutral, truly, but they seemed the most neutral, anyway.

• Essence Snow White Evil Queen (that is, there was a Snow White polish line and Evil Queen is the name of this polish)
• Orchid Island Couture, which desperately needed shaking up a little
• Ulta Celebutante
• Colorstay Amethyst
• Zoya Daul (which I think actually has a red-violet base but doesn't read that way)
• Zoya Savita, from the Matte Velvet collection
• Zoya Suri
• WnW Fastdry Buffy the Violet Slayer (here's a gratuitous Buffy/Angel gifset to go with it)
• Xtreme Wear Purple Potion
• Nfu Oh 51 (which is more neutral or more red-violet depending on the light, and I didn't really know where to put it, quite frankly)
• Julie G Holiday Gumdrops Sugar Plum Fairy
• Lippmann Let's Go Crazy
• Sinful Colors I Love You
• (upside-down) China Glaze Rendezvous With You
• Sinful Colors Winterberry

I really think some of that bottom row could and maybe should have gone in the blue-violet/gray-violet post from yesterday - especially Sugar Plum Fairy (more blue) and Rendezvous With You and Winterberry (both more gray). But oh well. And Nfu Oh 51 is just wacky. I think maybe it has a more neutral purple base and the flakes are more red, but honestly, I'm not completely sure I'm right about that, and I don't have the energy to look it up right now.

Anyway, there are some awesome polishes here. Two words: EVIL QUEEN. Plus the Lippmann and Oh 51 and the matte velvet - and I also adore both of those Sinful Colors on the bottom row, as it happens. (You can't tell it, but I Love You is actually pretty close to getting empty.)

Next up: red-violet.

Stash: blue-violet and blue-gray

The bluest and/or grayest out of my purple stash. Some of these look a little RV next to the BVs, but trust me, if you put them in with the red-violets and/or look at them in other lighting, you'll see they're not. The bluest ones are mostly at the bottom, here, but as is customary, I'm going top to bottom and left to right:

• Layla CE 39 ("Southern Lights")
• Butter London Lillibet's Jubilee*
• Insta-Dri Grape Going, a duochrome
• Zoya Mira
• Dollish Polish Deadly Nightshade mini
• BL No More Waity, Katie
• Zoya Lotus
• Megalast On a Trip
• RBL Purple Haze
• Revlon Not So Blueberry (scented)
• Sinful Colors Fiji
• S-OPI  I Don't Bite
• Diamond Strength Royal Invite
• Color Club - this is unlabeled, but I'm pretty sure it's Eternal Beauty

*In case somebody hasn't heard this story before: "Lillibet's Jubilee" refers to the Queen's Jubilee - Lillibet is a nickname of Elizabeth's. This, No More Waity, Katie, and Pitter Patter - which was in the previous entry - were released last summer as a set called "The Royals," and I bought them when BL was having a F&F sale - which should be coming up pretty soon, actually, if it's a regular thing. (I think that Pitter Patter was a genuine one-manufacturing-run LE - at least so far, to my knowledge - while Lillibet is an LE that's been re-released at least once or twice, and NMWK has been around for several years but I believe is now discontinued.) (And actually I checked BL's website and Lillibet's Jubilee is listed as a current color, but the other two are not.)

Man, I've got an awful lot of acronyms in that paragraph - do I need to put in a guide to my own acronyms? Some of them are more-or-less standard and some not so much. For the confused:
BL = Butter London
F&F = friends and family
LE = limited edition
NMWK = No More Waity, Katie (which was in honor of the royal engagement back several years ago now!)
and from the paragraph before:
RBL = Rescue Beauty Lounge
S-OPI = Sephora by OPI (you may see this elsewhere as just SOPI or sometimes $OPI)

