Ten Fingers, Ten Nude Shades

First of all, I'd just to to wish everyone a Happy Lunar New Year! I live in Singapore and most of us celebrate this day so if you are celebrating it too, GONG XI FA CAI! (:

This week, I'm going to show you some nude polishes, and next week, I'll show you some holographic ones! I've actually had quite a few posts done up in anticipation of my busy school semester so at least I can still concentrate on my studies while keeping this blog updated. Gonna finish posting my nude and holo posts before moving on to showing you my normal manicures again. Also, since I won't be painting my nails as often as I did when I was doing the 31 Day Challenge, I'll probably go back to posting at most 3 times a week.

I actually did this swatch a really really long time ago but after transfering the images from my camera to my hard disc, I totally forgot about them until I was looking through the pictures in my hard disc and realised I haven't blogged about these 10 differennt nude shades yet!

Like I said, these pictures were taken a long time ago so I'll try to recall the colours as best as I can. Hopefully I'll name them correctly!

 I'll try my best to recall the names!


From pinkie to thumb: Essie Jazz, Essie Sand Tropez, OPI Tickle My France-y, Etude House BR307 and Tony Moly TR07. They should all be 2 coats here if I remember right. These are the cooler nude shades from my stash.



From thumb to pinkie: OPI Dulce de Leche, OPI Miso Happy With This Color, Rimmel Barely There, OPI Bare It In Trafalgar Square, OPI Barefoot in Barcelona. 2 coats each, except Miso, which should probably be 3-4 coats! These are the warmer nudes.

I definitely have more nude shades but these few are the better ones! I'm starting to invest in more nudes, just bought myself OPI Samoan Sand, Coney Island Cotton Candy, Let Them Eat Rice Cake, Have a Tempura Tentrum and Essie Topless and Barefoot. I'm preparing my Helmer for the boring nail colours days that are soon approaching (this coming August)!

I think out of the 10 nudes, I really like OPI Barefoot in Barcelona the best. Weird thing is, I've never worn it before! This is what happens when you have a Helmer full of polishes but only 10 fingers! Do you have a favourite nude shade? If so, please share what is it! (:
A

Glitter Bomb

You know I don't really like OTT glittery nails right? I did buy OPI Bring on the Bling and Sparkle-icious but I only intended to use them for french tips or accent nails, nothing too attention-grabbing.

But, I went snooping around my mum's polish collection and I found this pretty gold glitter polish from TFS that my grandma bought the last time she came to visit and left it behind when she went back home (she stays overseas). It's called YL702 and it has gold and some holo glitters with some holo round bits too.

I decided to go a glitter gradient because I wanted to ease into glitter nails and I really like how it turned out!





I have Rimmel Barely There as my base on my thumb and ring finger, OPI Dulce de Leche on my pinkie, UGNY 222 (it's a super discontinued colour my mum loves) on my middle finger. I have nothing as my base on my index finger.

Really liking how it looks so pretty and princessy! (Which is totally not me at all.)

Sadly, I was riffing away on my guitar and my index finger took a big hit so now half of the polish on my index is gone. :( The guitar playing also explains why the tips of my fingers are so dry and cracked. Ahhh, the horrible things playing a guitar does to my fingers, on top of not being able to keep my nails long!

Essie Merino Cool vs Rimmel Beige Babe

Essie Merino Cool is on my middle finger and Rimmel Beige Babe is on my index finger.

Under a lamp.

 

 With flash. (Please ignore the "low quality" words on the left! I was doing my Marketing notes while painting my nails. Or was it the other way round? Haha!)

As you can see, Merino Cool is lighter and also more purple than Beige Babe. To be honest, when I bought OPI Parlez-Vous OPI?, I was kind of expecting it to look like Merino Cool.

I painted 3 coats for both polish but I guess you could get away with 2 coats. I think it was because I was painting my right hand which was why I went thinner on the coats. I tend to do 3 thin coats for my right hand and 2 thicker coats for my left hand!

