Cutex (Quick n Go) - 510 Ice Coffee Rush

Sadly this actually had little appearance of ice coffee. It came out too pinky. So I fixed it!! A few dabs of High Heeled Wife from Chi Chi (a creme tan) was much helpful. The brush took some getting used to. It is not only flat, but curved on one edge so you have to flip it over for each side of the nail. The formula was a little streaky but the pale colour is forgiving. I've done 3 coats here.

What I really loved when I saw it was the micro shimmer through it of minty green and candy pink. On the nail it is not very apparent, so I guess for your personal joy only. I had one compliment on it, at a shop. It has worn really well, as now it is 3 days and there is minor tip wear and no chipping!

I remember the days when Cutex was a giant in the nail market in Australia. I came from the day when they had the triangular bottle with the long white skinny handle. Where have they done now? To random chemists (if lucky) and Priceline... Sad times. Cutex is now owned by cosmetic giant, Coty.

Interestingly, nail polish is still one of the domestic products largely manufactured anywhere. For example, I currently have on my desk ones that are made in Spain (this one), Brazil, USA, France and Australia. China does not yet dominate the nail polish manufacturing arena. Look at clothing or shoes for example, and you would have to be trying hard to find product made somewhere aside from China, as this is the norm. But turn to nail polish, and it is actually unusual to find Chinese made polish (exceptions are the $2 variety fashion trend stuff).

b collection - part 4 - attack of the reds

All of these are cremes.

Milan - hot red, pretty much a fluro, orange based.
Rio, Costa Rica and Cancun are barely variable shades of hot red, progressing in darkness and orangeness. Costa Rica is probably the closest to true bold red. These are all chilli pepper tones. Think salsa, unbridled passion and all those exotic things.
Rome - sensible red. This would have been the reddest you could get back in the 50s before they started getting all these new fangled fluro shades. I guess this is your classic naughty dame colour. Scarlet claws.
Florence - now this is heading a little into tomato territory. It's still very much a red but a bit earthier than the dancing queens of before. Maybe they were thinking of tomato paste on pizza bases?
Tuscany - darker, but same line of thinking as Florence. Rome, Florence and Tuscany are in the blue based reds category.

b collection - part 3

Brisbane - well its a creme, it's some kind of blue based pink fuschia colour that I really dislike. The only reason I can think B decided to give this to Brisbane is that we have an arbour of bouganvillea in South Bank, one of our "premiere" tourist sites... except that bouganvillea has a much prettier colour. When discussing this with friends, we felt that Brisbane should really be something like beige or concrete. We have been through a major revamp stage with public spaces, and it tends to be all steel and concrete construction. Beige would be because we have a lot of staid workers here who stick to the rules. If Melbourne is black and Sydney is chocolate, we are definitely beige.

Casablanca - Who would have thought Casablance be a hot violet? But it is what it is. And its a creme.

Shanghai - ok, agreeable, the orchid of the east. Shanghai conjures up prostitute dens, luxury and excess, and velvet passions. Also a creme. Pink orchid.

New York - creme purple, that is what I would call this.Its a very middle of the paint rack purple. Not light, not dark, not red, not blue. Actually, it's probably the colour Yahoo uses in their logo!

Mykonos - dark blue shot with violet pearl. I compared this with the Modelista version of Mykonos and they felt it was better represented as a bold electric blue pearl. Either way, Mykonos is about blue. Blue blue blue blue. If you're an island surrounded by water, and offset by solid white buildings... then I guess blue is the most obvious choice.

Dubai - An electric pearl violet. It has all the lush appearance of silk satin glimmering in light, smooth and rich.

Beijing - There are two dark blues, the other being Moscow. I think Moscow is the darker. Now, if they were thinking that this is like the "workers blue" then it needs to be a bit lighter. But in comparison to Shanghai, yep, spot on. Shanghai is party town and Beijing is officious duty. Hand me the rubber stamp. It's so dark in the bottle it is almost black.

Wet n Wild - Blue Wants to be a Millionaire

So this is the Wet n Wild range that distorts a few tv show names to be funny. Ha ha. This polish was happily sent over from USA by my mate Jeff who said that he got a few funny looks as he pored through the nail polish section, examining each bottle closely. In the bottle, you can see a lovely medium blue colour but I am thinking you might need several coats to achieve it. On my nails is already 3 coats and it is still a very soft powder blue. The holograph glitter is lovely though. Brush is bristly unfortunately, and splays out at odd angles. I noticed this in all the Wet n Wild bottles that came over, but HEY what do you really want from a $2 nail polish?! So yeah, hard plastic bristles is a little bit of a let down but we are not getting into a Chanel $32 polish are we???

Holograph glitter... *sigh* if only this kind of thing was around when I was 10. I would have gone nutso.

** addition - I've now put this on a nail wheel along with my other holographics, and sad to say I don't think this is a true holographic. It is more like blue with holo microglitter. Compared to the others, it just doesn't do that awesome visual effect. A true holo should give you stark bands of colour like a rainbow that shift when you move your nails.

