Four Purples You Need To Know About

Here's a swatchfest of purples that I've worn, but haven't posted before. They are in much need of an outing.

Enjoy!

Kiko 278

Three coats. Simply gorgeous!!!
I think I picked this up through a blog sale. These days it's a blur: eBay, blog sales, facebook, etc.
It doesn't appear to be on the Kiko site any longer.

Meanwhile, this is a great formula and a lovely glassy finish (no top coat!) This is a stellar polish.
Despite my attempt to splash it around my nail, it seems to defy my best efforts and I only jammed up one nail. Win!

If you find it, grab it!




Brucci Grape Galaxy

A deep vamp loaded with silver glass fleck it is a classic three coater and a decent formula.

I don't really see much Brucci except randomly online. Their website is a bit of a conundrum with a South African Rand system after the home page professes "Made in the US". Maybe it just means they can't quite make it in the US, so they sell abroad.

Meanwhile a pretty polish, though very dark. The glass fleck brings it out of just being this side of a black polish.

I feel like Brucci might be more available on the east coast of the US. Out here in the west, it's just nowhere to be seen.
Except eBay, Amazon, etc.




Barielle Grape Escape

I purchased this awhile ago and saw that I didn't blog it, sheesh!

Three coats, gorgeous purple and such an amazing shade that I didn't quite capture (my photo is a bit blue).

I didn't do clean up, but you can see it help up against my fling-y approach to application of late!

Barielle is a brand that should have the kind of brand status OPI does: better formula, better overall. Yet, OPI has such a hold and releases relentlessly boring collections season after season.

Hey, I put my money where my mouth is: no one sends me any freebies, so OPI will hear me speak truth to power.

Barielle: buy it.




Gosh Wild Lilac

Truly a gem. I think I bought it through a blog sale, but I may have picked it up on eBay. Eep.

Meanwhile three coats, could have been two. Delightful! Not top coat, lots of gloss!

I seem to manage to splash over on one or two nails and just can't be bothered with clean up these days. The upside is that this formula holds together pretty well.

I wish Gosh was more accessible! I feel like Australian, Korean, and European brands outshine a lot of US ones.


Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Color Club Taps Into Tesserae - aka Modern Mosaic Collection Part 2

Back at it with Color Club's Modern Mosaic Limited Edition glitter collection.

Trying their hand at a "micro mosaic" effect for your nails.

Or a "pixel" effect, depending on  your visual art predilection, I guess.

Part 1 can be seen here.

In a nutshell: no top coats, two coats when solo, kind of thick, could use thinning, but that might be trial and error, too. One coat over the selected base.

On to the swatches.



Color Club Love You To Pieces

This is mostly white with a smattering of blue and a bit more violet glitter mixed in. I think the effect would have been more successful had it been less white glitter and more blue and purple.

One coat over Puccilicious. Pretty, and would be nice to add to a glitter layering combination, too.




Color Club Green Piece

This one you can really see my stained nails. Ugh!

Alright, this is a green and white glitter combination. One thing about this one that stands out is that it is truly thick. I should have redone it, but I think by now I was just exhausted. I also was watching the Roger Ebert documentary "Life Itself" since I'm such an Ebert fan, and it was sad and I was fairly spent so I was pretty much beyond worrying about this.

Green Piece over Nicole by OPI Mind Your Peas and Qs. I thought I'd blogged this before, but I didn't and so I don't have a "solo" shot. I love this polish a lot, have a backup I found at a blog sale. I think both of mine are from blogsales.

Meanwhile I need to do a mint green comparison, because I have a lot. The glitters in Green Piece seem to have a bit of a pearlescent quality, so unlike the rest, they aren't matte.




Color Club Blue Beaded

White glitter with a bright blue glitter mixed in. Should be more blue here, because it's a beauty.

I have it over Barielle Swizzle Stick, and you can see how it makes a sweet little topper.

Swizzle Stick is one that hasn't been swatched before:

Bright turquoise that isn't too intense, very beautiful and look at how smooth and glossy it is? I need more Barielle! No complaints on this one! I think I got this on a blog sale, but often Barielle runs sales.


That wraps it up on the Color Club Modern Mosaic Collection.

Cute, very thick, nice for layering with other glitters, but not sure if they are super favorites of mine. If you are into frankening, though, they might be a good resource, too.

My favorites: Orange Crush, Green Piece and Subway Station. Much more than just "white matte glitter.

