swatch: rescue beauty lounge atame

for a few days after i wore misa dying love i had on opi red hot ayers rock, and now i'm wearing rbl atame:


atame is patchier than most of my other rbl polishes, requiring three coats for opacity. its consistency is very smooth and easy to work with, and it still applies fairly well, but when i use an rbl i hope for the richly pigmented, almost-a-one-coater formula of polishes like teal, orbis non sufficit, and mismas - and atame unfortunately doesn't compare in that regard. still, it's a nice color, and i'm always happy to add to my rbl collection.

bf says: "blluhhh-dh!"

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."

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.

swatch: rescue beauty lounge lulu

this polish didn't have quite the opacity and smoothness of most other rbl cremes i own, so this mani required three coats:


i wore lulu with a super severe black dress - heavy fabric, high neck, and sharp, padded shoulders. i loved the contrast.

swatch: sally hansen salon quartz chameleon

the last couple of days have called for a neutral/"work-appropriate" mani, so i reached for this untried polish (from the fall 2008 sally hansen/tracy reese collaboration):


quartz chameleon went on smoothly and required three coats for opacity. honestly, i don't love this polish, as it's strangely close to my skin tone and kind of makes me look like i'm missing my fingernails. in addition, i think it's pretty clear from the polishes i typically wear that i don't like shimmer... but hey, at least this is no longer an untried!

bf says: "it's yoooou, babyyyy!"
me: "what?"
bf says: "THAT'S ALL I HAVE TO SAY!"

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. :)

packing for my return to new york...

after a few weeks away. think i brought enough polish? :P


goodbye, sunlight swatches! luckily, i was able to take pics of the rest of the aa polishes today, so they'll be up once i edit them.