Haul #1 from Archangel

So one day Archangel presented me with a bunch of samples that he had obtained, plus a special order he made to the UK for a discontinued Bourjois blue nail polish. It has taken me ages to get around to putting them all out to take a photo. There are some Blooms in there, Ozotics (yay!), a Nail It by Sportsgirl, Miki and then a whole lot of unlabelled bottles. There are 2 holos; one is a red and the other seems to be an odd aubergine colour. There is an absolute dreamy green lime iridescent. Many thanks to Archangel for the supply. Yay.

B collection - Oslo

So what is this colour? Well, against a white plate there's a hint of pink. Nude? Buff? Porcelain dolly?

Amsterdam was the other neutral, but is yellow toned buff. Dairy cream. Makes sense, Holland has plenty of cows and a cheese industry.

It was a bit streaky to apply, so the second coat I applied more heavily. It's a creme so even more difficult to deflect uneven application. Boo.. Still, I'm enchanted by the delicate colour after all the darks I'e been wearing in the last few posts.

b collection part 2!

Geneva - A very pretty shell pink with holographic shimmer.
Marseille - petal pink pearl with blue iridescent. This is such a standard number. *yawwwn*
Nice, Venice, Istanbul - can't remember much of these. I think they were all creme and all the kind of "perfect for a french polish" deals. In my mind Istanbul should be anything but a pastel pink... and Venice, well, for a city that hosts one of the most spectacular canivales, it should have been a gilded jewel tone. Maybe royal purple with gold shimmer.
Seychelles - creme neon pastel coral.
Copenhagen - very pretty baby pink pearl with tiny silver glitter. But am I wrong to say when I think Copenhagen I think blue???


London - black with silver holographic glitter. [Bloom = Mena]
Las Vegas - Musk pink glitter. (this is so right!) [Bloom = Lucille]
Chicago - Lilac glitter. Missing in action, but I have it at home.
Memphis - dark blue/purple pearl.
Osaka - Dark magenta glitter. [Bloom = Elise]
Los Angeles - Burgundy pearl. Now this confuses me too. I kind of this this should have swapped names with Hollywood. Los Angeles makes me think of high top sneakers and hot pink terry towelling shorts.
Adelaide - Claret with gold glitter. (hahha, sure, but maybe it should have been a creme. I don't think Adelaide is razzamataz enough for glitter). [Bloom = ?? Jessica Mauboy I]

B collection by Bloom (from Target)

It was bugging me like crazy that there seemed to be nowhere (aside from 1 swatch here and there from other bloggers) showing me what was in the b collection which was first released in October 2009 in Australian Target. The b website is hopeless. http://www.bcollectionbybloom.com/

Why am I excited? Well they are all called a city, and I guess I want to see whether the colour they picked is what I imagine that city to be, as well as you guys.

Soooooo, today I took some sneaky pics of some of the racks. I didn't get all because too many odd looks from shoppers. How am I supposed to say: hey, I am doing the Internet a favour, buzz off! Plus found that several were sold out. Will have to find a different Target!

Ok, so Montreal confuses me a bit. It's a muted herby green creme. This is the kind of colour people chasing after that jadey look can use. [Bloom = Cameron]
Bahamas, ok, yeah, not quite neon but getting there kinda green. It is very island fun.
Hollywood is neon pink. I get this also. It's hot. But I think I would have preferred Hollywood as gold glitter.
Now Capri and St Tropez are so close, even in real life. Capri is neon and the St Tropez is like electric rockmelon, it is creamy instead of straight-up orange. I guess some might call it mango? And again, yeah sure, island fun. Having said that, why didn't they name the Hollywood one some other fun island?
This whole rack is creme btw, not a glitter anywhere.

Barcelona is missing in action! A swatch is here. It's a neon coral. Well, personally I would have thought Barcelona more of a bold, chilli red. Creme.
Monte Carlo - I guess the bright yellow creme is reminiscent of racing cars etc?
Corfu - yes, the lovely baby blue creme.
Corsica - a standard light blue creme.
Tahiti - orchid creme.
Saigon - Pinky mauve pearl. [Bloom = Maggie]
Cape Town - now this one was odd. A rusty dark pink pearl.

Estee Lauder - Pure Red

It took me a while to warm to this. There is something about bright red nails that makes me think "unadventurous person trying to be bold". Wanna be bold? Wear a neon purple with glitter. Anyhow, I put it on last night, the brush seems a little hard to control - I've had better. One coat was enough, but I fixed up a couple of nails. The consistency was good, but not excellent. It looks excellent when wet, and excellent minus one when dry.

It wore really quickly. Not chipping, but just rubbing off the ends. I was just handling books, mouse, keyboard and yeah, wear patches evident. Had to top coat it. Tonight I decided it needed redecorating. French polished a rose gold band on top and as I was top coating that, it would drag micro glitter all over the surface. Now it looks great! I wish I could get the gold dust over the top without the french!

Purples

So today I got out all the purple polish I have and catalogued them. Hooray! The photos are terrible though. Cameras I've owned tend to hate purple and green. Will have to try natural sunlight instead of fluro tube.

