More from BB Couture For Nails!

BB Couture is another brand that is new to me but has been consistently shocking me with their unique and creative shades.

I remember that when I reviewed my first BB Couture Polishes, I was under the impression that the line was 'boring pinks and reds with a few awesome colors' tossed in. I was totally wrong. After viewing an actual color chart of all the BB Shades, it's clear that the awesome colors strongly outnumber the boring pinks and reds.

Here are a few of their amazing new shades (and a couple older but still new to me ones!)


Hermosa Surfer Girl. A deep pink jelly with multicolored glitter. This is a berry-pink, maybe a fuchsia? It's fairly bright bright but also mellow and rich. The glitter in this is hard to describe- it seems multicolored or at least iridescent as I can see gold silver and green clearly. I'm not sure if it's one type of glitter flashing different colors or a bunch of different colors of glitter.

Laguna Lagoon. Light mint green creme. This color reminds me a little bit of mint chocolate chip ice cream, but maybe a little lighter. Very pretty. This shade also had a particularly smooth formula, which is very rare for opaque milky pastels.


Midnight Malibu. Deep ink blue with multicolored glitter. This looks a lot more purple to me in the bottle, but when I apply it it's definitely a deep blue. Maybe a touch of purple. This has the same multicolored glitter as Hermosa Surfer Girl, but it has a touch of bar glitter thrown in as well. The bar glitter, although I love it, doesn't do much in this polish as it rarely makes it from the bottle onto your nail.

Moon Over Manhattan. Faded blue with subtle glitter. This is a really unique shade. I don't think I've seen anything like it. The shade of blue is really soft and faded looking, almost like it has a grey haze. It's more of a medium blue bordering on dark. The glitter in this is really subtle. It doesn't really sparkle much and it's not immediately noticeable but it adds a little depth and interest to the blue creme base.


Pink Champagne. Light pink shimmer with slight green flash. This has a shimmery, frosty almost metallic finish. It's a delicate light pink but to keep it from being too plain it has a touch of green flash that's noticeable at extreme angles. The green flash is more prominent in the bottle than on the nails.


Raspberry Cosmo. Hot pink with blue flash. Ooh, this picture didn't turn out so good. Anyway, this is another almost-metallic finish, and the hot pink base is accented with a subtle blue/purple flash.

Venice Party. Cornflower blue shimmer with silver glitter. This is another faded-looking blue. Quite pretty. This one is also very subtly duochrome, but only if you're looking closely. It is sprinkled with silver glitter. I have to be honest with you, I don't think this particular formula works. I've mentioned before the issue that arises when you add glitter to a thin metallic base. Instead of seeing a lot of sparkles on top of the polish, you get a weird bumpy texture that looks a little like bubbles. I like the color and that it has glitter, but I think the glitter needs to be bigger in order to break through the base color.

Venom. Frosty green. Venom is a medium green shade with silvery frost. I like the base color but I can't say I'm wild about the frosty finish. It tends to show brushtrokes so you must be very careful to apply it evenly. You can see in the picture where some of my strokes are more diagonal and some are vertical... Be mindful of your strokes when applying so you don't end up with that.


Balboa Beach Bunny. Rich purple with glitter. This one, like Midnight Malibu, contains bar glitter in addition to regular glitter. I love bar glitter. Unfortunately, this one does the same as Midnight Malibu- it has pretty bar glitter in the bottle but only one or two pieces actually end up on your nail. I'd love it even more if it had more bar glitter!

Blind Love. Green-gold metallic shimmer. This one is spectacular. It's bright and reflective but also has a fiery sparkle to it. It's an almost dead-on duplicate of Chanel Kaleidoscope. The difference between this and Kaleidoscope is one of them is a touch more green, but it's not noticable.


Dark Knight. Black with heavy gold shimmer. Oooh, this one is cool. It's a little bit like some of the other black-with-gold polishes that give the illusion of being a rich olive green. Dark Knight is extremely hot, very interesting to look at and I love the name as well.


Green Goblin. Forest green creme. I know I've posted this already, but it's so good I need to post it again. This time we get a rich, foresty, mossy dark green instead of all of the nearly-impossible to pull off and quite unappealing light yellow-greens we always see. I love this color so much, I might need twenty-seven backups.

