Never Again!!

I've used the Incoco Dry Nail Applique polish strips before and I really like them. I stock up when they're on sale at Walgreens because they're easy to use, last forever, have a nice finish, and they come with everything you need in the kit from a polish remover pad to a little orange stick. Only reason why I don't use them more is because I like to change my polish way too often.

Since I like the Incoco polish strips so much, I figured why not try out the Avon polish strips. They can't be that different, right? WRONG!

I got the Avon Instant Manicure Dry Nail Enamel Strips in a few colors when they were on clearance. Do you know why they were on clearance? Because they suck! I picked Bayberry because it looked like a light watermelon. Turns out it was a dull, matronly mauve mess on me - and when I say mess, I mean MESS!

The Horror!

I am pretty good at applying dry polish strips and these strips would not stay in place, they would not stop wrinkling, and look at that tip wear! This is what happened after wearing after wearing the strips a few hours. The tips lifted and tore right off like I was doing yardwork when all I was really doing was flipping through a magazine while we drove out to visit some relatives.

Awful color, awful application, awful wear - these Avon dry polish strips are hereby banned and will never be worn again.

Color Club Tru Passion

I've been so under the weather lately that I've barely been able to sit upright, much less polish and post.  We're supposed to be in the middle of the worst allergy season ever and, since I already have bad allergies, I've been knocked out.  So I picked a polish that I would love to see on my nails for awhile - of course, I picked a glitter *tee hee*

This is Tru Passion from the Fall 2008 Color Club Glitter Vixen collection. Flinty from Polish or Perish noticed this polish resembles Nubar Hyacinth from their recent Sparkles collection. 

I think of this polish as a lavender glitter. This glitter is a medium grit lighter purple, leaning more towards pink than blue, in a clear base. It's very sparkly, very opaque, very long lasting. I took this picture on Sunday and I've been wearing this mani since Wednesday. I only used two coats, but I think I should have used 3 on the fingers I used really thin coats, like my pinkie. To be honest, I was timid with application because I've read so many horror stories with this collection's removal. I put two coats of Redi Quick Dry topcoat on and I swear this polish got more shiny and sparkly as I wore it.

I love good glitters :)

Revlon Bubble Gum

I finally found a display of the Summer 2010 Scents of Summer Collection! I did it! I did it!!

Drug stores are so small around here so I rarely find cool polish displays, even when I'm actively looking for them. I found this display at the same Rite Aid I found my Maybelline Pie in the Sky. Their cosmetic section tends to look like a tornado hit it, but under all the mess and understocked shelves, this store is now 2-for-2 in my search for seasonal drug store polishes.

After a few happy days of sunshine, the rain rolled in. To counter the drizzles and brighten my day, I decided to try out Bubble Gum.

I tried to capture a really quick picture of Bubble Gum in the sunlight when the clouds briefly parted. Definitely not the best picture, but I wanted to show how how hot pink this polish can look.

In the sunlight, it's definitely a bright girly fuschia.

Inside, it's a bit mellower, but still bright pink:

(ooh, look how the CND Solar Oil soothes the cuticles, aah)

Bubble Gum is a bright medium pink creme. A slightly standard color, but these shades look good with my skintone and the color itself makes me feel happy. The formula was easy to use - slightly on the thin side. There was slight VNL at two coats, so I used three coats for my mani. For scent purposes, I decided to skip a top coat. This polish dried so glossy!  

You can smell the scent once the polish dries. This polish's bubble gum scent lasted about 2-1/2 days for me. I thought the scent was like Bazooka bubble gum. My husband thought it was like the bubble gum fluoride from his childhood dentist.

Since it's on my nails and not overwhelmingly strong, I'm really enjoying my scented nails. To be honest, I even tried talking with my hands more while I was wearing it to see how often I could smell the bubble gum. Ok, maybe I'm enjoying my scented nails a little too much!

China Glaze Blue Island Iced Tea

Some of my favorite blues are from the China Glaze Bahama Blues collection, so I decided to wear some of my others ones this week.  Here is Blue Island Iced Tea!

I like this polish in the sunlight... 

 but it's pretty cool in the shade, too.

Is this a bluish silver or a silvery blue?  Is this a metallic, a microglitter, a shimmer, or a foil? 

Blue Island Iced Tea is hard to describe because it changes in almost every lighting. This is my interpretation of its description: a silver-based light blue foil.  It's got the sparkle and bling of a glitter with the smooth finish of a fol.  It's on the sheer, thin side, so it needs 3 coats.

