Rescue Beauty Lounge Purple Haze

Purple Haze all in my brain
lately things don't seem the same.
Acting funny and I don't know why
Excuse me while I kiss this guy.

A few weeks back I ordered a few polishes from Rescue Beauty Lounge's Bring It Back order. One of the polishes I ordered was Purple Haze. This is described as a vivid violet creme, and I'm a sucker for purples.

I love the color, a slightly dusty lavender. I also love the formula, not too thick, not too thin and perfectly opaque and shiny in two coats.

I do have one complaint about the polish, and it's not about the polish, per se. I don't like the brushes used in RBL bottles. It's sparse, thin and slightly stiff. It makes for a tougher time applying polish. I found that with the exception of my pinky nail, I could only wipe a tiny amount off the brush or else it would be streaky and require many dippings.

Aside from the brush issues, I do love both of the polishes that I have tried from this order so far. I have two more left and I look forward to trying them as well.

Revlon Carbonite and Chanel Graphite comparison

So the trend now seems to be Chanel comes out with the season's new IT color, and then Revlon releases their dupe about a month later. First, we had Perplex, which was a pretty good dupe of my all-time favorite Chanel polish, Paradoxal. Next came Black With Envy, which was supposed to be a dupe of Chanel's Black Pearl, but from the pictures I saw, didn't capture the green tones in the polish. This time around, Revlon comes out with their dupe to Chanel's Graphite called Carbonite.

No, not that carbonite, fellow geeks!

In the bottle, they look very similar. Right away you can see that the particles in Graphite are slightly larger and reflect more gold and green than does Carbonite. Besides that, the base color is strikingly similar.

On the nail, they still look similar. You can still see the slightly bigger particles in Graphite, and Graphite seems to reflect a little bit more. The formulas are very different, though. Graphite applied beautifully and had full opaque coverage in two even coats. Carbonite also had full opaque coverage in two coats, however the formula was quite thicker and took longer to dry. It also dried a tiny bit bumpier than did Graphite.

However, having said all of that, the colors are very, very similar. Close enough to be deemed a dupe. Also close enough that if you love the color of Graphite but don't want to spend $25 on it, Carbonite will satisfy your lemming at a fraction of the price.

OPI Nice Stems mini collection

I actually wasn't interested in the OPI Nice Stems collection, that is, until I saw the mini collection available at my local Ulta. With the cute little bottles, who could resist?

L-R: Play The Peonies, Come To Poppy, Be A Dahl-ia Won't You, I Lily Love You

These are cute springy shades of pink with a really nice flecked jelly layering polish. I did find that putting I Lily Love You over Play The Peonies made for a streaky, flaky mess, so I didn't even include the picture.

Play The Peonies:

This one is a light, shimmery pale tinged white polish. Normally, this is completely not my type of color, but it would be nice to wear to a spring wedding. It applied nicely in two coats, but as I said before - it didn't play well with the flecked layering polish.

Come To Poppy:

This one was my favorite of the colors. It is a very nice shimmery warm pink. It also covered nicely and evenly in two coats. I also liked this one with I Lily Love You.

Be A Dahl-ia Won't You:

Another shimmer, but this one is more of a fuchsia pink. This one was still a little sheer after two coats, so I needed a third, still a pretty good formula. This one looked the best with I Lily Love You.

Not a bad purchase. I've been trying to get more pinks into my collection. I tend to look for unique colors and skip over the nice, basic everyone-should-own colors. These fit the bill nicely. I also like the mini bottles. These should still be available at Ulta.

butter London Wallis

So, this past weekend was the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale. There wasn't a whole lot that I really wanted that was limited edition, but I did pick up some nail polishes. The first of which is butter London's Wallis.

This was a nice olive green micro glitter suspended in a dirty green base. I knew I wanted this one when I saw it online. And, I have to say, it didn't disappoint.

This one, thankfully, didn't have the same application problems I had with Yummy Mummy. It went on nice and smooth, opaque in two even coats. And, for the amount of shimmery flecks it has in it, it dried very smooth.

The color sometimes misbehaves with the light, where it will look like there are bald spots on your nail in the right light (see above picture), and sometimes the light just dances off of the glitter.

I really enjoyed this one. Even the removal wasn't too bad. I'm happy with this purchase. I also indulged in the Dior polish exclusive as well as the Metier de Beaute mini set - oh those reviews are to come!

Did you indulge in the Nordstrom sale?

Le Metier de Beaute Kontagious Koral Nail Lacquer

This season, Nieman Marcus's Fashion Designer, Ken Downing, teamed up with Le Metier de Beaute to create a very lovey coral nail polish/lipstick duo. Le Metier de Beaute has never really been on my radar, until I read Elvira's post at Pink Sith all about this polish. I fully blame her for making me want this polish and subsequently going out specifically to purchase it.

One of the reasons Le Metier de Beaute has never been on my have-to-have-NOW list is because their nail polishes are always so expensive and small. Now, I'm not opposed to dropping bucks on awesome polish, in fact, I may just have a problem, however lMdB are just so TINY. 4ml tiny. However, this one is nearly 3 times that amount, 11.3ml, for only a few dollars more.

None of the colors had appealed to me before this one, either. Kontagious Koral (I'll let Ken slide on the silly K names) it is a beautiful red leaning coral. In some lights it looks dead on red, and in others you can definitely see the orange undertones. I keep staring at my nails.

The real beauty of this polish, aside from the color, is the formula. It was one of the nicest formulas I have ever put on my nails. It was thin, but not watery, applied evenly, but it did need 3 coats to be nice and opaque. And shiny, oh is this shiny. The pictures above are without a topcoat and they're still shiny shiny shiny. One of my nails did bubble a little bit, I have found when I put polish on a bare nail that happens, I have yet to experiment with base/top coats.

I love this polish. Love. I'm actually debating buying a backup, however with the amount of polishes I own, I don't think that would be necessary. My suggestion? Run, don't walk to get this polish. And if you run into Ken Downing on the way, give him a big wet kiss for me.

Dior Vernis 671 Graphic Berry

Ok. It is going to pain me to write this. I did not like Dior Vernis Graphic Berry. I normally love Dior polishes. They have a great brush, lovely colors, great application, but unfortunately this polish only had one of the three.

I do love the color. It is a deep fuchsia color that is quite shiny on the nails. However, that's where my love of this polish stops. To begin with, the brush, which I normally adore, was a bit wonky and I had to try very hard to get a nice even line.

Second, the formula was very thick and blotchy, very unlike the other Dior polishes I have. The first coat went on horribly. It was thick in spots, streaky in others and simply would not flow nicely on the nail. It made trying to get a nice thin, even coat very hard. I needed quite a bit on the brush - more than I'm comfortable with - to actually cover the entire nail, and as you can see, I have little nubbins.

I actually had to do this manicure twice to get it looking somewhat decent. Normally, using Diors are a joy, this time it was a chore. It's quite a shame, too, because I do like the color.

I'm actually hoping this was just a fluke with the bottle I received. I'm actually going to return this one as I will never use it again, and if I'm going to spend $21 on a bottle of nail polish, I want to be able to use it more than once.

Hugh Laurie for L'Oreal for Men

So, let me introduce to you my British-but-plays-an-American-on-TV boyfriend, Hugh Laurie, in this funny behind the scenes video for L'Oreal Paris:

What I wouldn't give to be that manicurist!

Happy 4th!

Happy 4th of July, folks! Behold, my utterly awful attempt at nail art!

And for those of you who are not in the US - happy Monday!