China Glaze 'Tis The Season To Be Naughty And Nice Collection Winter/Holiday 2010 Swatches and Review

Sorry it's taken me so long to get this posted... I've been having some difficulties. Hopefully I'll be back in the swing of things soon!

What a pretty holiday collection. Makes me feel all cozy and happy.



Cheers To You. Standard silver foil. Very pretty but nothing unique.




Frosty. Such a gorgeous white. It's a semi-sheer white similar to something like Zoya Ginessa- made of shiny white particles in a somewhat milky base. It's just so sparkly and pretty and soft and delicate, even slightly iridescent- see how some of the shimmer pearls change color on the nail? Love this one, it's fantastic.




Jingle Bells. Halfway between a chrome and a foil, more on the foil side. Shiny and reflective. A neutral light gold bordering on champagne.



Jolly Holly. Incredibly gorgeous rich forest green shimmer. The pigmentation is amazing on this one, it's a one-coater even though I did two for the picture. I adore this. It looks really good topped with a layer of Party Hearty, too.




Little Drummer Boy. Soft dark navy shimmer. It's less saturated than a lot of other navy shimmers and it gives it a really soft and sort of faded look- like denim. Great pigmentation on this, too.



Midnight Kiss. Light blonde gold foil. Very festive. A little bit patchy but evens out nicely with two thick coats or three thin coats.



Mistletoe Kisses. This seems pretty unique, I can't think of many other colors like this. It's a silvery green glitter, or perhaps both green and silver glitter together. It looks much lighter than I expected, but that's not a bad thing. It reminds me of those Christmas wreaths with the plastic holly leaves that are coated in this sugar-looking crystalline substance- it's supposed to look like snow on the leaves? Light and sparkly.





Mommy Kissing Santa. Rich red shimmer. Velvety looking. Another one that's not terribly original but still pretty.



Mrs. Claus. A light red tinted base with light silvery red glitter. Different from the usual Ruby Pumps-esqe red glitter. This one looks softer and lighter than most red glitters. It reminds me of the one Color Club did in the mini set for Christmas last year.



Naughty And Nice. Very very dark plum purple. Blackened plum. At one coat it's obviously purple, at two it becomes more black. Similar to OPI William Tell Me About OPI and Essie Velvet Voyeur and all the other blackened-plum shades that were released this fall.



Party Hearty. My favorite. I've worn this four times since I got it and I still love it. It's silver small glitter with larger red and green glitter in a clear base. Fantastic for layering. Good on its own, too, as you can see here. This is two coats, three would have been more opaque but this actually looks good with a little nail showing through.




Peace On Earth. AWESOME! An olive green shimmer! Golden threads running through soft olive green. I'm absolutely ecstatic about this one. It reminds me of the long-gone Cat's Eye shade! Darker and less frosty, though, so definitely improved.



Phat Santa. A maraschino cherry red creme. Very glamorous. This is the darker of the two reds.




Ruby Deer. The lighter of the two reds. This one is more of a tomato-red, closer to something like Zoya America to give you an idea.


Snow. Plain white creme. Dries very glossy and isn't the least bit chalky. Very soft. A little streaky, I needed three coats and that's what's pictured here.


Sugar Plums. A cousin to the discontinued yet beloved Crystal Ball shade. This is a red-plum or burgundy shimmer with teeny tiny itty bitty holo glitter particles. Click the pictures to see them better. You can see them pretty well in the bottle especially.



Here's how Party Hearty looks layered over a foil and a creme:

Party Hearty (one coat) over Midnight Kiss.

Party Hearty (one coat) over Phat Santa.

Lovely, right? Super Christmassy! I'm totally into this color! Anything that reminds me of a holiday. Love. Though, I have noticed that it's gotten thicker each time I've used it. You may need to thin it every now and then to keep it smooth.


The formula on these was varied but good. The plain shimmers were extremely pigmented, a little thick, but nice and smooth. The glitters were a little thick, but that's normal for glitters. The whites and the foils were slightly sheer, I did three coats and that was fine for them. The cremes were smooth and nicely pigmented. Drying time on all is excellent, very quick. China Glaze used to dry very slowly for me but their formula has improved a lot over the years.

Are all the colors unique? No, not really. Red cremes, red shimmer, gold and silver foil, blackened purple creme... all quite common shades. However, all the colors are nice, all the colors are pretty to look at and they all seem to go well together in the collection. None of them are ugly! Yay! I think it's a very appropriate Holiday-themed collection with a few unexpected surprises thrown in. I approve. The greens are especially gorgeous.

These are available online already and they should be in stores sometime in November- individially and also packaged as really cute gift sets.

(These were sent to me for review.)

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.)

Nicole by OPI Gossip Girl Collection 2010

First, let's set things straight. I don't do Gossip Girl. I've never seen an episode, don't know the name of a single character or actor in the show, nor do I care to. That said, if there's some sort of inside joke in one of the names of these polishes or it somehow relates to something in the show, I'm oblivious to it! So I can't comment on that aspect. But, I can comment on the gorgeous colors...

Party in the Penthouse. Gorgeous medium blue foil. It doesn't have the typical foil polish texture, but it does have a glimmering metallic foil finish. The texture actually reminds me more of something like Zoya Kotori- bright metallic particles in a sheer blackened base. Same with Too Rich For You. This was pretty sheer for me so I used three coats. Looks great at three coats, very sparkly.

Too Rich For You. A dark smoky blue shimmer with green tones. Looks like it has a lot of duochrome in the bottle but isn't really duochrome once it's on the nail. Again, similar to Zoya Kotori with the sheer smoky black base and the bright shimmery particles. This one was also sheer and I did use three coats to get rid of the visible nail line. The end result is quite beautiful, don't you think?

