Finger Paints Palette of Petals Collection Spring 2011

Hey guys... I'm really not up to writing right now, but I really need to work through my backlog of posts because it's out of control and I feel like I'll never catch up. Would you forgive me if I only post pictures this time?

This is Finger Paints' Palette of Petals Collection from this spring.

Aren't You Gladiolus?

Carnation Creation.

Chrysanthemum's The Word.

Dahlia My Number.

Did You Ast-her Out?

Heavenly Hydrangeas.

(This was sent to me for review.)

Color Club Starry Temptress Collection Summer 2011 Swatches and Review

Wicked Sweet was part one of Color Club's summer 2011 release, so on to part two: Starry Temptress. Both sets are collections of neon shades and while Wicked Sweet was mostly creme, Starry Temptress is glitter. But really different glitter... You'll see what I mean in a second.


Glitter Envy. The glitter in these... isn't sparkly? Crazy, right? I'll post my thoughts on that at the end. Anyway. Glitter Envy. It's a neon green with un-sparkly holo glitter throughout.


Otherworldly. Ooooh... A bright, rich blue with holographic glitter. Not much sparkle, but the glitter adds depth and an interesting starry sky effect.


Space Case. This one is a bit different from the rest because it has a shimmer base instead of creme. If you enlarge the pictures and look closely (in the bottle especially) you can see that it has a smooth green shimmer to it. Very nice.


Ultra-Astral. Wow, bright. The holographic glitter in this seems to take on a blue tint when it's covered by the thick creme base. Fascinating to look at.




Wink, Wink, Twinkle. This one seems to sparkle more than the others. I don't know if it's because of where the glitter ended up when I applied it, or if the base is less dense than the others, but some of the glitter does shine through on the top layer. Gorgeous color. I love the neon purple base with the speckles of silver in it.



You Got Soul-ar. Creamy bright neon orange with hints of holo sparkle. I love these bright traffic cone oranges.


This set includes a bottle of Starry Temptress topcoat, which is a clear base with some iridescent opal glitter. It adds a lot more sparkle to these shades, observe:


One coat of Starry Temptress topcoat over Wink Wink Twinkle, Otherworldly, Glitter Envy and Ultra-Astral, and a coat of topcoat over all of that. See all the different colors reflecting from the glitter? Mesmerizing.

The formula on these was pretty good. They're a bit thick, but because of that they're really opaque. You could probably get away with one thick coat of these, but I did two thin coats in all these pictures and it was perfect. Drying time is very quick and the glitter is shockingly smooth.

So... glitter that isn't sparkly. I have to admit, I'm liking it. At first I was disappointed because that hologram glitter looks so awesome in the bottle, but after wearing the colors for a while, it grew on me. It makes the colors look speckled, spattered, mottled... And I love that you can see glitter through the base color. Gives it a little depth. It reminds me of some of my favorite things from when I was a kid: Jelly shoes and plastic jewelry. Oh man, I loved jelly shoes. Sure, they made your feet all sweaty and nasty and they kinda hurt to wear, but I didn't care! I wish I had a pair to wear now. And they went well with my neon glittery beads and Lisa Frank accessories.

Another interesting feature of these anti-glitters is that they're smooth. You heard me right. Big chunky glitter that's smooth. It lies totally flat, dries totally smooth and doesn't look gritty or bumpy. It doesn't get that lumpy, oatmealy bubbly look. Must be magic. That doesn't apply to the Starry Temptress topcoat, though. That's gritty as hell and eats topcoat like you wouldn't believe. If you've tried the Color Club Japanese glitters or the Pardon My French ones, you'll know what I'm talking about.

That being said, I can easily say I have nothing like this collection. Speckled neons with a hint of holo. Weird, yes, but new to me, and so far I haven't seen anyone else do something like it this year. I approve. Though, if you're looking forward to the holographic sparkle that you see in the bottle, you'll be disappointed in these.

(These were sent to me for review.)

