Browsing Tag

nail polish swatch

Butter – Scoundrel

Wednesday, 12 May, 2010

Don’t you love that word? Scoundrel. It sounds so old world and yet delivers a punch…these days it would garner a giggle or three. However, I’m not laughing at this color by Butter.

It’s not a glitter, but a fabulous creme. I happened to like this shade because it’s that cross between a darker shade of pink with enough purple in it to fall into an almost pink/lavender category. However, this shade is richer and just more luscious. How can anyone not love this color?!

Application was a little lumpy and hard to work with on the first coat but it all worked out on the second. Still smells kind of nice and not like nail polish.

Butter – Henley Regatta

Tuesday, 11 May, 2010

I always say I hate glitter, yet I constantly keep buying them…hm. Here is another example!

Sunlight picture is a bit blurry, but I deliberately wanted it like that so you can see the pretty glitter in action.

MAC – Wham, Bam, Glam

Monday, 10 May, 2010

Let me preface this with one simple statement: I LOVE THIS COLOR.

Application was like any other matte for me – moody and pissy. I can never get them to look nice and even, as you’ll see from application pics with the brush strokes so evident on the nail. This color rocked it matte, but when I put on a shiny top coat? Swoonworthy. Seriously. It’s love. I have this fondness for mushroomy/taupe-y colors.

This isn’t quite like the traditional mattes I’ve been seeing out there – it’s a bit like a Ginger & Liz when this dried…more like the finish of a candle than a flat, dull matte.

Small note: I really am not a left handed person and I need to stop trying to paint colors on my right hand. Please excuse the fountain pen ink on my hand – my pen exploded because I dropped it and I thought I had cleaned it off pretty well. Clearly I didn’t.

Lamer excuses out of the way, in comes the pictures.

See? It’s pretty matte…

But it’s even prettier with a top coat, don’t you think?

StrangeBeautiful Volume I

StrangeBeautiful, Volume I – Olive Green, MAC Dry Martini

Friday, 7 May, 2010

Since StrangeBeautiful doesn’t name their colors and this is part of their Vol I collection, I gave it the generic name of Olive Green. Khaki wasn’t quite the right one. This reminded me of MAC’s Dry Martini, which I’ve also included in this post. Killing two birds with one stone.

MAC’s formula dried quickly and was not opaque on the first coat. With the initial application it was kind of gross – it looked like…well, poo. I’ll stop right there and let your imagination fly.

Once again, SB’s formula is superb – flawless application, fast drying and opaque when it should be. Strange Beautiful would be my favorite brand, but the fact that they’re limited editions and don’t come out with nearly enough colors to appease me bumps them to the bottom part of my top 7 fave brands.

Enough of the rambling, on to the polish!

Oddly enough, this color looked fabulous on me!

This was a gorgeous color and I really liked seeing it on me. I didn’t put a top coat on this because I forgot to. I had been in a rush. Oops. Sorry it’s not as shiny and perty as it could be!

Spa Ritual Spring 2010 Collection – Believe Collection (Part II)

Wednesday, 5 May, 2010

The second half of this collection focuses on the final three colors of the collection that were … not so great on me. The formula was still the same – wonderful. It dried fast, was a breeze to apply and no jacked up bristles. I had a minor problem that really was cuticle pull. You can see it all below. 🙂

You can see the cuticle issues on my middle finger. This pink had a shimmer in it that was meant for someone either younger or older, but not me. I’m very fussy about my pink nail polish and this is definitely not one for me.

See? Cuticle pull again! This orange…is orange. I love orange nail polish, but this was a bit too sheer and almost a jelly like quality. This is 2 coats and it’s still slightly sheer. Not sure if you can see that.

A lovely creme that I absolutely loved in the bottle. Sadly, it looks like I’ve glued some pastel colored M &Ms onto my fingers. It looks surreal and very odd. I was hoping that it would look ok on me, but it really didn’t. I love, love, LOVE this color. I really wish this would look good on me. Oh well…plenty of polish for me to choose from so I’m not lamenting my lack of choices. 🙂

SpaRitual Spring 2010 – Believe Collection (Part I) and NFU Oh #55

Tuesday, 4 May, 2010

I purchased this collection two months ago and completely forgot about it. 🙁 Well, it was hidden…so out of sight, out of mind. I knew I had purchased it, but didn’t know where it had gone to. The room I share with the cat is where I also have my polish collection. I honestly thought the cat had done something to it. Turns out it was erstwhile hubby, moving things around while looking for a some random cord to connect something to his computer, but that’s another issue completely. I will say that he needs to join Cord Collectors Anonymous.

Anyway, I now present the first half of SpaRitual’s Spring 2010 collection called Believe. It came with these cute little charms with words and sayings on them like, “Wish”, “Believe” and “I Can”. You’ll even see a tag in one of my swatches!

I loved SpaRitual’s formula – it was even and smooth with a minimal chance of me messing it up – which I did. Can you spot the flaws on the application, aside from my obvious cuticle pull mishaps? 🙂 Formula was so easy to work with and it dried so fast I was a bit stunned. The brush on Spread Your Wings was a bit jacked – more bristles than the other bottles and at a strange 15 degree angle. I thought it was supposed to be like that until I noticed some bristles less than a millimeter longer than the rest in the bottle.

