Revlon Matte Suedes

I only got two of these polishes, I suppose. I could have SWORN I bought Emerald City, but I cannot find it in my polish drawer, nor can I find photos of it. So apparently I just dreamed I bought it.

Can y'all tell I'm trying really hard to get through all of my photos? LOL. Tonight I put on the first of my new Ulta Enchanted Nail Collection, Sugar Cookie, and I LOVE it. It's what I WANTED Zoya Gaia to be. But I cannot allow myself to post photos of it til I've posted the other bazillion photos I've uploaded to Flickr. So here's another post for today! Hee hee.

Anywho, I know I bought Ruby Ribbon and Powder Puff from the Revlon Matte Suedes, because I can find pictures of both of them.

I so wanted to love Powder Puff... but didn't. I even tried it with topcoat and it just wasn't doing it for me.

Here it is without topcoat:

And Powder Puff with topcoat:

Still too sheer, and I think I used three coats. Of course, the Sugar Cookie I'm wearing now is still pretty sheer at three coats and I love it... so go figure. Powder Puff just wasn't for me!

Ruby Ribbon, however, was awesome. Two coats. I didn't even try it with topcoat, but I bet it's super pretty that way too.

This was after a full day of work, so there is some tipwear (typical since I didn't wear a topcoat), but I think it held up pretty well! My job is pretty hands-on (I fix computers), so if something holds up this well all day with no topcoat, it's a pretty good nail polish!

And now for your standard ending...

Also! Don't forget to click here to enter my Giveaway!

And! Click here to check out my stuff on my blogsale!

OPI Ski Teal We Drop w/Revlon Star

So I bought one of those new-ish Revlon glittery topcoats. It was... underwhelming. I got the one called Star. I didn't buy the base color to accompany it because it was plain and underwhelming.

Here is the result of my layering!

Green, Blue, and Purple comparisons

So I woke up early this morning and sat in bed with a glass of mango iced tea, watching Saved By The Bell and then Zoolander and doing nail polish comparisons. It's nice to be a lady of leisure. :)

Anyway, there are colors in the OPI Shrek minis and in the Essie Resort Collection minis that reminded me a lot of other colors I already had, so I decided to do some comparisons. Unfortunately, it's super cloudy today, but I think I got some decent pictures.

First up, the greens... well, blue-greens. Turquoises, if you will. Pardon the bottle shots, they were all taken on my bed. :)

From left to right: Essie Turquoise & Caicos, China Glaze For Audrey, Orly Gumdrop, Revlon Minted, Essie Mint Candy Apple

The polishes are on my fingers in the same order, from thumb to pinky.

The greenest ones are Turquoise & Caicos and Minted.
I still say Gumdrop and For Audrey are dupes, or at least near dupes. For Audrey may be a TINY bit bluer.
Turquoise & Caicos is actually a jelly. I thought it was a creme til I put it on. Nope, it's a jelly. It's also three coats. Minted is also three coats.
Gumdrop was opaque in one coat.
The rest of the colors are all two coats.


Now on to the blues!

From left to right: Orly Snowcone, Essie Lapis of Luxury, L'Oreal High Tide, Finger Paints Blissfully Blue, OPI What's With the Cattitude.

The polishes are in the same order on my fingers, from thumb to pinky.

Snowcone was opaque in one coat.
Lapis of Luxury is another jelly, another three-coater, and I think it may be a jelly dupe for Snowcone, which is a creme.
High Tide is completely different from the rest of them.
Blissfully Blue and What's With the Cattitude are similar, but not dupes. Blissfully Blue is way more stark, while WWTC is a deeper blue. Blissfully Blue was opaque in two coats, while WWTC took three coats.
Here's Snowcone on my thumb and Lapis of Luxury on my pointer. They are SUPER close.



And now for the purples!

From left to right: Essie Lilacism, China Glaze Light as Air, OPI Rumple's Wiggin.

On my hand, they are in this order:
Pointer - Rumple's Wiggin
Middle - Light as Air
Ring - Lilacism
Pinky - Rumple's Wiggin

Light as Air was opaque in one coat.
Lilacism took three coats. Rumple's Wiggin took two coats.
Light as Air is considerably lighter and grayer than the other two. To my eye, Lilacism and Rumple's Wiggin are absolutely dupes. There may be a tiny difference between the two, but you'd have to really be looking for it to see it.


So there! I hope this is informative and helpful. Now back to Zoolander. :)

Giveaway ENDING and nail polish haul

Ok, so I'm supposed to pick a winner for my giveaway today. I just got my spreadsheet caught up with my blog comments, so let's say that I'll count anyone who enters until 5pm Eastern time today (about 3 hours from now). Then I'll pick someone. YAY!

Oh yeah, and I GOT MARRIED ON SATURDAY! YAY! I had a really good time, and hey! I got married! We aren't taking a honeymoon at this time, so no, I'm not posting this from my honeymoon. :)

I also hauled on some nail polish while we were down in Florida. I also finally found Hidden Treasure! YAY! We drove from Athens to down in Florida where we got married. I stopped at a random Walgreens in Montgomery, AL, and there it was! FINALLY!

I wanted to go to the Del Sol store in PCB to get some more of their color change polish, but I didn't have time. But on the way back home, we stopped in another random Walgreens in Florida and they were selling Del Sol! Yay!

And then I hauled in the clearance aisle at Ulta.. and I picked up some other stuff there too.

So, I have all of that plus all the Zoya I got last week. I have a LOT of stuff in my untried drawer right now. This is a picture of everything I picked up on my travels. I also don't really have time to swatch right now, so I guess I'll be doing a nail a day for a bit. :)



And, just because I know I'm going to get terribly backlogged with my nail pictures, let me just go ahead and show you what I've got unposted pictures of. Enjoy!

