Polishes that Photograph Poorly: A Study on Nicole by OPI Shaved Nice and Covergirl Scalding Emerald

     I'm not sure if the shortening of daylight is to blame for the deterioration of my blog photos, or I'm just getting progressively worse. Could be both, but I will blame the polishes as well.

    The first culprit is Nicole by OPI's Shaved Nice. OPI always seems to have grandpa jokes as their polish names, this one is just dumb. I've worn Shaved Nice three times since I bought it and while I usually don't layer my glitters, this is one I think should be layered. By itself Shaved Nice looks an awful lot like an overgrown petri dish. I don't mind the look but once I made the petri dish realization I couldn't stop thinking of my 5th grade science fair project, which was a cool project but those petri dishes after 2 weeks were stinky and a little sickening to look at. Most recently I layered Shaved Nice over L'Oreal's Whimsical, which was an exclusive for the Color of Hope collection in 2011 (their Ovarian Cancer awareness collection). Whimsical is basically just a foil that is a shade or two pinker than Orly's Rage. I found this polish to be much prettier over Rage as Whimsical blended in too much with the pink glitter.

Slightly blurry to show overall effect

This is how it basically looks from afar.

         As you can see, this polish is essentially OPIs Muppet's World Tour, but instead of blue and magenta hex glitters, this one has lavender, green, pale pink and coppery/peachy glitter. The pink glitter seemed to be a close match for the L'Oreal polish. I'm aware my swatches would look a lot better if I had nicer nails but I have genetically bad nails (my parents, my grandmas everyone has bad nails...same with handwriting good thing you don't have to see that, it is like I was selectively bred to have the worst handwriting possible). I'm going to work on the lighting situation as well, and perhaps the camera situation it definitely wasn't made for too much macro shooting, not to mention my lack of macro skills.

      Bottle shot time!

         I've seen and heard some people call Shaved Nice a "dupe for OPI Muppet's World Tour" but that is patently untrue. In the bottle it is very unique but on the nails it looks mostly like I'm wearing a nude texture polish. I might experiment with this over black.

       The next polish I worse this week was CoverGirl's Scalding Emerald. I found it in a clearance bin recently and it reminded me a lot of Estee Lauder's Explosif, which came out 2 or 3 years ago. I couldn't bring myself to actually buy it back then, and I'm kind of glad I waited. The problem is while it is quite complex, it photographs terribly! It comes off mostly reddish brown and all the micro shimmer and iridescence is lost. From what I can tell it isn't exactly like Explosif which appears to be more khaki green and less red. 

This shot gives you a good idea of the duochromeness

      As you can see this polish has a multitude of different colored flecks in it which makes it very interesting to look at, definitely a nice twist on a sort of boring neutral. In standard daylight and the lighting in my bedroom it looks rather red-brown, but in the fluorescent tundra that is my work environment it really comes out green-blue.

   I actually much prefer this color when I am at work, since it does show more blue-green. I would have videoed it in this lighting but last time I took a video with my phone the quality was crap. I mean it looked nice on my phone, but the transfer to computer then blog must have compressed it (or it was just poor quality to begin with, I didn't buy my phone for the camera, rather the rest of it).

Anyway, if you actually made it through all that babble, hooray for you and I hope you have a nice weekend!

~♫ Drastic actions

ps, If I seem especially odd in this post you can blame my pseudo migraine and too much Manic Street Preachers. Or you could just blame me :-)

Sheer Blues: Butter London Scouse, Butter London Knackered, and Cover Girl MIdnight Magic

      This past week was apparently the week of sheer blue polishes. I bought both the Butter London polishes last weekend during the Ulta sale, so I had to wear those, and the cover girl one just seemed appropriate for the weather.

Knackered was a polish that I had been debating about getting since it came out two and a half years ago. I kind of have a love hate with polishes that have glitter in them, but aren't exclusively glitter. Some of them look amazing and some the base color just hide the glitter too much, and I don't like my glitter to be hidden! Anyway I ended up with this one, because the other colors I wanted either ended up being too similar to other ones I had (Champers looked a lot like Jessica Champagne Bubbles to my eye...but more flat) or like in the case of Airy Fairy, they just didn't have it! That was sad but I'm not really upset because Knackered ended up being beautiful. It does show up much more purple on the nails, but I'm calling it blue for the sake of this blog post. As you can see I took a video of it since it was rather sheer and at two coats it looked nice from far away but up close would have been not good. And the glitter shows up better this way...

The color is a touch off on this, it looks darker and more blue in person

Like the other photo, this comes out more Lake Placid Blue than it really is.

    Butter London Scouse was my other purchase from the Ulta sale. I'd been wanting this since about January. The only downside is that even after three coats there are still patches, it also chips like mad. But in my experience that's most Butter London polishes. That's why I tend to only buy BL on sale or with gift cards. While the names are great, especially for an Anglophile like me, and the colors are pretty, most of them just aren't unique enough to justify the price tag. The fact that most of them require 3+ coats for good opacity and they chip really quickly on me makes it not one of my favorite brands. Sorry for the kind of crappy phone photos, the color was more accurate there than on my camera.