Really like Merino Cool A LOT in terms of both its colour and formula! It's a great purple taupe polish!

 

Rimmel Beige Babe Bringing on the Bling

Once again, I got bored of my mani and decided to do an accent nail! Decided to paint my ring finger with OPI Bring on the Bling!

Used 2 coats of Bring on the Bling and it was a really fun look to rock!

 

Rimmel Beige Babe

I totally love how Rimmel Beige Babe can "change" colour under different lightings!

Case in point:

Purple under a lamp.

Grey under strong sunlight.

Brown in indirect sunlight.

That being said, I just wasn't feeling the colour. It's not the polish per say, it's just me. Perhaps it's just a case of wrong polish colour, wrong time. I'm feeling more meh these days, with school work, presentations and projects starting to pile up and maybe it has caused me to gravitate more towards the really neutral colours, like greiges and nudes. I didn't even feel edgy enough to wear a taupe for crying out loud. Funny thing is, my mum couldn't stop raving about this colour and asked me to give it to her if I don't want it anymore! Guess school has got me feeling down. Maybe it's also due to the fact that I don't have much time to practice the guitar as much as I want to and I can't master the techniques in time for the next lesson every week. Sigh. Guitar's looking more like a distress than a de-stress thing right now.

But back to the polish, it needed either 2 thick coats, or 3 thinner coats to get opaque. Both works just fine. I did get some sort of streaking (maybe due to the brush) which was why I chose to do thicker coats to kinda level it out. After that, I slapped on a layer of Poshe to get it to dry fast because I had a mountain of things to do.

Right now, I'm onto my third day of wear and I only have really tiny chips but they're mostly due to strumming my guitar with my nails so it's no fault on Rimmel's part. I'm actually loving how Poshe is at least taking me to day 3 of wear before chipping because normally I'd get a chip on day two previously and by day three, an entire chunk of the polish would come off! I just ordered a bottle of Seche Vite from Gwen's spree so I'm looking forward to testing that out and comparing it's wear with Poshe!

Really feel so tempted to remove this colour and paint China Glaze Pelican Grey (I had that colour on my toes for the past week! I'll show it to you soon!) or OPI Tickle My France-y on instead.

Collective Haul!

I've been buying so many polishes lately and this is a collective haul from 3 or 4 different occasions within the last few weeks!

Overall picture (I forgot to add some polishes in here but I'll show you all the polishes in more detail later on)!

 

Top row (L-R): Essie Merino Cool, Silky Girl Mauve Dreams, OPI Kreme de la Kremlin, Silky Girl Naturally Nude

Second row (L-R): China Glaze Pelican Grey, Color Club Worth the Risque, Color Club Revvvolution, Essie Body Language, China Glaze Fairy Dust

Bottom row (L-R): China Glaze Secrect Peri-wink-le (no, I did not spell it wrongly!), Color Club Take Me to Your Chateau

Now, I've group them into groups of similar colours. I've also added a brief colour description and the number of coats you need to achieve opaqueness in brackets.

The Nudes / Mauves:



L-R: Rimmel Barely There (flesh tone nude, 2-3 coats), Silky Girl Naturall Nude (nude pink with pearly shimmer, 2 coats), Silky Girl Mauve Dreams (mauve, 2 coats and it's a good dupe for Kreme de la Kremlin! Costs a fraction of its price and is so much easier to find!), OPI Kreme de la Kremlin (mauve, 1 coat but 2 coats will make it more creamy and rich), and Sally Hansen Mocha Mix (darker mauve, dries darker than in the bottle, 1 coat)

The Taupes:



L-R: Essie Merino Cool (taupe with purple undertones, 2 coats), Rimmel Beige Babe (taupe with brown undertones, 3 coats)

Also, I did this comparison of Merino Cool with other similar colours that I have so you can see how it differs from the other taupes / purples!



L-R (without flash): Essie Hot Coco, Essie Merino Cool, OPI Parlez Vous OPI?, Essie Smokin' Hot
I decided to store Merino Cool with my purples instead of my taupes (the two "categories" are kept in separate baskets) because most of my taupes are more brown and Merino Cool has significantly more purple than the rest of the taupes!

