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!