BB Couture for Men, "Tools" Collection + some CND Effects

Happy Monday everyone!

Did you guys watch the Golden Globes last night?  I wish they had given Ricky Gervais more to do and I was disappointed in some of the winners (I haven't seen Avatar yet, but James Cameron comes off like a bit of a douche every time he speaks at awards shows), but overall it wasn't a terrible show.  Meryl was lovely as usual, some of the ladies looked great (I think Sandra was the best of the night - maybe Marion who is my girl crush, but too many played it safe), Glee won, Chloë won and was appropriately aghast that her Valentino got ripped (can you imagine if Rachel Zoë had been her stylist? she would have flipped her shit), and George was so cutely excited that Julianna Marguiles won.  Okay, onto the polish!

I bought 4 out of the 6 polishes from BB Couture for Men's "Tools" collection.  I didn't get Hammer Drill or Vise, but you can find swatches of them on Vampy Varnish and Body & Soul (here, here, here).  I used 2 coats for all of these pictures and the application was good for all of them.  These were taken indoors on a wintery day with little sunlight, so please forgive the picture quality of some of them.  Here we go!


BB Couture for Men Stud Finder

Stud Finder is a golden brown with prominent gold shimmer.  It reminds me a bit of a couple of the polishes in China Glaze's "Rodeo Diva" collection (maybe Prize-Winning Mare and Golden Spurs smashed together?), but I have no dupes in my collection.  Kelly and Mary said it was a taupe shade, but I don't see it.  This one looks warm in most lights, but as you can see in the lower picture, it can take on a cooler cast too.


BB Couture for Men Stud Finder with Essie Matte About You

Here I added a coat of Essie MAY and I think it looks great - I can't decide which way I like better.  Matte, it looks a bit darker, but the shimmer is more defined as well.


BB Couture for Men Wire Stripper

This one is gorgeous and again, unique.  The gold shimmer makes it look kind of like a blackened brown, but it really is a deep blackened plum jelly with tons of gold shimmer.  You can see the plum base around my cuticles where I did some (poor) cleanup.  This isn't a shimmer that hides in low light - it glows.  


BB Couture for Men Wire Stripper with Essie Matte About You

First let me say sorry for the white bit on my middle finger.  The Essie top coat dries where you brush the excess off at the lip and then when you re-dip your brush in, it can get stuck and apply on the nail.  I usually wipe off my bottle with remover before I use it after it's been stored for a bit to avoid this, but I forgot this time!  Wire Stripper is another one that looks good matte.  The shimmer definitely becomes more subtle, but it's still there.





BB Couture for Men Pipe Bender

As you can see, the dominance of the blue shimmer in Pipe Bender can vary.  I took a lot of pictures trying to show this and didn't put top coat on, so it got some bubbles.  I tend to get bubbling no matter what in my polish if I don't use Seche Vite, so I wouldn't blame the formula for this.  Pipe Bender is a forest green base with a ton of blue shimmer that brings it almost into the metallic realm of finishes.  At times the blue shimmer takes over the polish, but at other times it's more of a subtle flash.  It's different from all my other greens, but I must say I prefer its more subtle side...



BB Couture Pipe Bender with Essie Matte About You

...which is why I love it matte!  It's not totally obvious in this pictures, but the blue shimmer still comes through, it's just a ton more subtle.  It's like the green is glowing a halo of blue.  I have no idea why that weird splotch on my middle finger happened, nail polish is weird!


BB Couture for Men Impact Driver

This is another great one!  I was really happy with all four of these.  I love slate blue and I wish there were more of them, but I have only found a handful.  This is a nice deep slate blue creme with iridescent shimmer that flashes pink, purple, and blue.  The shimmer is more subtle on the nail than in the bottle, but it breaks up the creme.  It's the kind of shimmer that you wouldn't notice from a distance, but that you would miss if it weren't in the polish.


BB Couture for Men Impact Driver with Essie Matte About You

I wasn't a huge fan of this matte because the shimmer just gets lost and I like shimmers and glitters better matte than I do cremes.

Looking at the shimmer in Impact Driver, I thought it looked similar to a couple of the new CND Effects, so I thought I'd try them out to amplify the existing shimmer in the polish.