The Blues: 



L-R: China Glaze Secrect Peri-wink-le (cornflower blue, more purple than Orly Snowcone, 3 coats), Color Club Take Me to Your Chateau (very light pastel blue, almost a one coater which is very rare when it comes to such light colour! Did 2 coats for good measure! It's also making me think of getting OPI What's with the Cattitude!)



Couleur Inc Beid. I forgot to include it in the first blue picture so here's an old picture I took of it! It's more of a turquoise and it needed 2 coats.

The Greys / Holos:



L-R: China Glaze Pelican Grey (grey with super subtle shimmer, 2 coats), Color Club Worth the Risque (silver holo, 2-3 coats), Color Club Revvvolution (charcoal holo, 2 coats), China Glaze Fairy Dust (holo top coat, I usually use 1-2 coats over a base colour) and Essie Body Language (light grey with pink undertones, 3 coats)

Also, recall that I bought a similar glitter from Couleur Inc?





China Glaze Fairy Dust has smaller holo particles and you can see this from the second picture! Couleur Inc Lupi also has silver particles amidst the holo particles so its effect is not as rad as Fairy Dust! Fairy Dust will win hands down if you ask me to pick one but Lupi is alright I guess.

The Red:



The lone red, Sally Hansen Cherry Red (red with slight pink undertones, 2 thin coats / 1 thick coat). I don't usually lust after reds because its hard to me to find a red I like and with so many different hues of red polishes out there, I really would wanna see it IRL before buying! I am lusting over OPI Ali's Big Break though! Saw it in Sephora and I like its jelly finish with the glitters in it!

This next one, is OPI Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous. It's my friend's so really, I have to pass it to her as much as I'd like to keep it! It is a gorgeous granite foil-like polish with multicoloured shimmer specks! It's so nice I want to get it during my next polish spree!



This picture just doesn't do it justice! I'm waiting for Misa It's You to arrive (from a transdesign spree that I ordered from weeks ago but the idiot organiser hasn't ordered yet because she's waiting for the Katy Perry line to be in stock again. Ironically, I didn't order any Katy Perry polishes so I'm waiting in vain.) so I can compare them and see if they're similar enough for me to skip this beauty!

Okay, I guess these polishes will be able to last me for my one month ban! Oh, have you seen the Misa 9-5 collection and Essie French Affair 2011? Some of the polishes have my name on it already! :D

Barely There

I showed you a swatched of Rimmel Barely There a while ago on one nail and now, I have an entire mani of Barely There for you!



This was taken under my lamp. The colour is pretty accurate.



This is also the colour that Barely There sometimes assumes. It's like a versatile colour that changes. HAHA! But really, I do find that with different lighting conditions, it does alternate between a flesh tone with yellow undertones and with pink undertones. Regardless, it's still a really nice colour and best thing? It's so easy to match with all your clothes!



I then proceeded to add 2 layers of China Glaze Fairy Dust over my ring finger. This was taken in sunlight and it's the most amazing holo top coat ever! How did I only find out about Fairy Dust recently?! It's GORGEOUS and it makes me wanna do accent manicures with it for the rest of my life! I do think it's a bit too bling bling for ten fingers hence the accent mani.

Although, perhaps one coat would be less bling and then you could paint it over all ten of your nails. If you can also remember, I bought a similar glitzy polish that I showed you guys a few posts back, the Couleur Inc one. The Couleur Inc polish has larger glitter particles and the particles consist of some silver ones and some holo ones, whereas Fairy Dust has smaller particles and all of them are holo.

If I had to choose, Fairy Dust would win hands down. I have no idea why I even bought the Couleur Inc one knowinf that I had already bought Fairy Dust! Oh, I did see a similar polish from Sally Hansen at Watsons on Saturday! It has a whiter base than Fairy Dust (which is a tiny bit grey so if you notice later on, it does make Barely There appear duller).