Color Club Wicked Sweet Collection Summer 2011 Swatches and Review

I know... I haven't even posted the Alter Ego spring collection yet and I'm already onto the summer collection. But, since I'm so late in posting spring, I figured why not wait on it a little longer and post the summer sets while they're still relevant?

Color Club is doing two sets of neons this summer, and not just plain neons. This set, called Wicked Sweet, just so happens to to live up to that title. They're not just candy-colored, they're candy scented as well!



Get Your Lem-On. This is a pale, green-tinged neon yellow with a green duochrome shimmer. The sunlight picture shows the green shimmer best and the indoor picture shows the base color truest. It's scented in a sweet, light lemon scent. This has my favorite scent of the bunch. I'd wear it just to smell it! The color reminds me a bit of Color Club Volt of Light.


Gimme A Grape Big Kiss. This is the standard neon fuchsia-purple creme. It looks a bit washed out due to the brightness of the color, but it pretty much looks like most other neon purples. The color is great... but the scent isn't my favorite. It's a candy grape scent, and I've never liked candy "grape"... Somehow the candy interpretation of grape doesn't taste or smell anything at all remotely like a real grape. But, that's just my personal taste here, if you love that candy grape scent, you'll probably really enjoy the scent of this.


I Always Get My Man-darin. A light, desaturated neon orange with contrasting green shimmer. I tried to capture that green shimmer, I really did. It is sneaky, but it's there. Very pretty once you see it in its full glory. The base color reminds me of fake orange juice... Like... what's it called... Tang? Or Sunny Delight. *shudder* The scent is a sweet crisp orange. Very light, but pleasant.

Raspberry Rush. This one is fighting with Gimme A Grape Big Kiss for my favorite color in the collection. It's pink, yes, but it's an awesome obnoxious gorgeous bright pink! It's too washed out looking in this picture (these crazy neon colors freak out my camera!), but you can get an idea of how bright and pretty it is. It's a much deeper pink, more of a magenta. The scent is a sweet candy smell, like the rest, but I can't quite put my finger on what it smells like. It doesn't particularly smell like raspberries to me. It sorta smells like when you open a bag of gummy bears, all the smells mixed together. It's nice, and it reminds me of something from when I was a kid, but I just can't remember what!


The Lime Starts Here. Light neon green jelly-creme. This is close enough to jelly to call it a jelly, right? But it's still creamy looking. So... jelly-creme it is. Nice and bright. Yellow toned. Has a sour candy lime scent. I dig it.


Wicked Sweet. This one looks like Zoya Phoebe with topcoat, doesn't it? Bright near-neon blue with electric blue and gold shimmer. The greenish tint to the shimmer makes the whole polish look teal in some lights. Quite glowy and beautiful. The scent is... blueberry? Blue raspberry? It reminds me of Crater Lake Company's Lemon Blueberry Frosting scent. I'm gonna go with blueberry then. Love it.


Yum Gum. This is a light pink neon, similar to something like China Glaze Pink Voltage. It has a creamy white base to the pink color. I like the color, but that name... Yum Gum? Really? Anyway... the scent is... gum. Bubblegum. Not the overly sweet kind, but the sorta dry hard kind, like the one that comes in baseball cards. Do they still put bubblegum in packages of baseball cards?


The formula was perfect. I didn't really have any problems with application. The texture is on the thin side, but it's not runny. Some of the shades are on the sheer side, but all are good with three coats. I'm wearing three coats in these pictures. The lemon and lime shades would probably look even better with a fourth coat, but I haven't tried. The drying time on these is confusing. They set incredibly quickly, but I found that I was still denting them nearly 45 minutes after application.

One aspect of the formula is notably different than my usual polish reviews... There's a scent. The scent is strongest when first applied and slowly fades away the longer you wear it. When I wore these with a coat of Seche Vite, I could still smell the scent for three days. It was very weak on the last day, but still there. It's not so strong that it gives you a headache, but it's not so weak that you have to stick your fingers up your nose to smell it.

