Sally Hansen Lacquer Shine - Glossy

I'm disappointed. I was hoping that there was be more of a deep chocolatey brown with a rich red shimmer as it looked in the bottle. The colour on nail is quite flat, none of the depth seen in the bottle, and mostly it just looks like black. Under a light bulb or sunlight you can see the red reflect, but under normal office lights there is nothing. Sally Hansen Mega Shine top coat actually made it less shiny - so it lives up to its lacquer shine name, but it also started wearing off the tips quite quickly. In fact, within the next few hours, a white line of wear was on the tips just from your regular abrasions - clothing, typing, folding up... Ridiculous! Guess its ok I only spend $2 on it!

I have to say though, it was one of the EASIEST paint ons I've done with a dark colour. For once, a Sally Hansen with an immaculate brush. It was long and smooth and the polish quite runny so I took aaaages and got the polish nice and smooth.

 

In daylight without direct sun it just looks black.

And here we are under a florescent lamp - finally, some sparkle! But where am I going to walk around with a lamp directly over my nails?

Coral Colours does Chanel

I never thought much of Coral Colours, which is a brand you tend to see in Big W and chemists. The bottles are around $6 each. But it caught my eye that some of the names were familiar. Now seriously... if you're going to rip off a major fashion house... oh well maybe that is part of their gig.

Ok, so here we have a hot line up of Particuliere, Paradoxal, Riva and Black Pearl. Retail aprox $38 a bottle.

And in Coral Colours we have Particular, Paradoxos, Jayd and Silver Caviar.

I don't have a side by side for you, unfortunately but I can say the Particular is more mushroom. Jayd may be a bit greener. But Silver Caviar is not bad.. it has purple and green flecks in it but barely noticeable. And I got an umbrella for buying 3 CC products. Score.

Orly "Iron Butterfly"

Here's the other suede effect metallic I got from Orly. I applied it before bed time and in the morning it had cracked. It's a pretty frail polish and reacts badly to any flexing of the nail. Not sure how it would go with 2 or 3 coats.

I found it was so heavily pigmented that one coat was even coverage.

So perhaps you can call this pewter. It's charcoal black and has this great silver glitter in it. Again, it smoothed itself out as I painted and I really love the frosted bottle and the brush is AMAZING. I don't think I have ever been much fussed about the brush but I can tell you in my old age, that with the shakes, a good brush that flexes well, with all its bristles working together in the same direction and sticking together... it really helps to keep your paint within the lines.

I wonder if I can use this polish as an excuse: sorry, I can't pick that up/type that letter/get that stack of whatever... it will make my polish crack.

P.S. I just looooved touching this polish on my nails. I really love the texture of it!

Nicole (by OPI) "Dream Maker" (and Orly "Glam Rock")

Nicole is a formulation sold at a lesser price in chemists and so on, with colours targetted at the teen market. I mean, they have had a range for Justin Bieber and Gossip Girl (4 colours: Spotted! green; Too Rich for You blue; Scandals, Secrets and Sparkle silver, and Party in the Penthouse lighter blue.). 14 colours for Justin.

Aaaaanyway. I picked out Dream Maker because it has that crystally glitter that makes me think I dunked my fingers in sugar. The pink was a bits disturbing - I'm not much into cotton candy shades, and this was smack bang princess, lollies and fairy floss.

Fortunately, it seems to achieve the colour in the pot you would really need to paint on several layers. I've out on 3 and its not flagrantly princess yet. There is just that delicious gold and silver all through and its a really easy brush on polish. Nice and flowing, fantastic brush for a budget brand. Very pleased.

Sadly the first photos I took were not in focus and after a couple of days I got round to taking more, but only after I added the Glam Rock.

Orly had a range of metallic suede/matte finish. Glam Rock is copper, I guess. The glitter is also nice and chunky. I dries flat, I was amazed. You need to paint quick because it dries to the matte finish quickly, but I am impressed because it seems to level off by itself. It's not really my colour, but I wanted to see how this matte finish stuff worked.