CND Effects Raspberry Sparkle over BB Couture for Men Impact Driver

This was the least successful of the three Effects I tried.  I think the pink was a bit too different from the polish.


CND Effects Sapphire Sparkle over BB Couture for Men Impact Driver (top),
CND Effects Sapphire Sparkle over BB Couture for Men Impact Driver with Essie Matte About You (bottom)

This was my favorite combo.  You can see that Sapphire Sparkle has a bit of a duochrome effect - it's a teal-ish blue but around the edges it goes more violet.  It looks pretty matte as well.


CND Effects Raspberry Sparkle (pinky, ring) and Sapphire Sparkle (middle, index) over BB Couture for Men Impact Driver with Essie Matte About You

Here's a shot from further away with Raspberry Sparkle on the left two fingers and Sapphire Sparkle on the right two fingers, both mattified, to give a better idea of how it looks from a distance.


CND Effects Sapphire Sparkle & Amethyst Sparkle over BB Couture for Men Impact Driver,
CND Effects Sapphire Sparkle & Amethyst Sparkle over BB Couture for Men Impact Driver with Essie Matte About You

For this last look, I layered Amethyst Sparkle over Sapphire Sparkle.  I think this one is pretty, but it just might be overkill.  Sapphire Sparkle kind of covered Amethyst's bases and kept it more subtle (as subtle as these Sparkles get).  Mattified looks nice too.

I'll have a separate post showing off my CND Effects (I got all of the Sparkles, plus Copper Shimmer), but overall I think they're great.  The concept works, since they're like a sheer topcoat with an effect in them, so you can play around with them and it doesn't really add to your dry time.

This was a great collection, not only were the polishes pretty, but they're unique - and not in that, well if you compare them right next to each other you can see the subtle differences way - the number one thing I love about BB Couture brand!  As I've mentioned before, you can buy these polishes from BB Couture's website or Overall Beauty.  I've used both sites and not had problems, but Kim at Overall Beauty has the absolute best customer service and fastest shipping, plus she offers BB Couture for about $1 cheaper as well.

Hope you enjoyed this collection and I'll see you later this week!

Posted on 1:50 AM by J.

5 comments

Customer's Beware Zoya

I'm sure most of you nail polish junkies know that Zoya is known recently for their abysmal customer service.  They seem to be thinking along the lines that since they so often allow people to abuse their coupon codes, they are thus allowed carte blanche to have inexcusable customer service.

I was sucked in again by the free Qtica lip balm that Scrangie said was really nice (I am in no way blaming Scrangie for Zoya/Qtica's customer service).  I got my order confirmation fine (ie, correct), a couple days go by  and I get my shipping confirmation (this is surprisingly fast for Zoya): they have billed the wrong address.  Not on the order confirmation, but on the shipping confirmation.  How does that even happen?  I went to my account to check that I wasn't the one in error, but no, my information is all up-to-date and correct.  Yet again, Zoya = FAIL.  Honestly, I am so exasperated with them that I don't think I will be purchasing from them anymore for the forseeable future - until I hear some actual positive customer service experiences on the Nail Board.  It's most disappointing because they actually have great polishes and I love Remove+, but they seem to think that their deals will bring in more customers than they will lose.  Not in my case.

UPDATE: Their customer service email address (cs@artofbeauty.com) bounced back to me.  Now I will have to call them tomorrow.  Ugh, so annoyed.

Posted on 4:52 PM by J.

1 comments

Orly Spring 2010 Bloom Collection, Plus My Apologies (and a List of Excuses)

Hello!  I don't know if anyone's still out there, but I'm gonna try this again.  For those of you who don't care, I'll get to the pics first and offer my apologies afterwards.

I wasn't too excited about Orly's Spring collection, but it was basically the first major spring collection to pop up on e-tailers.  A lot of the color's looked easily dupable, but not many of the nail blogger's were showing much interest in swatching them, so I decided I needed to get them to see for myself.  Since then, Polish or Perish, Scrangie, All Lacquered Up, Vampy Varnish, and Body and Soul have done partial (incomplete) posts of the collection - I don't think any of them were super amped up over this collection.  I too, do not have pictures of the complete collection; however, the only polish I'm missing is Ginger Lilly, which Mary from Body and Soul shows on a nail wheel in the post above (I'm not a big one for frosty polishes and the color didn't interest me).

