Sephora by OPI Absinthe Makes the Heart: Swatch Pictures

I don't even know what color to call this shade... gray-green?



It has some interesting irregular shimmer:


Absinthe Makes the Heart required 3 coats for total opacity.

Rescue Beauty Lounge No More War vs. MAC Dry Martini: Comparison Swatch Picture and Review

On Monday, I posted a picture of olive-green-brown RBL No More War. Another shade in the same general color family (albeit a much darker and browner version) is MAC Dry Martini, which was released as part of the Nail Trend FW09 Jin Soon collection (along with Cool Reserve, Dance All Night, For Fun, Rich Dark Delicious, and Beyond Jealous… none of which I bought). The marked difference between the two polishes can hopefully be seen in the following comparison shot:


In the picture above, RBL No More War is on my index and ring fingers, while MAC Dry Martini is on my middle finger and pinky.

I discuss the qualities of No More War in Wednesday's post. As for Dry Martini, it was my first MAC polish, and going in I was a bit worried as I'd heard bad things about the application of MAC polishes. However, Dry Martini was creamy, even, and richly pigmented (the swatch you see is two coats), and on top of that I loved the brush! It made for easy, neat application

Rescue Beauty Lounge No More War: Swatch Picture and Review

Some people love browned olive green shades; others hate them. Regardless of which side of the spectrum you fall on, these colors are certainly unusual.


RBL No More War was released as part of RBL's Fall/Winter 2008 collection, one of the very first polish collections I fell in love with. I remember loving the juxtaposing of more traditional shades like dirty pink Plie and plum-brown Bruised with less traditional colors like dark blue-green Teal and of course, No More War. RBL used to have a salon right by my apartment and I fought with myself for weeks, trying to justify the purchase of such expensive polish, before I finally made my way in and bought Teal. Plie, Bruised, and No More War came later, in one of RBL's famed 50% off sales, but eventually they found their way into my Helmer too!

This polish was a pleasure to apply, smooth and opaque in 2 coats. I have to say that I don't love this particular color against my skin tone (although I'll bet it looks darker and therefore better on pale skin), but I do like deeper versions of the shade. Stay tuned for a comparison with MAC Dry Martini, which I much prefer!

BB Couture Bonnie: Swatch Pictures and Review

BBC Bonnie is a rich green jelly with lots of eye-catching glitter! This beauty is from the Infamous Lovers collection:




Since BBC Bonnie is glitter in a jelly base, it required the expected three coats for full color and opacity. The application was smooth, and with topcoat, Bonnie easily acquired an even, glossy finish. So vivid and sparkly!

streetwear elf: swatch picture and review

here's a swatch of one of my very favorite streetwears... elf!


and a close-up to highlight the shimmer:


i love a murky dark green... you all know that normally i don't enjoy shimmer, but for some reason i like elf. a limited-edition holiday polish long since discontinued, elf is vhtf, so i feel quite lucky to have scored this beauty!

looking forward to the day ahead - first, a playdate with an old friend (who i haven't seen in months after years of seeing him nearly every day), followed by a holiday party/made-it-through-the-semester celebration with the other members of my program. and of course, keeping my fingers crossed about the DREAM act!

streetwear grinch: swatch picture and review

i was lucky enough to find a few christmas streetwears earlier this year, so i thought i'd post them in these weeks leading up to the holidays!


sw grinch is a beautiful fine green glitter that i'm thrilled to own! on my middle and pinky fingers two coats of grinch are layered over three coats of streetwear mrs. claus, and on my index and ring fingers i'm wearing four coats (plus a couple of touch-ups) of grinch on its own. so festive!

a note: grinch is vvvhtf, but according to karen of pretty random (who's a thousand times more knowledgeable about older polishes than i could ever hope to be), icing lucky charm is a perfect dupe!

swatch: nars zulu

vvvvvhtf and highly coveted for years, nars zulu was rereleased a couple of months ago - and i was thrilled to get my hands on this piece of nail polish history!


i'd heard that zulu was a streaky pita to apply, but luckily the (reformulated) new version wasn't bad at all. i applied three coats for the mani above and found that overall, the application of the polish was fine and its appearance was quite even. i'll admit, though, that i did preemptively wait a bit longer than i usually do between coats, just to ward off any potential issues. on the one finger where i tried to touch up a nail that had started to dry but wasn't fully set, the polish did pull away a bit, leaving a bald spot (that luckily was easily fixed).