Lastly we have Cover Girl Midnight Magic. I am pretty sure this one is now discontinued. I mean I got it for two bucks at Discount Drug Mart earlier this summer so I'm assuming it is no longer made. From photos it looks nearly exactly the same as Zoya Fei Fei. I never bought Fei Fei because while I really wanted it, I just wasn't sure I'd love it. Zoya Crystal seemed so perfect for me, but it just didn't look good on my nails and I was afraid the same thing would happened for Fei Fei. Why I do not know. Anyway, after three coats Midnight Magic was mostly good, but a bit patchy, I think a fourth coat would have made it much prettier but I was too lazy for that. I think it would look quite beautiful over a black. I might have to try that another day

Blurry sparkle shot

Overall effect

In the shadows this color becomes much deeper and in the sunlight it almost has a silvery effect. I love the depth and the variety of flake colors. If you can still find this it is definitely a must have (or just wait until Zoya has another sale and buy Fei Fei).

~♫♪ DA

Icing Sand Castle

I've been on a bit of a glitter kick. I"m currently wearing Milani Pink Flare (my favorite polish to wear when I have no idea what I want to wear), and yesterday I was wearing Essie Hors D' Oeuvres (which looks much better in the bottle than on the nails, the gold particles are just too small for the hex glitter). Earlier this week I wore Icing's Sand Castle, which is one of their "quicksand" finish polishes. I'm not sure if Icing is just discontinuing all of their polishes or if they are getting another bottle change, but I bought this one on sale for two dollars in early August. I hadn't been in an Icing store in about two years as it was, so I had no idea that they changed their bottles to be very similar to the Butter London polishes. This color does appear to be pretty similar to Butter London's Dubs. The lighting at Ulta made Dubs look a bit pinker, but I compared it to a bottle of Orly's Rage in the store, and they matched pretty well and here in my lighting at home, Orly Rage matches Icing's Sand Castle pretty well. But my bottle of Rage is nearly four years old so maybe they've made the color a bit pinker/ mine has faded?

Since my fingers are a bit pink, the polish comes off a bit cooler on me

   Anyway, on to the actually polish I'm supposed to be discussing. Sand Castles is a very nice textured polish that has a pinky nude tone to it. It dries super fast and has a mixture of a fine glitter and some small to medium sized glitter. I quite like the mix of glitters and I find the texture to not be too bothersome. I typically do not like the feel of very bumpy glitter but this one is smooth enough that it doesn't snag or upset my fingers (I have this weird thing where I can't stand the feel of some textures). This polish is definitely a nice change up from a flat or foil nude color and it sparkles rather well in the sun. If you can still find it (especially if these are still on sale for two bucks) I'd suggest you pick it up! I'm still convinced it is slightly less pink than Butter London Dubs, but I really couldn't justify having both so I can't actually compare that for you. Anyway, Happy Saturday!

~♫ Drastic

China Glaze Deviantly Daring

I actually had zero interest in this polish for a very long time. It was until maybe a week or two ago that I had any desire to even consider buying this polish. I happened to be reading something (I can't remember what) about Chanel's Bel-Argus. And I was a bit mesmerized by it when I found a video of it. The color isn't anything special but I found the particle size to create a very interesting effect. After searching around for dupes (since it is no longer available)  I realized I already had a blue that I really like (OPI Swimsuit Nailed It) so I gave up on looking for a dupe. I then decided to look at another polish from that same 2013 release (which I also dismissed at the time. To be honest I don't find most of the chanel nail polish colors to be appealing) which was Chanel Azure. That one also didn't interest me too much when it came out last year, but seeing it again, something about it I just felt I need to have. Probably due to a similar particle size and visual "texture" that Bel-Argus had. So I went searching for a dupe, figuring it was also no longer in stores and it honestly didn't seem worth it. Azure also seems to be a fairly typical color. So I found that the closest thing was probably China Glaze Deviantly Daring.

         From photos it sometimes looks spot on, and sometimes it looks a bit dark. But honestly I like it when it looks the darkest. I tried to take photos in not too bright of light (which washes it out a bit), in hopes of catching the darkness and hopes of catching the very slight duo-chrome ness of the polish.

apologies for the tip wear, this was at two days

       While this polish is pretty in the sunlight (it looks the most metallic/nearly foil like in the sun) It is just merely okay in indoor light. I actually found the color to look the best in the shadows. It is more frosty than other duo chromes I've tired. It definitely looks metallic but it doesn't have the same appealing visual texture that Missha HGR01 has, and that is sometimes visible in the Chanel Peridot dupes. I don't think I will actually wear this polish again, and I probably will give it to a friend. Definitely not horrible, but not so much to my taste.