Iced Olive. Shimmery olive. Another unique green! This one is a medium olive green, more on the deep green side than the yellow-green side with lots of gold shimmer. It's like the gold shimmer in Dark Knight. The cool thing about this kind of gold shimmer is that it gives it that bright in the middle/dark on the edges sort of look indoors. Like the center of the polish is glowing. Super cool.


Aren't those colors fantastic?! BB Couture For Nails is really surprising me lately. Almost every single color they've released since the first time I tried them as been edgy, unique and fun. Rock on!!

The formula on this is good, but inconsistent. Some are thick, some are thin, some are somewhere in between. The formula of these is much better than the first BB Coutures I tried, which had Three-Free Syndrome. These are a lot more smooth and less drippy/runny/gooey. I had trouble applying the frosty ones, but the cremes and glitters were perfect. Drying time is average.

I'm really happy that BB Couture is doing all of these unconventional colors. This is definitely a brand to keep your eye on. Lots of fun surprises. I'm really looking forward to seeing what comes next. So much potential! Potential and also proof that they're willing to do exciting colors!

BB Couture retails for $8.00 and can be purchased from Overall Beauty (I highly recommend and I can personally vouch for their great customer service) or directly from the manufacturer's website (but it doesn't appear to have all the shades).

Sephora by OPI Revisited

I have two new Sephora by OPI polishes that I want to swatch, but my nails are in no condition for swatching right now. I always break them doing stupid things! Opening cabinets, car doors, doing laundry... Ugh.


So, instead, let's revisit the Sephora by OPI line. When it was originally released, I did a bunch of swatches with all the polishes I bought. The formula was so thick and awful that the swatches suffered. Now I've added some thinner to them and they've come out quite a bit better.




Beauty Junkie. I admit that I only bought this for the name. It's kind of a vampy-brown-red-plum creme, too red to be chocolate.



Brainiac. One of the biggest disappointments. It was described as spiced pumpkin, but does this look like spiced pumpkin to you? No! It's kind of a weird burnt-salmon...



Cab Fare. Yellow with shimmer. It's pretty sheer in addition to being thick, stringy and goopy. All yellows are streaky and thick to some extent, but this one seems worse than others. The color is pretty nice and I like the sparkles.



Call Your Mother. Very pretty muted taupe-purple creme.


Charge It. Metallic gold. This one is pretty similar to Chanel Gold Fiction. I haven't done a side by side to see if they're exact dupes, but they have a very similar shade and texture.



Domestic Goddess. Bright candy grape purple creme.




Don't Go There. Another nice muted purple creme.



Metro Chic. Hard to describe... Mousy, grey taupe creme? I do love this color. It's the only Sephora by OPI polish I've worn since doing my original swatches...



Never Enough Shoes. Black with multicolored glitter. The glitter in this is small and subtle.



Queen Of Everything. Gorgeous metallic platinum-silver.



Run With It. Warm grey with coppery speckles. Reminds me of wet cement. Sort of similar to Zoya Harley.


Like I said before, I was not impressed with the formula of these. It's not consistent with OPI's formula, it seems like a completely different brand. Not all of the polishes were bad- some were a normal texture. The rest were insanely thick and gooey. I added thinner to them and it helped tremendously. Also, a lot of them have streaks of unmixed pigment that never mix back in no matter how hard you shake it. The streaks will occasionally transfer to the nail.

I don't like the way the bottles look, either. They look cheap and strange. The plastic they use to seal the bottles is also difficult to remove.

Nice colors, but I feel like they need to to a little quality control on these before they sell them.

Hopefully my nails will grow back soon so I can swatch my new ones!

NYX Revisited.

About a year or so ago I did a post featuring swatches of my entire collection of NYX polishes.
Looking back at them, I realized that the pictures could be a lot better, so here I am at number three in my series of collections revisited.

I've also revisited China Glaze Bahama Blues and Color Club Dance To The Musique.

Antique. Smooth, shimmery metallic antique gold. More of a bronze, really.

Asphalt. Black jelly with multicolored glitter. I call this one "Clown Roadkill."

Aurora. Light, pearly green-tinged yellow. This is soft and springy. Very difficult color to pull off, though. Makes my hands look super red.



Jungle. Duochrome aqua, green and turquoise shimmer. This is a must have color for any blue or green lover. It is breathtaking.

Las Vegas. Deep rich green with tons of green shimmer. This is incredible. Again, another must have. It is impossible to capture the beauty of this polish on camera. It has so much depth and sparkle, you just have to see it to believe it.

