Just A Great Polish

This is OPI - Ginger Bells.

Part of the 2009 Holiday Collection. It's a muted pumpkin color, suitable for wall and finter etc. It just looks GREAT. That's the word I kept thinking. I even said, "Doesn't this look great?" and my coworker said, "Yeah."















Not everyone gets it, do they?

I just kept looking at it all day and enjoying.

Even though I don't think it does any favors to my skin tone, it's just unusual enough to look very current.











With a matte coat however,

not so much. It sucked the life right out of it.













Here it is with its compatriot OPI - Shim-merry Chic.

I'm going to put the bottle picture in too, even though it sucks. The picture, not the polish.












It's hard to cope with this bleak winter light.

It's got flakes and glitter and makes an excellent top coat. Turns Ginger Bells brown, but the flakes are the color of the Ginger Bells. Very pretty and would work on a number of colors as the base. I haven't tried it alone yet.















Here's OPI - Absolutely Alice over Orly - Witch's Blue (mini bottle).

I've been reading mixed reviews about this and the Avril Lavigne song for the movie - but I really like both of them!!











Here's the little Witch's Blue and it's a beautiful blue on its own. I just didn't get a pic of it.

This is a fabulous polish, but it gets noticed. If you work in the kind of place where they don't really approve of this kind of thing you probably want to use it on the weekend. Yeah, I got some looks. I keep forgetting I'm supposed to be professional. Borrrring. lol














Last for today I have RBL - Bruised.

I bought this a while back. It is professional and I have a sweater that matches it...very nice for working.

















I can't remember why I bought it because its mauve-ness is not really me.

But it's brownish without being brown, it's purplish without being pinkish and that works and I like the name.

















The love of my life is bugging me to go do something today. I think he's in denial about the state of affairs with the snow. I told him, "I am doing something - I'm writing my blog!" and he got all nasty. It's the cabin fever. I shouldn't tease him, he could get aggressive. But come on, the man is looking at kayaking creeks and bike trails. Hello?

The view out the back.

I think this calls for watching a movie (We got Whip It on Netflix) and sending my newly driver licensed son out for Ben & Jerry's and taking a nap with the kitties.



Am I right?

Orly Gems - My Loving Tribute

Yes, this came out for Fall 2008 so you probably saw the swatches that summer before. Yet, I love all of these so I decided to do the whole collection.















We have here, L to R, Golden Jubilee, Sea of Light, Star of Bombay, Golden Maharaja, Mandalay Ruby and Midnight Star.

I started swatching these Fall of 2009 when they were first on sale and did two of them. They are named after actual gems, and I'm telling those stories too.

First we have Mandalay Ruby.

This was the cheapest one, $2.99. The others were $4.49 and I searched everywhere to find all of them with their rings. Seems that people shoplifted the rings! You might still find these around.















The real Mandalay Ruby.
Mandalay is in Burma where they have ruby mines.










I read up on the Mandalay Ruby and found out that a good color for rubies is the shade of "pigeon's blood." Great. Now that's all I can think of.

Glamorous! All in all, a very respectable red. Clear color, just a hint of darkness, a priceless ruby! I found out that real rubies always have flaws. That's how you can tell it's real.
















The other one I swatched previously was Golden Maharaja.

This is not golden, really, except when you look up close.



















Isn't that cool? The first coat comes out very reddish, then you get a rich brown, and with the last coat this shimmer comes out strong.










Here's the real Golden Maharaja.




















The Golden Maharaja is a 65.57 carat diamond!! Holy wow. It's not Indian, however, and has no cool historical tale. It's from South Africa, was shown at the Paris World Fair of 1937, spent some time in a museum and was sold in 1991 for $1.3 million. Snore. I was hoping for it being in the crown worn by some ancient ruler's elephant or something. Pretty though. I didn't know diamonds came in this color.

Looks great on me. Would have been cooler if they made it that teardrop shape though.

















Next up let's go with Sea of Light.

