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).

OPI Bright Pair Collection with Paige Premium Denim: Brights 2009

In the previous post you saw some comparisons and duplicates from this collection, now here's the "real" post :)

There are also swatches of the collection at The Nailphile and Sterling Nails.

A Grape Fit. Rich lavender creme. This is my new favorite pale purple. The problem I have with the pale purples/lilacs/lavenders is that sometimes they're so pale they look lifeless. This one is soft but still rich and bright enough to be interesting for me, and it looks good with my skintone.


In My Back Pocket. A bright orange creme. Ooh, orange! For some reason we don't see oranges being released very often... I wonder why that is? They're so bright and happy and flattering on most skintones. This one is especially nice because it's a little softer than most of the oranges that I have. It's definitely not neon and it's a little softer than pumpkin.

No Room For The Blues. Bright sky blue creme. Not the least bit unique but still a beautiful color. I really can't resist these bright blues, they are just soooooo pretty that I'm always drawn to them!


On The Same Paige. Deep orange creme. I want to call this red-orange- it's definitely orange but has a much deeper red tint than the other orange in this collection. Maybe it's coral? Would you call this more coral or orange? Coral is extremely confusing for me.

Over The Taupe. Taupe creme. This picture came out a little warmer than the color looks on me in real life. This is another color I never thought I'd like, but it ended up being my favorite from the collection. It's the most unique in the collection and it has that soft, grungy, edgy 'mushroom' look that I love so much.

Shorts Story. Hot pink creme. I'm going to use OPI's description for this one: "Hot Pink. The end." Haha! It's to the point and pretty accurate. This is a nice cool hot pink though, so it doesn't make my hands look dirty. I have a hard time wearing pinks, but I can usually wear the cooler, more blue-violet toned ones like this and OPI I'm India Mood For Love.

This collection is supposed to pair with the Summer line from Paige Premium Denim. Admittedly, I had never heard of the brand until this OPI collection mentioned it, but then again, I'm neither a denim wearer nor fashion enthusiast. But since seeing the promo pics for this collection that feature Paige denim in all sorts of bright colors, I kinda want some now.

That looks awesome. Admit it. Except.... Those jeans are ridiculously tight. I'm betting they're those 'skinny' jeans that don't look good on anyone but Emo boys (wait, did I say it looked good on emo boys?)....

The formula on these was flawless. Smooth, thin and opaque in two to three coats depending on the shade. I had zero application issues and the drying time was very fast. The Pro-Wide brush in these makes application really fast for me as well- I was able to use one quick stroke on each nail!

This collection of brights is missing what made the previous OPI brights collections unique- fun shimmers! The original sets of brights had duochromes (like Electric Eel) and sheer crystal shimmers in fun colors (like That's All Bright With Me). The Night Brights collection introduced us to one of the greatest polishes of all time: My Private Jet. It gave me one of my most favorite purple polishes, OPI Ink. Unique colors with no duplicates to be found. Mod about Brights gave us green and yellow. The Bright Pair collection is really pretty and all the colors are nice, but there isn't really anything unique about them.

I do like this collection a whole lot. The colors themselves are gorgeous, the formula on them is perfect and they all look really nice together. I only wish there were six more shades to balance out the cremes. It would have been cool to have coordinated layering shades like the old collection. But, it seems like the polish companies are scaling back lately and not releasing as many shades as they used to.

So... OPI Summer 2009 is almost done (one more collection to go!) and then we get what looks like an amazing set of collections for fall and winter. Woohoo!!

Comparisons with OPI Brights 2009 Bright Pair with Paige Denim

This time I thought I'd try something a little different and put the cart before the horse, so to speak.

I do love this collection of brights, but they are very similar to other brights I own, especially ones by OPI.

Index and ring: OPI A Grape Fit
Middle and pinkie: OPI Do You Lilac It?

As you can see, they're similar shades of lilac purple but Do You Lilac It? is significantly lighter.

Index: OPI No Room For The Blues
Middle: OPI Just Groovy
Ring: Zoya Yummy
Pinkie: Misa Right Here Now, No More Later

There are minuscule differences between these colors, but can you really tell? I wouldn't know this was four different colors unless someone told me.