Lime Sparkle. Golden green glitter in a lime green jelly base. One of the best glitter polishes in the universe. It's so smooth and shiny, so ridiculously sparkly and over-the-top insane. I adore this.

Paradise. Light blue shimmer with golden-green duochrome. Serene and tropical.

Rainbow Sparkle. Opalescent glitter in a neon yellow jelly base. Holy cow. One of the most bizarre polishes in my collection. It is super bright and neon, much closer to the bottle color than the color on my nails. Awesome.


Tahitian. Spring green shimmer. Crisp light green, doesn't necessarily make me think of Tahiti, but it's still nice.

Techno. Pearly, frosty medium purple. Much, much more purple in real life but still a little on the blue side.

Wild. Shimmery, rich purple. It is a nice color, but it's one of the worst polishes ever. It's insanely sheer. If I recall correctly, this was either five or six coats. It needs them. You won't achieve bottle color with fewer coats than that.


Purple Avenue over Wild. Blue-opal chunks of plastic in a sheer purple base. Honestly, this is an awful polish. I'd pass on this if I were you.

And one old picture because I couldn't find the polish to re-photograph it:

Peach Avenue over Wild. Peachy opal chunks of plastic in a sheer orange base. Another awful polish. Do yourself a favor and get Sinful Green Ocean if you want the plastic-chunk look, it's much better and easier to use.

The formula on these is very hit-or-miss. Some were dreamy, like Techno or Jungle. Others were sheer, like Wild and Las Vegas. Some were thick, some were thin, some were just right. I don't know what's up with their formula. Drying time is also all over the place. I can't make a definite statement on this.

The color selection is unbelievable. They have everything you could want. Sheers, reds, pinks yes but also duochromes, glitters, brights, vampies, GREEN, blue, et cetera. I don't know if they regularly release new colors or if they only have a core line, but this brand is hardly lacking in variety. The one downside is that they have changed formulation on some colors but kept the same name, so you may have two entirely different colors that share a name.

The only thing I really hate are the "Avenue" polishes. I thought they would be neat mylar glitter or something, but they're just crap. They are nearly impossible to apply. You will have an inch thick coat of sheer goo before you even have a decent amount of glitter on your nail. You could use the toothpick trick that I use to apply the heart polishes (Like the Valentine's Day Nicoles) but it's just not worth it. The 'glitter' is large chunks of sharp plastic. It sticks up through the polish and doesn't lie flat. At least they're really pretty to look at in the bottle!

I bought all of my polishes directly from Nyx Cosmetics.

KO Flatte Matte Polishes

I had been drooling over these polishes ever since I first saw them, and then, out of the blue, a very lovely and wonderful person sent me them as a gift! I couldn't believe it. I still can't! Thank you, amazing generous friend :) Your gift is loved and appreciated.

Anyway, enough mushy stuff, on to the polishes!

These polishes were created by the makeup artist Mike Potter- known for his work on Hedwig And The Angry Inch. Just from reading that sentence, you know they're gonna be awesome, right?

They are.



Flatte Black. That's pretty much a description in and of itself. It's flat black. It's very black and very matte.



Powder. It's kind of an off-white matte creme. It's not as matte as Black, this shade has more of a satin finish.

KO (Knockout) also has a matte pink called Calamine and a matte red called Karen, but I haven't tried them.

First, let's talk about the formula. It is much thicker than your average polish. It also dries very quickly. The combination of those two qualities can lead to some difficulty in application. Just make sure you have enough polish on the (gigantic) brush and work carefully and you shouldn't have a problem. What you see is what you get, so be careful to apply them evenly.

The Flatte Black is opaque in one coat. Powder needs three coats to be even an opaque.

The polishes start out matte, but by the end of the day are a satin finish. They become smoother and shinier the longer you wear them. Kind of cool, but I wish they stayed matte!

Another odd thing about this polish is that when it dries it becomes very brittle. After I had been wearing Black for a few days (I was sick and couldn't change my polish) it began to crackle and little black flakes would fall off randomly. I have never seen that happen with any other polish- it was so weird!

Now comes the interesting part- the bottles.

The bottles are a work of art. I absolutely love them. They are beautiful and a polish I would be proud to display.

