Purple Taupes

Final comparison post of the series! Had to wait this long because I was missing one of the polishes and only went to collect it recently!

So today, we have the purple taupes up for comparison. This colour has been very hot the last few seasons and many companies have done they take on the colour. I personally love the colour because it's edgy yet pretty neutral at the same time. It's a colour you'd wear to feel more edgy if you're confined to strict office policies on nail colours.

L-R: China Glaze Below Deck, Essie Merino Cool and Misa Coffee Pick Me Up (same order for all the pictures)



This one's the taken under a lamp and it's a little brighter than the actual colours.



With flash.





The last two were taken in natural indirect sunlight.

I hate to admit it but these three colours really look almost the same to me. The only minute details I could pick out was that China Glaze was the one with the best balance in terms of purple and taupe. It was also the thickest among the three but application was still a breeze. Essie Merino Cool was the darkest and most purple and also needed 2 coats. Misa Coffee Pick Me Up is the greyest and lightest amoung the bunch. It also needed 2 coats and it wins the Most Creative Name award (lol)!

Honestly, you probably don't need all three, or even any two of these colours. I went a little polish happy and bought all three (at different times) on a wimp and I don't regret getting all of them but I know I don't need them all and any normal person probably won't be able to tell the difference between them three anyways.

Okay, so this is the last of the comparison series (for now) and I hope you enjoyed it as much I as did! Hopefully I'll stop buying polishes that are so similar in the future! And on a separate note, it's the last day of March already! Wow, time's slipping away so quickly these days.

Purple Power

8th comparison post of the series! Lucky number 8!

Here we have (from top to bottom) OPI Done Out In Deco, TFS PP408, Done Out In Deco and OPI Parlez-Vous OPI?

(L-R) OPI Done Out In Deco, TFS PP408, Done Out In Deco and OPI Parlez-Vous OPI?

L-R: OPI Parlez-Vous OPI?, OPI Done Out In Deco, TFS PP408 and Done Out In Deco

The first 2 pictures were taken under my lamp and the last picture was taken with flash. Both the OPI colours needed 2 coats while the TFS polish needed 3 coats for opacity.

As you cans see, the TFS polish was close to Done Out In Deco but it was much brighter and redder. Done Out In Deco, on the other hand, was bluer and dustier. Of course, the dustiest of the bunch was Parlez-Vous OPI? and it was also the darkest among the three. I'd say that Parlez-Vous OPI? is Done Out In Deco's darker cousin because they're both in the dusty purple family.

Hope you like the purples! They're such a fresh colour to rock! :D

Dark Shimmers

Time for the 7th comparison of the series! Wow, never knew I had this many polishes that were close enough to do comparisons! =/

Today, we have Misa Dying Love, Misa It's You and TFS BK901 in the spotlight. All three of them are dark (almost black) polishes with some form of shimmer or fine glitter that makes them more interesting than your normal black polish.

Dying Love is a black-based polish with silver/grey shimmer and it applied very well. It's You is more charcoal-based with a duochrome purple and green shimmer. TFS BK901 is similar to It's You except it's black-based and it has duochrome purple and green (tiny) glitter particles. All 3 polishes needed 2 coats to be opaque.

L-R: Misa Dying Love, Misa It's You and TFS BK901. Here you can see the various glitter/shimmer finishes of the three polishes.

L-R: TFS BK901, Misa It's You and Misa Dying Love

L-R: Misa Dying Love, Misa It's You and TFS BK901

TFS BK901 and hopefully you can see both the purple and green glitter a little better in this picture!

Honestly, you can only see the shimmer/glitter in Dying Love and BK901 under strong sunlight or with flash (if you're taking a picture) so effectively, they both look like black polish indoors. It's You were a little more in-yer-face with it's duochrome shimmer so if you're going for a more obvious effect, then I suggest you choose It's You among the three.