The most affordable place to buy is Head2Toe, but shipping runs about $12-14 from where they are to the western US, so you need to buy a few polishes to make it worth your while. I don't have a Bed Bath and Beyond that carries Color Club so I can't speak on their prices. Most other places now carry them at $8 a pop. And while Color Club is head and shoulders above what Sally Hansen offers in her Complete Salon Manicure line, I've only seen Color Club very randomly in drug stores.


Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

A couple of Mints

I wanted to do a huge mint comparison, but for some reason I never got it together because I had so many other greens I wanted to do!

Here are a couple!

Diamond Cosmetics Sea Spray

Three coats, a gorgeous light green shot through with golden shimmer.

The base is more of a frosty shimmer than a creme, giving a frothy/foamy feel. Ever been on the beach on a really windy day and the foam blows up along the beach? It reminds me of it!

As you can see the gold shimmer is very pronounced, which is always a win!


A combo, here, e.l.f. Mint Cream topped with Barielle's Buddha-ful

Mint Cream was a little bit dicey at first, but in the end worked out. I have many, many, many mints, so this isn't high on my "favored children" list.
Barielle's Buddha-ful is a milky based minty flake. It shifts a little bit lavender pink, which is ever-so-precious, I love it so much!!

One coat here did the job!

I will say that of all the flakies I own, this one did a weird thing, it actually made dents in the polish creating a few divets where a smooth surface was what I expected after two top coats.

Even after I redid this manicure with another mint - Essie, I believe - it did the same thing. Odd. I may need a thicker top coat, though my quick dry is pretty thick. Oddness.

Here are the bottles!

As you can see here the e.l.f. looks a bit more turquoise, but it's not quite so brightly pigmented or as blue in real life.

If you are into flakies, Buddha-ful is a nice one.

Also Diamond Cosmetics is always an affordable way to get a lot of neat colors. I am not affiliated in any way, but I always seem to like what I see when I put on their polish.

Thanks for reading my nail polish journal!

Curfew Variations

L'Oreal Breaking Curfew #380 was on sale about a year ago when L'Oreal discontinued their main nail polish line. Right now they bring out some seasonal collections, I recently reviewed their summer offering here.

I will say now that I adore this formula.

Let's do it:

A deep vamp plum, which has purple moments in the bottle but also feels burgundy. Refreshingly, it doesn't look brown, and it seems to hold out against turning completely black.

Three coats that did, I feel, need it. It dried pretty quickly for a non-quick-dry polish! Shine, well, you can see the warning label that is inside the lamp in the gloss. I could read the word "caution" when I was editing! Wow! Shine!!

Here is the bottle:

I feel like this is a bit light, although it shows how much like plums this color looks.

Perhaps above all, the fact that the finish is a jelly, really is so nice.

I tried a few things with it, too.


First I tried Barielle's Elle's Spell.

This is my only Barielle, I found it in a sale bin at Ulta on a fluke. It is similar to Hidden Treasure, but the flakies are smaller and it's in a red base that leans into the pink range, feels like pomegranate jelly.

This is two coats. I like it, it's very beautiful!

I then added some Elle Elle/LDL polish that is from an old 9 pack from Ross. Ross now carries a lot of WetnWild, Color Club, and other brands. No longer does it carry the LDL or my beloved Princessa by Richon. It's holiday season, so who knows what might float in on the retail waters.

This is a clear base, perhaps a little milky, with a cool gold glassy particle glitter. I really love this, so delicate.

It feels like mini-flakes over bigger flakes!

Also feels like a holiday manicure.


Finally I pulled out some Hidden Treasure. My beloved Hidden Treasure.

Two coats, delicious green flash and fire of red and orange.

Seems like I always get a thrill when I put it on. So nice!

Last, but not least, I put Breaking Curfew over a mini Sally Hansen Diamond Strength sheer from a small set that was at Ross. These are pretty old, and I couldn't even guess what the bottle is called in the full size, but it's a nice glassy shimmer that has been in the layering drawers for a while.
I didn't photograph it over BC because I felt it was a bit too much coverage, although not bad.
So, I used it as a base.

I pretty much reached the end of my lighting/camera/my capabilities. Here is a close up to show the effect:

That luminous shine pops from beneath the jelly. I believe this is two coats.

I think I love all of these layering attempts, but Hidden Treasure is sort of like showing up at the local rec center Halloween contest in your custom made Darth Vader costume and sweeping the field.

There you go!

Hope you enjoyed!

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!