Illamasqua Boo over Essie Sexy Divide: Swatch Pictures and Review

Finding Illamasqua Boo was such an ordeal for me... it wasn't officially being sold in the US (and I was loath to pay hefty international shipping fees from the Illamasqua website), but I'd heard rumors of a few mislabeled bottles somehow making their way to Sephora! So one freezing New York winter day, just before Christmas, I put on my wool cape (no, really) and set off up the island of Manhattan, on a quest to hit every Sephora in my path. And after half a dozen stops, pausing to hurriedly open up every bottle of "Collide" at each one, I struck gold! One "Collide" was actually "Boo"!


Since Boo is glitter in a clear base, I layered it over Essie Sexy Divide in these photos.


Sadly, my tale has a rather disappointing end: after all that hunting, it turns out I didn't even really like Boo on my nails that much, and I swapped it away to a better home. Recent nailboarders have had it a bit easier in their quest for Boo, as the Holiday 2009 Boo/Baptiste duo recently went on sale on the Illamasqua website for just £10! It appears to be sold out now, but there's always swapping...

swatch: illamasqua grab

hi guys! sorry to have been so absent from here - my laptop kicked the bucket pretty much as soon as i landed in california, and until it's fixed i don't have access to my saved pictures or any photo editing software. but while i've got a second, here's a photo of the notd i wore for *gasp* four days last week, illamasqua grab:


unfortunately, this isn't a color-accurate photo - this polish is much darker and richer irl. but while grab is tough to capture, it's lovely to apply... creamy and opaque in two coats.

bf says: "that looks like a lisa frank trapper keeper."

swatch: illamasqua hectic

for the past couple of days i've been wearing illamasqua hectic, a polish that unfortunately didn't make it to sephora stores stateside. here's how it looks on me in indirect sunlight:


and here's how it looks on me in indoor lighting (i.e. most of the time)... quite a bit more browned:


when i applied the first coat of this polish, i almost wanted to laugh at how horrible it looked with my coloring - it was basically a sickly green version of my skin, really awful. but as i built up a couple more layers of this shade, the color deepened considerably, and i found that it wasn't actually so bad. that said, i wouldn't exactly go running to recommend it to other tan and olive-toned girls...

hectic is a bit more sheer than most of the illamasqua polishes i own, requiring three coats plus some additional touch-ups for opacity. besides the lack of heavy pigmentation, however, the formula was quite good. and now i'm really looking forward to trying out my mac dry martini, as it looks to be quite a bit darker than hectic and will thus hopefully provide a better contrast with my skin.

by the way, if you're in the market for a browned olive green, you have a few options besides hectic: rescue beauty lounge no more war, the aforementioned mac dry martini, and obsessive compulsive cosmetics swamp thing. check out flinty's great comparison of the last two here!

as i mentioned earlier, hectic is not currently available in the united states. i received mine as a gift from a generous friend, but if you're interested in getting one for yourself, hectic and other uk-exclusive polishes can be purchased from illamasqua directly. unfortunately, buying from the illamasqua site is quite pricey - the polishes retail for £12.50 (= $20.63) each, plus shipping to anywhere outside the eu is £7.50 (= $12.38). all that said, illamasqua is currently offering free shipping worldwide on orders of £65 (= $107.25) or more; details on the promotion are available here.

bf says: "are you in the military now? that looks like camouflage."

comparison swatches: bb couture, illamasqua, rescue beauty lounge, and zoya greens

i haven't yet decided on today's notd (currently leaning towards nails inc. curzon street, but we'll see), so in the meantime here are some green comparison swatches i did this past weekend.


from thumb to pinky: bb couture green goblin, rescue beauty lounge orbis non sufficit, rescue beauty lounge recycle, zoya envy, and illamasqua rampage. orbis non sufficit is the dustiest of the bunch and has the best formula, envy is (clearly) the darkest, and rampage is the only one of these polishes with a jelly finish.

i wasn't thinking and didn't include orly enchanted forest in this comp, so i'll try to take pics with it included in the near future. i also have a dark green from l.a. girl's flare line that might be interesting to compare as well.

as you can see from the above pic, green goblin and recycle are quite similar, so i did a second comp featuring just those two polishes:


bb couture green goblin on index and ring finger, rescue beauty lounge recycle on middle finger.

recycle is more of a "clear"/true green, whereas green goblin is more yellow/brown (which i personally prefer). also, green goblin's formula is superior to recycle's - while green goblin was perfect in two coats, recycle was more watery and needed three coats for complete evenness.

scrangie has a comp of recycle and green goblin here that makes the two polishes look much more different from each other, but i can honestly say that they didn't look nearly that different on me, even under a bright desk lamp. the pic i posted above is literally the *most* different they ever look on me, and in most/dimmer lighting, the two polishes are practically indistinguishable.

swatch: illamasqua lament

another old one...


while i like this color, i was at the same time disappointed by it. from the photos that influenced my purchase, i was expecting lament to be lighter and more muted, and instead it turned out to be a super-bright pink. i like super-bright pinks... but i also have about 2348209384 of them already.

also, the application of this polish wasn't as smooth/great as that of the other illamasquas i own. the polish itself was easy to control (that is, it went where i put it), but the result was chalky and uneven. the above picture is three coats plus touch-ups.

swatch: illamasqua rampage

i did three coats with the specific intention of getting it as dark as it could go... i like my jellies vampy.

here it is in the sun:


and here's a photo of it in the shade:


in standard indoor lighting it goes even darker (to the very darkest a green can be before it goes black) and that's when i love it the most. it's like the smoothest, shiniest, deepest green glass you've ever seen... incredible.

swatch: china glaze fortune teller

my halloween mani! i didn't have a costume this year, so i figured it was important that i at least wear a festive polish. this is one coat of (the absolutely amazing) illamasqua boosh, topped with two coats of fortune teller (which i believe is a sally's exclusive):

fortune teller features a number of different kinds of orange glitter (as far as i can tell, regular glitter, small hex glitter, and larger hex glitter) in a black jelly base. here's a closeup shot to better show the varying sizes of glitter in this polish:

also, i'm very tempted to get a backup of boosh - i've worn it three times in the last five weeks, which has got to be some sort of record for me (given that i'm normally a die-hard daily polish changer). it's just sooo glossy and sooo magical to apply...

swatch: illamasqua boosh + clarins 230

i was running late for work today and didn't get a chance to take a photo of my notd (l.a. girl rockstar), so here's one from the archives. boooooooooosh is glossy, gorgeous perfection. applies wonderfully too... goes *precisely* where you put it. boosh, i love you.

and here it is with clarins 230 accent nails. i got so much flak on the nb for wearing 230 alone instead of layered over the black but whatever. i tried both options and liked it better this way... although i'm dying to wear it over a purple thanks to the pics pretty random has up here.

two coats of boosh, four of 230.