I was convinced this would look horrendous on me, and guess what? It doesn't!! I gave my first one to my sister before I even wore it. Took me awhile to find one with a ring on it.
















I think it's coral enough to really work on a variety of skin tones.

The real Sea of Light. How amazing is this. It's called the Darya-ye Noor Diamond of Iran. One of the largest diamonds in the world, and pale pink, one of the most rare.
















The shape of this one is pretty accurate!




















Golden Jubilee.

I wasn't sure how this one would work on me either, and I really liked it. A whole lot. It was a lot sheerer than the others and came out a nice soft peachy gold.
















It looks really cool posed on my jeans here.















Here's the real deal:

The Golden Jubilee Diamond is the largest faceted diamond in the world. It used to be called "The Unnamed Brown," and was considered a bit of an ugly duckling in the gem world.











Makes a nice ring.

It's a fine feeling to wear all of these priceless gemstones!


















Star of Bombay.

I've heard of people (Jen from Nevertoomuchglitter) like to franken with this because it's such a pure blue. No red or green in it.
















Here is the real one.


The real Star of Bombay is a star sapphire, a really interesting stone. It's blue and when you put it in the sun this star appears. This gem was given to the Smithsonian by US movie star Mary Pickford. It's from Sri Lanka.











The polish is a lot darker. Looks close to black.

I think even navy blue is lighter than this. It's as close to black as you're gonna get while still being blue. Love this!
















The last one is Midnight Star.

It's a gorgeous pearly muted purple. Really unique.


















And what does the real Midnight Star have to tell us?

This is also from Sri Lanka and there was some debate over whether it was really a ruby, but no, it's also a sapphire. It has a reddish tone which was deceivingly ruby-like to some. It's compared to the color of the sky after sunset.









Well, this polish isn't really like that, but boy is it ever pretty.

It does have that same smokey, mysterious look.


















These are fun to sort.

Two frosts (orange & purple), two cremes (blue & red), two sort-of-shimmers (pink & brown).

Two round rings (red & purple), two oval rings (orange & blue), two rectangular rings (pink & brown).

Warm colors (pink, brown, orange), cool colors (red, blue, purple).

It has traditional (red and pink)
Gothy (purple and blue)
Season-appropriate (brown & orange)

I wish there were more of them to do! I loved the formula of all of them as well as the colors and the fun of the names.

I like the uniqueness of this collection and I really love swatching a whole collection, it's really fun!

Aargh...A Dupe. I hate that.

I found this really pretty Essie - Bahama Mama and I should have known.

It's exactly like Borghese - Palermo Plum.













I love a nice plum. I'm at the point with polishes that I really need to check if I have something close. I'm not the kind of collector who needs every variation of something. You can see that the Essie is just slightly pinker.

My cuticles are so unhappy these days. Winter is getting really long. My application kind of sucks here too.

















I'm busy watching the olympics! The luge guy makes me sad though.

Anyway, everyone, enjoy your day, no matter what kind of expectations are involved. It's still a great day and only a few weeks left to Spring and pedicure weather shortly after that!!
















Lots of love to you!!

Black Radiance - And The BRUSH

Looks like Black Radiance revamped themselves a bit to be even more vampy! New bottle, shiny colors, added "Bold & Sexy" to the name. Wow. I'm feeling a little coquine....

On the left is old school - Red Ebony. Middle is Passion, right is Naughty (Coquine!)












The Red Ebony is not swatched here. I may have done it at some point in the past. It's actually one of my favorites, a nice brownish-red. Kind of luxurious.

Okay check out the package for a second.

See that "dome cut brush" thing? It's crazy, man!


















They are not kidding. This thing is huge. Take the Insta-Dri brush and add two OPI brushes.

The new one is on the right. It doesn't look as big here, but that thing is 3-dimensionally huge. It's a little hard to deal with, but I have fairly small nail beds. Would probably work really well if you have wider and longer ones.















