Fig

Here is Sinful Colors Fig:

There are other polishes called Fig from other brands, so watch out for that. Most of them are some variation on this kind of color, like the outside of a fig, though - some are lighter, some are darker. This has a nice shimmer to it and it's pretty but I actually have never worn it much. (This might be a good candidate for that "use it or lose it" list, which I've been thinking might be a good idea. Maybe I will start a tag for that, because I'm always saying "I never wear this" but I don't usually think that's necessarily enough to destash a polish - I need a prod to wear some of those and see whether they're keepers or not.)

Added: here's my first pass at Fig, almost a year ago.

NOTD: Hypnotic

This is not a great picture (or a great manicure, for that matter) but here's Revlon Hypnotic:

It's maybe a tiny bit balky going on and that shows up here as being a little bumpy, but on the whole it wasn't bad. And it's really pretty.

(added: Another recent post on this polish: Hypnotic vs Oui!)

NOTD: Vespa

This is Zoya Vespa (a Pixie Dust) with one coat of matte top-coat:

One coat of Matte Me Crazy did not get rid of the texture entirely, but it made the sparkle less obvious. That seems to be what I like these days, subtle sparkle.

I like this polish. Basically sort of a neutral jade-green with silver sparkle. I wouldn't say it's a fabulously flattering color on me but it's not actively unflattering, either, so I can work with that.

Das Esspensive XXV

This is KL Polish Das Esspensive XXV:

This was a limited edition for Kathleen's 25th birthday (thus XXV, see), so it's very doubtful that you're going to be able to find this one. It's been sold out for ages. That's not to say there couldn't be a few bottles floating around for sale, but demand seems to be high and it's gone from the KL Polish website and has been for quite a while.

I showed a manicure with this polish back in March, but I realized that I never had done a bottle-and-wheel post, so here it is. I really like this polish a lot and I hope she'll do this formula in other colors because the application and the wear on this was really awesome.

Party By The Pool

Here is Pretty Serious Party By The Pool:

This was the first Pretty Serious polish I ever bought - that one came from Llarowe, but mostly since then I've bought things directly from the website. I've always liked this polish a lot - jelly and microglitter, what's not to like? and I noticed lately that it was on clearance, so I bought a backup bottle.

I had forgotten that the original one came in a holiday box like this, but it did - I have photographic evidence from way back in 2013.

(I had to explain to my husband the other day about how Christmas in Australia was in the middle of pool season - he had never thought about that before.)

Rescue Beauty Lounge: stash & favorites

It turns out that I have exactly 10 RBL polishes:

L-R, top row is Locavore, Small Dim Summer Stars, Peachypolish, Pretty Gritty. Middle row: Meow Meow, Chinoise, Makeupwithdrawal, Purple Haze. Bottom row: Bubblegum Punk and Scrangie 2.0.

If I was looking at the picture above and guessing what would be my favorites, I would guess the brightest pink and purple ones (which are Peachypolish and Makeupwithdrawal, respectively). I like those two, but somehow in person they don't live up to what I thought they'd be from looking at the bottles. In reality, I feel like Bubblegum Punk is pretty clearly the winner here, because I love that polish an extra extra lot. However, I'll show you the rest of my shortlist, too:

L-R: Bubblegum Punk, Scrangie 2.0, Locavore, Small Dim Summer Stars. Except huh, I didn't put Pretty Gritty in this picture, I don't know what I was thinking. Pretty Gritty was my favorite polish of 2015 - here's the post on that. I've talked about B'gum Punk pretty recently, too, so I'm not going to try to swatch again or anything. Let's call it Bubblegum Punk #1, Pretty Gritty #2, and Locavore #3. It seems silly to have any more than three favorites out of only 10. Of course this is RBL we're talking about and RBL was pretty extraordinary. (I'll just say that Scrangie 2.0 and Small Dim Summer Stars are honorable mentions, though, and leave it at that.)

I took a picture of some of the labels, which is something I've been doing lately. I don't know if anybody else cares about label pictures but I usually think they're sort of interesting.

All of my RBLs have white labels except the one pictured here; Scrangie has a red one and I'm not sure what that's supposed to tell you. I did learn something from this, though, and that's that RBL bottles are only 0.4 ounces. I had it in my head they were 0.5.

Hypnotic vs Oui!

My husband gave me Revlon Hypnotic as a little surprise for my birthday - bear in mind that the Zoya Earth Day haul is also meant to be part of my birthday present, and I also have a monster gift set from Sephora that's also a birthday goodie. I actually thought Hypnotic was a pretty good pick - on the whole he has a better track record picking out jewelry for me than nail polish. (I love my red-violets - maybe I should give him a hint for the future that thinking purple was a really good idea.) But I also thought it looked awfully similar to Marc Jacobs Oui! which I bought when they were all on 50%-off sale a couple of months ago. So I thought I would do a comparison right off the bat, instead of just showing one or the other and saying vaguely, "Oh, I should have done a comparison!" like I usually do.

So here's Oui:

I thought immediately that Hypnotic looked just like this. But I also thought that if anything Oui would be lighter, and that proved to be the case:

They do look very similar in the bottle, don't they? Berry-colored and super-shimmery, and I think the formulas are very similar, as well. But they're definitely not dupes. On the wheel #11 (on the bottom) is Oui, and Hypnotic is #12, just above that. And Hypnotic is very definitely darker, and slightly more purple. Oui is slightly more pink.

(Also, I don't know what it is about those Revlon bottles, but somehow I always end up with nail polish on the black part of the cap. I suppose it's just that they're dark and reflective, but it happens every single time. This one is brand-new and somehow I managed to do it once again, on the very first use.)