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!

Do I Need Them All? Zoya, Nails Inc London, and China Glaze nudes

Welcome to November's edition of Do I Need Them All!  This month, we'll be taking a look at four nude nail polishes.

From left to right, we have: Zoya Ana, Zoya Chantal, Nails Inc London Radnor Walk, and China Glaze Sunset Sail.  I have the polishes in the same order on my nails in the photos below.

These polishes are pretty surprisingly different once you get them on the nail!  Ana is a Satin finish - somewhere between glossy and matte - which comes as no surprise since that's right on the bottle.  Radnor Walk actually dries to a matte finish, which is a bit of a surprise since it's not written on the bottle at all.  And Sunset Sail has a bit of a shimmer to it, but its shimmer is much more subtle than that of Radnor Walk.

Angled more towards the light to purposefully get a glare - to demonstrate the different finishes.

Colorwise, these polishes kind of pair up: Sunset Sail is almost the same shade as Chantal, though SS leans perhaps a touch more peachy; and Ana and Radnor Walk are very similar shades, though the pinkish sparkle in RW does make it look a bit pinker overall.

 

I found that using flash was the best way to show the differences in finish - and to actually show off the shimmers in Radnor Walk and Sunset Sail.  My camera wasn't really picking up the shimmers at all - and the flash on my camera is ridiculously bright at its lowest setting, so I took this picture on my phone.

These colors are altogether much more different on the nail than they are in the bottle!  There are definitely no dupes here.

So, Do I Need Them All?  Sure!  These babies are definitely all different from each other.  The sparkles in two of them, the matte and satin finishes, and the two different main color tones make them very different nail polishes.  Until I really got in to collecting nail polish, I probably would have picked only one of these four, because I wasn't really in to nude polish.  Which one, I'm not sure, but I use to wear nude colors so rarely that I didn't care to own similar shades!  However, for someone who loves doing nail art but works a job where nail polish can't be too colorful, I would say that you definitely need all of these!  Just be sure to grab a Satin and a matte top coat if you want to secure your manicure and retain the different finishes featured in this post.

Was this post helpful to you?  Are there any specific polishes that you'd like to see compared in this series?  Let me know in the comments!

Do I Need Them All? Zoya Ryan vs Essie Style Cartel

Welcome to this month's edition of Do I Need Them All!  Today we'll be looking at two lovely navy blue cremes: Zoya Ryan and Essie Style Cartel.  They're both from each company's Fall 2014 collections, but navy is always a good color for this time of year!  I actually bought Ryan shortly before breaking a no-buy policy to snatch up Style Cartel, and then I facepalmed at myself when I held them up next to each other.  Let's see how they actually compare!

Style Cartel is a little bit lighter and more blue-toned than Ryan.  Ryan is such a deep shade of navy that it almost looks black in lots of lighting.

Don't mind the airbubbles on my ring finger!  Or the bright blue glare, which is from my lamp and its blue shade.

Overall, I like Ryan more than Style Cartel.  Ryan's formula is dense and highly pigmented.  It can almost be a one-coater, as long as you have a steady hand.  I did use two coats in these photos, mainly to help neaten the line around my cuticles.  Style Cartel, however, is much thinner, almost the the point that it's watery.  I left it at two coats on my middle finger, and did three coats on my pinkie.  You can see that the third coat deepened the shade just a little bit, but it still looks lighter and bluer than Ryan.

So, Do I Need Them All?  Ehhhh, I would say no.  They are slightly different, so I wouldn't call them dupes, but they're so close that I don't think owning both is a must.  My personal recommendation is Ryan, simply because the formula is so much smoother and more opaque, but Style Cartel is also a  good navy blue polish.

Do I Need Them All? Zoya Mikka, Shivon, and Haven vs Julep Elle

Welcome to this month's edition of Do I Need Them All!  Since it's September, I thought I would start looking at deeper, more autumn-y colors.  Today we'll be looking at four purples: Zoya Mikka, Haven, and Shivon, and Julep Elle.  All of these polishes are at least a year old, but they're all lovely purples that are perfect for this time of year!

From left to right is Elle, Mikka, Haven, and then Shivon.  As always with this series, I have the polishes in the same order on my nails from pointer to pinkie fingers.

As you can see, Shivon is on an entirely different page than the rest of these shades.  It's not as deeply purple as the other three, but I figured it was close enough that it should be included in this post, anyway.  Once you get it on the nail, it's a very rosy purple with flashes of gold, while the other three colors are much more purple and less colorshifty.

These polishes all photographed pretty horribly; no matter what I tried, they just came out looking brownish or blackened.  I did the best I could to edit the photos for color accuracy, but they're still a little bit off.  I know Elle, Mikka, and Haven all look pretty much identical in this photo.  There are some subtle differences between the three in person that you'll just have to take my word on.  Be sure to check out the linked store pages for the companies' photos!

Elle and Mikka are similar enough that I think it's safe to say that they're dupes.  Mikka is perhaps a touch more reddish, but barely.  They look the most identical in the bottle as well: they both have a silver shimmer to them, while Haven glistens with a brighter orchid purple.  Between Elle and Mikka, my personal favorite is Elle.