Hey, I feel really dumb, but I just found out Black Radiance is marketed for "African American Women." Hm. I didn't even guess that. I'm what should be marketed toward "Dumb Blonde." Well, their product is good and I'm going to buy it. I'll just insinuate myself into their demographic for a minute.

Here's Naughty.

It's gray with just a taste of something greenish. I thought it was black. I like this, although would put on another coat; this is two. It's similar to other grey metallicy hint of color things that I have.















Here's Passion.

I love this. It's an awesome black red. I know I have something similar to this, probably Petites, but the red glitter is a lot more obvious in that. This is subtle, a real undercurrent.















Now I want to get the rest of these. The old school Red Ebony someone gave me a few years ago after I admired it and I've worn it many times. In fact, I would compare it to Essie Rock Star Skinny. These two new ones I just bought the other day at Cherry Hill Beauty Supply for $3.39 and they had more.

I love really black polishes. I keep hearing how people wish it would go out of style and I say BLACK POLISH FOREVER (or when I most feel like it!!!)

Here we are a little closer to Passion. It's what I strive for.

The Other Blogger RBL

The other of the three blogger RBLs is Mismas.

Now see this is only ONE coat. Mismas is courtesy of Michelle from All Lacquered Up. Look it up.











Just a teensy bit of cuticle pull (which is something that Michelle historically doesn't like).

ALU is one of the granddaddies of all nail polish blogs. It's a behemoth. Lots to see there.

How cool is it to have an RBL named after you?

This is actually a really lovely purple. In the bottle you can see a lovely blue collecting around the top before you shake it. This is a dark purple that holds its own and is in no way black or vampy. I think she really achieved her goal with this.








Except...I stand by my disappointment with RBL although this formula is way better than Scrangie. Cuticle pull? Really? When that's one thing that means a lot to Michelle?

This is one of the things that truly annoys me about marketing. It's so fake. RBL said "Let's jump on the blogger bandwagon and act like we care." They made these three blogger polishes, with their input and did not really listen to what was important to them.

Diatribe with no new photos - you can leave now if you want:

This is why I don't need a disclaimer for my blog although I should have a disclaimer disclaimer. I only post and review what I have paid retail and sales tax for. Or if I got it from someone for a gift or borrowed or stole from a family member or friend.

Many bloggers advertise and almost all of them get the products from the companies for free. That's fine and I love seeing the new stuff that's coming out, but I wanted to blog about the consumer experience and give some genuine buying advice for a product that you can never tell how it's going to act until it's on you. I hope the marketers pay some attention to blogs like this too.

I think we deserve quality products that make us happy! I know my nail polish makes me very happy during the day and I love trying it out, writing about it, wearing it around. I also love the fact that we can all get together and benefit from each other's experience and say, "I would really love to try that color, where can I buy it?" or, "I love that color but I'm not paying $18 for it if the formula sucks," or "My skin tone looks really terrible with that but maybe a bluer version of it would work." Stuff like that.

Thanks for joining me!

Disappointed!

You know, I love Scrangie. Just look at scrangie.com. I was really excited about the RBL blogger polishes, and bought all 3. Today I just have Scrangie and its inside with no flash because it's winter and my job is consuming all my time and I feel bad about neglecting my blog!

This is two coats and I can't think Scrangie is happy about that.












The color is awesome though...unusual and complicated! Bright blue flash, but wait, there's a green flash too!

Reminds me of two other favorites, Color Club - Ultra Violet and Wet n Wild - Eggplant Frost.












But darn, you guys, the formula on the RBL just sucks. It's gummy, it doesn't dry for all day, kind of rolls up when you bump something and does not work well with top coats. And it's expensive! Those other two are under $3.00. The RBL is freaking $18.00. I bought it on sale, $9.00.

It surprises me because Scrangie is all about writing about the formula. I wish RBL had done her some justice.

I'm gonna go put on another coat. Much as I think the color is cool, I don't recommend you buy this. But go read Scrangie's blog. She's the best.