I love the scents in these. They're so much nicer than almost any scented polish I own. They're all soft and sweet, no sharp chemical fakeness. They really truly smell like candy. I remember some of the scented polishes I had in the 90s... I think the brand may have been Loud! Music, or something to that effect. I had a vanilla and an orange one. They have me the worst headache every time I wore them, they were so strong and invasive and sharply fake smelling. None of that here. It can be a little unsettling if you forgot you're wearing scented polish, though. The first time I tried them out, I kept thinking... What's that smell? Why do my hands smell like gummy worms?!

Overall, I'm a fan of this collection. Sure, the colors are fairly common neon colors. Heck, a lot of them even look like existing Color Club neons. The scents make them special. And you know me... I'm a sucker for anything scented. Vanilla scented garbage bags, remember? So yeah, I am definitely a fan!

(These were sent to me for review.)

China Glaze Island Escape Collection Summer 2011 Swatches and Review

Another 2011 summer collection! I know, I'm not even done with the spring collections... But these were just so pretty and sparkly looking, I had to try them on... China Glaze Island Escape!


108 Degrees. A glorious glass fleck, the way only China Glaze can do them. The base of the color is a warmer magenta jelly while the glass fleck shimmer is a cooler toned pink and violet duochrome with a little hint of gold. Definitely brings back memories of their old glass fleck polishes... Doesn't this seem like a cousin to the classic China Glaze It's 5 o'clock Somewhere?



Blue Iguana. Another gorgeous glass fleck. This one is a medium/borderline light blue jelly base with a turquoise blue glass fleck and a tiny hint of purple duochrome. The duochrome is really more like a purple reflection- the polish looks blue, but when there's a reflection on the shiny surface, it's purple. Again, reminiscent of those great old China Glaze glass flecks like Drinkin' My Blues Away and Martini Pedicure.


Cha Cha Cha. A bright, glowy, yellow toned apple green and gold duochrome shimmer. Wow... Another flashback! Don't you think this is in the spirit of China Glaze Moonpool? Sure, it's brighter and less olivey, but still has such a similar theme. It's less frosty, so that's good.



Electric Pineapple. A yellow-green creme. I think this is my least favorite of the collection. It's not a bad color, but it looks bland next to all the other shades. It's really similar in color to Zoya Mitzi- it's about a shade lighter and not matte finish, but the shades are similar.



Papaya Punch. I might like this one even more than the glass flecks! It's a medium bright orange creme. It's not a neon and it's not too bright, it still has a little bit of softness to it. It reminds me of the fake cheese powder in boxed macaroni and cheese. I've said the same thing about Color Club Explosive... this is less yellow than that and not as bright.


Senorita Bonita. A red-toned purple with awesome pink shimmer. This was really hard to capture... that pink shimmer doesn't want to show up in pictures! But it's so so so pretty. Might need to enlarge the picture to see it. I think it shows up on my ring finger pretty well in this picture. The shimmer isn't glass fleck like the other colors, it's actually tiny little broken flakes of red-pink foil. Not chunky or glittery at all. Smooth. This color has a lot of depth and even a small amount of gold duochrome on the shimmer flakes. You have to see this one in person.


The formula on these was okay. They're a bit thicker than I expected. They didn't apply as evenly as some of the more recent China Glaze shades, but they weren't particularly troublesome. I might thin mine. Opacity was varied, but good. The cremes and Cha Cha Cha were good in two coats, but I thought the others looked best with three. I'm wearing three coats in all these pictures. No topcoat, either- see how shiny they dry without topcoat? Drying time was good as well.

You know what I like about this collection? It has echoes of past shades. And not random ones, either... Good ones. Ones that we all love and covet. It's like China Glaze is giving a nod to their longtime fans by including memories of some of their best discontinued shades in this collection. There are no direct copies or re-releases, but the similarity is obvious. Love them for that.