I actually love how BK901 looks so intergalectic. It's very space-age and gives of a really cool looking effect! All in all, I really like the overall glitter/shimmer addition to the polishes. It would have been so boring if it were just the base colours but the shimmer/glitter livens up  the polishes!

I Feel Like the Colour Blue

For those of you who listen to Aerosmith, you might find the title line familiar (it's from their song Crazy). I think you probably guessed by now that today's comparison will be between two blue polishes!



Left to right: OPI Dating a Royal, China Glaze First Mate, Dating a Royal and First Mate. Taken under a lamp.

Boy, it was so hard to capture these two blues. I must really say that the two colours are much darker than in my pictures. First Mate is a light navy (such a paradox but it's not the kind of navy that's really dark, you can still see it's blue) and Dating a Royal is just a royal blue. It's very rich and it reminds me of the blue in the British flag. In fact, Dating a Royal kinda looks like First Mate's colour in the picture above so you kind of have to use your imagination for this post.

Notice how glossy Dating a Royal Is, that you can actually see the reflection of my camera!



nder indirect sunlight.



Taken with flash. The order is (L-R) First Mate, Dating a Royal, then First Mate again, and Dating a Royal.
God I hate my my pictures came out. Dating a Royal is really hard to photograph and every swatch I've seen online just doesn't do it justice. Honestly, the best picture I've seen of it is this:



It's so rare for the picture from OPI to actually be accurate but in this case, it is.

Anyways, colour aside, Dating a Royal took 2 coats to be opaque while First Mate only neede ONE. Wooohooo, a one-coater! Now, despite it being a one coater, its formula was much better than Sea Spray (from the same Anchors Away collection), which had such a thick consistency and was harder to work with.
I guess my collection will settle with having 2 dark blues because I'm pretty much satisfied with them and don't need any more navy blues unless a perfect one comes along!

Peaches and Strawberry Milkshake

Comparison #5!! This wasn't part of the original line up but I realized how close these two were so I decided to add them into the series of comparisons!

Up for battle against each other today: Elianto Peach and China Glaze Seashell



Peaches on my index and ring fingers and Seashell is on my middle finger and pinkie. This one was taken under a lamp.



This was was taken in indirect sunlight. Here, the two colours seem more similar to each other than in the previous photo. Honestly, the only different between the two is that Peaches is a tiny bit more orange than Seashell, which is a pastel pink.



With flash, and you can see how glossy the two colours dry. I wouldn't have considered them to have jelly finishes before seeing this picture but maybe they are. There was no topcoat on btw.

Both needed 3 coats for full opacity and I feel Seashell had a better formula. It was slightly thinner so it was easier to handle. Peach also didn't really self-level so I needed to be careful with application. Seashell did tend to level itself out. Really like how sweet these 2 look, I haven't worn either before so maybe when I'm feeling more girlie I'll be able to rock the look better. They're not uber pink, like barbie pink but they're definitely pinker than what I would wear on a normal day. Peach is a little less girly though.

Hope you're enjoying the comparison series so far!

The Beiges

Comparison #4!!

My good friend bought OPI Bare It In Trafalgar Square quite a while back from eBay and when she gave me a swatch of it, I loved how it looked so much, I knew I just had to have it! Mind you this swatch was one stroke of polish on a scotch tape. That was how much it drove me crazy. That one thin strip of beige was so alluring!

Left to right: OPI Bare It In Trafalgar Sqaure (BIITS), Essie Jazz and Elianto Eggshell, taken under a lamp.

Same order, taken in indirect sunlight. Colours are more accurate in this picture!

Taken with flash.

So I did a comparison previously between Jazz and Eggshell and I concluded that they were dupes of each other (with one eye closed). However, I do not have any dupes for BIITS in my collection because it's far whiter than any of the close colours I have. It did look pretty close to Jazz in the bottle though!

