Maybelline Taupe'd Off

I've had Maybelline Matte Stone around for a while:

It is shown here with no top coat and three coats.
I will admit it's kind of muted like a taupe, but I must have gotten it after I did my taupe comparison, because for some reason it wasn't in that batch.
I'd call it more of a clay color.
In any event, it's not self leveling, in need of thinning and for some reason even caused a divit on the ring finger. I should have redone it, but I didn't.
Eep.

I pulled out NYC's Molten Metal, I blogged it here, and popped it over the taupe, er top.

The base is very similar and so the pretty silver remains! Nice!

I think I put on a couple of coats. It's pretty alone, too, but works nicely with the taupe/clay/light brown shades.

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Pacific Blue Versus Butler Please

Hello!

Essie's Winter 2012 collection has been knocking socks off locally. I browsed my local Rite Aid and found the display emptied except for about four bottles of the red cremes. The blue and the aqua are hot, the glitters are fabulous.

Had to have Butler Please, so I poked around eBay and found it for a good price. Not the cheapest, but better than Walgreens/Rite Aid. As an aside etailers tend to be about the same with shipping for me, so it's usually just easier to hit the 'bay.

I have Sally Hansen Pacific Blue. A classic case of Sally Hansen nailing a great color down, putting into the Xtreme collection and making it easy to find. Faultless formula. I rarely say that about SH!

Here's Pacific Blue:

Three coats, with a top coat, and a pretty nice formula. Smooth, dried well and self leveled. Win.
Personally it falls into the cool semi-periwinkle realm of blue, which I love.


Here is Essie Butler Please:

Deeper, but not cobalt, similar, but much more vibrant.
I love the dry time, but it was somewhat lumpy and did not self level. I'd call it a bit thick.
Ugh.
Drat.
Still, I would rate the dry time a bit faster than the Sally Hansen.

Here is the comparison:

These blues are both intense, just two different shades of awesome. In the end the Essie took more of a tweak to apply.

Not dupes, more like kissing cousins.

I love both, it's a hard call. The Essie has impact, but Pacific Blue does as well, just a bit brighter.

Nubbin Swatch-o-Roonie

Well, after breaking three nails in pretty quick order, I decided to chop down an just start over.

It happens. I'm not dedicate to long nails. As you can see from my photos, they don't grow straight and they curl a bit in as they grow. If my nail beds were longer, I'd probably opt for shorter at all times.

Here are a trio of colors!



What's Your Name, Sinful Colors:



Yes, my nail beds are actually wider than they are long. Kind of frustrating not to hit that genetic lotto.


Three coats of black jelliness with doses of color shifting glass fleck. The shift is blue to purple, but it's very hard to really capture it.
Pretty basic formula. No top coat, very glossy.
The pop of shimmer takes it out of being just a black polish.


Wild Thing, Essie

Three coats, perhaps a fourth, now that I think back on it.
It's actually a complex polish.
First off it's a jelly.
Next it's peppered with holographic glitter. In some lights I could get all the glitters in the bottle to compose that telltale holographic flame.
Finally it's packed with silvery micro-glitter.

Unfortunately it looks much better in the bottle than on the nail. Glitters are fairly sparse, then the micro-glitter feels like a shimmer, and kind of hides the lower layers of the larger glitter.
See what I mean? A little at odds with itself.
This is a berry red, not a true red, and in the bottle it actually looks even more blue leaning.

Still, it pops, it's easy to apply, builds and dries well.


Raspberry Frost, Sally Hansen

Hey, Sally? Um. Er. Girl? This is brown. Just sayin', k?
A brown that is filled with gold shimmer.
Remember Burnt Sienna from your Crayola set? Yup. Not Raspberry.

Two coats, no top coat, much shimmer within the color itself and the gold shimmer thrown in.
Very much the autumn shade.
This dried surprisingly well, I expected a tacky/denty mess, but it was really quick to dry.
A wee bit brushstroke prone.