Surprisingly, I actually liked this collection.  It's not a super exciting group of polishes, but I think the assortment is good, it has a spring feel to it, I love cremes and these applied very well, and none of the colors had dupes in my 500+ collection.  Here are the pics and I hope you enjoy!



Orly Wandering Vine, indoors in direct sunlight (top) and indirect light (bottom)

This is a great medium green creme.  Green is one of my favorite polish colors, so I have quite a few, but this green is unique.  I think it's a good workhorse for those who want to have a nice edited (ha!) collection, because it is bright but also darker than most brights and not too warm- or cool-toned.  This polish looks fairly bright and happy in the sunlight, but it's dark and somber enough not to be shout-y.  This is 2 coats and the application was great - lately Orly has had good cremes - this could have been 1 coat if I was more careful with my application.  You can see it dries a bit darker than the bottle color, which is true for all of this collection.



Michelle from All Lacquered Up suggested that Wandering Vine might be an alternative to RBL Recycle, but you can see that it's not.  Recycle is darker and more of a true green, whereas Wandering Vine is more blue-toned and a bit dusty.  Interestingly, Wandering Vine is not really noticeably dusty alone, but it makes itself and others that have a similar base color look dusty next to it (Blackboard and Enchanted Forest).  Enchanted Forest is actually the most dusty of these colors - Blackboard doesn't appear dusty alone.  OCC Blackboard (which is perfectly named) is deeper and a bit more blue - I would say Wandering Vine classifies as a medium-tone and Blackboard as a dark.  I know people were interested in the similarity between Wandering Vine and Enchanted Forest; obviously they are different, although if you took Wandering Vine, added some black, a bit more blue, and greyed it out a bit more, you might get Enchanted Forest.  Scrangie's link above includes a few that I didn't compare: BB Couture Poison Ivy, Nubar Forest, Illamasqua Rampage, and a Hot Topic green.


Orly Wild Wisteria, indoors in direct sunlight

I was expecting this color to be blah and a Zoya Pinta dupe, but I actually really like it.  I think it's flattering to my skin tone and it applied really nicely - again 2 coats, but could have been 1 with more care.  To me, it doesn't bring to mind wisteria, but it's a beautiful color.  This one can look almost-black in low light, but to me it's just light enough that it's not too bad (I love Chanel Vendetta, but you know what I'm talking about).



First, sorry I made the labels so big on this pic, it's a bit distracting!  SpaRitual Solitude is dustier, more red-leaning, and lighter (plus this is 4 coats to 2 for the rest!) - it looked closer when I swatched it on a nail wheel and it is in fact a bit darker than it appears in this picture, it just doesn't compare to the others.  Zoya Pinta is obviously the closest and I have a side-by-side alone below for a better comparison.  Diamond Cosmetics Plum Pie in the Sky is a darker greyed-out version with a bit more blue (again, I swear it looked more similar on the nail wheel!).



You can see that these two are not dupes, but they are close.  Pinta has more black and as such, looks a bit less blue.  Pinta also has a tendency to look black in indirect light.  If you want only one of these (I couldn't choose because I'm a polish whore!) I would go by which brand you like better: Orly has the nice rubberized caps and a standard brush while Zoya's brushes are a bit stumpy, which I don't mind.  Flinty of Polish or Perish did a comparison with OPI Sapphire in the Snow (link above), which is from the Holiday 2009 "Holiday Wishes" collection, and Wild Wisteria looks to be its dupe.



Orly Thorned Rose, indoors in direct sunlight (top) and indirect light (bottom)

I liked this one too!  These burgundy colors are very flattering to my skin tone.  As you can see from the mess I made, this one did not have application as nice as the previous two.  It was two coats, but it was a little more watery.



Comparison, indoors in direct sunlight (top) and indirect light (bottom)

Thorned Rose is a tad brighter than the other two.  I'd say it's lighter and has a bit more yellow than OPI Mrs. O'Leary's BBQ (which I love).  OPI Can You Tapas This? is the most different of the three, which is more apparent in the indirect light picture - it's darker and more brown.  I like all of them, don't make me choose!  You wouldn't, because you understand, don't you?


