Blues Legend

When I typed that phrase into Google the first hit was Robert Johnson.

If you aren't acquainted with his work, please indulge yourself. Genius is not an overstatement.

Blues are fundamental to modern music as we know it. Musically it's like the change from the writing style of Henry James to that of Ernest Hemingway. 

Here are some tasty blues you should latch onto, if you get the blues, these blues will sing to you.

Left to right:

Sally Hansen Denim Creme

Sally Hansen Thinking of Blue

American Apparel Royal Mount

Not a dud among them.

Royal mount is slightly more pink, but all are gorgeous and glossy.

Three coats each, I did clean up a tad here and there. 

Here are the bottles:

Denim Creme is probably on eBay, I found it at a Dollar Tree. The matching cap just adds to it's sweetness.

Thinking of Blue is a Complete Salon Manicure that is not in the racks, but probably on eBay, found mine at a Walgreens. I don't know which release this was in, the drug store price point for SHCSM is rather high for the formula payoff. I believe that I found this on sale.

Royal Mount was a blog sale find, but is also at American Apparel's website. A formula not to be sniffed at, I kind of feel like it's a Color Club. But then again I think there is a lot of sub-contracting going when non-beauty brands get into makeup. Unfortunately I  have no evidence to support such a theory, but if you think about it, it's much easier to contact a company who "does polish" order new packaging and call it good. 

Meanwhile, enough with the speculation, this is my fave shade in the medium blue realm. 

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Golden Veil

I found that I'd not swatched Sally Hansen Zippy Frost, so did it up fast:

Why Sally calls it a frost and not a chrome is beyond me, or at least a metallic. Quick an dirty, doing what this finish does best: showing ridges and every random dust flotsam that lands on my nail.

It's three coats, could easily be two. The color really isn't me, in fact it's a bronze with a pink cast. The very unmixed bottle has a clear layer of deep pink that holds more fascination to me than the final product. Ah well!

I thought it was dense enough to try stamping, so I put on a couple of coats of SinfulColors Unicorn and stamped with Zippy Frost.

SinfulColors Unicorn is an easy formula for a pastel. Took a bit of tweaking, some clean up, but all in all, I love the soft yellow. 

I'm not a super practiced stamper,  I am also not a perfectionist, so I left the drag effect, which kind of is a let down as I edited and post the photos.

I can't recall which plate this is, either. I think it's a Bundle Monster. 

I like the effect, though I feel I need to just jump in and practice, practice, practice.

Practice makes perfect. (Well, perfect practice makes perfect, according to a teacher from long ago).

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Essence Underwater and Above Par!

Essence again!

This one I can't recall where I got, but I feel it came in a swatch some time ago. Thank you sweet person!

To be honest, when petrol blue is declared a Pantone "color of the (insert season/year/decade) I will be one happy girl.

Here is a petrol blue to wrap yourself up in:

Three coats.

Secret shimmer in the larger incarnation of glass fleck style particles and a rich aqua blue.

Contorting my fingers to get the shimmer just was not finding the sweet spot, so I would call it a Top Secret Shimmer.

Meanwhile, love the formula, love the finish. A quick dry formula, too. Nice!!

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Obscure Dupes

I'm in a blue frame of mind, colorwise. There are several coming up peppered with some other colors.

I also want to note that I'll be on vacation camping and am setting up the "schedule" posting feature in Blogger so I can keep up the momentum while I'm gone. My iPhone will erase a page if I try to edit it (sad face) and so I will try to respond only to comments but won't be editing stuff.

Onward!

Pulled out a WetnWild called Sapphire Blue (no longer appearing on the WnW website) and compared it with a Lina Gale (by Markwin) polish I'd gotten in a holiday pack at Ross.

Oddly familiar!

WetnWild is pretty good at rebottling polishes and looking around with that "who me?" face.

Here is a three coat shimmerfest:

Bright sapphire blue, beautiful shimmer, easy formula, and identical.
Left to right:

• Lina Gale No Name
• WnW Sapphire Blue
• Lina Gale No Name
• WnW Sapphire Blue

So nice. My only complaint would be that these are long gone (eBay for WnW) and really should be stand-bys in people's collections, these are a little bit on the warm, maritime side of navy compared to things like CC Hippy Trippie.

Little fail, much win.

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Oh Riley?

Zoya Riley that is!

Three coats, easy to use.
I didn't bother with cleanup. I've got to say it would have helped. Mea acetata.

Pretty!

Zoya calls it a "raspberry red" but it feels more like a cranberry shade. I suppose parsing the "berries' is silly.

In any even it's got a crelly sense to it, almost luminous feel when you look.

If you look closely you can see that I've put on a dose of hand creme and it's made it a bit shiny. eep!

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Green Party Part 3

Here is a comparison of all of the polishes swatched in the last two posts.

I feel, though, that the photos are a little dark. I took some under lamp and others in daylight. I've also lightened them up, too.

Kind of a fail. But here they are.
  