one other thing potential buyers/swappers should be aware of - as far as i can tell, the square caps on nars polish bottles do not pull off, unlike the caps on illamasqua or chanel bottles. this doesn't get in the way of application too much, but just a heads-up.

while i like zulu a lot, i'm still not a jelly convert... at the end of the day, while i do appreciate zulu's glassy finish, i'd still prefer a dark green creme (like sephora by opi dark room or zoya envy).

boy says: "look at the sloppy application on your pinky!" :(

streetwear toad: swatch picture and review

this is my favorite version of sw toad... beautiful olive green shimmer:


this polish is fairly thin and watery and tends toward bald spots, so i did four coats to get this evenly opaque. worth it, though! thanks to my sweet friend amy for hooking me up with this pretty!

american apparel summer 2010 swatches part 1: butter, malibu green

hi everyone! sorry for my absence the past couple of days... we've hardly had any sun around here, which makes photographing polishes no fun! this morning, however, we had some nice weather, so i thought it would be a great time to swatch a couple of the latest offerings from american apparel.

as i've posted before, being a die-hard creme lover i'm a big fan of smerican apparel's range of polishes, so i was thrilled to hear that this summer, they were expanding their line to include five new colors: butter, california trooper, l'esprit, malibu green, and summer peach.

i had mixed feelings about butter - i loved the color, a gorgeous warm soft yellow, but i did have issues with the application:


yellows are notoriously difficult to apply, and butter wasn't particularly awful in that respect; it was both thick and runny, and somewhat streaky as well, but most people could probably get it to work in three thick coats (since i didn't figure this out through midway through my application, i used four regular coats for the swatch above). however, the american apparel brush is designed in such a way that the stem retains a lot of polish even if you wipe off your brush well, causing drips and mess if you aren't careful. thus, in order to have a controlled, neat manicure, you have to wipe off the brush and stem so thoroughly that you simply don't have enough polish left to do properly thick coats. if you're able to figure out how to apply butter in a way that works for you, though, the color is very pretty.

malibu green on the other hand, had an awesome formula, and i really liked the color as well:


(please note that the polish is brighter and more saturated irl.) this had the thin, super-pigmented formula that i love and think of as being typical of american apparel's polish! with all my love of crazy polish i've never really ventured into bright blues and greens, so i was surprised by how much i loved this shade... i actually wound up wearing it for three days! the formula of this polish was excellent - smooth and very easy to work with - and it was opaque in two thin coats. malibu green makes a great pop of color against the blacks and neutrals i insist on wearing even throughout the summer, and i'm looking forward to breaking it out again.

i should have the rest of the american apparel summer colors (california trooper, l'esprit, and summer peach) swatched and posted for you on monday... i'll update this post with a link once that's done. happy weekend!

disclosure: the products in this post were sent to me by american apparel for consideration

rescue beauty lounge surf collection swatches: 360, bangin', and diddy mow

what better way to come back from my little blogging break than with the latest collection from my absolute favorite polish brand, rescue beauty lounge? the spring/summer surf collection is now available again for pre-order through this wednesday, april 7, so i thought i'd share my swatches for those of you who are debating whether or not to take the plunge on these.

by the way, the formula on all of these polishes is absolutely perfect. creamy, smooth, buttery, pigmented... exactly what i expect from rbl. each of these polishes was close to opaque in one coat and was perfect in two.

diddy mow is a completely unique and seriously cool blend of gray and green. i can see myself reaching for this polish again and again and again come fall:


here's a close-up of diddy mow to show its secret shimmer:


360 is a muted medium aqua that's very pretty. it's slightly darker than what i'd normally consider a summery color, but it works:


the secret shimmer in 360 is slightly stronger than the secret shimmer in diddy mow - here's a close-up:


and finally, bangin' is an amazingly bright warm red creme and my current notd. i know many are passing on this color because it seems dupey, but i consider bangin' to be the ultimate, most beautifully pigmented version of my favorite polish color. some browsers are doing funny things to this pic, so please know that this is pure red, not orange at all:


okay, basketball needs my attention again. gordon hayward is so boyishly adorable; i want to fix him a grilled cheese sandwich or something. maybe bring him a glass of chocolate milk.