All three of the polishes took 2 coats to be opaque although Jazz was a little more sheer than the other 2 so for people who are very particular about VNL, 3 coats would be best! I'm actually very impress with how opaque BIITS was! I was expecting it to be sheer and was prepared to do 3-4 coats but it's very opaque, even with the first coat on! Maybe it's got to do with the fact that it's a black label (old OPI that isn't Big 3-free).   

Really loving all three of these colours and I think I may be wearing these for the first few days of my internship, to check out how conservative my office is (as well as the clients' offices)! I love how these colours looks so chic on short nails and they makes them look very neat and clean cut! (: 

 

 

Shatter // Crackle

Update: I found the youtube video that shows the random painting strokes you can use: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMjAvQvmiHA
Click away! And be creative! (:
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Finally went down to collect my shatter / crackle polishes from Estella today and I couldn't wait to test them out!!

Thumb: Nature Republic BL503 base (light powder blue) with China Glaze Cracked Concrete painted on with super random strokes. I actually like this pattern the best among all the different "techniques".

Index: Nature Republic BK001 (silver) with OPI Black Shatter painted on with a braided technique, which is like painting diagonally from right to left, then from left to right and so on and so forth.

Middle: Nature Republic BL503 base with OPI Black Shatter painted on regularly.

Ring: OPI Hey! Get in Lime base with China Glaze Cracked Concrete painted on using very very very random strokes.

Pinkie: Nature Republic BL503 base with China Glaze Cracked Concrete painted on normally.

I really like the whole pale blue with grey combi and the process of painting the polish and watching it crack is so fun I could do it all day! If I had to choose which one's better, I actually prefer the OPI one if I want to do just the normal linear crackle because the brush was wider so it was easier for me to coat my entire nail without having to go over certain areas again! But of course if I want to do the braided technique then I'd probably choose China Glaze for it's thinner brush so I can get as many strokes as possible for more cracks in different directions! Formula wise, I did find OPI a little thinner and hence easier to work with!
Hope you enjoyed this post! (:

China Glaze Sea Spray vs Pelican Grey

Comparison post #3!

Here we have China Glaze Sea Spray on my index and ring fingers and Pelican Grey on my thumb, middle finger and pinkie.



Taken under my lamp. I don't know why they look so thick cuz I only used 2 coats. I have 3 coats of Pelican Grey on my tumb though and yet it looks the thinnest! How ironic. Sea Spray is quite hard to capture because it's more grey than this but my camera always makes it look really blue. In fact, if you look at Sea Spray alone, you'd think it is a grey until you put Pelican Grey next to it.



aken in indirect sunlight. You can kinda see the secret shimmer that both these colours have.
Application-wise, Sea Spray was super thick and was harder to paint on but it's not impossible to work with. You just need to get use to it. Probably need to add some thinner soon though. Pelican Grey was thinner and much easier to paint on.

I really like the combination of these two colours. Having next to each other is kinda cool cuz they look similar but they're not! Also, Pelican Grey is light enough that it doesn't make your nails look boring. In fact, it's quite a refreshing colour compared to darker greys! i think these 2 colours would fit well into the whole Spring look!

Greys

Inspired by Sophia's post on grey polishes, I decided to do my own. I don't own as many true grey polishes as she does so I picked out the 5 polishes that best fit the bill!



Here, I'm wearing (from thumb to pinkie) China Glaze Pelican Grey, Essie Chinchilly, Misa Paint my Nails @ Work, Misa Pay Days Are Happy Days and Essie Playa Del Platinum. I didn't include Essie Body Language inside because I felt it was too light and pink.The above picture was taken in indirect sunlight.



This was taken in direct sunlight and this is probably the best picture I have that shows their true colour!

China Glaze Pelican Grey: This is pretty much a true grey in terms of colour. It's a dove grey and has some secret shimmer that is barely noticeable from a distance so it does appear to look more like a creme polish. It needed 3 coats here but I've can away with 2 coats normally. Its formula is neither too watery or thick so it is easy enough to apply.

