More Del Sol Solar Color Change Polish

I no longer feel good about recommending this brand, so I've archived my review.

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).

Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics Nail Lacquer

I wouldn't have discovered this brand if it weren't for a wonderful reader recommending them to me, so thank you!

Before I post these pictures I want to apologize for the quality. I was too anxious to swatch them and spent a couple hours battling clouds. They are a little blurry and have lots of reflections of clouds on them, but the colors still show accurately. Sorry!

Okay, hold onto your hats!


Blackboard. Chalkboard green creme. Wow. Totally unique color. Exact same shade as the chalkboards (blackboards) from when I was a kid. I love this to death. I don't own a single dupe for this color.




Dangerous. Medium grey creme. This is the color of sharks. Gorgeous grey creme with easy application.

Grandma. Bright coral creme. The name of this one had me practically rolling on the floor laughing. I love a company with a sense of humor. This is totally something my grandma would wear. Despite the fact that it's a grandma color, it's still nice! Bright and summery.


Swamped aka Swamp Thing. Dark olive creme. My bottle says Swamped, website has it listed as Swamp Thing, I'm not sure which is correct. This is such a perfect color. It's the olive I've been looking for. Not bright and clean olive by any means, this is a murky, dirty, stagnant swamp green and I couldn't be happier.

Traffic. Taxi cab yellow creme. This is a bold bright yellow creme that has a surprisingly good formula. I've been trying out a lot of new yellows lately (including this one) and the formulas seem to be improving drastically. Maybe they have finally figured out how to make a yellow smooth? Either way, this had great formula and opacity, especially for a yellow. It could be a two coater if you're careful, but I did three because I was too excited to apply it properly.

Wasabi. Wasabi-paste bright spring green creme. This is almost the exact color of that little ball of wasabi that you get with cheap sushi. It's bright but at the same time it's a little murky, if that makes sense. It's crisp with a little dirtiness. Fantastic and also pretty unique.

The formula on these is great. It's on the thin side but it's very pigmented. All but Traffic and Wasabi were two-coaters. I'm pretty sure these are three-free but the texture of the polish wouldn't make you believe so. I had zero application issues. Drying time was very good as well.

I am so impressed with these polishes. All of the names are pure genius, the formula is impeccable and the colors are mostly unique and not boring. I'm always complaining that polish companies are playing it too safe, but you won't hear me say that about Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics.

After a quick browsing of their website, I can say they're definitely not afraid to think outside the box. They seem to be focused mainly on professional, theatrical and special effects makeup, but when looking through all the shades of products you'll see every color of the rainbow represented. Not just boring safe pinks. Their polish line is the same- it's a small, limited selection but every color is represented, and for once, someone has more than one green. Awesome.

Overall, I am ridiculously pleased with my new polishes from Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics. Blackboard and Swamped/Swamp Thing were instantly added to my 'favorite polishes ever' list the minute I opened the package, and the rest of the ones I tried were very memorable. I especially love the names of all of them, even the ones I didn't try- Uber, Lucretia, Pallid, Bone Daddy and Anime, just to name a few. I hope that in the future they will expand their polish line to include even more colors and finishes! I, for one, would love to see a little glitter.

Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics nail lacquers and cosmetics are also vegan and cruelty-free. The polishes can be purchased directly from their website and retail for $8.00.

Illamasqua: Makeup For Your Alter Ego

I've only recently discovered the brand Illamasqua and I'm already in love.

Where has Illamasqua been all my life?! It's like we were made for each other. I adore everything about this brand- the packaging, the colors, the website, the names of the products, the formula of the polishes, just... everything.

By taking a minute to browse their website, you'll see why I like them. They're not some frilly, foofy pink pom-pom girly-girl cosmetics company. They're sexy, dramatic, mysterious, edgy and a little dark. Needless to say, that really appeals to this girl.

They are mainly a cosmetics company, but they do a range of polish shades as well. Just wait until you see them!

In the polish ('Scratch') portion of their website, you can see that they have a small but strong collection of polishes. I love the names- Obtuse, Boosh, Unnatural, Ruthless, Milf... And for such a small collection, they have a high concentration of awesome polish colors. I see what looks to be about five greens, five blues, oranges, yellows, purples, metallics and glitters and just a splash of pink-and-red to please the less adventurous polish consumer.

Here are the shades I tried:

Hectic. A drab olive creme. YES!!! I don't know what else to say about this other than... WOOHOO!!!! It's great. Straight off my "Nail Polish Wishes" post!


Rampage. A rich forest green creme. You've already seen this but it's worth posting again because it is UTTER PERFECTION. I have already made a significant dent in my bottle and I've had it for less than a month.


Phallic. Rich, starry dark blue shimmer. What a name for a polish. Fantastic. The polish itself is pretty amazing, too- it's one of those dark blue vampy shades that look lit from within. Dark around the edges and light in the center. It's rich and sparkly, like a starry night sky. Tons of depth in this one.


Spartan. Antique gold glitter. This is a cool one. It seems to be multiple shades and sizes of glitter that create a soft antique gold look. They aren't really your traditional uniform circular glitter particles. They're more like flakes and shards. They are pretty fine but buildable and the end result is very smooth. With one coat of Seche Vite you can't even tell you're wearing glitter. I love the names of all of them, but this one especially. I think they may have been going for this type of Spartan:

But of course, it makes me think of this type of Spartan:

Anyway...

Here's one coat of Spartan layered over Rampage:




Sparkles!!