swatch: bb couture poison ivy

hi everyone, sorry for my absence from the blog lately! the past couple of weeks have been crazy-busy, but hopefully i can get back into the posting groove again smoothly! so without further ado, here's a green notd from last week, bb couture poison ivy:


the formula on this is a tiny bit thick, but i found that worked to my advantage as i was in a rush to get out the door for my st. patrick's day plans and wanted something with serious coverage. and poison ivy didn't disappoint, as it was opaque in two quick coats.

by the way, i don't normally comment on any nail polish's wear time because i change my mani so frequently, but i recall being very impressed with the lasting power of this polish. i kept this mani on for four days last week, and even though i'm seriously hard on my hands, i didn't get even the tiniest chip.

the fact that i was able to keep this mani on for so long when i normally have to change my polish every day out of boredom is also a comment on the quality of the color. poison ivy is a vibrant green creme - brighter in the sunlight (for example, in the picture above) and darker indoors - and i really enjoyed having it on my nails.

and also, for those of you who are coming here from getcha nails did, welcome! thank you brooke for mentioning my little blog!

bloom bianca + streetwear fx flash: swatch pictures and review

i'm lucky enough to have some gorgeous revlon streetwears in my collection, thanks to a great dusty where i live as well as some generous friends. for some reason, though, i don't break out my streetwears as much as i should, so i'm starting a new feature on my blog to encourage me to swatch and wear my sw collection, one polish at a time. so welcome to streetwear saturdays!

after i got bored with yesterday's bloom bianca mani, i decided to layer one coat of streetwear fx flash (the green/chameleon/mermaid version) on top of it. here's fx flash in the bottle:


and here are some pics of the resultant mani. unfortunately these pictures don't do the manicure justice at all - in real life most of the colors you see in these pictures (the teal, the light green, and the yellow/gold, although not the blue) are much more vivid, and there's also a very strong copper tone to the glitter in certain lights.




i'm completely in love! i described this layered effect as "totally crazy and delicious" to some friends earlier, and the more i look at my nails, the more i think that's the perfect description for this mani.

by the way, if you'd like to see sw fx flash layered over black, please check out this post.

swatch: bloom bianca

bloom polishes unfortunately aren't available in the u.s., which is a shame since i've had my eye on a few for a while! luckily, i was able to score this one through a swap:


the consistency of this polish is a bit odd - it felt like i was spreading a gel over my nails (and a fairly sheer gel at that, as bianca required three or four coats for opacity depending on the thickness of the coats i used). the color is soooo worth it though... i have mermaid nails!

bf says: "your fingernails look like the shells of ten jade turtles."

swatch: sephora by opi dark room

i absolutely love this color... i've been wearing it since before the weekend and still have no desire to change my mani:




dark room is a very dark, murky green that's almost black in low light and whose green hue only really comes out in direct sunlight. the polish is thin and appears almost watery on the first coat, but it builds smoothly to achieve opacity within three coats. i feel like i sound so 'flat' here but i really do love this polish - i wear tons of gray in the winter, and i think this color looks great against those clothes.

american apparel polish swatches, part 2: berry berry, factory gray, office, and poppy

here are a few more swatches of american apparel's new polishes - my first set of swatches (with dynasty, mount royal, palm springs, and peacock) is here if you missed it earlier.

given that i'm a huge fan of bright warm-toned cremes, it's no surprise that i love poppy:


this is unfortunately another picture that looks quite off in firefox (way too orange) but normal in safari - it's a vivid red-orange in the same family as opi cajun shrimp. pigmentation on this is great, requiring only two coats for nice opacity, and i know i'll be wearing this polish a lot come spring and summer. excuse the smudged ring finger!

office looked better on my skin tone than i expected, although my favorite mint green is still bb couture laguna lagoon:


this picture is unfortunately off in ff as well (only slightly this time - it's just a bit too light and not blue enough). office was a bit less pigmented than the other aa polishes i tried, requiring three coats for opacity instead of the two the rest required. in a lot of the swatches i've seen this has a strong grayish tinge, but that's not detectable on me. as i look at it against my skin right now, it appears to be pretty much a plain mint green… which unfortunately makes it a lot less interesting than i'd expected!

factory gray changes quite a bit depending on the lighting. sometimes it's a standard gray creme...


