Joe Fresh – Gunmetal

Digging through my old photos to find material for the blog…must…not…buy…more…polish…

Joe Fresh’s Gunmetal. A brown-taupe FROST (I know, shock horror!) full of metallic shimmer, and a little blue and pink shimmer if I look closely enough. I don’t know. Frosts are really not my taste. This one wasn’t too horrible, as brush strokes are minimal – you know I can’t stand brush strokes. I think frost shimmers are just a little much on me.

What I love about Joe Fresh polishes though, is that they are affordable and of great quality. So even if you end up buying a colour you don’t love, you’re not out too much money. Though I’ll probably end up giving this to someone who appreciates frosts more than I do.

Maybelline Express Finish – Cool Couture

Bought this several months ago and never got around to reviewing it. I think it’s limited edition as well, so hopefully you can still find this!

Maybelline’s Cool Couture, from the Express Finish line. A stunner and truly a unique colour from a mainstream drugstore line. I can honestly say I never expected Maybelline to come out with such a sophisticated, yet trendy polish. The base is a cool gray creme with a fair amount of “hidden” blue-teal shimmer running throughout. This is the gray/teal sister of Chanel’s Paradoxal, which has a smokey dark gray-purple base with purple shimmer. Yes, I just compared Maybelline to Chanel!

The Maybelline Express Finish brush is great. Not the widest out there, but decidedly flat (which makes it much easier to work with, at least for me). The formula on this was fine too – two coats, no dragging or opacity issues. I’m a happy camper.

Dior – Rock Coat

I cannot tell you how many bottles of nail polish I got for my birthday. I guess that’s just what happens when you have a lot of girlfriends who know you write a nail polish blog :p Thanks everyone!

Consequently, I have a lot of new material to blog about that I really should get around to. This is one of my more recent gifts (thanks Chu!).

Rock Coat over The One That Got Away

OPI The One That Got Away by itself

Dior Rock Coat (shown in the first image over OPI’s The One That Got Away, ) is a super sheer jelly gray-black that’s designed to be used over other colours as a top coat. It turns the existing colour into a smokey, vampier version of itself.

In theory, a really cool idea. I’m all for changing up my nail colour, especially if I’ve had the colour on for a few days and want to jazz it up without applying a new shade. However, you have be quite careful and strategic with Rock Coat. Getting the exact right amount of polish on the brush is important in order to achieve a streak-free finish. Even so, it’s sort of a hit-or-miss product – I HATE brushstrokes of any kind, so this kind of variability in application really irks me.

A lot of this has to do with the type of polish you choose to use underneath, though! I’ve had great luck with it over high-shimmer foil polishes such as OPI’s The One That Got Away (pictured). It turns the bright glittery polish into a more glowy, “dark on the edges, light in the centre” finish that I love so much. It’s pretty difficult to use over light pastel creme colours though – the streaks show up like crazy.

Essie – Power Clutch

Don’t feel like writing a preamble today, so…I won’t :)

Essie Power Clutch is from their Fall 2011 collection “Brand New Bag”. I bought this thinking I needed a true slate gray creme polish to add to my collection. I was…wrong?

The official shade description calls this a “striking, deep gray-green”. I didn’t believe the description when I bought the colour. In the store, it was clearly gray. But upon closer inspection, this is certainly a gray that leans a bit to the green side. Can’t see it? It’s hard to tell in the photo, but this is definitely not a blue gray or even a true gray. Quite a unique colour, I’d say! The green doesn’t come out to say hello all the time, but when it does, it’s a pleasant surprise.

As for application, I don’t know if I bought an old bottle or what, but it was the tiniest bit too thick. The brush wasn’t able to spread itself easily and I had just had an all-round nightmare trying to apply this the first time around. A few drops of polish thinner did the trick, though, and it applied smoothly and beautifully.

OPI – Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous

OPI’s Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous is from their Swiss Collection for Fall 2010. What a fabulous colour! A gorgeous charcoal (reminds me of pencil lead) polish chock full of foil shimmer. It glitters beautifully in the sunlight, but isn’t gritty to the touch at all, and removal is pretty easy too. At two coats, application gave me no troubles at all. Not sure what else to say about this. It’s quite a straightforward colour and not much to write home about. If you’re into gunmetal foil nail polishes, you’ll certainly love this!

