NOTD: Yuki-onna over No-Buy

When last heard from on the manicure front, I was wearing No-Buy, the red with gold shimmer. It's really, really pretty, but it did chip a bit after several days (I'm fudging there because it was a week or so ago and I've lost track of what I did what day, quite honestly) and so I did my usual thing, I patched it up and slapped something else on top of it to make it last longer. And I used Yuki-onna, the Pretty Serious top-coat that I bought at the same time I bought No-Buy.

You can see my slapped-together patch job pretty clearly if you look close, but you can also see how pretty Yuki-onna is, without changing the color of the polish much. (Although I have to say the gold shimmer part of No-Buy was pretty much unnoticeable by this point.) Like so many of my manis, this doesn't stand up to photographic scrutiny very well, but in real life it looked fine. And that's what I care about.

I have a bunch of these whitish top-coats (for example Alpha Nail and Travel In Colour), because I seem to adore them. But most of them have some sort of hidden shifty color to them. My two examples have shifty blue-to-violet bits (Alpha Nail) and a wholesale pink shift (Travel In Colour) - but Yuki-onna, as far as I can tell, doesn't go there at all. Yuki-onna is just white (and, you know, transparent and a bit glittery and slightly pearlescent, too). So that's nice, because it's different from what I already had. Note that it is also quite a bit more expensive than your average PS polish - I assume that has to do with the ingredients. I think I will enjoy playing with it a lot, though.

Miss Universe, Evening Emerald

I showed some black and charcoal-gray polishes, and then I showed some bright-blue polishes, so let me remind you where I last was in working around the color wheel - blue-greens. Next up is Essence C&G Miss Universe and Pixi Evening Emerald:

I would call these both teal, generally, but they look more blue than green, to me. And they're very similar-looking on the nail wheel. Evening Emerald is maybe a trifle more green (although still not anything that I would call emerald) and while you can't tell it here, I think I remember Miss Universe being much more sheer than you'd expect.

(I poked around at Essence and Pixi and neither of these colors seem to be current, anyway. -- Aside: has anybody tried Essence's gel polish? I wonder if it's any good. The price is definitely nice. I guess they think it's pretty good or they wouldn't have discontinued their other polishes!)


(Added: I found Miss Holly's review of Miss Universe, and I'm pretty sure I bought this from her in a blog sale, so presumably this is the very same bottle of polish pictured there!)

Blue Majesty, Blue Whale

This is NYC Blue Majesty and LynB Blue Whale:

The NYC polish, you can see, is from the Crystal Couture collection, which was a holiday collection a couple of years ago. The LynB polish is from a collection based on a pretty obscure show, to most Americans - the British comedy/quiz show QI. ("Blue whale" is a phrase that's an ongoing joke on the show - I've only seen it a few times but I do remember that much. If you've never seen it and you appreciate British comedy at all you should definitely hunt this show down.) Back to the subject at hand... you can see Blue Whale on my nail wheel easily, because it's the one with the big glitter pieces. It's very beautiful, although as I recall I thought the wear was not too good on it (as tends to happen with big glitters). Blue Majesty is very similar in color but is a much smaller-scale glitter. I think the Crystal Couture polishes were really intended to be top-coats, but I think you could get this one fairly close to opaque if you were determined to. This is two coats in the picture.

Here's Accio Lacquer's pictures of the LynB "They Say of the Acropolis" collection - Blue Whale is at the bottom. (Have a look at that link just for the gifs.) I looked on NYC's website and LynB's Etsy page and didn't find either of these, so I'm guessing they're both discontinued.

Sweet Peacock, So Blue Without You

This is Orly Sweet Peacock and China Glaze So Blue Without You:

You may remember that I said I was missing some pictures of my blue polishes. I never found the pictures, but I had the wheel and I found the polishes, except for one (Apple Berry Smoothie is the one that is still MIA). Anyway, this is the metallic contingent of the lost-then-found polishes. You can see that Sweet Peacock is the darker of the two - and it almost looks like it has a little bit of violet flash to it! (It's possible that I'm imagining that.) I would say that Sweet Peacock is my favorite of the two, if I was forced to choose, but hey, they're both pretty and shiny and pretty much exactly what you want from a metallic, generally.

(Note: There are more Sweet Peacock swatches over here.)

I was all prepared to tell you that So Blue Without You might be harder to find of the two, since it's a holiday polish from several years ago. However, it turns out that both of these polishes are current, according to their respective websites. Good metallic blues are a popular thing, I guess. Links: Orly, China Glaze

(Disclaimer: I was given the China Glaze polish as a promo.)

Rid Of Me

Here is Nostalgic Lacquer Rid Of Me:

It's the lightest color on this section of the wheel, and compared with Dorothy Who? which is just below it, it's both slightly lighter and also somewhat less glitter-packed. But it's still a gorgeous color. I usually wear it with an undercoat of some other blue. (However, to the best of my knowledge this brand is defunct, so Dorothy Who - which is a China Glaze core color, last I checked - might be a good substitute.)

NOTD: No-Buy

This is Pretty Serious No-Buy:

The bottle looks more brown than it really is, but what you see on the nail isn't too far off. I thought at first it was going to read more orange than it actually does - in fact, it reads very true to what it actually is, which is a red with heavy gold shimmer. I am supposed to be on no-buy status for reds, because I have so many, but I bought this one anyway because it was something different, and I can't say I'm sorry.

(From the Serious Business collection.)

Fetish, Via Montenapoleone

This is Cult Nails Fetish and Square Hue Via Montenapoleone:

Let's talk about Via Montenapoleone first because despite the grand name (which is a street in Milan's shopping district, if you're curious) it's just a plain ol' black, except with a satiny finish. It's not different enough to make much difference to me, though. For layering purposes I'd rather use WnW Black Creme since it's a definite one-coater. If I want a black because I'm in a gothy mood and I just want to wear black, I'd be more likely to pick something like Dovima or Fetish instead. You can't really see Fetish's cool finish here, but it's described as a wax finish. It could also be described as satiny, but more-so than ViaM... it's almost rubbery, which I assume is why the name. Here's somebody else's swatches since mine are failing on this point: Let Them Have Polish!

This is actually the only Cult Nails polish I got around to buying before they went out of business. I wish I had more. And that sort of answers the other half of the availability question (since Square Hue polishes are always LE) - it's a no on both of these, unless you just happen to find them around. I think Fetish was originally released as LE but then went on to become core after that, so it might possibly be findable if you poke around, I don't know.