So, Do I Need Them All?  Not really!  Shivon definitely stands out from the other three, but if you only want one deep purple metallic, you'll be happy with Elle, Mikka, or Haven.  Haven's orchid tones make it stand out from Elle and Mikka, but as for the latter two, I would recommend choosing one or the other.

Do I Need Them All?: Zoya Demetria vs China Glaze I Brake For Colour

Welcome to this month's edition of Do I Need Them All!  Today, we're going to look at two fairly new polishes: Zoya Demetria and China Glaze I Brake For Colour.  Demetria is from Zoya's Paradise Sun collection, while I Brake For Colour is from China Glaze's Road Trip collection.

I have Demetria on my pointer and ring fingers, and I Brake For Colour on my middle and pinkie fingers.

This image is slightly Photoshopped; please see the bottom section for an explanation!

They're pretty close in color, but definitely different!  (Unless you're part of the population who can't see as many shades of red, perhaps?)  Demetria is a bright, summery red that borders on neon, while I Brake For Colour is more of a bright pinkish coral.  In the bottle they look very close, but on the nail, they definitely belong to two different color families!

The formula on both polishes is very similar: both apply very smoothly and are highly pigmented, and both require two coats.  I Brake For Colour leans a tad to the thin side, so be careful of flooding your cuticles with too much polish.

So, do I need them all?  Sure!  It's always fun to have bright reds and pinks in one's nail polish collection.  These are definitely not dupes.

*    *    *

Okay, these polishes photographed kind of horribly.  My camera has a tendency to highly over-saturate very bright colors and reds.  So ask it to photograph a bright red polish, and it looks horrid.  I couldn't even hold either of the bottles in the photos because of how badly it flattened the reds and whitened my skin (as if my skin isn't already white enough)!  No amount of adjusting the white balance, ISO, shutter speed, or aperture seemed to help (for the non-photography savvy: I tried changing how much light the camera let in).  Here's how grossly over-saturated the polishes actually showed up on my camera:

As you can see, both polishes look much more orange than they truly are, and they don't really look all that different.  So I cooled down the color on the computer by adding a LOT of blue to the photo.  This photo more accurately shows the colors of the polishes:

My skin is so blue here that it's pretty jarring.  So for the first image that you saw, I crudely Photoshopped my nails in the blue photo onto my hands in the non-blue photo.  I know it's not the best job, but I wanted to show you what the polishes actually look like on my skin, rather than make you try to picture the blue-d nails on my non-blue skin.

What do you think of this new series?  Want to see more posts like it, or other types of posts that I haven't done many of?  Let me know in the comments or by giving your feedback here!

Do I Need Them All?: A new comparison series!

Welcome to my new monthly series of blog posts, called "Do I Need Them All?"!  Once a month from now on, I'll be comparing nail polishes that look very similar or even identical and answering the question of whether or not one really needs them all.  (I was going to go with "Do I Need Them Both," but then as I was pulling out polishes for this post, I had four very similar polishes so I decided to make the series title a bit more open-ended.)  Similar or identical polishes, whether they were released by the same or by different companies, are often called "dupes," or duplicates, of each other.  Unless you're a professional nail artist or a collector, buying a dupe of a polish that you already have can be frustrating and expensive.  So I'm here to help you out by letting you know if you need them all!

For today's inaugural Do I Need Them All post, I'll be comparing four different blue creme polishes: Zoya Robyn, Zoya Ling, Sinful Colors Why Not?, and Essie Strut Your Stuff.

In the name of consistency, I made sure to line up the polishes in the same order from left to right in both photos.

 

As you can see, these are all very similar.  Probably the two that are most similar are Robyn and Why Not.  Although those two are nearly identical, they are still just a tiiiiny bit different: Why Not is a tad bit richer and bolder.  They both look pretty much 100% the same as Strut Your Stuff on camera, but you can see the variation better in person.

Ling is definitely the darkest and deepest, while Strut Your Stuff stands out as the most neon.

Even the formulas on these four was very similar.  They all required two coats, though Strut Your Stuff was the only one that I would say definitely always needs two coats.  The first three are pigmented enough that a very steady, skilled hand might be able to get away with using only one coat, but Strut Your Stuff was much thinner.  Blue polish is pretty notorious for staining, and even though I didn't wear these for long, 3 of these 4 were no exception.  Ling didn't really stain my nails or skin at all; Robyn, Why Not, and Strut Your Stuff all required some light scrubbing with toothpaste to get rid of all the blue.

So, to answer the question of do I need them all?: probably not.  If you love blue as much as I do, you might, but if you're just looking for a good bright sky blue creme, any one of these will satisfy your needs.  They're all so close in color and formula that your color palette won't be missing much by only owning one of these.  But if you really want two of them, make sure one of them is Ling.

What do you think of this new series?  Want to see more of it, or is there a different type of non-swatch post that you'd like to see?  Let me know in the comments or by giving your feedback here!