(So. Back to topic.) Every time I talk about Layla, I wonder about their numbering/naming system - they don't put names on the bottles but apparently there ARE names, every time I've looked, I've found one. I think you can buy Layla at Target now in the US, right? so this will presumably come up more than it used to. Anyway, this one is a pretty unusual color - a dark blue-leaning, grayed-out purple. I can't think of anything else like it, at least. Then next we have Lillibet, which is also somewhat unusual, a very silvery pale purple (BL calls it lavender but I don't really see much in the way of blue tones to it. (Actually, maybe I need to stop saying these colors are unusual - this is just a range where a lot of these colors are going to be pretty unusual, especially the grayed-out ones, I think.) Next we have Grape Going, a blue/purple duochrome. I've had mine for a while, but I believe this one is still in the current collection. Zoya Mira is a medium, blue-toned purple creme. And rounding out the top row, we have Deadly Nightshade, a purple & blue glitter which was a Halloween color last year and possibly the year before too - seems like I read that somewhere at some point, anyway - so if you like it, look for it to maybe roll around again this fall. On the other hand, this is one where there are other polishes fairly similar, so I wouldn't go poisoning anybody to get hold of it (so to speak). (And yes, this was a Nightmare Before Christmas themed collection, that it was from, if there are any fans out there who are wondering. It was the first thing I thought of when I saw that name, myself.)

No More Waity, Katie may be discontinued but it still has a page on BL's website. They call it a greige with lilac glitter. I've always thought it read as a very greyed-out lavender, but anyway, it's a fabulous color, much better than it sounds. Zoya Lotus is another very subtle color - a dusty blue-violet with a lot of pinkish shimmer. On A Trip is sort of a traditional lavender, a creme. And Purple Haze is in that same sort of range, but a bit dustier.

On the bottom row, there's Not So Blueberry, which is, well, not blue at all, but a shimmery, slightly blue-leaning violet. Then we have three blue-violets with shimmer, but none of them are dupes at all: Fiji is darker and more sheer. I Don't Bite is lighter and even more shimmer-packed. And Royal Invite is also really packed, but with multicolor shimmer, in this case. And then last of all, we have Eternal Beauty, one of Color Club's line of strong linear holos. It's stunning, and I'm not even really a fan of holos.

Orchid of the Year

Remember when I did a whole post about Radiant Orchid, and what color was that anyway? Well, here is Lynderella's answer, and man, it's really beautiful.

(Note that this first picture seems to lean more blue than the one below. I think it's the one below that's probably the more accurate rendering of the color.)

I even got halfway decent pictures. This is over Zoya Mira, which was just what was handy and seemed reasonably close to the right color.* It's actually one coat of glitter on most nails and two on a couple - I did a second coat on like one nail on each hand and then I couldn't tell the difference anyway, so I stopped. Bonus points if you can figure out which is which, because I'm not even sure.

This is now the most expensive polish I own, but I don't even care, because I love it.

Added: Here is the link to Lynnderella but I think I literally bought the last bottle of this. (At least, so eBay told me.)

*I wouldn't want you to think I plan things. Because anybody who knows me very well at all can tell you I don't.

Stash: dark purples

It's so hard to tell one dark purple from another that I reswatched everything, using the other half of that wheel I showed yesterday.

Here are the bottles:

• OPI Who Are You Wearing? (which was originally from the 2007 Holiday in Hollywood collection) (one coat)
• Revlon Moon Candy Orbit (one coat plus a bit of the glitter)
• SH Salon Plum It (two coats)
• OPI Lincoln Park After Dark (the mini in the center - from a Chicago collection several years ago now, I believe) (one coat)
• Color Show Amethyst Couture, from the LE Brocades collection
• Sephora By OPI Just A Little Dangerous (two coats)
• Butter London Pitter Patter, which was an LE release in honor of the baby prince last year
• Jet Set Nightlife (one coat)
• Hard Candy Vinyl, a mini (one coat) (this is the long-gone "old" Hard Candy incarnation)
• Urban Decay Vice (one coat)
• Ulta Empty Stocking, from a "Wicked Wonderland" set some years ago (one coat)

If anything, they look somewhat lighter in this picture than they do most of the time, but that's probably a good thing, since you can tell more about the colors than if they looked darker.