Revlon/Lilac Lingerie, Arezia/881 (this is from Sasa Hong Kong - Sasa is a chain beauty store), Sugar Baby/Time Out, Essie/Demure Vixen, Seventh Sense/Soft Lavender (Shanghai brand), Chi Chi/Cat Fight, Sasatinnie/FCW033 (Sasa's own brand), Orly/035 (I am sure this is fake, from China), Revlon/Gum Drop (ths is scented slightly of lollies), Christian Dior/Mauve Samba (this is really old, from the 90s).

Stuf/56 Beam, B/Chicago, Sasatinnie/FCGL002, Sugar Baby/Be Mine, Bloom/Billie, Butter/No more waity, Katie, Catwalk/VIP Violet, Tuesdays Girl/Most Mauve (this is from the early 90s!), Claire's Mood/Mellow/Crazy, BYS/Mood N285

Australis/Limited Edition 1, Coral Colours/Paradoxos, mystery sample iridescent, Karpati/Midnight Romance, mystery sample glitter, mystery sample holo,  Christian Dior/Blueberry (also from the 90s).

The Tuesdays Girl one I have never found a replacement. It is pretty gluey now. It is a clear base with purple iridescent in it so that it looks like you are wearing nothing til light hits your nails.

The one I was most disappointed is Sugar Baby's Time Out. It was meant to be a very pretty orchid, but is almost bubble gum pink instead.

Ran out of room to try 3 of the polishes!!! Not good. I am not so good with the purple polishes I thought, due to skin tone... but is seems I've accumulated a lot over time.

The Arezia one is a milky base with purple iridescent. Very subtle. Coral Colours and Christian Dior both applied patchy and streaky. Annoying. But Blueberry is a very exciting colour, it really is that colour of blueberry juice, a deep red toned purple. It has a shimmer too. The Sasatinnie is interesting too, a dark jelly purple, even with 3 coats it was still semi transparent. It has flakes of silver, magenta and tiny gold glitter in it.

Haul #2

Where's Haul #1? Well, I haven't got round to photographing the stash that Arch brought up last time he visited, but its amazing!

But instead, enjoy the haul that I got in the post today from USA, from my friend Jeff! Wet n Wild and 2 Le Metiers!

So we have: Le Metier "Noble Passion", "Magic at Dusk", then Wet n Wild "SaGreena the Teenage Witch", "The Wonder Yellows", "Sage in the City", "Blue wants to be a Millionaire", "Blackmail", "Hush hush", and "Kaleidescope".

There's a group of Wet n Wilds with funny tv names. Har de har har. Their website: http://wnwbeauty.com/
Some other tv names: Everybody Loves Redmond, 90210range, The Gold and the Beautiful, Teal or no Teal, Teal of Fortune, Fuschiarama, Silvivor, Party of Five Glitters, Hannah Pinktana, Grey's Anatomy, How I Met your Magenta.... anyway, ha ha ha.

B "Edinburgh"

B is the cheaper line of cosmetics by Bloom. Many of the colours in this Target range are just replicas of ones in Bloom. All the current range are city names.

Edinburgh comes across in the bottle as a moody, stormy blue green murk with a frost finish. On the nail however it was more of a myrtle green, could not see the hint of blue anywhere. Disappointed - it was quite enigmatic in the bottle.

The formula was quite good for this one.** Ugh, this stained my nails through a 1 coat base.

Coral Colours - Silver Caviar

What a let down. Even before I began, I had to thin this down. It reminded me of bad quick-dry formula. The first stroke on the nail would go on like a dream, but immediately after clump clump clump. The colour is streaky. It is a pewter black with green and magenta micro glitter. And I really mean micro glitter, not powder shimmer, because this colour is comparable with Givenchy Elegant Pearl which has the more refined glitter. I tried that on in Myer and it looked more like a black pearl than this did.

So this is supposed to be Coral Colours' rip-off of the catwalk colour. On my pinky is one coat of Black Pearl by Chanel. Unfortunately nothing like it. It was much closer to the Estee Lauder and Givenchy.

Even worse than the long time I spent trying to apply this well, was that 2 or 3 days later, large flakes were coming off from doing practically nothing! If there is something that makes acrylic paint flexible, then CC was skimping on that chemical!

Loreal Resist & Shine Titanium - 734

Up to 7 days it reckons. Well, by the day after application, I already had chips on 2 nails and the shine had worn down. The colours are incredible in the bottle and less so in real life. In the bottle, this is the most amazing satin look red, and on the nail when applying, a dark ruby, still acceptable. But on drying, it was just one of the usual dark bloody reds with a hint of glitter. The glittering was further lost on application of a top coat.

There are nail colours where I can't stop looking at them, every time they glint in the light. These were so forgettable I've barely glanced at them all day. The only good thing about this is that it is eye candy in the bottle. Maybe it would look better if there was a silver undercoat - I'll experiment with that at some point.

 See? In the bottle looks like there is a beautiful lava, orange/red thing going on! Fail in real life.

** Edit 19 June 2011 **

So in other countries, they actually have the names, not just the numbers. These are: Black Red (734), Black Purple (732), Black Mauve (733), Black Turquoise (736) and Black Gold (737). There is also 731 which is Black Blue.