Orly Pure Petunia, indoors in direct sunlight

I would never have chosen to buy this polish, but I was planning to buy the whole collection (and then I couldn't make myself get Ginger Lilly); however, I like it!  It will never make my Top 20 list, but it's pretty and I think it looks good with my skin tone.  The sun makes it look a bit bright, but it's surprisingly deep.  I think you could probably get away with this as a work color (but I'm only 22 and have never worked in a strict dress-code environment, so what do I know?).  This one was like the first two polishes, with great application in 2 coats - could have been 1.



None of these are close.  The $OPI is a lighter, dustier, more blue-toned take.  Barry M is darker, brighter, and more magenta than mauve.



Orly Blushing Bud, indoors in direct sunlight (top) and indirect light (bottom)

Unfortunately I had to play around with this a little in PhotoStudio to get the polish to look right.  I actually do not have many bright pinks (the Barry M in my comparison below is the only other creme), so this was a nice addition to my collection.  There probably is a dupe somewhere, but I don't have it, so I'm happy!  The bottom picture makes it look crazy bright because it is not my actual skin tone, but the polish color is accurate.  This is a deep bright pink, which also had great 2 coat - 1 would have been good - application.  I really like this one, it was totally my pleasant surprise of the collection.  I think they should have given this a name with peony, because peonies are my favorite flower!



Comparison, indoors in direct sunlight (top) and indirect light (bottom)

The Orly is a tinge more blue-toned (I think) and obviously deeper.  The Barry M is lighter.  Application was better for Orly.

That's it for the collection, I hope it was helpful to y'all.  I am learning that I have a problem with short posts, mine always seem to become treatises, no matter how I try, but I do want to explain why I abandoned this blog for a bit.

  1. I had terrible withdrawal from Roxicet (liquid Percocet).  I mentioned in my last post that I was worried about this and I spent the days around New Year's Eve feeling worse in a totally different way than I did immediately post-tonsillectomy.  Nothing was emergency room-critical, but I was just miserable: hot and then cold sweats constantly, dizziness, nausea, headaches, back aches, etc.  No matter what I did I couldn't even be apathetically comfortable - chilling out on the couch, trying to focus and distract myself, sitting, laying down, walking - the one real refuge I had when my throat was hurting was sleep and now I couldn't get more than a couple of hours before waking up in either cold or hot sweats.  Of course, I timed my withdrawal over the holiday, so my ENT wasn't available.  I talked to the nurse the Monday after NYE and I learned that I shouldn't have gone cold turkey when my throat started feeling better (I did alternate my doses of Roxicet with Tylenol for one day, but I guess I should have done it for a few days).  It took me a couple more days to feel fairly normal and while I was recovering all I could kind of focus on was television (nail stuff hurt my back and reading hurt my head and I wasn't allowed to work out or even pick up my dog).  This television-watching leads me into...
  2. I got caught up on some shows I've missed out on.  I watched Lie to Me (I love Tim Roth and the actual science behind this is interesting, but: meh), Modern Family (love it and am so glad there's finally a good family sitcom on again - am also excited for Parenthood), caught up on Fringe (Pacey!), and now I'm on the second season of Lost (I gave it up mid-first season because it was moving too slow for me compared to Alias, which is why I gave it a chance; then, once it picked up I was too lost.  Now Netflix/Roku makes it awesomely easy to watch.)  Being in school and being a perfectionist means I don't have time to watch all the great shows.  I allow myself How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, Bones, and a Tivo-ed Project Runway, which is a tradition for my mom and I to watch together (and was a very disappointing tradition for us last season, so step it up tonight, you guys!), but otherwise I'm working two jobs and a full-time college student, so I don't have much time.
  3. This is time intensive.  I want this blog to be helpful for people, because you don't see too many minority nail blogs (I'm Asian).  I rely on the Nail Board and bloggers to figure out what polishes I'm going to buy and I'd like to help people in a similar way - but I also have a busy schedule.  Swatching in-and-of-itself doesn't take much time at all, but...
  4. I have a crappy camera.  And I live in Minnesota.  It's winter, so there is fairly tiny time slot to get pictures taken in.  While I was finishing up this collection the sun began to set and I was running all over the house trying to find the light.  This means it takes me forever to get good pictures.  For this set I had about 300 pictures and honestly only about 45 were acceptable.  I'm still a little embarrassed about these, but they're the best I'm going to get.
  5. Speaking of winter, my cuticles are crazy terrible and I have been sitting around with gloves on while I recovered because I cannot get over it.  My parents are doctors, so we know a lot of other doctors and in the winter about half of them get disgustingly cracked (like earthquake-split-on-a-fault-line bloody) fingers because our winters are so dry and they have to wash their hands so much.  I never noticed the state of my cuticles until I started taking nail pictures and then I made the mistake of buying cuticle nippers.  Do not buy them if you get compulsive like me, because you will not just use them for hangnails or crazy frazzle, you will use them on everything and then your cuticles will get thicker and more disgusting.  Now I am trying to re-train myself not to use them so my fingers can go back to the perfectly nice way they used to look.
  6. Editing this blog is a pain.  I think it might just be the simplistic format of Blogger and the fact that I'm not knowledgeable in HTML, but I have to edit my posts about 5 times after I first publish for formatting stuff.  Even now, I want the two light pics to fit side by side, which Blogger says will work fine when I'm in "Compose" mode, but doesn't work when I actually hit "Publish Post".  I don't want to make the pictures any smaller.  The Preview feature is also not at all accurate, which is très annoying.
  7. I'm lazy.  A month off from school felt like a glorious forever, but then I had to have this surprise surgery and recovery was obnoxiously long.  Now, I'm feeling the clock ticking and I have a lot of stuff I want to get in.  I've kind of been ignoring email, the NB, etc., just wanting to relax for a bit and shut everything else out.
I think some of these excuses have merit and some are just to be chalked up to my weak character, but I hope you'll stick around a bit longer to see how it goes.  If you have questions or comments please let me know, because I would love to hear from you guys!

