Essie news Part 2 — FALL 2013

Hope you enjoyed my preview earlier today of Essie’s summer collection, Naughty Nautical.  I think there are some awesome colors in the bunch.

And now I’ve got tomorrow’s news today (shades of the old TV series “Early Edition”) since I was going to post this tomorrow but want to get it out asap.  Hold on to your beret; I’ve got fall news!  Meet

For the Twill of It

Woo, that’s quite a duochrome!  Let’s meet the colors.

I love the fabric and fiber theme.  The names and descriptions are a little hard to read in the picture, so let’s spell it out:

• For the Twill of It — a purple/green duochrome (the description says “rich maple with reflective olive shimmer”…. MAPLE???)
• After School Boy Blazer — blue-black or navy creme
• Twin Sweater Set — vibrant crimson red creme
• Cashmere Bathrobe — flannel gray shimmer
• The Lace Is On — pearlescent fuchsia
• Vested Interest — cool gray-teal creme

Great mix of rich fall tones and some very attractive neutrals.  Any of them grabbing you?  The shimmery silver and the grayed teal are calling my name, and I need to check my stash of blues to see if I have a shade quite like ASBBlazer.  I don’t yet know the release date.

Hopefully you read the news here first!    But….. maple???

Knackered

Knackered:  [ˈnækərd] Brit Slang

adj

1. exhausted; tired out

2. worn out; no longer working, esp after long or hard use

and don’t forget

3. a very cool duochrome polish from Butter London

I’ve had Knackered in my stash ever since I bought it in a sale last year, so long ago that I don’t even remember what I paid for it.  Actually, that doesn’t mean anything — I can barely remember what I did yesterday.  At any rate, the SRP for Knackered at Butter London’s web site and in retail stores is $15.  Kind of pricey; I love BLs but almost never get any unless they’re on sale.  Ulta often has coupons you can use.  Right now BL is having a web sale that offers free shipping.

Anyway — Knackered is a real chameleon.  In the bottle it looks blue with a purple tint.  BL calls it an “oyster shade” which to me is vague; I thought oysters were white or gray.  It’s actually a very sheer duochrome that flashes mostly purple with some green, and it also has sparkly micro holographic glitter.  That’s a lot going on in one polish!

I knew from other bloggers’ swatches and from my own experience of swatching it on a nail wheel that it’s so sheer that it’s hard to build up enough coverage on its own.  So I used a base coat of plain black polish and then three thin coats of Knackered.  An application tip for Butter London polishes:  be aware that the large square black cap pops off so you can grip the cylindrical ridged handle underneath.  The first time I used a BL, I didn’t know that and thought, “Boy, is this awkward.” 

I saw both purple and green duochrome shift on my nails in person, which did not show up well in my photos no matter what I did.  Mostly just the purple was apparent.  But the micro holo glitter — something I think Butter London does very well — is so pretty and eye-catching.

Under low indirect outdoor light:

With the flash:

Two angles in direct bright sunshine:

And a closeup:

I think Knackered might look different depending on what base coat you used.  Over green it would probably look more green, and so on.  It’s a fun one!

Let’s compare: rose golds

Disclosure:  One of these polishes was provided by Zoya for review.

Yesterday when I was swatching Zoya’s Irresistible Collection of foils, I kept thinking of other polishes I wanted to compare them to.  When Irresistible was first announced, I thought Tinsley looked like a foil version of one of my first ever Zoya polishes, Happi.  Is it?  Let’s find out.

Surprisingly, at least to me, Happi and Tinsley are not similar at all.  Happi is a cool pink gold duochrome shimmer, and Tinsley is a rose gold foil.  Tinsley has a definite glittery look.

Tinsley is, however, very close to another Zoya shade called Tiffany.  I just bought this one in the Earth Day sale and am kind of bummed that they’re so close!  Tiffany is from the older Flame Collection and I really thought from its picture that it would be more peachy or coppery.

Here are all three, left to right:  Happi, Tinsley, and Tiffany.

I applied three coats of each and here’s how they look under reflected outdoor light, next to a bottle of Zoya Purity for contrast:

In direct sunshine:

The base of Tinsley is slightly more pink than the peachy base of Tiffany, but all the gold foil/flakes (beautiful!) make the two polishes almost duplicates on the nail.