They have long brushed metal handles, a matte finish frosted glass with KO and Flatte being the only shiny parts. They are flat and have a scallop shape. Lovely. Oh yeah, and they're GIGANTIC.

Here they are compared to a regular OPI bottle to give you an idea of how huge they are. They are really, really tall and pretty wide.

They look awesome, but the super long brush and handle make them difficult to work with. It is very tricky to maneuver the extra-long brush stem, and since the stem is so long it's also hard to get all of the excess polish off of it to prevent dripping.


These polishes are incredibly cool and even if you aren't wearing them they're nice to look at.

They remind me of another brand of extremely cool matte polish with awesome bottles...



ManGlaze.

ManGlaze will always be my favorite matte polish, but the KO polishes are different enough from ManGlaze to warrant owning both.

KO is just plain flat black that becomes shiny after a few hours of wear. ManGlaze Black (I believe it's now called 'The Death Tar') and Grey ('Fuggen Ugly') have depth and texture. They're packed with these little particles that make the polishes look like smooth asphalt that stays matte without topcoat, but transforms them into an uber-sparkly black or grey polish when topcoat is applied.

I will do a side-by-side comparison when I get a chance, but I just wanted to point out that yes, they are different.

KO Flatte Black is one of my new favorite colors. It's seriously badass. But, if you want to keep it looking totally matte and intimidating looking, you will need to invest in the KO Flatte Top
topcoat. I have a suspicion that it's nothing more than a ridge filler or nail strengthener in a topcoat bottle, but I've never tried it so I can't say for sure. China Glaze used to have something called Flat Top -it's discontinued but still available at some beauty supply stores- it was a topcoat that made your polish matte. I wonder if they're similar?

I love matte finish polishes and I have a feeling that we will be seeing a lot more of them this year. Bring on the mattes!!! (And make a green, please.)

Orgasm Cosmetics Hard Day's Night

Orgasm Cosmetics Hard Day's Night.

This is the first polish I've tried from the new brand Orgasm Cosmetics and I am really pleased with it.

This shade is called Hard Day's Night, and despite the fact that it causes the song of the same name to instantly repeat over and over inside my head, I really enjoy this polish. It looks like a rich charcoal grey with silver shimmer, but it has a really blue cast to it like it's not actually grey, it's a darkened, smoky blue. In fact, Orgasm Cosmetic's color chart portrays this polish as a dark blue-purple and not grey, so I can't be imagining the blue cast on the polish.

The formula on this polish is really nice. The color itself is opaque in two coats. The texture of the polish is 'normal' to me- not noticeably thin or thick and for a three-free polish it really doesn't seem like one (it doesn't have the runny/gooey texture that three-free polishes can have). The brush was a nice shape and didn't have any defective bristles. The drying time was reasonable- not particularly long or short. All around, a good, solid formula with no obvious flaws.

I really like the bottle- it's a unique shape. I have no other polishes that have the same bottle as this one. If you're trying to make your brand stand out from the crowd, a unique bottle shape helps. It also helps if the bottle shape is actually good (Butter London FAIL) and while this bottle isn't terribly fancy or anything, it is sturdy and stable and not an awkward shape and it doesn't tip over when you're painting your nails.

Another thing I like about this polish is that the name of the polish is printed on the bottle. I wish more companies would do this! I can't tell you how many label stickers I've found floating around in my polish bins. Certain brands are notorious for having the labels either fall off or fade completely, and that can't happen with this polish. Nice big print on the back of the bottle clearly displays the name of the shade. A really nice touch.

For a new brand, it sure seems like they did their homework. Fun colors, great formula and bottles with labels that won't fall off. The color chart on the website is the only flaw I've seen so far- it is a very pretty interactive color chart, but it's not an accurate depiction of the colors (at least for two of the four colors I have tried).

Orgasm Cosmetics nail lacquers are available directly from their website for $6.
Clicking on the color swatch of the polish you want will open the "add to cart" screen.

Nail Polish Wishes

I have been thinking a lot lately about new nail polish collections. Wondering what types of colors the polish companies are creating and why. What influences them? Is it fashion? Art? Or is it just the numbers, new creations based only on what sells?

I fully understand that I (we) are a different type of nail polish consumer. The main difference between me (us) and your average salon consumer is a big one: Volume. While the average salon patron or nail polish customer may purchase one or two polishes every couple of months, perhaps spending up to $20, we, the nail polish connoisseur, are no strangers to purchasing twelve polishes at a time, usually more, spending more on one polish purchase than the average polish consumer will in her lifetime.