Not too many of these colors are widely available; either they were limited edition in the first place (the Color Show Brocades, Pitter Patter, Vice, Empty Stocking), they're older colors that are now retired (Who Are You Wearing? and Orbit) or they're from entire lines that are retired (SH Salon, Sephora by OPI, the old versions of Hard Candy and Jet Set). Actually now that I look at them, I think the only one of these that's a current, widely available color is Lincoln Park After Dark, which is popular and a classic and probably isn't going anywhere any time soon. Vice is not terribly old and might still be obtainable even though it was LE, as are all of Urban Decay's polishes these days. (The Brocades came out around the same time, last fall, but I haven't seen hide nor hair of them since they were first released; they seem to have been snapped up and disappeared completely. Still, it's a drugstore polish and it's possible there are bottles of those floating around, too. I haven't poked around on the internet to see.)

But the availability question is not going to stop me from talking about these polishes just the same. Here's the wheel, in the same order:

Who Are You Wearing? is very much in the "blurple" camp. So is Orbit, although it's not quite as obvious. The glittery end of this polish "wand" is almost completely dried-up, but I smeared a little bit on the tip there on the wheel so you could get some idea what it looked like. I remember that back when I first tried this out I thought that by the time I got the whole thing on, base and glitter, that it looked completely blue and not purple at all. But the base on its own looks more purple than blue, I think. I tried to put these in order going from blue-violet to red-violet, and the next few are maybe more neutral purples, although Lincoln Park After Dark, in particular, goes on so dark even with one coat that it's hard to tell. Plum It, LPAD, Amethyst Couture, and Just a Little Dangerous all seem to be pretty neutral, though. And maybe Nightlife, too - at least in the lighting in this picture it looks like it - but I'm holding this wheel up in front of me as I write this, and in the light in this room I can't see that effect I see above, where Pitter Patter looks more red than the two on either side of it. I suspect that it's true, that it's a little redder, but I don't think you're going to be able to tell most of the time. And Vinyl almost looks like a dark-wine color in the light here. On the whole I don't think I did a terribly good job of ordering these, at least on the right-hand side. I think it's Pitter Patter and Vinyl that lean the most red - but I also think most normal (by which I mean non-color-obsessed) people are going to look at these and not see much difference, because they're all so dark.

Half a wheel

This is everything I bought on our recent trip up north, plus some layering that includes a polish I'd bought a while back and forgot about for a while. I didn't number these, so we'll just go left to right:

• Studio M Sexy Siren, 2 coats
• 1 coat of Jordana Crystal Glitter (which is the one I bought and promptly forgot I had) over 1 coat of Bonita Peonies Gone Wild
• 1 coat of Jesse's Girl Firefly over 1 coat of Peonies Gone Wild (this is much more subtle than Crystal Glitter, but very pretty - sort of a shimmer with some gold in it)
• Peonies Gone Wild on its own - I think this is 2 coats
• Julie G Butterflies and Rosebuds - I'm wearing this now and it's really pretty - I would call it sort of a blackened red-violet microglitter. I think this is also two coats but I'm wearing three, so that may be why it looks somewhat darker than in this picture
• Studio M Purple Medallion, which picked up a much more blue-toned sparkle in this picture than I've noticed it having in real life
• Wild Shine Deception, the LE jelly, 2 coats
• Bonita Royal Highness, 2 coats
• a layering combo of Deception over Purple Medallion over Royal Highness, as seen here

On that last one, I see that I didn't even remember to mention in the other entry that I had put Royal Highness on the bottom - it was just what I had handy to put on the bottom of all this, since I wasn't sure how opaque Purple Medallion was, exactly. I don't really think it made much difference with the final color.

So here's an iPhone picture that actually looks pretty decent, for once. This is Butterflies and Rosebuds:

I kinda hate that name (maybe she meant it ironically, do you think? I never watched "Julie G"s videos, I don't know what she's like) but anyway, I really do like this color. I spent the last year kind of avoiding all the bright-pink kind of colors, but apparently my love for them has come back, because, well, just look at that wheel picture above. I didn't even realize it, but practically everything I bought was in a berry/orchid sort of range, except for the one blue.