Overall, small but strong collection. The colors are WAY better in real life than they were in the promo pictures. The only weak point to me is Electric Pineapple because it doesn't have the same oomph as the rest of the shades. It's just kinda... meh. But the rest get two thumbs up from me, especially Papaya Punch. Love the sparkle and depth of the glass flecks, the flaky shimmer in Senorita Bonita and the brightness of the collection as a whole.

(These were sent to me for review.)

OPI Texas Collection Spring 2011 Swatches and Review

This year's spring nail polish collection from OPI is Texas-themed. I've never been to Texas but I have a lot of Texan friends... I wonder what they'd have to say about these shades? Any Texans want to weigh in on them?

There are twelve shades as usual, and they are:


Austin-tatious Turquoise. You know, this looks like such an amazing color in the bottle and it looks pretty great in the picture... But it's actually a freaking nightmare. The color is great- a sheer turquoise glass fleck shimmer with subtle pink duochrome... But the formula! Oh, the formula. It's sheer and watery, a combination that can only spell disaster. What you're seeing here is SIX COATS. Six watery, runny, goopy coats. The color is dustier and less vibrant in real life. If you want something similar (glass fleck duochrome turquoise) without the weird formula, try Nicole by OPI Iceberg Lotus.

EDIT: I've been receiving reports from people who own this color, and a few of them say that their bottle isn't watery and sheer like mine. However, the majority of people I've heard from say they have watery bottles like mine. It seems like there are multiple batches of this color floating around.



Don't Mess With OPI. Nice dusty medium green. I like the muted quality of this, it's not your standard green creme. It's like if OPI Jade Is The New Black and Rescue Beauty Lounge Orbis Non Sufficit had a baby.


It's Totally Fort Worth It. Very, very hard to capture the finish of this color. It's not just a plain silver shimmer, it has tiny pink-red sparkles! You can see some of those elusive sparkles in the middle of the bottle on this picture. It would be my favorite color of the collection if it weren't for the sheer, watery formula. This is four coats.


I Vant To Be A-Lone Star. I'm not understanding the name of this. I get the "Lone Star" part, but 'vant'? Is that like a Green Acres reference or something? Wait, did Green Acres even take place in Texas? Eh... guess it doesn't matter. The color is nice. Light greyed-out blue with silvery shimmer. Tranquil and serene. Reminds me of another ancient discontinued OPI... drawing a blank on the name.


San Tan-tonio. Light milky brown creme. Surprisingly flattering on my cool skintone. Makes me think of suede.


Suzi Loves Cowboys. I used flash on this color because it looked too black in natural light. The flash shows the base color and how it looks in sunlight. It looks about two shades darker in dim light. It's just a dark chocolate brown creme, nothing too exciting... But very unusual for spring!

Now for the surprise: the jellies sorbets.

Big Hair, Big Nails. A red coral, or a light cherry sorbet.


Do You Think I'm Tex-y? A deep beet pink/purple sorbet.


Guy Meets Gal-veston. A medium orange coral sorbet.


Houston, We Have A Purple. Haha, my favorite name out of all of them! This is a deep magenta borderline purple sorbet.


Too Hot Pink To Hold 'Em. An awesome saturated pink sorbet. My picture doesn't do it justice, you have to try it out! (Fixed my typo, oops!)


Y'all Come Back, Ya Hear? A medium orange sorbet.

Now, OPI is really pushing this "sorbet" finish pretty hard lately. They describe it as a completely new finish. It's a semi-sheer or translucent wash of color which has the effect of looking like hard candy or popsicles... If you've been into polish for a while, this should sound familiar, because it's what we polish junkies know as a "jelly" finish. Jelly polishes have been around for a long time, but they're not very common. Despite the whole "It's not a jelly, it's a sorbet, it's brand new!" thing, OPI does this finish really well.