Coming up, I have pictures already taken and just need to finish editing: BB Couture Men "Tools" collection, miscellaneous  BB Couture, BB Couture "Disco Ball" collection, BB Couture "Vampy Varnish" collection, miscellaneous Rescue Beauty Lounge (you saw bottle pictures earlier), mint green comparisons, grey creme comparisons, American Apparel polishes, and some new drugstore polishes.  I have a lot more collections I haven't yet taken pictures of, plus I have a giveaway I want to do, but my idea is to have it be a bit participatory, so I don't want to do it if nobody's reading, so I think I'll wait until I've stayed a bit more consistent in my posting.  Whew!  Let me know if there's anything you're looking to see!

Posted on 5:18 AM by J.

2 comments

China Glaze Medallion over Orly Solid Gold

China Glaze Medallion is one the gorgeous glitters that came out in the (creatively named) Fall 2009 "Glitter, Shimmers & Cremes" collection.  I know lextard has swatches of the collection in her China Glaze set on Flickr and Kris Primps has them all catalogued here.  There were 6 gold glitters in this collection - all of them visibly different and awesome!  I got Gold Digger, Goddess, and Medallion.  Here's a bottle picture comparison of them.



I'll just give you a brief description of each - eventually I'll swatch the other two, but you have to spread your blingy mani's out a little bit!  Gold Digger is a uniform, small true-gold glitter in a clear jelly base. It is slightly rosier/brassier than the other two.  Goddess is a uniform, small silver glitter in a clear jelly base that's packed with dense true-gold shimmer. The gold shimmer coats the silver glitter, making it appear to be a platinum gold.  Medallion is a multi-size glitter with small yellow-gold glitter and medium hexagonal holographic (prismatic) glitter in a clear jelly base.  All three of them have medium glitter density and require about 3 coats to be almost opaque, so they work well as layering polishes as well as on their own.

Now here's Medallion over Orly Solid Gold.  These were taken when the sun was setting, so I got some good images of the crazy amount of sparkle.  I just could not stop taking pictures of this manicure - I lurve it!