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Bronze Age Part 3

Particularly stellar are those glass fleck polishes that have duochrome shift.

Love!

Here are a couple of faves that fall into the bronze family:

Color Club Wild and Willing

This is a four coat coater. It has a rosy quality, pushing into copper. It also shifts to a yellow green, but I could not adequately photograph it.
This came out in 2009 in the Wild at Heart Collection.
Has anyone seen this movie? It's David Lynch's interpretation of Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz.
Very David Lynch.
I know these are in no way tied together, but it sure is a great polish name for the movie.

Great formula, superior dry time and fabulous layering capabilities. Back-up worthy? Not yet, it's still readily available through most etailers.



Pros and Bronze

This, too, is four coats. Like it's cousin, it strays into the rosy/copper territory, but stays a little longer. It also has some purple/pink sparkles in some angles.

Love this one. It comes from Serena William's Glam Slam collection a 2011 series of sets which are all pretty fabulous. I have most, but for some reason I don't have the green one, which is odd, because I love every photo.
Plus, I like Serena Williams, she doesn't just do a collection, she spent time learning to be a nail tech, so she really thought about this collection. It shows.



Here these both are over black:

This is two coats of each. Here, front on, they are quite similar. I'd go so far as to say that unless you closely examine the nuances, you could call them dupes.

Here you can see that Wild and Willing shifts into a more yellow tone and Pros and Bronze pulls into the pinker range. Though I will say that Wild and Willing has more of a solid color shift, it's got both copper and bronze and green, where Pros and Bronze is a melange of colors, including some pink, plus it flashes a bit of purple, too.

Both are over Wet n Wild Back Creme. I finished the bottle with this manicure, which was pretty neat. My first one!

This will be my third and final Bronze entry. I snapped off nearly all my nails at the barn and so I will do a redux of the cooler tones when my nails get a bit longer.

Back to short and sassy nails.

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Bronze Age Part 2

Hey!

More bronze action! A shimmer, a metallic and a foil.

I usually save the best for last, but I'm going to throw down a good one first, Max Factor Exhilarated:

A muted bronze with a green flash in the shimmer. Though it's not as apparent, it almost looks like Hidden Treasure was put into a blender and made into shimmer particles, you got the same green flash.

Another photo:

Three coats, easy formula and good wear. Was a touch slow to dry, but not as bad as I expected.
I have to admit that I wish the photo showed the green a little better. Kind of a let down.
I feel the green cools it down, mutes it a bit.
Love it a lot!




Next up is Color Club's Golden Girl:

I blogged this before when I blogged the Color Club Haute Brown set. I admit it's a gorgeous golden metallic bronze. Three coats, wonderful! The best part is that it's not a flat metallic, but more lustrous like a foil, which I like a lot. It also has this rosy warmth to it that softens it up a bit.
Easy to use and wear. Like this formula a lot.


Finally, Zoya Richelle:

Two coats of a rich foil. No complaints here! I have to say that of the three, it gets extra ticks for having a foil finish. As above it has that rosy warmth, but in foil form.
No problem with usage, or wear, for that matter, which surprised me because I always seem to gripe about Zoya in that department.

Here is a comparison of the trio:

Same order: Max Factor Exhilarated, Color Club Golden Girl, Zoya Richelle

Max Factor Exhilarate is probably hardest to find, as it's long since gone the way of the Curlew, though I have seen it on eBay, it's probably at other outlets, too.
Color Club Golden Girl appears to be on eBay, but not on the etailers that I poked around at. Must have been a limited edition? Hmmm. What a shame, it's such a great golden bronze.
Zoya Richelle is available on Zoya.com. One thing about Zoya, they don't play you with limited colors, this, I feel, makes it easier when you actually don't have the ability to buy every color as it comes out.

Of the three all are pretty wonderful in their own way.


Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Bronze Age Part 1

Sometimes I call it burnished gold when  it's warm, sometimes it's oxidized and cool.

Oh, it's cool all right!

