Barielle Holiday Hustle Collection for Winter/Holiday 2010

I was at Costco this week and noticed that they had already taken down the Halloween decoration aisle and put up the Christmas decoration aisle! It's September! I've never seen them do that before. I feel like I'm being rushed! Luckily that is not the case with Holiday polish collections... I'm the opposite with those- I want them in June! Ha!

Here's Barielle's Holiday offering:


Coaldest Day Of The Year. Yes, Coal-dest. I know. *groan* I think it wants to be OPI's Baby It's "Coal" Outside, from the looks of things. This is a black/charcoal with blue-toned silver large particle shimmer. It's not round shimmer, it's more like broken pieces of shimmer. Icy.



Elle's Spell. My favorite of the collection. This is a dark candy apple or light wine red sheer base with red/orange toned opal flakes, a la Nfu Oh. This is rather sheer and not quite as jelly like as I had thought from looking at it in the bottle so it may look better layered if you want a stronger flaky effect.


Get Me To The Party. A deep bronzy gold. Looks sort of duochrome, doesn't it? Has the lighter gold area in the center and the deeper more bronze color on the edges. A little frosty but more metallic than pure frost, but definitely not chrome.



Jess' Champagne Toast. This one is painful. Look how AMAZING it looks in the bottle! It's spectacular! I could barely believe what I was seeing when I held the bottle up in the sunlight. It's a periwinkle leaning toward light lilac frosty metallic base with lots of pink microglitter. Sadly, it doesn't translate on the nail. It looks lumpy and bubbly because the frost base is too, well, frosty? And the glitter is too delicate to be seen through the thick frost. It always makes me wonder when I see a polish like this.... Did they actually wear the color on the nail before they decided to release it? This totally could have been saved with a thinner, more sheer metallic base!


Snow Day. This one is more like a chrome. It's a super reflective metallic blue-toned silver. Very blue toned... Maybe it's actually a silvery blue! Ha! But yes, you will need to be careful with brushstrokes. Frosty.


Wrap Me In Ribbon. This does remind me of ribbon. Pretty. It's a mauve metallic frost, again not a plain frost but more of the China Glaze Romantique Chrome reflective type of frost. You can see how reflective it is in the picture but you can also see some brush strokes.

The formula on these was odd. Elle's Spell and Coaldest Day Of The Year were really thick and a little goopy but the rest of the colors were oddly... soft feeling? I can't even describe it. It's like they're oily or too soft or maybe airy? Know what I'm talking about? They feel strange going on. Maybe it's the too-soft brush. I'm really not digging Barielle's brush lately, it doesn't conform to my nail and I can never get a nice application with it. Drying time is long.


I don't know what to say about this collection. I like some of the colors like Elle's Spell and Get Me To The Party. It just seems like Barielle is making so many frosts lately. I miss the Barielle I fell in love with in 2008.

(These were sent to me for review.)

Barielle Style in Argyle Collection Fall 2010

I've been wavering on posting these for a couple weeks... Interesting collection....



Aura Angora. My absolute favorite of the collection. I am a fan of mustard shades and this is a mustard shade if I ever saw one. It's a gold color- yellow and brown- creme finish.



Cashmere or Loose Me. I don't even know what to say about the color because I can't get past the name. I don't get it... The only thing I can get out of it is "Catch Me Or Lose Me"? And in that case, if it is actually 'catch me or lose me', did they really spell it wrong on the label? I sure hope that's not the case... Maybe it's just an even more elaborate and horrible pun- because cashmere sweaters are often loose? This is one of those rare cases where a really awful name will actually make me dislike the polish (which is not actually a bad color, it's warm milk chocolate brown with red pearl).


Cowl Of The Wild. A dusty milky brown. Bordering on that grey-taupe-brown-beige thing, but this is definitely more in the straight brown category than grey/beige/taupe/current-trendy-color. This one is rather nice, very calming shade.


Tight Knight. A warm plummy milk chocolate brown.



Unraveled Rust. This doesn't really strike me as a rust color- it's more of a deep dark chocolate with slight wine tone.


Wool You Marry Me? This is a brown with plum-burgundy tones. Seems to be on the cooler side of brown.


The formula on these was decent. Thick, as Barielles tend to be, but opaque. Good coverage, two coats are pictured here. Some of the brushes had stray hairs that I needed to be mindful of while applying. Drying time is long.

Um... I'm really not sure about this collection. All browns? If you want to do an all brown collection the right way and make it really good, you should take notes from Nubar's Chocolate Truffles Collection. That was a great set of browns- nice variety of shades and finishes, something for every skintone. This Style in Argyle collection, though... I can't say it excites me. None of them really look very good on my skintone and the names are pretty cheesy (and possibly even misspelled!). I do really like Aura Angora, Unraveled Rust and Cowl of the Wild. I would actually wear them.

I don't want to be harsh, but I do want to give my honest opinion... I am disappointed. Do I need to whip out the 'Son, I am disappoint' man again? I look forward to every brand's fall collection as the fall collections are usually the best ones, and for the past two years, Barielle's fall collection has been amazing. 2008 was that epic set with Date Night, remember it? And 2009 was the All Lacquered Up collection with twelve whole shades (designed by a blogger, to boot!). Now in 2010 we have... six browns. Though, this year's collections this year haven't quite rocked my world, either, but this is just the icing on the brown, frosty cake. I'm just having a hard time imagining someone at Barielle saying, "Hey, let's do an all brown collection." "Yeah, everyone's going to love that, it'll be a huge seller!"

But, whatever, that's just this girl's opinion. I am a person who does actually like brown polish. I do, I wear it often, my first true brown polish love was OPI Espresso Your Style and I've loved it ever since. Yet, as much as I do enjoy brown polish, having the entire fall collection consist of nothing but brown is a disappointment for me. Based on their past fall collections (I've only known about them since the 2008 fall) I had intensely high hopes for this year's collection. And, that's what I have to say on the topic.

These should be available now on the website, and they are in a perpetual state of buy two get one free.

(These were sent to me for review.)