Isn't it just gorgeous?  I played around with different polishes underneath Medallion before I settled on Solid Gold, which is a brassier gold and has that multi-gold finish that I thought gave even more dimension to the glitter.  Medallion looks good over any color, I was just in the mood for a flat-out bling-tastic manicure!  You can wear this alone, but it would probably take 4 coats for full opacity, so I think it's just easier to have a layer underneath to cut down on dry time - using a matte made it extra quick!  This was two coats of Medallion over one coat of Orly Solid Gold, which is from the Winter 2009 "Metal Chic Metallic Matte" collection that also included Glam Rock (copper) and Iron Butterfly (black).  I added one coat of Seche Vite right away and one the next day and it was as smooth as glass - very nice for such a chunky glitter.  I think this would make for an awesome New Year's Eve mani - you want to say goodbye to 2009 with a bang!

Using the matte polish made this a super fast mani - glitter has the tendency to stay on the nail,  minimizing clean-up for me - but I will say that when I took this mani off I discovered the worst staining I have ever had. I usually use CND Stickey base coat with no problems; when I do a matte, I use NailTek Foundation II underneath Stickey to smooth out ridges, which are so apparent under mattes, but since I was putting glitter over it I didn't bother.  I asked on the NB and nobody else had staining with Solid Gold, so I'm just going to assume it was user error.  However, I would advise you to use a ridge-filling base coat, which prevents staining better than a rubberized base coat.

All of the China Glaze glitters, as well as the shimmers and cremes from fall collection are available online from the major e-tailers.  I shop at Victoria Nail Supply, 8ty8 Beauty, Head2Toe Beauty, and Trans Design and haven't had problems from any of them, though YMMV - shipping from all of them tends to be kind of slow.  The Orly "Metal Chic Metallic Matte" collection is available from VNS, H2T, and TD.  VNS also has an exclusive China Glaze glitter, Black Magic, which is a Halloween-themed polish with orange glitter in a black base - Mary at Body and Soul did a comparison with Fortune Teller here - and is offering a free gift (China Glaze Fast Forward top coat, Color Club 0-60 Topcoat, or holiday nail stickers) with the purchase of 10 glitters.  H2T is offering 5% savings (as much as you're likely ever to get from an e-tailer) through December with the code DEC05.

Yesterday, I experienced an act of hubris.  I had been feeling a bit better, so I decided not to wake up at 4 am to take my pain medication (I had been taking it every 4 hours and thought 8 hours in my sleep would be okay).  When I woke up at 8, I was frozen with pain.  I took some medicine right away, but it really knocked me for a loop and I went back and slept until about 5 tonight.  It sucks because now I'm scared to wean myself off it, but I'm also really scared of becoming addicted, since I'm taking Percocet.  My mom's a doctor, so I know she'll help me figure it out, but man it's now the tenth day post-surgery and I just want to have my pain down to where I can take some over-the-counter stuff for it!  I guess it's too much to ask of my body at this point, grrrrr.

Anyway, I plan to swatch my RBL's tomorrow.  I have a ton of new stuff to swatch, so if there's anything in specific you're looking to see, let me know and I'll try to get it done!  I hope those of you that are going back to work have an easy day to get back in the swing of things.  I'm still off work for another week to recover from my surgery.  As usual, I'd love to hear from you.  I'm thinking of posting my idea for a contest tomorrow, so I hope you'll tune in for that!

Posted on 3:06 AM by J.

1 comments

Ruby Red Polish Comparisons

Happy Post-Christmas!  I think until you're done eating Christmas food, it still counts as the holidays.  Thankfully, I started the pain turn-around yesterday afternoon after my tonsillectomy, so I was able to go out and celebrate with friends and family.  I hope all of you had a great holiday, whatever you celebrate!  I'm sorry I didn't get to my promised posts yesterday, but since Friday, Minnesota has been having major snow - it made for a lovely Christmas, but poor swatching conditions.  At least we have some celebrating left to do for New Year's Eve - the blingy manis are still in season!