With flash to bring out the bling bling. Isn't it to die for? Again, notice how Barely There looks pinker here.



 CLOSE UP! This makes it even more beautiful doesn't it! The photo's out of focus so it makes the glitter particles more obvious.

 

My right hand, so you know I really did a 10 finger manicure! Sometimes I just paint 4 fingers on my left hand to show you guys cuz I'm too lazy to do my right hand. Plus it's crazy hard to paint my right hand nicely! Also, take a look at my index finger in the above picture to see the really tiny shimmer particles in Barely There. The shimmer is barely there (pun intended) but in the light at different angles, you can totally see it! Sad that no one else can see the shimmer. It's a secret shimmer polish I guess!

I think Rimmel's brush was amazing and it really helped me to do a really neat mani with really little (almost none really) clean ups! FYI, I did 2-3 coats of Barely There for all my fingers depending on individual sheerness / opaqueness! Then I painted on Poshe on my ring ringer and a Sally Hansen top coat on the rest of my fingers. Polish was easy to paint on and drying time was fine! I think we all know the star of the show is Fairy Dust but Rimmel gets some credit in my books too!

Ultimately, I'm loving this mani quite a lot and I'm hoping it lasts! (Update: I got a chip on my right index and ring fingers on my third day of wear. So much for Rimmel proclaining "Up to 10 Days of Wear" on their bottles! I guess it'd only last 10 days if I don't do anything around the house and simply eat and sleep.)

Watsons Haul

Sad to announce that I have the poorest self-control in the whole world when it comes to polish. I went to Watsons today and I bought four bottles because they were having a 20% off promotion for the two brands I purchased! I was really not looking forward to school starting tomorrow so I had to do a little retail therapy.



Left to right: Sally Hansen Mocha Mix, Sally Hansen Cherry Red, Rimmel Beige Babe and Rimmel Barely There.

Mocha Mix reminds me of Chanel Rose Confidentiel but it's definitely darker than the Chanel. It dries pretty dark so the colour in the bottle is not really a good gauge as to it's true colour.  It applied like butter and was opaque in one coat. I did two though, just to cover up any uneveness I had (due to my poor painting technique and not the brush or formula).

Cherry Red is a red with pink undertones. It's a relatively bright red and it's really young looking!  Again, it went on opaque in one coat (I'm very impressed with Sally Hansen's formula!!) but because reds tend to appear pinker than they really are, I did two coats to bring out it's true colour. The Sally Hansen brush isn't a pro-wide, like OPI, it's thinner in fact but its formula is such a dream to work with that the brush size was okay for me!

On to Rimmel, first thing that took me by surprise was its brush size. It's wider than OPI's pro-wide so it's wide. I could paint my nails with one stroke but I chose not to fan the brush out. I wanted more control so I painted lightly and still did three strokes.

Barely There is a flash coloured polish that made me look like I had mannequin nails! Finally a polish that gives me that look! It's not a look I particularly like but it's a different look that I'm open to trying! Barely There does have some tiny tiny multi-coloured glitter particles that makes it such a pretty shade! I'm starting to like glitter now, I don't know why. I used to be a creme finish girl but recently, I've been coveting glitters! I used 3 thin coats to get it fully opaque.

As for Beige Babe, it's a gorgeous taupe creme that looks like milk chocolate! It has rose undertones so it does look a little different from OPI Over the Taupe and Essie Hot Coco. Those were the 2 polishes I have that looked the most like it. Although I must add that the difference is pretty minute so to untrained polish eyes, they'll look the same. Again, I used 3 thin coats to get Beige Babe fully opaque and it dries really glossy!

Here's a picture of Beige Babe with the other taupes I have for comparison. Left to right: OPI Over the Taupe, Rimmel Beige Babe, Essie Hot Coco and OPI You Don't Know Jacques (thrown in for good measure)



And here are todays colours swatched on! Left to right: Sally Hansen Cherry Red, Rimmel Beige Babe, Sally Hansen Mocha Mix and Rimmel Barely There



No more new polishes for the next month! I promise!