Showing posts with label taupe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label taupe. Show all posts

Saturday, May 9, 2009

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!!

Friday, May 8, 2009

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 :)





Thursday, April 23, 2009

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!

Monday, January 26, 2009

Random Zoya Swatches (Warning: Very Picture Heavy.)

These are for the lovely Phyrra, but since I know that a lot of you are planning on doing the Zoya Polish Exchange, I thought I'd post them on here :)

If I had to pick favorites, these are my favorite Zoya polishes (in the order they appear on the website, for handy browsing!):

Gaia
Sparkle Gloss
Snowsicle
Angella
Glimmer
Shimmer
Pasha
Vegas Freeze
Zara
Malia
Venus
Areetha
Kylie2
Manhattan Mixer
Creamy
OC Cooler
Gabrielle
Ginger
Lianne
Sienna
Annie
Elke
Soho Punch
Kiki
Whitney
Audrina
Jinx
Richelle
Colette
Shivon
Kaufda
Beyonnce
Anastasia
Pru
Kalista
Evangeline
Ivy
Jade
Delilah
Jacy
Colby
Mikka
Rihana
Blair
Sloane
Kierra
Rea
Lael
Roxy
Ki
Hope
Yasmeen
Tangy
Irene
Suvi
Southbeach Ice
Yummy
Jo
Kotori
Tart
Indigo
Trixie
Harley
Freja
Angelina
Casey
Raven

Most of those I've posted on here at some time or another, use the search function to find past swatches. Here are a bunch of swatches I'm pretty sure I haven't posted:


Beyonnce. Duochrome.


Blyss

Paris


Ginger

Eve

Evangeline

Delilah (View full size!)

Aria

Angella

Gabrielle

Harmonie

Ivy

Jade (View Full Size!)

Lindsay
Lillith

Kiki

Kaufda



Juno. Slight duochrome.

Sienna. (Incredibly stunning.)

Pasha

Milla


Marry / Marry J (Bottle says Marry, website lists it is Marry J)

Roxy

Venus

Tama

Vegas Freeze


*whew* That's a lot of swatches!

Now go forth, be conquered.....




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