Tonight, I have my comparison of the "ruby red" polishes in my collection.  It seems like any reasonably popular nail company these days must have one of these.  You know what I mean: those red jelly polishes packed with red glitter, almost invariably named after Dorothy's ruby red slippers.  I've always wondered that most of these polishes have such similar names, since we all know Ji Baek had to change the name on Rescue Beauty Lounge's Revamp to Black Russian after legal snafu's over that name, but I digress.  (Also, did you know that Dorothy's slippers weren't even originally red?  They were changed from silver for the movie, because Technicolor had just come out and they wanted to show off a more vibrant color!)  I have had Essie Ruby Slippers forever and as such, never saw the need for the most popular "ruby red", China Glaze Ruby Pumps.  Then last year, I caved and bought Orly Star Spangled because it was on super discount at Sally's Beauty Supply and I thought I might want a finer-grade glitter.  So by the time the re-vamped China Glaze Wizard of Ooh Ahz collection came out this winter, my resolve was already low; I decided I needed to have it to complete the collection.  At this point these are the three ruby red's I own, but here are some other's I know of: BB Couture Cherry Baby, Butter London Chancer, Color Club Ruby Slippers, Finger Paints Pretty Poinsettia, Finger Paints Red Marzipan, Maybelline Red Comet, OPI Crimson Carol, OPI Dear Santa, OPI Smitten with Mittens, Pop Beauty XMas, Precision Twinkle Toes, Savina Ruby, Savvy Ruby Slippers, Zoya Delilah, and Zoya Jade.  That's only polishes in a true red jelly base with red glitter - I allowed different sizes as well as those that include some gold glitter because Essie Ruby Slippers has a gold glitter look at times. Most of these polishes are still available.



Orly Star Spangled from Summer 2009 "Stars and Stripes" collection

Orly Star Spangled came out this summer, along with two repromotes (Star of Bombay and White Out), to celebrate Independence Day.  Now, I am all about a theme mani, plus my birthday is July 2, plus one can never have too many reds, plus GLITTER, plus it was on sale for an insanely cheap price.  Donc, I had to buy it - it's not a compulsive sickness, it was clearly necessary, all right?  This is three coats, indoors in indirect light (it's not often we're going to have sunny days while it's winter here in Minnesota)  - it only needs two coats for opacity, but three gives it more depth.  Application is typical of a jelly glitter, it's not hard to apply, but it does have a slight tendency to pool at the tips.  I was perfectly happy with this ruby red, but every season on the NB, Ruby Pumps continues to be ranked in the Top 20, so I figured there must be something special to it, right?


China Glaze Ruby Pumps, part of the core line; originally from Spring 2001 "Wizard of Ooh Ahz" collection

Hmm, maybe. Well, when Wizard of Ooh Ahz was re-released this winter, I had been built up to a lather due to the insane pre-buzz and pictures.  Sadly, the line has not lived up to the old formula in my eyes, but it induced me to buy the whole collection for posterity.  As you might be able to see, Star Spangled and Ruby Pumps are very similar.  These pictures were taken during the same session under the same conditions.  Both polishes required 2 coats, but attained more depth with three and had the same application.  They are a bit different, but unless it was brought to your attention, I doubt even the most discerning polish fiends would know which one they were looking at with certainty.  I took some comparison pictures for those who have to know (like me).


Orly Star Spangled (l) and China Glaze Ruby Pumps (r), indoors in indirect light


Orly Star Spangled (l) and China Glaze Ruby Pumps (r), indoors with modified flash

Here, you can see some differences. SS's glitter is a bit finer and seems to have a slightly warmer tint than RP's.  Yeah, that's about it.


Orly Star Spangled on index and ring fingers and China Glaze Ruby Pumps on middle and pinky fingers

Here, again, there are slight differences between the polishes.  The base color of these polishes are the same exact shade of rose-y red that deepens to a true red after two coats; it is the glitter that changes their appearance.  SS's glitter is slightly more yellow tinged than RP, which is a bit cooler.  The glitter for SS is ever so slightly finer than that of RP; more importantly, it is more uniform or homogenous, whereas RP's glitter has a bit of variation, that gives it a little more depth on the nail.  If you look at the pinky nail comparison of Ruby Pumps to Star Spangled, that is more accurate in showing how similar they are - my middle finger is double-jointed so I can't get it to lie in the exact same direction as my other fingers and it is inclined a little more, showing off a different reflection.  Honestly, I don't think you need both of these polishes, but if you do have them I suppose you can comfort yourself  with the fact that they are not identical twins, more fraternal.  Now on to the third, and my favorite, ruby red polish!