Essie Chinchilly: I hope you can see how this has a hint of taupe in it! It looked like a pure grey in the pictures I showed you in my previous post but it really has a taupey hue to it. Again, this was 2 coats that went on rather easily. This one's the darkest of the bunch and I can't wait to wear a full mani with this colour!

Misa Paint My Nails @ Work: 2 coats that went on smoothly. The polish appeared thick in the bottle but when I painted it on my nail, it somehow applied rather fluid-ly. This colour is from Misa's 9 to 5 collection that has a whole bunch of very neutral colours that are extremely appropriate to wear to extremely coservative offices. Really siggin this colour!

Misa Pay Days Are Happy Days: Love the name of this polish! Another polish from Misa's 9 to 5 collection and this was also 2 coats. It seemed way thicker in the bottle (much like Paint My Nails @ Work but this was thicker)  but like its fellow sister polish, it applied really well. Compared to Paint My Nails @ Work, this colour is more tan-based while the former is has more taupe in it.

And lastly, we have Essie Playa del Platinum: It's the most tan-based grey out of the lot and it took 2 coats to reach opacity as well. It's from the same collection as Turquoise and Caicos but has a way better formula. How intriguing!

I really love all the colours from this comparison and yes, three of them are from the previous post, in case you're wondering. Might as well use them for another comparison so I won't have to remove and paint them again for this one! This is where planning comparison posts comes in handy! :D
Hope you like the swatches!

Grey Taupes

First of the few comparison posts I have installed: the grey taupes. These are such neutral colours that they'll probably match almost anything you wanna wear so you won't have to think twice about whether your mani will match your outfit!



L-R: Essie Chinchilly, Misa Paint My Nails @ Work, Misa Pay Days Are Happy Days and Color Club High Society. The order for the rest of the pictures in this post is the same.

God knows how I have such a major weakness for colours like these!



Under my lamp.



Under sunlight.



Under indirect sunlight.

I don't know why Chinchilly is coming off more grey than it really is. It has more taupe in it that depicted in the pictures! It's not a true grey, like China Glaze Recycle. Anyways, all the four polishes were 2 coats and they applied really well! As you can see, none of them are dupes (THANK GOODNESS) and they're very neutral because of the grey in them.

Compare them with normal taupes, like OPI Over the Taupe or Rimmel Beige Babe, and you'll find that these somehow look more basic. They're not as attention grabbing so if you've been wearing plenty on bright colours and want a little break to cleanse your polish palette, why not consider these few colours instead of the conventional french mani pink polish that most people use?

I also love how they're kind of in the same family of colours so they look great beside each other. I think these colours will look good as an ombre manicure! Just need to find a fifth colour to match the other four!

OPI Dating a Royal

OPI Dating a Royal under different lightings! I think the first picture was with flash and the second was without! I would say the color in the second picture is more accurate to its true color! It's a rich blue but it's not a straight blue, like say Essie Mesmerize. Rather, I would say it has the tiniest hint of purple in it. Not enough to make it a blurple but still, it's gorgeous! Maybe it's an indigo? Really reminds me of the blue in the union jack (British flag) so the name Dating a Royal was really a good choice!

It dried really really glossy so for intensive purposes, I'd classify it as a jelly and not a creme! This was 2 thicker coats because I was to lazy to do 3 thinner ones.

I purchased it last year but haven't worn it yet so I guess I'll wear it when I feel edgier! Definitely after the next 2 weeks because I'll finish my Career Foundations module then! (YAYYY! Hello to bright nails again when that happens!)  

Swatches to Come

Here's a look at what's to come! I've got quite a few comparisons lined up and some swatches of lone colours too!