Index: OPI On The Same Paige
Middle: OPI Orange You Glad It's Summer?
Ring: OPI Don't Be Koi With Me
Pinkie: Misa Um You're Too Delicious

These oranges weren't as close as they appeared in the bottle. Similar, but I don't think I have an exact match yet.


Index: OPI Over The Taupe
Middle: OPI You Don't Know Jacques
Ring: Butter London Fash Pack
Pinkie: Orly Country Club Khaki

Hmm, no dupes here! Similar, but again, nothing exact.

Index: OPI Shorts Story
Middle: OPI I'm India Mood For Love
Ring: OPI D.C. Cherry Blossom
Pinkie: China Glaze Laced Up

I thought I had more pinks similar to Shorts Story in my collection, but I couldn't find a duplicate. I'm sure that one exists, but I'll have to keep looking to find out what it is.

Index: OPI In My Back Pocket
Middle: OPI Osaka To Me Orange
Ring: OPI It's A Bird, It's A Plane... It's OPI
Pinkie: OPI Orange You Glad It's Summer?

This one seems closest to my favorite orange, OPI Osaka To Me Orange.

Aside from No Room For The Blues, I haven't found an exact duplicate of any of these colors. In my opinion, they're unique and pretty enough to own all of them, but only if you really love the color. I happen to love them all even though they look like other things in my collection.

I only wish this year's brights had the matching crystalline shimmers like the old Brights collections, but I'll save my lamentations for the 'real' post :)

Reader Requests

Index: NARS Zulu
Middle: Illamasqua Rampage
Ring: BB Couture Green Goblin
Pinkie: Rescue Beauty Lounge Recycle
None are dupes of each other.

Index and ring: OPI Pearls Night Out
Middle and pinkie: Color Club Front Row Diva

Index: Misa Dirty Sexy Money
Middle: Essie Greenport
Ring: Barielle Sweet Addiction
Pinkie: China Glaze For Audrey
None are dupes of each other.

Index: OPI I'm India Mood For Love
Middle: OPI That's Hot! Pink
Ring: OPI Strawberry Fields
Pinkie: OPI Feelin' Hot-Hot-Hot!

Index: Barielle Swizzle Stix
Middle: Misa Right Here Now, No More Later
Ring: OPI Just Groovy
Pinkie: Zoya Yummy
All but Swizzle Stix are very, very similar to each other.


Index and pinkie: Essie Short Shorts 2008
Middle: Essie Flirty Fuchsia 2009
Ring: Essie Punchy Pink 2009


Index: Essie Perky Purple 2009
Middle: Essie Bermuda Shorts 2008
Ring: Essie Funky Limelight 2009
Pinkie: Essie Shorty Pants 2008

This year's Essie neons are *much* more neon and bright than last year's shades. In fact, compared next to each other, last year's neons don't even look neon.

Nic's Sticks By Nicole

I found one of these in the clearance bin when I was grocery shopping last week and decided to give it a try.

I am normally pretty skeptical of nail polish in pen form- I have tried to use them in the past with disastrous results.

I do trust Nicole to make good polish, and hey, it was on clearance! I had to see for myself.

The color I have is called "Baby Go Bye Bye." Ummm... Interesting name.


This is what a Nic's Stick looks like. It's a little fatter than an average Sharpie, but it really looks like a pen. I don't think anyone would suspect that it's nail polish if you had one at your desk. It has a cap that screws on so it can't come open accidentally and it has a little button at the opposite end for dispensing polish.


I was sort of shocked when I removed the cap. The brush is CRAZY!



Look at that. It's like a mop! It's huge and wild, bristles pointing in every direction. How am I supposed to apply polish with this thing?!


Despite all my doubts, that crazy brush applied polish extremely well. Near one-stroke coverage on every nail, no polish on the cuticles at all. It was like magic!

The color (Baby Go Bye Bye... I hate typing that... worse than ordering at Denny's!) is dispensed into the brush by pressing the button on the end. You hold the brush pointing downward and click the button three times. I couldn't see the polish coming out at first so I pressed it a few more times and ended up with a lot of polish. One click is enough to do all of your nails.

