Showing posts with label aqua. Show all posts
Showing posts with label aqua. Show all posts

Saturday, October 13, 2012

Essie Winter 2012 Collection Swatches and Review

Huzzah! My first full collection review! Swatching is hard! Anywho, here's Essie Winter 2012 (or, the Leading Lady Collection. Not sure which is official. The display says Winter 2012):


Beyond Cozy is an antiqued silver micro glitter in a clear base. Super dense, it only took two coats to be completely opaque. Since it's so opaque, it's not the best layering polish. It totally overtakes the base color you layer it over. Super pretty.



Butler Please is medium blue creme. This one was hard to capture. It's got a bit of purple in it, but it's not blurple. It's also slightly dusty. It dried to a satin finish, so perhaps there's some neon pigment in there, too. I used top coat to make it shiny. Three coats.



Leading Lady is a red glitter in a red base. It looks a little pink to me, so it's a raspberry red. Two coats. You can see my comparison between this and Ruby Slippers here. If you have Ruby Slippers, you probably don't need this.



She's Pampered is a pink-leaning red jelly-creme hybrid. I love this. It's totally appropriate for winter. Two coats.






Snap Happy is a tomato red-orange jelly-creme hybrid. Hot damn, this is awesome. It's so bright and squishy. Three coats.






Where's My Chauffeur is an aqua creme. Leans blue. Way gorgeous. It changes in different light, hence millions of pictures. Three coats.

The formula on these were amazing. The cremes flowed wonderfully, spread evenly, and were not streaky. The jelly-cremes applied like butter. The glitters were opaque and not lumpy. They are thick though, so you may have to thin them after each use.

I really love this collection. It doesn't feel totally "winter" to me, but I think it works. The vampy and jewel-toned colors that usually saturate winter collection start to get repetitive after a while. If I was forced to pick only two, I'd go with Beyond Cozy and Snap Happy, with She's Pampered as the runner-up.

I found these at the brand-new City Target (seriously, that's what it's called) in the Chicago Loop, so I don't know what the availability of the collection is at this time. I haven't seen it anywhere else yet, nor have I heard of anyone finding it yet.

I'm planning a comparison post within the next couple days, so feel free to make requests on anything you'd like to see! Thanks for reading!

Friday, September 7, 2012

Guest Nails ft. My Sister & China Glaze

My sister is way more creative & better at nail art than I am. Here's a little something she did not to long ago:


She used China Glaze Life Preserver and China Glaze Aquadelic.

Monday, May 7, 2012

Barielle Do Unto Others

Boyfriend picked this one. I'll occasionally ask him "What color should I paint my nails?!" and he'll respond with "Whatever your heart desires" or "I don't know, you have so many!". Today, however, when I asked, he said "Something turquoise! Not shimmery." Since I've already worn Essie Turquoise & Caicos, that was out. It was between China Glaze Aquadelic & Barielle Do Unto Others. I went with the Barielle.




I'm sure glad I did! This is two medium-thick coats.




The formula itself was a little on the thick side. It wasn't runny and I had good control. I felt like the formula was getting thicker as I continued to paint though (from being exposed to the air?) so I added a drop or two of thinner between coats. It helped slightly. I added 4-ish more drops when I was done painting completely.




The color is gorgeous. Stunning. It glows. I'm in my dimly-lit room as I type this post and I keep getting distracted by how awesomely bright my nails look. It's a perfect combination of green and blue, with green being more prominent. I'm not great with colors, so I don't know if this is really turquoise or if it's actually aqua. Is there even a difference? I suppose it doesn't really matter, any nail color that is any combination of green and blue is fabulous. Anyway, I got some black flecks on my thumb from my top coat and I was heartbroken. This polish has made Top 20 status; that's how much I love it.



Matches my phone case perfectly. Perhaps there's a reason I love this color so much?



 Here it is matte. *le sigh*