And now on to the best part... the glitter shades!


Scandal, Secrets and Sparkle. I think that's in the right order... all I remember is it was three S words! This is a medium-sized silver glitter in a sheer silver shimmer base. Very much like Zoya Luna or China Glaze The Ten Man. The base of this isn't so much colored as it is filled with little shimmer particles, so it gives a milky look that shimmers when sunlight hits it. Very sheer, probably best for layering. If you want a less-sheer version of this color to wear alone, Zoya Luna is your best bet. However, Luna is too opaque for layering, so if you're looking for a layering glitter, Scandal, Secrets and Sparkle is the better option.


Nicole...Spotted! I saved the best for last. Man, do I ever love this polish. It's a sheer aqua gel-like base with super tiny golden-green iridescent sparkles (micro-micro glitter?) and small sized pastel iridescent/opal glitter- mainly colors of pale yellow, green, blue and orange. This is just so much prettier than other polishes of this type.... I know I have a few, the first one that comes to mind is Sinful Nail Junkie. Nicole...Spotted! is so much more sparkly and lively, it never falls flat. I layered it over tons of things and it looks good over pretty much everything. Here's a couple layering combinations:


Nicole...Spotted! over OPI Unripened. Here's what it looks like over a black based shade. Smooth, sparkly, mesmerizing, adds a slight blue tint, too!

Nicole....Spotted! over Party in the Penthouse. Looks good over a foil, too. Looks... oceanic? Looks like blue ocean water with colorful rocks below the surface.


And my favorite combination so far... Nicole...Spotted! over Too Rich For You. You might want to enlarge these pictures to really enjoy the delicate golden sparkle in this. It's so bright and awesome. I'm obsessed with it now.

For thoroughness sake, here's Scandal, Secrets and Sparkle layered:

Scandal, Secrets and Sparkle over Too Rich For You. See how indoors it looks cloudy and in sunlight it looks sparkly? That's the little particles of white-silver shimmer in the base. Very odd look, it changes so much from indoors to outdoors.


The formula on these wasn't the best. The two dark shades, Too Rich For You and Party in the Penthouse, were rather sheer and a little watery and needed three coats to be totally opaque. I'm used to a thicker, more opaque polish formula now and these were a little bit of a surprise! The glitter shades were perfectly normal, though. Not thin, not too thick or glue-like either, nice and smooth. They are also sheer, I did three coats in these pictures and one coat for layering. Drying time is great. The glitters aren't super lumpy but they do benefit from thick topcoat as most glitters do... they look amazing under that shiny glassy layer of Seche Vite....

Overall, not a bad set... But I'm most enthusiastic about Nicole...Spotted! I can't even see the other colors... I only have eyes for Spotted. It's fantastic. Looks good alone, over black, over blue, over creme, over shimmer... It just looks good, period! (And then exclamation point?)

If you're looking for these, I saw them on clearance at Target just this week! They also have huge cardboard displays of them at Meijer, but they're full price there.

(These were sent to me for review.)

Closer look at the Illamasqua Contest Winners

So, I've now seen them in sunlight and worn them each for a little while and here's what I think.

Eclipse. Let's just get the one out of the way first. This color is nothing like I expected it to be based on the early images. In reality, Eclipse is a dark blue with silver frost. It is slightly purple- it is more obvious in real life, but there are definite purple tones in this. The color is nice but I'm just not really on board with this new Frost Revival thing going on. It's really not a bad polish at all, but my expectations were just super high for this... This was what I hoped it would look like:

Dark purple, blue, green- duochrome looking with glitter or even flakes. Isn't that what it looks like there? It looks incredible. I was so excited about this shade. But now all I can say is this:



Raindrops. Actually... my blurry low-light picture of this was better at showing the cool qualities of this shade. It's a blue-toned light grey jelly-creme (very sheer- this is three thick coats) with lots of random and irregular shaped silver flakes. This one turned out really well, pretty much exactly like the promo shot:



Shrapnel. This isn't as bad as everyone's making it out to be. I rather like it. It's a coppery rose gold metallic- or is it chrome? Yes, it's frosty but it is super shiny and reflective, so it has more of a chrome finish than a true frost. Reminds me of the China Glaze Romantique collection chromes. Very, very shiny. I had expected this to be more of an orangey copper flame type shade with glitter, but it's really quite different! This has a definite 80's dance party look to it. Retro-futuristic. And yes, brushstrokes :( But, I think this might be great for Konad- it is VERY dense and pigmented- this is one coat. But really, nothing like I expected based on this:

Yeah... that's really not the same polish, is it?

But, the formula was great as usual. It's Illamasqua. Their formula is one of the best I've ever used. Thick, opaque, smooth- with the exception of Raindrops which is sheer. Drying time was good. Brushes were nice and even and thick. No problems with the formula or brushes.

You know, this is really sticky territory for me. On one hand, these polishes definitely weren't what I was expecting, but on the other hand I don't want to insult or upset the winners of the contest because I was disappointed. Also, I am a giant Illamasqua fan and this is the first time I have been let down by the colors, that kinda stings... I think Raindrops turned out the best and truest to the original pictures, but I really loved the inspiration behind Eclipse and Shrapnel too. If any of the winners are reading this- how do you feel about the end result? Is it what you imagined it would look like?

And also because I'm really super curious about what the other entries were like- how many of you entered? What was your color going to be like? I'm positively dying to know this. Please comment and tell me all about it if you entered.

I have seen a disturbing amount of frosts this year... I hope this is just a phase.

(These were sent to me for review.)