Now that I've raved about the colors and the names, I'll touch on the formula briefly. It's perfect. The polishes are thick and opaque. I did two coats of all of them. The formula is extremely smooth and easy to apply. It's comparable to Rescue Beauty Lounge's formula, which is pretty much the gold standard for me. The polish dries quickly and wears well. I had no bubbling and after two days of wear had almost no sign of tipwear (that second shot of Rampage- the indoor lighting one- that was taken after two days of wear).

Now, these polishes aren't cheap- they're £12.50, which comes to about $19 in US dollars. Cheaper than Chanel but with much better formula and color selection. They are one dollar more than Rescue Beauty Lounge. At least they have great formula. If a polish is going to cost this much, it better apply itself!

The brushes are good, I did not encounter any wayward bristles or application problems with them. The bottles are really pretty- they're a solid bottle that's not going to get knocked over easily and they're a little bit Gothic in design. Beautiful to look at. I especially love the logo and the shape of the cap:


So, overall, the only think I don't like about this brand is the price. Everything else is freakin' awesome. The style is finally something I want rather than something I have to settle for. I hope they release more colors because I have faith in them to create things that appeal to me. Even if they don't release more colors, their line is pretty strong as it is. That also impresses me. The number of good colors outnumbers the safe colors by a lot. Love it.

Illamasqua can be ordered directly from their website. They are a UK company, but they will ship to the US.

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.

OPI Colección de España Fall 2009 and OPI Holiday Wishes Winter 2009 at P'ssion!

If you haven't seen them already, the lovely Emelie of P'ssion has posted promo images of OPI's upcoming fall and winter 2009 collections!

Colección de España Fall 2009

OPI Holiday Wishes Winter 2009

They both look amazing, but I'm most excited about España!  There's a GREEN!!!!!

Thanks for posting, Emelie!

Illamasqua Rampage

Illamasqua Rampage.

Here's that other awesome green I mentioned in the last post. The name of the color is Rampage, which is also what I was about to go on if someone didn't release a deep forest green soon! This is a cooler shade of green which is a good thing because it doesn't make my hands look red like warmer green shades do.

This shade has me speechless. I could rave about it all day. Everything about it is excellent. The shade, the finish, the durability, the application, the brush, the bottle.... This is about as close to perfect as it gets.

Worth pointing out- the second picture (the indoor picture) was taken after two days of wear. Maybe just a hint of tipwear- I'm impressed.

This color has instantly skyrocketed to number two in my list of favorite greens- number one is, of course, the notorious NARS Zulu. Unfortunately, Rampage is not a dupe for Zulu but it's still similar. I am working on a comparison of these new dark greens against Zulu and Rescue Beauty Lounge Recycle, so I'll be sure to post the pictures as soon as I get a chance.

I have three more ridiculously awesome polishes from Illamasqua to post, so stay tuned for those.

May this be the year of the greens!

BB Couture For Nails Green Goblin

It's been rainy and cloudy here for the past week so I haven't really had a chance to swatch anything. I'm enjoying the weather, but it's creating a huge backlog of things I planned on swatching!

However, this beauty arrived today and I had to find a way to get a picture of it. Good picture, bad picture, it didn't matter. I just *had* to show you this. I resorted to using ambient light from my back door, so pardon the reflections.

BB Couture Green Goblin.

When I saw this nail polish, a magical thing happened. I think the bottle may have been glowing. I could faintly hear Handel's Messiah playing in the background. Suddenly, the world was a better place.

Behold, a dark green polish.

This particular shade of green is earthy and mossy. It's dark but not so dark that you can't tell it's green. It has a creme finish but the polish itself has an almost blurry, mottled looking effect- it's not a flat, uniform color. It says 'moss' to me. I love it.

The formula is flawless. Smooth, opaque, not too thick, not too thin. Drying time is good. No bubbles, no shrinkage. No complaints.

I especially love the name. Green Goblin. I love goblins. The best part is, this one won't kick your ass with Bomb Toss!

This has been a very good week for green polish. I have another unbelievably cool green to show you as soon as I can get a decent photo of it. It's from the British brand Illamasqua and it is truly a sight for sore eyes. My cries for deep green polish are being answered.

BB Couture polish can be purchased from OverallBeauty (and there are MULTIPLE greens!!).

Rescue Beauty Lounge 50% off sale and Lippmann Gift With Purchase

Wanted to give you all a heads up on these awesome specials from two of my favorite brands!

First of all, Rescue Beauty Lounge is having a 50% off sale for a couple hours tomorrow. Stephanie at Polish Addict covers all the details in her post, so check it out to get the whole scoop!

Also, I know I'm a day late on this one, but Lippmann Collection is giving away the completely awesome Party Like A Rock Star kit with any $50 purchase. The email does not include a code to enter, so I'm assuming it will be automatically added to all orders $50 and over. I would mention it in the comments section just to be safe. This is also for a limited time- tomorrow is the last day to get the free kit!

Here are a few swatches to inspire you :)

Rescue Beauty Lounge Black Russian

Rescue Beauty Lounge Dead Calm

Rescue Beauty Lounge Frugalista


Rescue Beauty Lounge Locavore

Rescue Beauty Lounge Look Rich, Be Cheap

Rescue Beauty Lounge Recycle

Lippmann Collection Party Like A Rock Star Set


Lippmann Collection Whatever Lola Wants

Lippmann Collection Purple Rain

Lippmann Collection Maneater

Lippmann Collection It's Delovely

Lippmann Collection Pump Up The Jam

Lippmann Collection Shut Up And Drive

Lippmann Collection Rhapsody In White

Lippmann Collection Lady Marmalade

Lippmann Collection Fever


Lippmann Collection P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)