Orly (mini) - Blue Belle

More than 5 years ago, I had a colour I really, really adored - Bourjois' #50 Bleute. It was iridescent, semi transparent with a vague milky base and looked like I had a sheet of plastic over my nails. It had a strange way of not looking like nail polish. I've been trying to replicate it for years. Lots do the iridescent baby blue look, but none have come near the effect this Bourjois polish did.

On Wednesday when I discovered Orly at a New Farm chemist, I decided to give Blue Belle a go, despite having been disappointed by other blue polish. Well, it is close, closer than other ones, but still not quite there.

But still, what can I say? This look evokes ethereal beings, angelic and blithe.

I wanted to know why it just wasn't working out for me. Under a fluro lamp I found the Bourjois has a faint amount of pink or violet iriscence. I wonder if I can replicate that. Grrrr. Anyway, for now, this is as near as I can manage.

Butter - All Hail The Queen

Well straight up I've decided the Butter formula is not so great. I found it hard with this one to spread it evenly, worse than the purple one I reviewed earlier. The shade is just divine though. I read a few that said they found it ho hum, but its a very cool toned fawn. The shimmer you can see gold and dark pink, but there is also a holographic element to it. Inside its very refined, and outside in the sunlight its just perfect.

I really liked the colour, but its a let down that its hard to put on. Only 2 of my nails worked out perfectly, so I can't see this as my go-to polish ever.

Orly in New Farm

I am happy to discover that the pharmacy on Merthyr Road has mini and regular Orly's. Yaaaaaaay.

Chi Chi - Cat Fight and b Collection - Chicago

A long time ago I had a Tuesdays Girl nail polish (UK brand) that was only purple iridescent. It looked like a transparent grey until it reflected sunlight and then you could see a great electric violet. Well, I had been waiting for something like that to come back and here it is, except that the Chi Chi version is far more visible in ordinary light. It's quite sheer and I put in 3 coats.

Now there was a hot Chanel shade of the moment called Paradoxal which could lead you to get this Chi Chi and be horribly disappointed. Paradoxal comes on warm grey and reflects violet. But I have found Australis has a limited edition duplicate, which funny enough they just call Limited Edition 1.

Anyways... shortly after I painted on a semi circle of b Collection's Chicago which is a silvery purple glitter. b Collection is Bloom's cheap version of itself for Target. The bottles are cheaper material, the brush is not as good and I daresay the polish itself is made of cheaper product. The colours however are clones of ones available in the Bloom range (another Aussie brand) but are called names of cities. Bloom's range are called girls' names. I think Chicago's alter ego is Catherine. It's still pretty tremendous though, a highly condensed glitter, goes on very chunky. I'm quite fond of the texture and prefer it without a top coat.

It's quite unfortunate that the Brisbane polish is a really unpalatable pink. It seems the b website does not have a colour chart.

Swatches

So it seems a lot of nail freaks like making swatches of their polishes and that you can get these professional plastic swatching things on places like Alibaba. You see them in shops as well so you can tell if the outcome matches what it looks like in the bottle.

But if you're not going to buy yourself 100 pieces of swatch plastic off Alibaba then you may have to make do with clear gelati spoons. I wonder if I will get strange looks when I ask the gelati clerk that I need a clear one, not the blue one. :-)

So the pics are of a wheel version, and the Zoya spoons - you can get these on the Zoya website to help you decide what colour to buy and then they deduct the cost of the spoon off your purchase. Neat idea. Well, if you live in the US!

Essie - Demure Vixen and Ulta3 - Envy

Not being a total nail fanatic I find it hard to describe Demure Vixen. I guess its like a nude blossom purple, with electric violet iridescent. I did 3 coats on one hand and 2 coats on the other. I like it better with 2 coats because the iridescent shows up better. I really like the formula of this - you can take ages putting it on, and its liquid enough to smooth itself and not dry out and get clunky on the brush. The brush is amazing too.

I've discovered that nail polish brushes are a bit like art brushes. You get low end, very bad stiff plastic with bristles that go everywhere, and then really good brushes where all the hairs sit straight and they move and spread fantasticly.

