BB Couture Ashes: Swatch Picture and Review

I picked up BB Couture Ashes (from the Saints of Ruin collection), even though it's not my typical shade, because I thought it looked and sounded interesting based on Vampy Varnish's review. Unfortunately, the color I received doesn't look quite like I was expecting to get!


What do you think? To me it looks like a pretty straightforward charcoal shimmer, with a different base color from what I expected and none of the multicolored shimmer I was hoping for. I feel like I got a completely different polish! It applied well and was opaque in two coats, but it's not as unique as I thought it was going to be.

Edit: I've since done a bit of investigating and it really looks like my polish is so different from many of the other ones I'm seeing out there. (Examples: 1 2) I take care to make sure my pictures are accurate to what I see on my nails in real life, so I'm wondering if different lighting may have played a role (I take my pictures in natural light) or perhaps skin tone.

swatch: chanel illusion d'or over american apparel hassid

when the chanel noir et or paris-shanghai polishes (black velvet, gold lamé, and illusion d'or) first went up on the chanel website, i was tempted by them but ultimately decided not to purchase any. once they appeared to have sold out, however, i felt a momentary panic... maybe i did want them after all, and now they were gone forever, never to be seen anywhere again except for on ebay for $300+! (lest my male friends who read this blog think i'm being hyperbolic, that's what really happened with the last chanel limited edition nail polish, jade - it now sells for several hundred dollars.) so when i saw the polishes back up on the chanel site, i clicked "purchase" without letting myself think twice.

i ultimately wound up purchasing both black velvet (mostly for the packaging, not gonna lie) and illusion d'or. since black velvet can't be worn with topcoat and i'm a slave to my quick-dry, i'll be waiting to wear that one 'til i have a nice chunk of free time; illusion d'or, however, i put on the day after it arrived.

first, a bottle pic:


and a close-up of the polish in its bottle (those little purple iridescent pieces are the coolest thing about this polish, imo):


and now for some mani pics! i put one coat of illusion d'or over american apparel hassid, a fabulously pigmented black that works great for layering! here's the result in overcast light:


in regular natural light:


and finally, in bright sunlight so that you can see how dense yet fine the glitter is:


also, here's a close-up so that you can see the individual glitter particles better. please excuse the leftover red polish on my nail!



all in all, i think illusion d'or is quite pretty. it's still growing on me - i normally prefer cremes or in-your-face bling - but i do like it, especially when the purple bits catch the light.

rescue beauty lounge grunge and streetwear black widow: swatch pictures and review

recently, i was given a tip as to where i could find a treasure trove of old revlon streetwears, and this was one of the long-discontinued and htf polishes i scored! rbl grunge looked totally wack on me on its own (i'll do a full post on it soon, but in a nutshell: brown girls beware!), but i thought its fairly nude/neutral color would make a good base for black widow:


my inspiration was a manicure done by my friend eve, in which she layered black widow over a nude polish to create the effect of a nude slip dress topped with a black mesh, lace, and sequined overlay. her mani was far superior to mine though - i did 3 or 4 coats of the sw, but maybe i should have done even more!

here's a close-up shot of black widow so you can see all the various kinds of glitter it contains: black regular glitter, silver regular glitter, and black bar glitter:

swatch: misa dying love

so much for my new year's resolution to post four times a week huh? unfortunately, i've been so busy lately that i kept $opi dark room on for a week and my next mani, opi dutch tulips on for close to another week. i'll try to be better from now on!

here's my current notd, misa dying love (two coats):


dying love is a black with silver shimmer that lightens the polish's overall color to more of a charcoal gray. the shimmer in this polish is so fine that it can barely be made out as individual particles; instead, it just serves to give the polish a pearly sheen.

me: "what do you think about this one?"
bf says: "nothing! it's just black! it's not even a color."

comparison swatches: avon golden twilight, china glaze wagon trail, and opi ds mystery

a friend on the nb was planning an avon order and was curious how golden twilight compared to some similar polishes from other brands, so i took the opportunity to do these swatches:




from left to right:

china glaze wagon trail (on my index finger) is a black base color packed with fine gold shimmer, giving the polish an overall olive appearance. it's a well-done polish, but the shimmer is too fine to really appeal to my taste these days.

avon golden twilight (on my middle finger) actually has a very deep blue-purple base (captured well by steph's closet), but it looks pretty much black on my nails. the gold shimmer in golden twilight is chunkier than the shimmer in wagon trail yet doesn't shine through the base color well, giving this polish a muddy appearance. i wish i'd passed on this one!

opi ds mystery (on my ring finger) is my favorite of the bunch. while it's not the deep purple holo i had imagined when i first heard that a purple ds polish was in the works, i still love it. this polish has a base color that's much more strongly purple than golden twilight's (although to be fair, it's still quite close to black) as well as very chunky gold shimmer that stands out nicely. i'll definitely be doing a full notd with this one soon.

swatch: sephora by opi what's a tire jack? matte

never thought i'd love a matte the way i love this one... another candidate for my top 20:


normally i don't care for matte polish, and i've been annoyed with the number of late-to-the-trend companies that have been putting out collections of mattes in the past few months (when they could have been putting out unique cremes - my true love - instead!). but i've come to realize that while i dislike the vast, vast majority of mattes, a totally flat matte black polish is *so* me.

the gold standard for matte black polish is ko knock out cosmetics' "flatte black," but i was uninterested in paying $19 for a polish i wasn't sure i'd love - especially one with such an unwieldy brush stem. someone on the nb described totally flat black mattes like this one and the ko as being like black holes, sucking in all light, and i completely agree with that description. i think that effect is best appreciated, however, not in close-up nail shots like this one but rather in the larger context of a full outfit, so that the polish is part of an interplay of textures. right now, for example, i'm wearing leather, lamé, cotton, and a chunky wool knit (all in various shades of gray and black), and the flat black polish on my tips adds one more interesting texture to the mix.

what's a tire jack? matte flows like a normal, non-matte polish when it's being applied; however, this can be a bit misleading, as it doesn't even out the way non-matte polishes do... so take care to do an even first coat. also, it does go a bit "satiny" after some wear, but a good matte topcoat can fix that easily.

bf says: "that is a matte finish."

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.