~♥ Drastic

Jessica Champagne Bubbles and bottle comparisons

    This is also a recent purchase of mine, 2014 has been the year of finally buying polishes I've been waffling about for a while. (example: I finally caved and bought Chanel Graphite after the dupes I tried didn't cut it, at least now Taboo has a friend) Anyway the reason I was on the fence about this polish was that the impression I got from other people on the internet was a bit mixed. People talked about this polish having a bit of a weird chunkyness. It was also described as being similar to OPI Designer de Better. I have bit of a problem where I need lots of foil polishes that are similarish to my skintone. I don't know why, I just have a foil problem. It took a lot of restraint last year for me not to buy OPI Haven't the Foggiest (to me it looked a lot like OPI Your Royal Shineness which I already had). The fact I held out so long is either a sign of my will power or my need to beat myself up over buying similar polishes.

Anyway, on the nails it reminds me a lot of OPI Up Front & Personal just a touch less yellow and more foily (UF&P is more of a glass fleck heavy polish). But I don't think this truly is a foil even though a lot of people claimed it was. To me it just looks like a super heavy glass fleck, just because the particles do have some of that iridescence. I can also see why it was described as similar to OPI Designer de Better because there are two (at least) different colors of particles in the bottle. But while it is more silver than UF&P it isn't anywhere as silver as DdB

Anyway, on to the photos!

OPI Up Front & Personal, Jessica Champagne Bubbles, OPI Designer de Better

Orly Rage, Jessica Champagne Bubbles, China Glaze Swing Baby

As you can see from the photos above at first glance the Jessica and DdB look very similar, but the effect on the nail is different. It is also less pink than Rage and is a shade or two lighter than Swing Baby. So if you liked Up Front & Personal but found it too yellow for you or found Swing Baby to be too dark I think Jessica Champagne Bubbles would be an option to try. If you are like me and need all the pale sparkly colors (which I think are fun and work appropriate) it definitely would be worth picking up as it is not a dupe to any of these others. A thing to note is that this polish has a bit of that fuzzy effect, maybe hazy would be a better term. It isn't strictly a foil so don't expect it to be super reflective like Zoya Trixie but it is quite shiny and sparkly. So if you aren't into sparkly polishes that are not true foils you could probably skip this one.

~♫ Drastic

Butter London Wallis and Wet n Wild Contact High

I've skipped posting a lot of polishes I've worn lately. I apologize for that. Many of the polishes I've worn in the last two weeks have either been swatched to death (china glaze ray-diant, china glaze rare and radiant) Or were ruined by my painting of the upstairs hallway (oops).

   Apologies for only getting one good photo, if you can even call it that. I didn't notice the poor clean up again. Once I remembered to take another set of photos I had scuffed everything up with latex paint. This one isn't that great, and I forgot my camera when I went home to see my family this weekend. I'm starting to thing I might just want to post photos of polishes I don't see too many swatches of as opposed to getting kind of crummy photos of polishes everyone and their cat have seen.Or maybe I should just start shooting video of all my polishes since that seems to come out better than photos in my case. 

EDIT! I found some bottle shots I took a few days ago for comparison's sake.

Butter London Wallis, China Glaze Cast a Spell, Zoya Edyta

Zoya Edyta, China Glaze Cast a Spell, Butter London Wallis

I think my nail photos definitely don't do the polish justice, the bottle shots do show a more accurate view of what the polish looks like on the nails. I'm wearing three coats of Wallis. As you can see (ignoring the red reflecting from my shirt in the bottles) Edyta and Cast a Spell are very similar except Cast a Spell has glitter in it as opposed to a shimmer throughout. Wallis is definitely in a different category with a very different visual texture and a more vibrant olive green to it. All are must haves in my book!

Contact High by Wet n Wild is a unique one in my collection. Mostly because I shy away from cream polishes. Perhaps the fact that it is part jelly and part neon helps? I typically cannot stand cream polishes( except for Essie After School Boy Blazer that is my favorite toe nail color at the moment), not sure if it is the longer dry time, the thicker consistency, or the fact that is shows off my ridges really well. I also think part of it has to do with the fact that I love sparkles, I can't stand to look at non sparkly nails. And half the time, I can't stand specific kinds of sparkles. I'm just hopelessly picky. How I ever get anything done I do not know. 

Our family friends have a lot of neat stuff in their house. Not only do they have a rotary phone that looks like a world war one plane but they have one of these "candlestick" phones. I of course had to make calls on both of them :-). The candlestick one shown above didn't broad cast the best, but I could hear just fine on it. The top photo is with flash and the bottom without. It shifts from being just very green to a bit neon depending on the lighting. I'm wearing three coats and it probably could have benefited from a white base underneath/a fourth coat for vibrancy. But it looked good in person this way.

~♥ Drastic Actions