Do I Need Them All? Black Dahlia Lacquer & Polish Me Royalty strawberry polishes

Hey, it's been a while since I published a post in this series!  I'm not really sure why I dropped the ball on that one.  I'm clumsy. ;)

Anyway, today I'm going to compare the polish that you saw on the blog this past week with another strawberry-inspired polish.  Because I'm obsessed with strawberry polish, it was inevitable that I wound up with two similar ones!

Today we'll be looking at Polish Me Royalty's Strawberry Shortcake and Black Dahlia Lacquer's Strawberry Fields.  (I did a full swatch of Strawberry Fields at the beginning of last year, and you can find that post here.)

I have Strawberry Shortcake on my pointer and ring fingers, and Strawberry Fields on my middle and pinky fingers.

They're definitely very similar, but also noticeably different.  Strawberry Fields is a brighter, more true pink than Strawberry Shortcake, which is a bit more muted and on the berry-purple side.  (Is "pinurple" a thing? "purnk"?  I'm calling purple-leaning pinks purnk from now on.)

Both polishes have a subtle shimmer that my regular camera can barely pick up.  And the flash on my camera is so unbelievably bright that it completely washes everything out this up close - so I have to take any flash photos on my phone.  You can kinda-sorta see the shimmers in the flash photo:

You can see that Strawberry Fields' shimmer is more golden-pink, while the shimmer in Strawberry Shortcake is more silvery-pink.  They're both very subtle and very pretty.

As I mentioned in this week's post, Strawberry Shortcake is very nearly a OCW.  If my nails were shorter and/or I had this in a full-sized bottle, I would probably only need one coat of it.  It's a much more highly pigmented formula that Strawberry Fields, which definitely requires two coats, even using a full-sized brush.  And as I also mentioned earlier this week Strawberry Shortcake is SCENTED which is awesome!  Strawberry Fields is not scented.

So, do I need them all?  Well, I do, because strawberries.  Although, funnily enough, I don't usually reach for pink when I want to throw on a quick coat of polish.  Under normal, non-strawberry-inspired circumstances, I would probably not want to bother owning such similar shades of pink polish (sorry, pink).  Buuut they're definitely not dupes, so for a pink lover or a fellow strawberry lover, I'd say that yes, you DO need them all!

Thanks for checking out this month's edition of Do I Need Them All!  Which of these shades do you prefer?  Let me know in the comments!

And don't forget to enter my blogiversary giveaway, which can be found here!  There are only a few days left to enter!

Black Dahlia Lacquer: Woke Up On 6th Street

Holy holographic glitter, Batman!  This polish is amazing!!!

Woke Up On 6th Street comes from Black Dahlia Lacquer's Capital Collection, inspired by the city of Austin, Texas.  I did a little bit of Googling and it turns out that 6th Street is the heart of Austin's arts and entertainment district.  That explains the bling and glam in this polish!

I absolutely love the small spattering of blue glitters in there with the silver.  It adds just enough depth to the polish to break up the holo rainbow a little bit, helping to make it impossible for me to look away.

Application is surprisingly smooth for such a dense glitter.  The glitters don't clump together, nor do they cling to the brush.  A very pleasant surprise as I didn't expect such a dense glitterbomb to be so cooperative!

JUST LOOK AT ALL OF THAT OUT-OF-FOCUS HOLO GOODNESS.

Another great surprise about this polish is just how dense it is.  It was practically opaque at only one coat!  I used two coats in all of the photos.  Can you believe that?  Only two coats of a glitterbomb, and it's 100% completely opaque!

 

I'm super in love with this polish.  If I ever visit Austin, I'll definitely have to pay a visit to 6th street with this on my nails!

*excessive drooling*

*hyperventilates*

  

This is definitely one of my top favorite glitterbombs that I own.  What are your favorite glitter bombs?  Are any of you from or familiar with Austin, and if so, what do you think of this representation of Sixth Street?  Let me know in the comments!

Black Dahlia Lacquer: Strawberry Fields

Highschooler Me would be freaking out right now.  When I was in high school, I got really, really in to The Beatles (not that I ever didn't love them).  I was also sort of obsessed with strawberries.  My friends occasionally referred to me as Strawberry ShortKate, I had a pink shirt with a large strawberry printed on to it, and one of my friends gave me a giant, blinged-out strawberry necklace for my birthday one year.  My strawberry obsession was one of those things that made total sense at the time, because duh strawberries are yummy and sexy and awesome, but makes me feel kinda silly writing about it as a 23 year old because strawberries are just a fruit.

Here I am, in all my glory on my (how'd you guess?!) 16th birthday.  The scarf and necklace 

were a present that year; there's a picture of me hug-tackling my friend who gave them to me. :)

Anyway, the Beatles song Strawberry Fields Forever basically became my theme song.  When I doodled on my notes, I drew melting strawberries a la the movie Across the Universe (which came out in the middle of my intense Beatles obsession).

Sooo, a few weeks ago when checking out Black Dahlia Lacquer's shop for the first time, I came across this polish, and I knew that I absolutely had to have it!

Strawberry Fields is that really great shade of strawberry reddish-pink.  Real strawberries are much more red, but at the height of my strawberry obsession I often drew and doodled strawberries in a pinkish tone.  So I approve of the pinkness of this polish. :)

There is a very fabulous yet subtle pinkish-gold shimmer in this polish.  Part of what makes it so fabulous is how subtle it is!  At certain angles in certain lighting (ie, the dimness that is my basement bedroom) you can't see it at all, but let the light hit it properly and it sparkles beautifully!

 

Strawberry Fields' formula is very nice.  Very smooth, even coverage, and two coats yielded perfect coverage.

My camera captured this much more neon and pink than it is in person.  I did my best to desaturate it and tone down the redness to make it look more accurate, and I think this photo is the closest.  And you can see the shimmer the best right underneath the word "Dahlia"!  (The photos on BDL's website are very accurate.)

I'm definitely impressed with this polish and adding Black Dahlia to my list of favorite indie brands!  I did purchase another polish from them, but I decided not to put them in the same post.  So look forward to another Black Dahlia swatch+review in the next few weeks!  I also absolutely love their super unique bottle shape.  It just barely fits upright in my Helmer - if it was about half a centimeter taller, I'd probably have to lay it flat in the drawer!

What were your odd youthful obsessions?  Have any of them ever re-appeared in your adult life like mine did?  Let me know in the comments!