One great thing about doing this comparison is that I was reminded all over again how much I love Happi.    Also, I think what I’ll do with Tiffany is pour some of it out and add some copper or brown polish (?which one?) to make a copper foil that I might like for fall.  That’s something to do if you end up with duplicates — play with them and change them to make something new!

Disclosure:  One of these polishes was provided by Zoya for review.

New collections from Orly – Part I

I don’t talk much about Orly and have no idea why, because I’ve loved every single one of their polishes I’ve tried — the formula, the color, even the handle of the brush.  Re-reading some of my old posts, I see that I never even tried an Orly until last summer, and even now I only own a few.  I’d say some retail therapy is in order, wouldn’t you?

Recently read some news from the Cosmoprof convention in Bologna, Italy, earlier this month.  I believe the big U.S. Cosmoprof bash is usually in July in Las Vegas, so expect lots more news then.

Unofficially, some upcoming 2013 collections from Orly include a late spring one called Mega Pixel FX and a summer one called Mash Up.  All information, colors, dates (I don’t have exact release dates), etc. are subject to change.

Mega Pixel FX is a shimmer/glitter set.  By “a pixelated look” I’m not sure if they also mean holographic.

Slip on some sparkle this spring with six new shades of pixelated perfection from the MegaPixel FX Collection. ORLY’s innovative 3D formula provides millions of glitter pixels for a multi-dimensional finish. Just two quick drying layers create a long-lasting, hi-res manicure.

Pro Tip: MegaPixel FX can be worn two ways

• For a 3D, textured finish, do not apply topcoat
• To smooth out the texture, apply 1-2 coats of topcoat for a glossy shine

The six lacquers in the MegaPixel FX Collection include:

• Silver Pixel: Silver 3D Glitter Nail Lacquer

• Rose Pixel: Rose 3D Glitter Nail Lacquer

• Pink Pixel: Pink 3D Glitter Nail Lacquer

• Aqua Pixel: Aqua 3D Glitter Nail Lacquer

• Plum Pixel: Plum 3D Glitter Nail Lacquer

• Black Pixel: Black 3D Glitter Nail Lacquer

The summer set is called the Mash Up Collection, and it’s an odd bird — a wild variety of bright colors and different finishes, with some unusual names.

They are:

• Harmonious Mess – smoky grayish lilac
• Choreographed Chaos – candy pink neon with violet tones
• Sparkling Garbage – aquamarine green with a jelly base
• Mayhem Mentality – flashy neon orange
• Pretty-Ugly – light blue with aquamarine shimmer
• Beautiful Disaster – iridescent bluish purple

The last one looks like a very interesting duochrome.  More news tomorrow!

Twisted, sister

After a weekend of enjoying the nicer spring weather and managing to break a few nails despite being cautious, I have a pretty duochrome to show you.  And it’s from Pure Ice so it’s only $1.99.

Twisted is one of the new colors for 2013 from Pure Ice, a brand available almost exclusively at Walmart.  I’ve read that some Walgreen’s have Pure Ice, but I’ve never seen them there.  Twisted is a flashy blue-green flakie that makes me think of sunshine reflecting on water.  The base is a sheer ocean blue and it’s chock-full of microflakes in blue and green.

It went on very smoothly and two coats gave great coverage.  The second coat looked so much greener than the first that I suspect a third coat might bring out the green even more.  Having said that, the green did not show up well in my photos, in spite of my trying many different angles and lighting.  Trust me, it really flashes green over blue.

Here’s Twisted under indirect cloudy outdoor light.  The second, more oblique, angle shows the darker blue duochrome look.  (I apologize for the wildly varying length of my nails but I just can’t cut them all off to match the shortest!)

And with the flash:

I love this one and think it would be awesome with a tan.  So summery and beachy!  I haven’t given it a wear test, but its look rivals blue-green duochromes from other companies that cost four times as much.

The Zang Toi trio has landed!

Look what the FedEx guy just delivered.  You’ll remember my slobbering over this limited edition trio from Zoya last week, and while part of me feels like a chump for paying so much ($33), part of me is very happy to have a treat that doesn’t involve alcohol or empty calories. 

This trio from designer Zang Toi at New York Fashion Week (NYFW) contains Imperial Russia (purple), Peterhof Palace (gold foil — it’s Ziv renamed, not a new color), and Chinoiserie Fantasy (emerald).