I split this collection into 2 – Part I is the ZOMG MUST SHOW YOU and Part II is I MUST SHOW YOU THESE LATER! In other words, the first part wowed me while the second part made me look and go, “Oh. ok. Not so bad.”

Enough of my nattering – here are the pics.

How gorgeous is this purple?! I love cremes and this purple creme makes my heart beat a little faster.

Despite the jacked up brush, this color really moved me. This is the shade of red that I love wearing. How can one NOT love wearing a color this luxurious?

Hello, green lover…*purrs* How beautiful is this? I didn’t have to do anything to this picture – just cropped it. The green looked exactly perfect and when I ran it through PhotoShop, it barely did anything to it to balance it out. When I had this one, this green shot straight to the #1 spot for my greens. IMO, this is the go to green for me. I used to dislike green polish, but the ones that have come out in the past couple of years have really made me change my mind.

Perfection in the sun, too.

Was playing about and put NFU Oh’s #55 on top. The sunlight washed it out, but it was a lovely combination. The NFU is lighter and what you can’t really is the dimensional depth the glitter added. I had a shade shot that was slightly blurry but even in that you couldn’t see the difference. You can really see it in person.

SpaRitual Spring 2010 – Believe Collection (Part I) and NFU Oh

Tuesday, 4 May, 2010

I purchased this collection two months ago and completely forgot about it. 🙁 Well, it was hidden…so out of sight, out of mind. I knew I had purchased it, but didn’t know where it had gone to. The room I share with the cat is where I also have my polish collection. I honestly thought the cat had done something to it. Turns out it was erstwhile hubby, moving things around while looking for a some random cord to connect something to his computer, but that’s another issue completely. I will say that he needs to join Cord Collectors Anonymous.

Anyway, I now present the first half of SpaRitual’s Spring 2010 collection called Believe. It came with these cute little charms with words and sayings on them like, “Wish”, “Believe” and “I Can”. You’ll even see a tag in one of my swatches!

I loved SpaRitual’s formula – it was even and smooth with a minimal chance of me messing it up – which I did. Can you spot the flaws on the application, aside from my obvious cuticle pull mishaps? 🙂 Formula was so easy to work with and it dried so fast I was a bit stunned. The brush on Spread Your Wings was a bit jacked – more bristles than the other bottles and at a strange 15 degree angle. I thought it was supposed to be like that until I noticed some bristles less than a millimeter longer than the rest in the bottle.

I split this collection into 2 – Part I is the ZOMG MUST SHOW YOU and Part II is I MUST SHOW YOU THESE LATER! In other words, the first part wowed me while the second part made me look and go, “Oh. ok. Not so bad.”

Enough of my nattering – here are the pics.

How gorgeous is this purple?! I love cremes and this purple creme makes my heart beat a little faster.

Despite the jacked up brush, this color really moved me. This is the shade of red that I love wearing. How can one NOT love wearing a color this luxurious?

Hello, green lover…*purrs* How beautiful is this? I didn’t have to do anything to this picture – just cropped it. The green looked exactly perfect and when I ran it through PhotoShop, it barely did anything to it to balance it out. When I had this one, this green shot straight to the #1 spot for my greens. IMO, this is the go to green for me. I used to dislike green polish, but the ones that have come out in the past couple of years have really made me change my mind.

Perfection in the sun, too.

Was playing about and put NFU Oh’s #51 on top. The sunlight washed it out, but it was a lovely combination. The NFU is lighter and what you can’t really is the dimensional depth the glitter added. I had a shade shot that was slightly blurry but even in that you couldn’t see the difference. You can really see it in person.

Inglot – #891

Monday, 3 May, 2010

When we moved to India, I was having a hard time finding polishes I liked. MAC was a bit too pricey for me, Chanel was just far too overpriced for my taste…that and I already had the colors.

Wandering through Saket’s Select City Walk mall – which, by the way, if you ever have the chance to go there, go…it’s insanely gorgeous and a fun place to be in – I came across a store called Inglot. The packaging for Inglot is similar to MAC’s – black with white lettering.

Inglot was my first introduction to matte nail polish in the fall of 2008, but that matte polish color will be for another post. This post is the silver metallic grey that caught my eye. I hope you can see why. When first applied, it went on a very dark gun metal grey then when it dried all the silver mega mini micro glitter came out to play. The pictures do not do this justice.

Inglot doesn’t have names assigned to their polishes…merely numbers. I purchased several bottles for myself and a bunch for my fellow polish friend back in the States.

Inglot’s an Eastern European brand and it’s really very pretty, but the colors and bases were definitely made with the eastern european skin tone in mind. A lot of the colors ended up being super bright and scary on me. I gravitated towards the ones that were closer to black, dark grey and dark blue.

You can now find Inglot in New York City located in Times Square, by the way.

Pics of the gorgeous metallic grey below. 🙂