Polish connoisseurs like you and I buy polish because we love color, and we love being able to have a little fun with our nails. We don't buy polish because we have to maintain our perpetually sheer-pink tips and our only bottle of Essie Ballet Slippers is running out. We buy it because we love it.

In my opinion, that should give us more pull with polish companies when they consider the colors for their collections. I feel like the only look at what the salon consumer is likely to purchase, but us polish junkies need some love too!

Please don't think I am being ungrateful and whiny- I know that polish companies have been very good to us. They've been listening to what the nail polish connoisseur wants, and giving us a little something every season. I mean, even Essie, the queen of sheer pinks, gave us Mesmerize this season. China Glaze gave us two unique collections, Romantique and Summer Days. Zoya's spring collection rocked my socks, and do I even have to mention Barielle and Color Club? I know they've been good to me, but I still can't help but feel like some things are missing.

Here are my nail polish wishes for this year.

I want....



GREENS!!! Specifically, Mazoo's 'Bahama Greens'. But really, I'll take all the greens I can get. Please skip the light golden-shimmer greens, please! We need a variety of greens in all tones and finishes. The world is severely lacking in dark to medium greens. We have a reasonable amount of light greens with gold shimmer, as well as pale pastel green cremes and chromes. We need more Zulus, more Recycles, more Evergreens, more Date Nights, more Rainforests, more, more more! And we need creme, yes, but frosts, shimmers, glitters, duochromes, jellies and holos! May this be the year of the greens.


I also want....






Camouflage colors! Drab green, olive, dusty grey, dirty brown. Not enough of these colors exist in the world, and I don't want to have to resort to 'frankening' my own. They are chic ad much as they are edgy, and I think people would be open to them if they had the option to buy them. And not just the traditional Woodland camouflage, either! How about desert camo, snow camo, urban camo, heck, even pink camouflage pattern themed colors? You could sell them in sets of three or six. It would be awesome.


I want....



More holo colors! Not just duplications of the holographic colors we already have, I want entirely new shades of mesmerizing holographic goodness! We don't really have a true red holo, nor do we have a dark blue or green holo. We don't have a yellow holo that isn't gold, and we don't have an orange holo that isn't pink. I want darker hologrpahic shades to contrast with all of the very light bordering on pastel holo shades we already have. And I wand more smooth holo like this Nfu Oh- it's extra awesome.


Also,







I want more unique glitters!! We have plenty of gold glitter, plenty of silver glitter, heck, even plenty of plain holographic glitter. I want more funky shades! Dark colors are especially rare. I bet people would love a dark blue glitter, and just look at the frenzy that China Glaze Emerald Sparkle caused! I know that a few people were even hoping for black glitter, and I think it could work. How about darker shades with a handful of holo glitter? Think about the Massini glitters and how much they rock. And don't be afraid to mix shades together, like these mind-blowingly awesome gems in a bottle:





I also NEED....





More Magnetiques! We only have a blue and a brown, think of the possibilities! And don't make them country-exclusive and don't make them limited edition. Does Lancome hold the patent on these? If not, why hasn't anyone else created these?! I have never gotten more compliments on my nails than when I wear Bordeaux Esmee.


I want...



More Mattes! I have both ManGlaze shades, and two Knockouts, but all together that's only six matte shades available for purchase. Two blacks, a grey, a white and a pink. You can do better than that. Matte is cool, we just need more variety. How about a matte red, a matte blue, a matte olive or a matte green? I think the green should look like moss, and maybe even be named moss.


And last but not least, we need more...







FLAKIES!!! The polish finish that magically transforms a plain polish into something special. There's nothing like flakies. And really, outside of Nfu Oh, there are no flakies that are easy to find. There are maybe one or two readily available shades from CND and Nubar, but other than that they have all been discontinued. Flaky polishes are truly unique and the possibilities for creating opal-like shades are endless. Please give us more.


There are a ton more things I'd like to see created by polish companies, but I could really go on all day. This post is long enough with my demands :) Maybe I will do a part two?

I hope that one day I get to see some of these things come to life. Every time a polish company releases yet another red or sheer pink (on top of the thousands and thousands in existence), I feel a little bit sad and wonder if it could have been something awesome instead.