So, I tried Illusion D'Or over everything for a few days. Here it is over black:


And here it is again over L'Oreal's High Tide.


And here it is over Rimmel's Milk Chocolate!


This is La Playa from the new Orlys that are out now.


Sinful Colors "Rise and Shine," which JJ declared "hideous."


Minted, one of the new Revlons.


Orly Glam, which I found on clearance at Sally..


And the ONLY Zoya Sparkle I've photographed so far, Charla. I really loved this color!!

Revlon Scented Polishes

Okay, so I picked up a couple of the scented Revlon polishes. I only got two of them, since I'm not a huge fan of Revlon polish in general, but I'm a sucker for a gimmick.

I got Peach Smoothie (smelled like... fake peaches) and Ocean Breeze (smelled like every "ocean scented" candle or incense I've ever bought). The scents actually do last and are discernable even through topcoat.

This is Peach Smoothie, which is a slightly shimmery pale peach. I actually liked this one more than I was expecting. It was a little watery, so this is three coats.


This is Ocean Breeze, which is a frosty blue-green. It's not as vivid on the nail as it is in the bottle. This is also three coats. I liked this one less than I thought I would.

Street Wear!

Oh, the 90s were a different time. I was a teenager, grunge was fashionable, and crazy nail polish colors were much harder to find. You whippersnappers don't know how good you have it. In my day, we had pinks, reds, and nudes and we LIKED IT. Not really. They were boring even then.

Sure, there was Hard Candy, but Montgomery, Alabama (where I grew up) wasn't the shopping mecca it is now. Laugh if you will, but Montgomery's come a long way since the 90s, at least as far as shopping goes. And there was no internet... at least not as we know it today. The 90s were like a primitive wasteland. FOR REAL.

But then, at some point in the mid-to-late 90s, Revlon introduced Street Wear nail polish. I LOVED this stuff. I don't even recall what colors I had, and I bit my nails like a madwoman back then, but I loved this stuff anyway. Odd colors! You could buy it at the drugstore! SCORE!

This is all stuff that Claudia from Chromatic Misadventures sent.
From left to right: Taxi, Mmoody (which I'm PRETTY SURE I had as a teenager), Burnt, and Burnt (what?! AGAIN?!)


First up is Taxi, which is a bright (but not anywhere near neon) yellow with shimmer in it. This is, I believe, three coats. This was actually pretty good for a yellow.


This is Mmoody. VERY sheer. I believe this is four or five coats. This would probably look awesome layered over something else, but I was way too lazy for that shiz.


TWO Burnts? What is this fuckery?


SEE? Even the same number on the label!


Burnt the first, a mustard yellow.


And the OTHER Burnt... my favorite of these four! This is like.. olive green? grey? silver? beige? It's very neutral and very duo-chromey. I could never decide what color it was, but I LIKED IT enough to take four pictures.

Looking rather olive-y green.


More green-y.


What is this?! Grey? Slate blue?


Silver and gold? WHAAAA?

Revlon

Good morning! I'm caffeinating myself and working on swatching my collection. I'm also debating a payday trip to Sally, but it's COLD outside! If I were more prudent, I would tell myself I couldn't buy any new polish until I've swatched everything I already have, but I'm not that prudent. Still, it's COLD outside!

My cuticles on my middle finger and on my thumb on my left hand are messed up. I would try to swatch and photograph my right hand, but I'm right handed and yeah... Anywho, I'm just trying to keep the polishes off of my cuticles for right now and I'll do some damage control later on.

I decided to start this morning with Revlon, since I hate them so much. There is one Revlon color in my collection that I've owned for several years now (perfunctory googling tells me it was released in 2003... jeez) and I adore it. I think, though, I may have stumbled upon the secret of getting good consistency out of your Revlon polishes. Two of the polishes I swatched I distinctly remembered as having crappy formula -- runny, wouldn't cover the nail, left sheer spots. But they were fine today. They were also older, a little bit thicker, and had some gunk around the neck. Maybe these polishes just need to be aged, like a fine wine. Or like a mediocre drugstore wine. :)

I'm going to start with one of the worst nail polishes I own, hands down. It's also the newest Revlon I own, and the formula is runny, and leaves sheer spots. It also never, ever dries. It's Revlon White on White. I was looking for a good white, not to do tips, but to use as a base for layering sheerer colors on top. This is NOT a good white.


This is Revlon Iced Mauve. Yeah. Shimmery pink, how boring. I can't really complain about this formula, but I do know that the last time I wore it, it peeled off within a day. Yech.


Revlon Sweet Nothings in Rendez-Blue. This is obviously a sheer. That's four coats in the photograph. I don't really "do" sheers, but this looks really cool layered on top of a darker color. It's sort of a blue/pink/silver duochromatic sheer. It's alright. :)


Revlon Vixen. I distinctly remembered this having the same type of formula as White on White. I generally LOVE vampy reds like this, but hardly ever wore this one because it was so tricky to apply. Much to my surprise, when I went to swatch it today, it applied beautifully and was opaque in two coats. I may be wearing this one more often. Or it could just be thickened because it's so freaking cold here... but it's not cold in my apartment, and it isn't as if I store this outside. So who knows.


Revlon Mystical. This is it, the one Revlon color I adore. Shimmery royal blue/purple with a bit of a duochromatic effect. You can see the purple in the bottle much better than you can on the nail. On my nails, it's more of an electric royal blue in direct sunlight. In low light, you can see the purple a bit more. You can sort of see the purple here on my pinky nail. You can also see that I got this at CVS for 47 cents! LOL. I have no idea how long ago that was, but I'm guessing 2003 or 2004. I've long had a thing for blues, purples, and duochromes. :)


Here it is, blurry and indoors.