There was another color shown from Zang Toi at NYFW, a deep sapphire blue called Catherine the Great, but it hasn’t been released yet.  Zoya is saying it might be released in a fall collection later this year.  I also suspect that Imperial Russia and Chinoiserie Fantasy will be re-released but there’s no guarantee and I don’t have insider information. They may be limited edition only.

I was cool with getting Peterhof Palace/Ziv in the trio because I’d been meaning to get it but still hadn’t.  I bought it as a gift for someone this past Christmas and was very tempted to keep it for myself!  Here’s a quick picture of it since it has been extensively reviewed by other bloggers over the last few months.  I’m usually not big on golds but the foil finish is gorgeous.  I literally felt like I was painting liquid gold foil on my nails.  Two coats.

Imperial Russia is a deep amethyst purple shimmer.  It leans more blue than red if you had to pick one tint, but it’s truly a stunning royal purple.  I see microshimmer particles in dark pink, blue, and purple which you can see in the second photo and the closeup, which were taken with the flash.  Three coats, no top coat.

I pulled two other Zoyas that I thought would be similar, Hope and Mikka, but they’re not even close!

Chinoiserie Fantasy is an amazingly rich emerald green shimmer with a mirror-like shine.  I thought it was teal green but in person it appears to be emerald with a blue duochrome shift.  Hard to capture with the camera, but I tried.  You can see it most in the edges of the bottle and in the higher angle photo.  I used three coats and no top coat.

I love how this green doesn’t make my skin look too red, like many greens.  My camera doesn’t capture how truly beautiful this color is — sounds like hype, but it’s true.  And here’s Chinoiserie Fantasy next to two other Zoya greens, Akyra and Suvi.  No dupes here.

Peterhof Palace/Ziv makes a wonderful accent to the two new colors, which as a set has a kind of Mardi Gras vibe.  I’ll wear these year-round.  Am I sorry I paid so much?  No, because I got the three free Valentine’s Day sale polishes at the same time and most of all because I didn’t have Ziv and I love all three polishes.  The Valentine promotion is good through the 27th, so if you want it and haven’t placed your order yet, you just have two more days.

Royal blue

Hi everyone, sorry for not posting yesterday.  I almost always try to post on Saturdays, and yesterday I was prematurely thrilled to see that my Limited Edition Zang Toi trio from Zoya was “out for delivery” on the FedEx truck.  So I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

It never showed up.    Guess the driver was too swamped with deliveries, but hey, it’s just nail polish and I feel confident the package will be in my hot little hands tomorrow so I’ll be able to swatch and review the new colors.

So let’s talk about something else from a recent Fashion Week.  I got this picture in an email from Butter London and fell in love with the color:

Scouse (Brit-speak for someone from Liverpool) is a “sheer, royal blue and indigo duochrome nail lacquer with pink, purple, and blue microglitter” and is only available in the U.S.  Its SRP is $15 which is a bit high for me.  Then I thought, “Wait a minute, don’t I already have something like this?”

Yep — this is OPI’s DS (Diamond Series) Magic, which I reviewed here.  Still expensive at $12.50 though, and it may have gone up since my review.  I’ve read that Orly’s Lunar Eclipse is a dupe but don’t own that one for comparison.  Might be something to look for, though, if you’re craving this fashionable royal blue flash at a more reasonable price.

Getting ready for Valentine’s Day (It’s here!) – #7

Happy Valentine’s Day!  How about some Crazy Love?

Crazy Love is a bright duochrome from Pure Ice that until recently was called Jamaica Me Crazy.  It’s been renamed for 2013 but some of the old bottles may still be in stores.  It’s a neon hot pink shimmer that flashes a wild blue-purple in certain lights.  Pure Ice, as you probably know, retails for a mere $1.99 for a full-sized bottle at Wal-Mart.

CL/JMC surprised me by being smooth and streak-free.  It looks a little frosty in the bottle so I thought brushstrokes might be a bother.  Nope, it’s a smooth operator.  Glossy, too.  Here are two coats, no top coat, under cloudy outdoor light:

What a pretty, bright pick-me-up!  Under the flash you really see the duochrome:

A  closeup:

This is one I’d probably wear more in the summer but it’d be fun any time.  Hope you’ve enjoyed a week’s worth of reds, pinks, and the occasional purple.

********************************

Polish was supplied by Pure Ice.