Close ups:







Not gonna name names to keep you in suspense! I swatched all of these on paper yesterday because I was studying for my Accounting quiz and I needed a break. Hopefully the next two weeks won't be too hectic so I can swatch all these on my nails for you to see! There's so many projects and assignments to work on especially since it's going to be recess week soon (which isn't really recess week because it's just an excuse for tutors to dump us with more work to do), plus I have a TON of readings to catch up on! Hope to start swatching some of these polishes this weekend if time permits!
Alrights, happy weekend folks! (:

Skin Food Polishes

Bought 2 polishes the other day after my internship interview because I got offered the internship and I was so happy I went on a polish mini spree! Dropped by Skin Food at Bugis and purchased 2 glitter colours! First one I got was a copper one (BR612) and the other was a really really dark (almost black) blue (BW701)!



Here, we have (from L-R) one coat of the copper layered over black polish, two coats of the copper by itself, 2 coats of the dark blue by itself and lastly one coat of the dark blue over black polish. I LOVE how the copper polish looks over black! It became a little olive in colour and the glitter particles just became so much more magnificant to look at, much more prominent! Reminded me of Zoya Edyta (which I don't have but I want to get once my self-imposed 2 month polish ban has been lifted). The above picture was taken in natural sunlight!



This picture was taken with flash and here you can see the crazy copper polish's glitter particles in their full glory!

I think I probably won't wear the copper polish by itself because I'm not really a gold polish kinda person! So I'll definitely layer it over black! I decided to do a full mani with the dark blue a few days after I bought the 2 colours so here are the pictures!



It's really a blue-black colour with fine shimmer particles. Honestly, I couldn't really see the shimmer in it (maybe cuz I didn't use a top coat?) so I was a little bummed.



Here it is looking more blue. I know it already looks like it's black but bear with me.



There you go, now it's black. I would say most of the time it looks like a black polish until you put something that's black against it and then you'll realise it's just a really really dark blue!



Here, you can see the tiny glitter particles (especially on my thumbnail, index and ring finger nails). The polish looks really nice when you look at it closely but sadly it only looks meh if you don't really notice it. Guess it's a surprise party for whoever bothers to thoroughly look at  your nails!

I would describe the particles to be blue and purple and you can see it more in the picture below! Hope you can see it!



Hope you like these pictures! Anyways, I think my glitter streak is fast disappearing! As you can see from the above picture, I painted China Glaze Fairy Dust over the blue-black polish just for both my thumbs and it just didn't appeal to me anymore! The whole glitter novelty probably wore off so I'm going back to my first love, cremes!

I also compared it with Misa Dying Love, which it reminded me of.



Misa on the first 2 fingers and Skin Food on the last 2. Now can you tell how it really it blue and not black? Misa took 2 coats to be opaque as well and as usual, the formula for Dying Love is a typical Misa formula - such a breeze to work with! Dying Love did however appear a little more gunmetal, or really drey grey, rather than black and it shows the streaks of shimmer (due to my lousy painting technique?) so I didn't really that about the Misa polish.

The blue-black polish was opaque in 2 regular (yay, not thick) coats and it wore pretty well considering the fact that I was strumming away on my guitar  without a pick! Took it off after 2 days because I wanted to try other colours that recently arrived, so watch out for them! (:

Rainbow nail

Saw Lynn's post with her rainbow nails and I wanted to try it out!



Used these few pastel polishes because I don't have colours that look like the actual rainbow colours! I can't remember what the Face Shop polishes' codes are but they're pretty easy to spot when you go to the shop! Pastel yellow, mint green, blue, purple and lastly, China Glaze Seashell for the pastel pink!



Painted on (it was 1am and I couldn't be bothered to wait for each layer to dry to sponge the colours) the yellow, the green, then blue, purple and lastly pink! As you can probably tell, the end result was this goopy nail that I couldn't take! Oh, and that white heart shaped thing, it's a reflection of my light, which was totally not planned (I swear! I only noticed it after transfering the picture to my computer)! Kinda got impatient when it came to the pink so some of it got smeared onto the purple layer. Yikes.



Here you can see the difference between the blue and green a little better!

Oh man, I really wanted to like the look but I just don't! I really like Lynn's nails so much better! I'm still amazed at how she managed to squeeze soooo many colours on her nails! Guess the rainbow nail isn't for everyone?