Left to right:
NYS Amaranth
Walmart Noname
Color Club Wild Cactus (Probably CC Abyss)
Catrice Forest Floor
Essie Going (blogged here)
Verity Aqua Blue

Here in daylight:

Daaaark.
Kind of a bummer. Makes them all look similar, but they are very different.

The upside: even when dark, they don't go totally black.

Hope you enjoyed the swatches!!! Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Green Party Part 2

Welcome back!

Here are three more greens!

Catrice Forest Floor

Three coats, amazing formula.
Super wow!
I got this in a swap, and really am glad that Catrice is available on eBay and soon on NinjaPolish.com.
Perfect green.
Love!


Up next is a conundrum, I have this labeled this Color Club Wild Cactus, but it might be Color Club Abyss.
I really am not sure.

I think this is a pretty accurate photo, though later, in a comparison shot, it looks darker.

The worst part is that this came in one of those Ross sets that has no names. This was full of CC holiday glitters and this one. I really wanted the glitters.

Three coats, easy formula. I think it's Wild Cactus, but it has less of that warm tone and much cooler, which seems to imply Abyss. Which makes me wonder why manufacturers do a lot of the same colors?  I'm only really realizing this as I type all this, all my comps call this Cactus....erp.

I feel like this is ok, but not a super fave.


Finally Verity Aqua Blue

Neither aqua nor blue, but a great green in a piney vein. If you like jelly finish, you probably need this one. Found on Amazon.
Three coats, easy formula. I think this photo is a little blown out, too.

Of all of my jelly finishes, I must say this is a favorite: good coverage, yet that translucent depth.

Part three will have a comparison of all five, plus a bonus.

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Green Party Part 1

Here are a few greens I didn't get to in March.

It's a multi-parter because it's a lot of pictures.

Here are two I love.

First up, an all time favorite, New York Summer Amaranth

A beautiful jelly green. My nails, due to genetics and staining, have a band of darkness before the white. It makes it look a little like a syrup.

Three coats, great formula.

Available at Transdesign, where I grabbed it. A perenial favorite.

I think it was a real hot color a couple of years ago when it was the prime ingredient in makeing the then-discontinued Nars Zulu.
I am not sure what the formula was, aside from adding black, but it was a very popular as a key ingredient.
I never got it, made my own "version", finally got Zulu, and got this and just enjoy it's pretty green color. Unfortunately my stained nails make it look a little like a syrup polish.


Next we have a real find.

An unnamed Walmart polish that showed up around Halloween about 2009.

Three coats of a rich cool green that is really a nice surprise for a little $1.00 bottle!
I bought 4-5, for some reason, and it's a really nice formula, surprisingly. I imagine Walmart subcontracted with someone like Bari - the Pure Ice and Bon Bons maker - or something like that. I've not seen nail polish on the Halloween aisle much. I didn't really look the last couple of times, but then again, I am spending less time in Walmartland. in general.

Here is the sweet little bottle:

Cute!
No printing on the back, just a little anonymous bottle of polish.

Ah well.
More green soon. Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Unlikely Win!

Sometimes when I browse eBay I look at international sellers. It's hard at times to see them. If you do a search, you can add them, you also can see the offerings at the last page of a search, too.


I've had a lot of luck with them, in fact right now I'm posting some of that real "what luck!" feeling.

I had purchased one color from a UK seller a couple years ago and after the purchase I saw a La Femme Beauty polish in their items and added it to the sale.

I've ignored it for a while now, untried, forlorn because the packaging is rather uninspiring.

Enough chat:

Three coats, great wear, a tight little formula that was fairly easy to work with. Old formula polish, camphor/formaldehyde, but wow. Seriously wow.

Love the magenta around the edge and hot fuchsia pink with a blue shimmer in the center.

Sad little ugly label and a sorry little bottle kept me from trying it out and thinking it would go directly into the get-rid-of pile.

I believe this a drug store brand in the UK, but the internet shows it on some discount UK etailer sites.  A handful on eBay right now.
I am sure there is some sort of dupe out there. It is a great little polish, though!

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

That 90's Feeling

I enjoyed the 90's in Seattle.
Fun times all around.
Everyone in seemed to know each other in whatever little group you ran in, there was a real sense of affordable living so you could enjoy having a good time, making art, being in a band, etc.

Seattle is now very expensive, less fun, and, unfortunately, the old cute neighborhoods are slowly losing their charm. Not as slowly as one would have hoped, sadly Belltown and south Lake Union are now quite different. Ah well.

I found L'Oreal Roseberry at the Dollar Tree on a road trip in a town that feels like the 90's came and went but the 70's never really left.

A brownish berry rose with enough of a kick to make me think of antique coral jewelry, I think if this had been an OPI shade it would be called "Woodn't You Like it Berry Much?" or some such nonsense.

Needs a bit of thinning, but all in all it was fun to wear.

Then I made a big mistake: I threw a gold top coat over it.

Gold is from an ooold Markwin set from Ross

Now it looks like cheap wallpaper from "the day" and really brought out the orange/brown. In low light it was horrible. I couldn't get home from work fast enough to take this one off. Blech!!!

Sometimes layering works, sometimes it doesn't.

Ah well!

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!