A new duochrome from Sally Hansen

I haven’t talked about Sally Hansen, the queen of the drugstore polishes, in a while.  Been distracted by Zoya, a-England, Butter London, and a bunch I barely knew about years ago.  But yesterday I picked up two brand spankin’ new SHs and like them a lot.

SH has a new line called Lustre Shine.  If you think that sounds a lot like China Glaze’s Bohemian Luster Chrome you are absolutely correct.  The Lustre Shines are also duochromes and even duplicate several of the CG colors.  What stinks, though, is that the SHs contain less polish and are more expensive.  You read that right — the SH Luster Shines were $8.29 at CVS Pharmacy!  I think that’s really terrible for drugstore polishes.  And the bottle only holds 0.33 oz/10 ml, when the China Glaze was $5.99 for 0.5 oz/14 ml.  Not good, huh?

Weeeellll… it might be OK.  I really like this SH polish.  As is typical for SH, the new polishes aren’t on their archaic web site but you can read more about the set at Nouveau Cheap.  I think there are or will be eight colors in the set but I only saw six at the small CVS display.  The one I bought, Scarab, is numbered 007 so I do think there are eight.  Somewhere.

The display pictured at Nouveau Cheap’s site says “Infused with real silver particles” so if you have a reaction to silver you might want to avoid these.  But when I looked at the ingredients list on the actual bottle (warning: it’s so small you need an electron microscope) it says that it ** may ** contain silver.  So it does… or it doesn’t… or it might.  Are you confused yet?  I am.

The colors I’ve seen are Scarab, Moonstone, Lava, Plume, Firefly, and Copperhead.  Plume looks like the polish world’s bazillionth dupe of Chanel’s Peridot, and I think Firefly is very close to China Glaze’s Swanky Silk (pink/gold).

As I said, I got Scarab, which is a near-dupe for China Glaze’s Deviantly Daring.  Scarab is a bright teal, a green-tinged blue that I think of as “peacock.”  I used two coats and thought the formula was very good; brushstrokes were less of a problem than with Deviantly Daring.  Here’s Scarab in indirect outdoor light at two angles so you can see the teal to dark blue duochrome effect:

For comparison, here’s a picture of Deviantly Daring in the same light:

I don’t know what it is about bright metallic teals, but they seem to make my camera go crazy and not focus well.

Here’s Scarab with the flash:

As you can see, the colors are very similar, and the duochrome effect is too.  If you have one I don’t think you’d need the other.  I think the price of the Sally Hansen is ridiculous unless you can pick it up at a BOGO or BOGOHO sale.

Oh, and a warning for you — the Lustre Shine bottle is oddly shaped in that it narrows quite a bit at its base, which makes it unstable.  I almost knocked it over a couple of times just wiping polish from the brush on the inside of the neck.  Still, with all my caveats, I think I like this one better than the China Glaze one because it looks better, and really, isn’t that the most important?

Tomorrow I’ll show you my other new SH, a cool top coat.

Weird ****

I feel like I’m in “The Twilight Zone” since last night.  First of all, I watched the movie “The Cabin in the Woods,” which is some seriously weird stuff.  Entertaining, but horribly gory.  Not my usual type of movie.  But I’m going to watch it again tonight.  Go figure.

Then I swatched some new polish for you, Downtown Brown from Maybelline’s Color Show line.  The company has six new colors in the line for fall, and several of them are close dupes of some of China Glaze’s Bohemian Luster Chromes duochromes — a gold/green, a bright green/blue, and a pink/gold.  The one I picked up, Downtown Brown, is the odd combination of brown polish with a strong green duochrome.

This polish is strange on several levels.  First of all, the bottle is deceptive in size.  It doesn’t really look that small but it only has 0.23 oz./7 ml of polish, which puts in squarely in the mini-size camp.  I’ve seen prices listed from $2.99 to $4.99; I paid $3.79 at CVS Pharmacy.

The color is just plain bizarre.  At one angle it looks cocoa brown but at another the green really flashes brightly.  The formula was fine and I used three coats.  Two might have been enough but with any duochrome I really like to use three to intensify any dual look.  Brushstrokes weren’t a problem.  Here’s how it looks at two different angles in indirect outdoor light:

See how big the bottle looks in my hand?

With the camera flash:

It looks the same in direct sunlight as it does with the flash.

Honestly, the only thing that runs through my mind when I look at this polish is, “This is some weird ****.”  That’s not the kind of impression I want to make, and I have no idea where I would wear this.  Gardening, maybe?