I wonder if some of the higher end polishes even use sable hair or some other mad rare animal fibre. Ugh!

Ok, so then I got excited about some metallic cheap polishes I found at the chemist. Ulta3 is made in Australia and you get them at the chemist for $3 each. I got gold, silver and bronze. I guess this is what they call 'foil' because when it goes on it looks all shimmery and sparkly like tin foil. Otherwise, you just get flat metallic gold that just looks smooth instead. So anyway, this is the bronze tone but you can barely tell in the photo because its just a strip. I cut a sweetheart line out of some sticky tape and then stuck that over the nails before I painted the bronze on. I guess if I dotted two dots on either side I would have something that looks like an owl or monkey. :-)

Savvy by DB - pink iridescent

Savvy by DB is a line of cheap stuff you can get in Priceline. In the
bottle this looked duller - I was really after a clone of a memorable
colour I had years and years ago by "For Your Look" which is a brand
that is no more. Ahhh... if anyone recalls it, they were in a short
square bottle and had a matching metallic rose ring. I still have that
colour... but sadly its well past its use by date.
Anyway, the cloning failed and I was met with this quite horrendous
musk lolly pink. It is very shiny and iridescent though. I hope I
don't attract some wayward Christmas beetles.

Cosmiss silver and pink glitter chunks

I blinged up my blue polish of a couple days ago. I have no idea what
Cosmiss is, but I got 2 bottles in China. The other is a brick colour.
The sparkle over the dull background is just great. There is silver
glitter and then larger chunks of metallic pink.

Seventh Sense - Style Blue

Seventh Sense is a brand sold in Sasa and made in Shanghai, as far as I can find out online. When I was over in China I picked up 2 bottles of it.

Style Blue is greyish powder blue with pink shimmer. When I was in store, I thought it was silver shimmer. The polish is a bit thick and was hard to get on evenly. Two coats makes the shimmer stand out nicely, but with the third coat that I needed to cover the bald patches, the pink is not so apparent anymore. It seemed to take a longer time to dry as well.

Other than that, its a pretty good muted colour for winter and restrained enough for workwear.

Butter - No More Waity, Katie

This polish came out to commemorate Kate Middleton's royal engagement.

What I first noticed about this bottle was the great lilac sparks of glitter against a dull greyish background. What was that colour, I wondered. What it's turned out to be is a jelly-like base of translucent neutral purple. 2 coats is probably the best, unless you want a dark purple. With two coats you can still get the great jelly look. The big round pieces of confetti are all one colour. The effect is quite sweet - restrained in the public eye, but exciting on closer inspection.

What I didn't like was that it seemed chunky out of the bottle. This is meant to be new product but I found it a bit hard to spread evenly, a real glueiness. The problem with this was that it really affected the tips and edges of the nail. Maybe it was just my bottle. Try and fix it resulted in darker patches. I am thinking it may help to go for a colour base coat. Something like OPI Parlez Vous - the same neutral lilac thing. http://beautycouch.blogspot.com/2008/09/notw-opi-parlez-vous-opi.html

Then I can just do one coat of this over the top.

Mini Colorama by Maybelline - (88) Peach Cocktail

I got this because I have a fixation with coral, and also because I am mad about shimmer. This doesn't remind me in the least of any "peach" I have seen in real life. In fact, over days it seemed more watermelon to me. It is an orange based red and is flecked with silver and hot pink shimmer.

The polish seems a tad thin. I put on one layer and was satisfied with the colour - I didn't want to go darker. Had to patch up some bald spots though. Base coat and top coat helped and it wore very well over 5 days. In the photos you should be able to see the hint of pink shimmer. 

Hey, it's even lucky number 88! 7.5ml bottle - if only more paints came in this handy size!

One pic is under a fluro lamp. The other is in sunny daylight. I made some adjustments in a photo editor, but I still can't seem to bring down the orange tone... Trust me, it really is more watermelony than these pics show!