I mean, just look at them, they're beautiful. You may not be able to pick up on the jelly effect of the finish from my pictures, but the finish is really spectacular. It's not so sheer that it looks clear, and it's just translucent enough to look soft and squishy. The colors they chose are vibrant and candy-like and they're perfectly suited for the jelly/sorbet finish.

Initially, I did not have high hopes for the sorbets. They all looked like boring colors and I thought they would be too sheer. And, as usual, my mind changed once I actually put them on my nails. They're lovely. I did three coats of all and I think they're perfect.

The formula on this collection is varied. The sorbet/jelly shades are nearly perfect, only a little on the thick side. The other six shades are watery, runny and sheer. I had a really hard time applying them with Austin-tatious Turquoise being the most difficult and I Vant To Be A-Lone Star being the easiest. The brushes were inconsistent and uneven in shape, size and smoothness. Some were rough, a few were normal. I am used to OPI having a very consistent and reliable formula, this collection is hopefully just a fluke.

I'm torn on my opinion of the collection overall. I had written off the sorbets before I even tried them and they ended up being my favorite part. They're very spring/summer appropriate predictable colors, but the sorbet finish makes them wonderful.

The other shades seem too random. There doesn't seem to be one cohesive theme within the color range. You've got brown, green, sparkly turquoise, silver.... They just don't mesh well. And they're a little bit sleepy, I have to admit. Though, I've realized that OPI's spring collections have been very sleepy for the past few years and the summer collection is the exciting one.

Also, the names are starting to be a little too ridiculous. Some are cute, but others get dangerously close to Misa-level cheese and length. I did really love "Houston, We Have A Purple."... I'm still giggling about that one!

So, overall, the new sorbet polishes are definitely worth trying on if you get the chance. If you've never tried a jelly finish polish before, you'll probably be delightfully surprised. People with longer nails may have issues with visible nail line, but if that doesn't bother you, you'll probably love them. The inconsistent, watery formula on the rest of the colors turns me off to them a bit, but Don't Mess With OPI and It's Totally Fort Worth It are worth the frustration.

(These were sent to me for review.)

Zoya Mod Mattes Collection Summer 2011 Swatches and Review

In addition to the Sunshine and Summertime shimmer/creme sets for summer, Zoya has also released a mini collection of matte finish brights. They are:

Lolly. A bright pink creme matte. I like this shade of pink in the matte finish. It's a cooler shade of pink than OPI La Paz-itively Hot Matte and it has no shimmer.

Mitzi. A yellowy pea green matte creme! This is my favorite of the set. It really stands out on the nails. It's bright but murky at the same time. More dirty and yellowy than OPI Gargantuan Green Grape Matte.


Phoebe. A bright blue matte with blue shimmer. The only shimmer finish matte in the bunch. The shimmer is very subtle but it adds a nice satiny glow to the matte color. Think satin ribbon. Also, I just noticed that I have foundation in my cuticles. Ew. Sorry about that.

Since Phoebe has some shimmer, I was curious to see how it looked with topcoat to make it shiny:



It's nice glossy, too! The shimmer is still subtle but it looks electric. The blue on blue with a touch of green is really eye-catching.


The formula on these was good. You seem to have more time to work with these than previous mattes and that helps application somewhat. Your best bet is still to completely load the brush and cover the nail in as few strokes as possible, but you don't have to do it as quickly with these. They do dry completely in only a few minutes and they don't require topcoat so they're great for when you're in a hurry. They are much more sheer than other mattes and I needed three coats to make them look perfect. The wear time is average for mattes; I wore Phoebe for two days with no chipping or tipwear until the end of day two when a large section of polish on my index finger cracked off unprovoked... It's so weird when that happens. It just goes POOF! and it's gone.


I love the mod look of these. Very funky and even a bit psychedelic. It's nice to see more colors of matte, I'm getting a little tired of all the matte greys and blacks! Matte nail polish isn't over yet... wonder if anyone else will do more mattes this year?

(These were sent to me for review.)