What I really like about this polish is that it's a great polish to wear all year.  It feels icy when there's snow outside, it feels like sun off the waves in when it's summer time, it brightens up a cloudy day, it blings out on a sunny day. It looks different whenever you look at it.  Is that a jelly base? Is that a hint of turquoise glitter? It just keeps on sparkling.

Zoya Gwin

Gwin is from the Zoya Spring 2010 Reverie Collection.  Zoya describes Gwin as a "sunny melon metallic." I describe Gwin as pink-toned orange with a strong gold shimmer.

This polish really has a lot of iridescent shimmer. There are flashes of gold, yellow, and even green shimmer running through it. This is a lot more apparent in sunlight. Here's a blurred picture to show off some of sheen. It's like you think you're looking at a bright juicy orange shade and... it's glowing! from inside!! the shimmer!!!

My husband bought me the Reverie set a few months ago and today he picked up Maybelline Sunset Prisms for me. Yay for bright colors with a shimmer flash! (By the way - Lacquer Laine has a full swatch of Maybelline Sunset Prisms and it looks like this is one of those polishes that has a different color batch out there. One is orange with a green flash. One is pink with a gold flash.)

Side by side in their bottles, I thought Sunset Prisms might be a possible dupe for Gwin. On the actual nail, Sunset Prisms is a lighter melon orange shade. It's the early spring cousin to Gwin.

Gwin's on my index and ring finger.
Sunset Prisms is on my middle and pinkie finger.

Gwin is a darker orange with a gold flash and pretty much opaque in two coats. Sunset Prisms took four coats to get opaque but the gold shimmer and green flash is more obvious in most lighting. They both had decent formulas. Even though, Sunset Prisms took twice as many coats to get rid of VNL, it actually dried faster than Gwin. Not bad! Sunset Prisms even had a good brush - and it's a Maybelline Express Finish!

Soooo... since both of these polishes were nice to work with and they are related but different colors, both are staying put in the stash. No dupes this time!

Zoya Indigo

I was intrigued to see if my stash had a navy blue creme because I know that I have navy blues but they tend to have shimmer finishes. Zoya Indigo isn't supposed to be one of navy blue shimmers, but on the nail, it looks like it is!

Zoya describes Indigo as "navy blue with subtle multi-color micro glitter." In the bottle, I can totally see that. It's sparkly and full of rainbow glitter sparkles in a rich navy base. On the nail, it looks a navy blue shimmer. The glitter really gets swallowed up. Where does it go?! From some angles, a glitter piece will sparkle here and there, but in other lighting, they just look like bumps or bubbles.

Also, it looks almost black in some lighting. That gets under my skin so much because you shouldn't have to be in full sunlight to enjoy a polish. You might be able to appreciate it more in better lighting, but you should still be able to get the basic idea when you're inside or outside on a cloudy day.

So, instead of a navy blue with fantastic rainbow glitter, Indigo ends up looking like a standard almost-black navy shimmer that has odd bumps in it.

Good ponts - It is opaque in two coats. I didn't do any clean up above because I put it on, took the picture, and took it off, but you can still see that there's not any visible formula application issues. Indigo is from the Zoya Fall 2007 Downtown collection and still available for purchase if the look on the nail speaks to you - just don't go by how it looks in the bottle!

China Glaze Bermuda Breakaway

A tweet from Michèle from lacquerized. inspired me to wear this shade.  She wanted to wear a navy blue creme but couldn't find one, so I got to thinking about whether or not I had one.

Bermuda Breakaway is from China Glaze's Winter 2008 Bahama Blues collection. They describe it as a "Deep Navy Purple Creme."

I don't really think of this creme as a true blurple, but this blue does have a touch of purple in it. I tried to adjust the picture so I could represent the shade as accurately as possible. That's actually why my hands look so dry and winterized in this picture.

I had been avoiding this polish because of the horror stories with the Bahama Blues formula when this collection came out.  Maybe the formula's been tweaked a lot since then because this polish went on really easily! It was opaque in one coat, but I used two coats to even out and deepen the color. 

Some might think that navy is a bit darker than this shade, but I don't care for almost-black shades at all, so I wouldn't want it to be any darker. I think that Bermuda Breakaway fits the bill nicely my stash's navy blue creme. It's clearly blue in all lights and it's a breeze to put on. To think I was going to let this sit untried in my drawer - Thanks for the idea, Michèle!