while other times it has a strong purple tone (which is again, unfortunately, only really showing up in safari):


factory gray, like dynasty from my last post, is less pigmented than many of the other aa cremes i swatched but is still opaque in two coats. i find it quite unusual and interesting when it has that purple hue to it, but when it's just a regular gray it seems pretty boring to me. this may be because i don't much care for grays on myself, though… i mean, i'm sure poppy has lots of close dupes but you don't see me calling that one boring! ;)

and finally, i loved berry (edit: the aa website is now calling this "berries," but i could've sworn it used to say "berry berry"? weird.):


this polish seems to me like it should be dupable… but whatever the dupe is, i can't think of it! i don't have much to say about this one except that it applied very smoothly and was quite pigmented (perfect in two coats), and i can't wait to wear it as a full mani!

i plan to go back to posting my regular notds for a bit now, and then when i get a bit of free time, i'll add a third part to this american apparel series with some comp swatches. :)

swatch: sally hansen salon project runway

merry christmas to all who are celebrating today! in honor of the holiday, i'm wearing sally hansen salon project runway, from a recent collection that's currently exclusive to canada (so a big thank-you to the lovely girl who sent this polish my way!). there have been rumors that this collection may be coming to the u.s. at some point, but honestly, i wouldn't trust a thing sally hansen's customer service people say... they usually seem to be pretty clueless about distribution, etc.


the above picture is of two coats. while this polish for the most part applied pretty well, it did have a somewhat odd consistency... it almost felt like i was gliding thin melted jello onto my nail. also, i was expecting this polish to look slightly different on me based on other people's pictures (i thought it would be darker and less blue, and that the gold shimmer would be more visible on the nail), but i do still like it quite a bit. what i do not like, however, is the crazy shrinkage poshe gave me on this mani! *grumbles*

and now, i'm headed off on a trip for a few days, although i've scheduled a couple of posts to go up during that time. i hope you all have a good weekend!

swatch: zoya envy

i absolutely love this super-dark green creme. i know many dislike envy because its green tone disappears somewhat in dimmer lighting, but i'm a big fan of almost-black shades. please excuse the polish i accidentally slopped all over my ring finger:


envy has an unusual texture - on the first coat, it's quite sheer and somewhat grainy-looking, but then it becomes extremely dark and even with just one more coat. the graininess of the first coat of polish suggests that envy would have some shimmer; however there is nothing i hate more than subtle/"secret" shimmer and i promise this polish doesn't have it, not even when right under a bright light.

bf says: "...is that black? black and something else? what color is it?"

ughhh the weather is so gross here, so i'm off to eat mac & cheese in bed while watching entourage. happy saturday!

swatch: bb couture for men grenade

i'm having pangs of swapper's remorse over this one... but then again, i never wore it in the months that i owned it, so it's good that it went to a better home. a gorgeous olive green absolutely packed with gold shimmer:






very smooth application, three coats. bb couture polishes (including the men's collection) are available at overallbeauty.com.

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."

swatch: orly enchanted forest and zoya "green friday" promotion

happy thanksgiving!! as this post goes up, i'm currently on a train to the berkshires to spend the holiday with a good friend and his family. i unfortunately didn't have enough light to take pictures of my thanksgiving notd (lippmann superstar) before i left, but i'll be sure to post photos tomorrow. for now, here's a pic of orly enchanted forest, since i neglected to include it in my recent green comparison:


by the way, if you like green polish, zoya is running a great promotion through 11:59 p.m. est this friday (11/27). with the code "greenfriday," any purchase of $20 or more will receive six full-size green zoya polishes (envy, irene, midori, suvi, tangy, and veruschka) absolutely free! for swatches of these colors, check nailgal.com (always an excellent resource!), and for more details on the promotion, visit the zoya blog.

i personally love zoya - to the point that i have close to 50 of their polishes. not only do i appreciate that they offer great discount codes to make their polishes affordable for their customers, but they're also my go-to brand for pedis because of their small brush (clean-up-free pedicures? sign me up!). to see swatches of all the brand's polishes i've posted on my blog so far, check the zoya label - while i don't have pics of all of them up here yet, my personal top five are ali, astra, dita, pinta, and roxy. and now i have to stop typing because i've written the word "zoya" about nine million times in this post, and it's starting to look weird. i hope those of you who celebrate thanksgiving have a great holiday!