I'm doing a 4 part series on some bronzes that I like a lot.


Here is a favorite of mine:

Matte Gold by Maybelline

This is a matte, which ends up being a little bit of a piece-y shimmer with a silvery cool gold glitter running through it.

I've blogged it before, but it deserved a second outing for this compfest.

Three coats, easy, yet somewhat thick formula, needs a quick dry top coat, because it really tends to hang out in "dent-able" territory if you aren't careful.

I think a warmer skintone could rock this color, for sure.

As far as availability, I found mine at Dollar Tree, but I think if you poke around eCrater/eBay, you may be lucky.




L'Oreal Bond Bronze

This is an older James Bond Collection. I blogged another of these a while ago here.

I've done more poking around the internet and found that L'Oreal had makeup product placement in Die Another Day. There's an article here on product placement. So, if this product-cum-movie marriage is correct this is a 2002 polish.


This is three coats, a matte finish (though I've glossified it with a top coat). Easy to use. Similar shimmer/glitter combo and it feels like it's a little richer than Maybelline's offering.

Though I will say that these colors are kind of popular now (OPI's Goldeneye is in this warm bronze/gold family), they aren't super easy to wear, but they are gorgeous.

Here are the two shades next to each other:

You can see that they are definitely similar, but next to the Maybelline Matte Gold, Bond Bronze looks rather meek.
This photo is a little on the red side, which kind of stinks, I know.


Here is the bottle shot:

As you can see, they are very close in the bottle. Similar shimmer base, similar gold glitter throughout.

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Ebay Redux

A while ago I posted a blog post with tips for buying on eBay.

I feel like it might need a little update.

For a start, eBay has amped up their protection plan to include shipping. This is a pretty fantastic step.

There still is a 45 day countdown clock on filing a dispute, so keep that in mind.

In addition to Toolhaus.org as a great site to see how a seller's feedback shakes down, you can also check out WatchedItem.com to see who else has their eye on "your" loot. I just discovered that one, and I can say it will give you a good idea if a lone item will get rained on with bids or not.

I want to give a personal example of looking under rocks, trusting your collector's gut, and being willing to take a chance.

I saw this auction:

I edited to provide some privacy for the seller.

Notice it's unlabeled. Except for the brand name. There was no list of polish names or numbers in the auction text or the title.
Also, this particular seller has a high feedback number, it's very good percentage-wise and she doesn't sell in this category very much at all. Did I hit the trifecta?

I examined the photo closer:

A pair of muddy burgundies. Though you can see some shimmer, and on the left hand side you can see a telltale bit of something in the shimmer.
Hmmmm.

The auction went onto my watch list.

It ended with NO BIDDERS!

I emailed her and asked her to do a Buy it Now and she did. I bought it in a matter of minutes.

Got the package and among four bottles of Clarins 220, Patient Pink, blogged here, sat two bottles of 230.

Two Fracking Thirty!

What?
No!
YES!!

Do not be afraid of eBay. Do NOT succumb to scalpers. Be patient that it will pop up.

Check new auctions - You never know what you will find.

Check outside/broader categories - sellers goof when they list.

Check brands, misspellings, and oddball words that might be in a polish name. You never know what will pop up.

Everyone is looking for "230".
Apparently I was the only one gazing into the "Clarins" search with any regularity.

This was a complete fluke.

Keep an eye out for polishes whose MUA hotness has waned, suddenly they are lounging on eBay at low prices with no takers. I've got a eye on one that a couple years ago people were agonizing over, now the seller has a pile of them and no takers.

Patience. Be alert to wish lists and keep an eagle eye out. "You never know" is the take home lesson here.

Think sideways, upside down and through the back door when searching.

Yes, I could have paid $30 for a muddy burgundy, but the photo showed promise.

It was a risk. I know that. I might be blogging about my collection of obscure Clarin's.

But I'm not.
hee!

Sorting, Stashing, and Shining

I'm delving into the land of Google Drive. I've got my spreadsheet started.

