September 12, 2014

Fifty Shades of Blue

Just kidding with the title - it's only eight shades of blue.

You may recall from my post on Zoya's Muse that I own a lot of blue nail polishes - specifically, sparkly blue-green-gold polishes.  If you want to talk about all shades of blue and all different textures, it's 32 blue polishes.  That's just about one third of my entire nail polish collection.

Some of these blue-green-gold polishes are so ridiculously similar in the bottle that it's a good thing I don't have them displayed near each other on a shelf.  You'd think I was on a quest to own as many dupes of the same color as possible.  Once you get them on the nail, though, most of them actually look a lot different.  There are two polishes that still look pretty similar, but neither is an actual dupe of the other.

After listing all eight of these colors in my previous post, I decided to paint them all together and then swatch each one, then throw all of them into the same post.  Don't worry, I didn't paint my nails nine times in one day!  I've been building this post for days now, a few colors at a time.  And, since I conveniently have two hands, I've only been painting each color on one hand.

Since this post has so many different colors in it, I'm not going to go into much detail about each one, nor will I share as many pictures of each color as I usually do.

Fifty Eight Shades of Grey Blue


No explanation really necessary here: this is each and every one of my blue-green-gold polishes all conveniently lined up on eight fingers!


And here's a shot of the bottles lined up, all looking ridiculously similar.

OPI "Austin-Tatious Turquoise"


Austin-tatious is one of my very oldest nail polishes; I'm pretty sure I've had this bottle since middle school.  I'm now a year and a half out of college.  It's a blue-purple metallic, but my camera wouldn't capture the purple no matter how I tried.  The purple is actually fairly subtle - it's not quite a duochrome.  Three to four coats - it's very sheer.

Zoya "Charla"

I dropped the bottle and mercifully it didn't break, but it did get smooshed on one corner :(

Charla is a really great metallic shimmer with a lot of green and gold undertones in the blue.  Of course, my camera couldn't pick up on the gold in indoor lighting very well, though you can see it in the top of the bottle.  Two coats yields perfect opacity.  Application is absolutely wonderful.  And cleanup is nice and easy - the color is light enough that it doesn't stain.

Nicole by OPI "Candid Cameron"


Candid Cameron is from the Modern Family collection - it's inspired by the character Cameron Tucker.  It's a blue-green duochrome metallic, and I ADORE it.  Once again, my camera didn't want to capture the duochrome-iness of it, but I think you can kind of see it in the bottle in this picture.  I matte-d the ring finger, but I'm not crazy about it - the matte really detracted from the gorgeous colorshift, really flattening the color.

Sinful Colors "Nail Junkie"


If I didn't get Nail Junkie as a gift almost two years ago, I'd think it was a dupe of Muse.  They're very similar - but definitely different quality.  Nail Junkie's glitters are much bigger than Muse's, and it applies a bit thicker than Muse does.  Actually, it's gotten quite goopy in two years; I used a few drops of nail polish thinner to make it easier to apply.  The glitter is in a clear base, so it's a good one to layer over a creme polish!  My ring finger has a base coat of Sinful Colors "Why Not?" in this photo; the middle finger has a matte top coat.

Zoya "Muse"


I've already done a complete swatch of Muse; you can find that post here. Muse is probably my favorite of these eight polishes.  It's so sparkly and the colorshift is so mesmerizing!

Zoya "Remy"


I've also already done a complete swatch of Remy.  You can find that one here.  While Remy comes out very dark on the nail, in the bottle is has the same gold-ish shimmer that a lot of these polishes have.  I'm not really sure what happens to the gold... maybe it only looks gold because of the way the light bends when it hits the glass bottle?

Nicole by OPI "That's What I Mint"


That's What I Mint is very interesting; I'd say it's the most unique texture I own.  If you're familiar with Zoya's Pixie Dusts, it's sort of like that, but there's definitely something different about it.  This is from the Gumdrops collection, and the tag describes it as a "matte 3D glitter."  The polish base is sort of matte, but the glitters are so sparkly that you can hardly tell.  My ring finger has a matte top coat, which totally flattened it; middle finger has my usual Out The Door, which flattens it a little; pointer and pinky have no topcoat, which I think helps it keep its sparkle.

Julep "Lizanne"


Lizanne is a lot more green than the rest of these polishes, and it showed up even greener on my camera.  It has a really nice, subtle sparkle in it (I wouldn't even call this a shimmer or metallic polish; it's really a creme with some shimmering in it).  Again, my camera hardly captured the shimmer, but you can see it in the bottle beneath the word "Julep."  Julep tends to have insufferably thick, goopy polishes, but Lizanne was actually pretty cooperative.  It's definitely among the thicker polishes in my collection, but it's not insufferable.  I rather like it - it reminds me of the Emerald City, somehow.

What's your favorite of these colors?  Do you think I'm ridiculous for owning all of them?  Let me know in the comments!

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