Essie in Ruby Slippers from ? 2003 collection (if you know, please tell me in the comments!)

I have never seen why Ruby Pumps gets all the love, when Ruby Slippers is it's blingier, more bangin' sister.  To me, Ruby Slippers is Nicky Hilton to Ruby Pumps' Paris - she is actually prettier and cooler, but Paris gets all the press!  I found this one first and it is my Holy Grail ruby red polish, so I never bothered looking for another.  Now I have two others and let's face it: they're nice, but they're really just extraneous compared to this gorgeous lady!  Okay, I might be biased because I am a huge glitter hound - wait until you see how crazy I went with the Fall 2009 China Glaze "Glitters, Shimmers & Cremes" collection - but it's so so so so pretty!  In the first picture it looks a little bumpy, but as you can see in the second picture, it's glass smooth (one coat of Seche Vite!), it's just the reflection of that insane amount of glitter.  Like the others, this baby only needs two coats, but three gives it more depth.  This one is obviously different from the other two; it has a deeper almost vampy red jelly base and the glitter is larger and less similar to the base color - a bright orange-y red that gives this polish a gold flash at times and for some reason, occasionally I get a blue-purple flash.  Love it!  (Sidebar: Why does Essie do these amazing colors and then discontinue them, while she produces yet another sheer pink and red creme each season?  I found it so bizarre when Scrangie did her interview with Essie, that she said she wears sheer combos on her hands year-round - Mademoiselle and Ballet Slippers are her favorite.  Why start your own polish line because salon color's were "limiting" and then confine yourself to such conservative colors?)  I also did Ruby Slippers matte, which brings the glitter to even more prominence:


Essie Ruby Slippers with Essie Matte About You

Just for the sake of being complete, I did comparisons of all three, but you don't really need them - they're just extra pretty.



Orly Star Spangled (l), China Glaze Ruby Pumps (c), and Essie Ruby Slippers (r)

I hope you guys enjoyed this!  I've got my BBC pictures all taken, I just need to edit them and write up my posts.  This afternoon I saw Nine, which was better than i thought it would be from the reviews; I really enjoyed it.  (Also, I have a girl crush on Marion Cotillard, who is just luminous and has a really nice voice - all the women in the movie are gorgeous!)  While I was at the mall, I picked up Claire's Dreamcatcher, which the NB has discovered is a pretty close match to Chanel Jade.  I'm going to do a mint green comparison soon, including those two polishes.  I also picked up an extra and I have a couple other polishes that are dupes (Finger Paints Icy Iris, for one), so I'm thinking of doing a fun contest soon - stay tuned for more on this!  I'd love to hear comments from you guys: let me know how I'm doing, if you're enjoying my posts, what you'd like to see in the future, or just say, "Hi!"  Tonight I'm going to watch Fellini's 8 1/2 (which inspired Nine and also the name for my old friend's dog) and finish off the bourbon pumpkin cheesecake my mom made for Christmas.  I suspect other's might be having a similar Post-Christmas night; if so, may it be as delicious as mine is sure to be!

P.S. I'm still getting the hang of this HTML code stuff, so if this post changed slightly from the last time you saw it, it's because I'm still fiddling around with the code when I edit.  Sorry about that, hopefully soon I'll be more proficient!

Posted on 11:22 PM by J.

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Top 20 Nail Polishes (Winter 2009)

  • 1. MAC Dry Martini
  • 2. Lippmann Collection Call Me Irresponsible
  • 3. Color Club Wild at Heart
  • 4. Sephora by OPI Metro Chic
  • 5. China Glaze Recycle
  • 6. OPI DS Extravagance
  • 7. Illamasqua Muse
  • 8. Zoya Envy
  • 9. Zoya Astra
  • 10. Chanel Jade
  • 11. OPI Can You Tapas This?
  • 12. Chanel Barcelona Red
  • 13. Chanel Kaleidoscope
  • 14. Zoya Posh
  • 15. Chanel Noir Ceramic
  • 16. Zoya Casey
  • 17. OPI Parlez-Vous OPI?
  • 18. OPI You Don't Know Jacques!
  • 19. Zoya Bailey
  • 20. China Glaze Stroll