Showing posts with label Shimmer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shimmer. Show all posts

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!

August 20, 2014

China Glaze: Flying Dragon

Flying Dragon is kinda surprising on two levels.   In the store, I first thought it was a totally flat creme, but upon further inspection I realized that it has some really subtle shimmers in two colors: the color of the polish and just a hint of blue!

When I got it home and first swatched it on a nail display, I was even more surprised to realize that it has a matte finish!  It doesn't say matte anywhere on the bottle, yet it's definitely a matte polish.

Apparently, China Glaze has released two versions of this color, both under the same name.  The older version is darker, I think; the version I bought this summer is more neon.  Kinda.  It's quite summer-neon in the bottle and when it's wet on your nails, but it darkens pretty significantly as it dries.  And as it darkens, the sparkles become less distinguished.


Application is kind of iffy.  If you go over the same spot twice while the polish is still wet, you get slight streak marks.  Fortunately, the streaks evened out pretty nicely when I applied my second coat and even more with my top coat.  I really didn't care for the matte look - I think this polish looks better when it's wet - so I used my usual Out the Door on all but my ring finger.  My ring finger has two coats of OPI's Matte Top Coat.  The matte top coat made the sparkles all but disappear.  It's a bit disappointing.

Another thing that's rather disappointing about this color is the way it photographed.  In person, it's a very deep purple that leans only slightly to the red, but as you can see, it looks much more red on camera.  I tried playing with the white balance a bit, and managed to get one picture that looked a bit closer to accurate.


And then, in iPhoto, I messed with the coloring to try to get the color to look exactly like it does on my nails.  You can see in my skin color and in the reflections how much blue and green I had to add to the photo just to get it to look properly purple instead of red-violet.



It still looks a little bit more neon in this photo than it does in person, but I promise you that Flying Dragon is nowhere near as red as it looks in the first two photos.

I'm really shocked at how dark this got compared to the brightness that I saw in the bottle; it's like it transformed from a neon summer purple to a deep autumn purple.  Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, except that it's still summer neon season and I wanted to have an awesome summer neon color on my nails!

Yet another disappointment: it cracked and chipped really quickly.  That may, however, have been my fault and not the polish's: one nail I nicked with a knife while cooking, and I cleaned the bathroom rather heavily the day after painting this polish on.  I did wear gloves, but cleaning is still rough on my hands and nails.  Still, I suspect the polish's formula is at least a little to blame because I have never had a matte polish not chip easily - and I have had non-matte polishes stay undamaged after cleaning the bathroom.

Cleanup of Flying Dragon is okay.  It stained my cuticles a little bit, but not too badly - I was able to clean up all stains without too much extra effort.  Removal is super easy.  No polish stains or glitters smearing all over my hands!

So, all in all, I do like this polish.  It's just not quite what I expected based on what I saw in the bottle.