The polish itself is almost opaque in one coat. Almost being the key word. It is probably opaque enough for most people, but I needed it to be completely free of visible nail line.

This is where I had trouble.



Let's call that one and a half coats. You can see parts on the center of my nail where the polish isn't opaque.

Since the first coat was still a little sheer, I wanted to do a second coat. I had waited about three minutes since doing the first coat, so I assumed that would be more than enough time for the polish to dry enough to do a second coat.

I clicked the brush once to dispense a little more polish and then tried to paint each nail. The polish on the nail wasn't dry enough to not be disturbed by the brush. When the brush touched each nail, it wiped off all the polish that was on them! It's not soft or flexible enough to paint on wet nails like a regular polish brush would be.

I tried waiting for the polish to dry longer and tried again- I still had problems, so I just left them the way they were. That's what you see in the pictures.

The formula of the polish is very different than traditional polish. It's very thin and paint-like. It doesn't seem to dry on the brush and it flows very freely. It's almost watery, but not runny!

It took forever to dry for me. This is supposed to be a speedy, last-minute on the go type product, so I don't think the dry time is appropriate.

However, this could be a miracle product for a lot of people. For one, it's extremely fast to use. Click the pen, one swipe on each nail and you're done. If you want painted nails in a hurry and you don't want to deal with a messy bottle of polish, this is the way to go.

And maybe it's just the color I chose or maybe I'm too picky, but I can see this being a one coat polish. I think that if I had chosen a darker color it would have been. Maybe mine was just meant to be a sheer sky blue. I think red would have definitely been opaque in one coat. So, maybe bad color choice on my part.

Overall, I'm not totally impressed but I will still be keeping one of these in my purse for emergencies. I wouldn't paint my nails with this product every time I do a manicure, but I would definitely use it if I needed to paint my nails quickly and I didn't have all my 'equipment'. Perfect emergency polish. Keep one in your purse!

I do think the name is kinda funny. Nic Stick? Am I suppose to light one end of it?

Nubar Disco Blue Glitter

I have a lot more french manicure stuff to post, but it's putting me to sleep!

So how about I spice things up a bit in between bland french mani posts?

Take a look at this beauty from Nubar:

Nubar Disco Blue Glitter.

Your eyeballs can't repel sparkle of that magnitude!

Disco Blue Glitter is a medium blue shade of fairly large size yet not chunky in texture glitter. It looks chunky, but it has a strangely smooth and flat feel for this type of glitter. That's the beauty of Nubar's glitters, they're unusually smooth.

The way the glitter lies on the nail is also fairly different from other glitters I own. It is really flat and smooth looking, the closest glitter I can compare it to is Milani Disco Lights. It's like little glitter platelets. Hard to describe, but the end result is spectacular.

Nubar is known for their out-of-this-world unique and breathtakingly beautiful duochrome shades like Peacock Feathers and Purple Beach, but they also have some of the best glitters on the market. They're all intensely sparkly to the point of being dangerous in their ability to distract. If you walk outside wearing one of Nubar's glitters on your nails, I guarantee that you will be staring at your hands more than is probably safe.

The other special feature of Nubar's glitters are the shades. Yes, they have the standard gold-silver-holo-red type glitters, but they also have colors that you'd be hard pressed to find anywhere else. Orange glitter is one of my favorites, but they also carry a burgundy glitter, which is a color I haven't seen from another brand (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, I'm always looking for new glitters!). Grass Green glitter is the best green glitter in my collection. I'll be posting pictures of all of my favorites as soon as I can re-photograph them, but in this humble glitter addict's opinion, Nubar glitters are a glitter lover's dream.

And, like I mentioned above, Nubar's glitters are strangely smooth. Normally wearing glitter is like having little sheets of sandpaper on your nails (which doesn't bother me but is sometimes a deal breaker for people) but the glitters I have from Nubar aren't half as rough. I don't know why that is. Maybe it's the type of glitter they use or maybe it's something in the formula. Either way, it cuts down on the amount of topcoat you have to use to produce a smooth, glassy finish.

Really, what I'm trying to say is that Nubar glitters rock. I love them.

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.