Pretty soon I'll post it. It's about 150 entries, here's the breakdown:

•  I've done all of the current crop of stamping polishes (I love stamping, but my caffeine jitters, appalling application, and intermittent practice make it impossible to blog about as of yet)
• All my top/base/treatment coats (stockpiling sale items makes me feel hoarder-ish. Oh meme, go away!
• I've got all my gold and yellow
• Halfway through bronze/brown
• Beginning tans/taupes/beige.

It's laborious. So many notes on color. Soooo many untrieds! So many unblogged!

On the other hand, it's fun to see things in a color I didn't know were there. Finding out the shimmer version of MPJ has a bronze/brass shift, that I actually have two of the same polishes one in purple one in pink/red, etc.

One color, a mini Sally Hansen Lacquer Shine, was categorized as a brown, but it's really a black packed with a red shimmer that shifts to brown then raspberry depending on the light.

It looks like magic in the bottle, however there is only the most faint trace of shimmer in natural light. I needed to blow out the photo to see it, and those were ridiculous looking photos.

I will be toying with flash in the future, this might have helped, normally I am so close flash is impossible and my camera doesn't do medium distance too well.

It's a pretty polish and I love the shimmer. Still had SH dry time - on its own dime, basically.

If anyone knows of a better version of this polish, I'd love to know who make it. I am not sure if the RBL version is a whole lot better or not.
Hmm.

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Pink Foils and Shimmering Glitters

Pink + foil = fun.

It's my favorite finish. Why? Well, it's luminous, it's hearty, you don't have to have special lighting to enjoy because it's reflective, and it's got a real metallic pow that I like a lot.

Here are a couple that I have and recommend.

This is a completely neutral pink. Not too warm, not too cool. Two coats, easy to use and wore very well.

Subtle, understated, yet with that prowess that foils have about themselves that says "hey! look at me!"

Hard to fault this one. I found it on a blog sale and am delighted with it!

This is from OPI Kick Up Your Heels Collection Holiday 2006.

Oh crikes! the lack of cleanup!

I have blogged this one before, and it is a really nice find. It's L.A. Colors unnamed pink foil. In the bottle it looks more like a watermelon shade, but feels more hot pink on the nail.
The main reason I blogged it again was to show off an Elianto glitter, Shimmer Violet.

This is three coats and it's a pretty nice polish for a dollar. Comparable to the OPI and held its own formula-wise. It's less uniform that OPI's Starring the Rockettes, however, which makes it feel a little less metallic.

I have to say I love finding things that I've wanted to add to my collection and Eliato is no exception. It's not a US brand, nor easily attainable on eBay.

Here is Shimmer Violet over the L.A. Color polish:

Shimmer Violet is in a pink base that is like a water, very translucent, but put on over a white, you could see the tint.

I will note right now that my nail beds are still horribly stained from the green jelly I mad from SinfulColors Last Chance. I put it on over a Poshe strengthener, which ended up just pushing all that pigment right into my nail bed. I've tried a few things to lighten: buffing (ridges make this impractical on some fingers), toothpaste, denture cleaner, and a whitening product for nails. To nothing that approaches a success story. It's very weird. I'm going to be glad when it grows out!

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Purple on Purple

I blogged about Maybelline Colorama's Purple Party here.

It's a kind of frosty, a bit sheer and kind of walking that line between a layering coat and just needing undies.

I used Wet 'n' Wild Black Creme as a base then lobbed on two coats of Purple Party, finally topped it with Tru Passion from Color Club's Glitter Vixen collection.

Enough chatter, to the pix.

Because the black brings out the blue - though my photo pulls a bit more blue, it's slightly more lavender - the Tru Passion shows up as almost a pink on the top.
Cool combo!

This is after about 4 days of wear. I must confess I'm impressed by the wear here, too.

Tru Passion has a lavender purple glitter and a tiny sprinkle of holo thrown in.

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!