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 recent Spring 2010 "Bloom" 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, 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 in Wandering Vine, indoors in direct sunlight (top) and indirect light (bottom)

Wandering Vine 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 in 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 in 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 Wild Wisteria to be blah and a Zoya in 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 in 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 in 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 in Pinta is obviously the closest and I have a side-by-side alone below for a better comparison.  Diamond Cosmetics in 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 in 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 Thorned Rose 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 in Mrs. O'Leary's BBQ (which I love).  OPI in 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 normally never have chosen to buy Pure Petunia 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 Blushing Bud 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!

Pic from http://www.mooseyscountrygarden.com/frisbee-lawn-garden/pink-peony.html

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!