The one that started it all: Chanel Paradoxal

And by “started it all”, I mean it’s the one that confirmed that I officially had a problem hobby.

Chanel Paradoxal is already a Chanel classic in its own right, right up there with Particulière, Black Satin, and Blue Satin. This is the first polish release for which I waited with bated breath. And then actively sought after. I even tried to get my brother to buy this for me in France (he couldn’t find it. Still don’t really understand how French Chanel beauty stores drop the ball on new releases, but whatevs). After weeks of lusting after it, I finally found it in the form of two bottles of Paradoxal I accidentally received for my birthday (one from my mom, one from my aunt). Well, we overshot the goal a bit but at least I got there!

Holy effing crap do I ever love Paradoxal. Am I hyping this up too much? I hope not! This polish is definitely not as flashy as the bottle suggests—the smoky dark purple-y gray creme base dominates, making the polish appear as a creme from further away. Almost none of that intense bright violet shimmer would appear on the nail.

But it’s still so freaking pretty. You don’t always crazy in-your-face shimmer for a polish release to do its job. Elegant, yet edgy. Conservative, yet has a hidden bit of excitement in the shimmer. The bright violet shimmer keeps Paradoxal from being a boring flat taupe-y purple gray that’s been reimagined hundreds of times. Especially if you look at your nails under sunlight or incandescent light, the shimmer jumps out at you from the centre of the nail.

Formula? Great. Applies like buttah. Two coats and you’re golden. Brush – like it a lot! It’s a traditional brush (which I usually find just average), but strangely, I found I could control this one very easily. Although that could be due to its exceptional consistency.

Now, my point of contention…Chanel polishes are not cheap, obviously. Can’t remember the exact price but it’s gotta be at least $20CAD a pop. That’s not even the problem (after all, I didn’t pay for it, hahaha). Chanel polishes are just not ideal in the longevity department. I haven’t actually had this chip on me, but it’s because I don’t wear the same colour for extended periods of time. But on the second day of wear, you can already notice very noticeable tipwear, and it really gets on my nerves. Feh.

Sigh. I guess nothing truly is perfect. For the sophistication of the colour alone, though, it instantly made it onto my all-time favourites list!

Essie at Shoppers Drug Mart & Chinchilly

I know this is either really nerdy in a nail polish context, or just plain ol’ girly. But I got SO EXCITED yesterday when I walked into Shoppers Drug Mart and discovered they were selling Essie nail polishes. Yes, SDM has been selling Essie’s for a while, but it was always put amongst the other nail polishes and took up a pathetic two racks. Also, the colour range was super boring (though I did get Sexy Divide from it, as well as Sugar Daddy which is probably my all-time favourite sheer pink – that’s for another post), consisting of like four near-identical sheer pinks and more saturated red/pink cremes. Yawn.

But this was different! SDM has the same Essie set-up as Wal-Mart does (at least in the U.S.) after being bought out by L’Oreal around a year ago. The bottles are slightly different – there’s a sticker on the top of the lid that has the shade’s name, a barcode sticker on the lid, as well as a sticker that has the brand name on it. The best part is – there are so many more Essie shades now. There are literally at least 5 times more colours to choose from. I was going NUTS at the Essie rack.

Yes, you can buy Essie’s elsewhere, but only in few salons, and I can’t think of a store that offers this much in colour selection, maybe apart from Shifeon (which is grossly overpriced btw, blech).

Omg! Other exciting thing! Shoppers also has the new Essie collections! I saw A French Affair polishes there as well. Didn’t buy anything from it (almost got Coat Azure but resisted).

Okay now that my obsessing is over, and I’m sure you’ve just skipped the above paragraphs, let’s get on to what I did buy.

Essie Chinchilly. Finally a polish name I actually like. I’d say that it’s almost a true gray with the tiniest bit of taupe. In some lights I see a lavender undertone. In others I see green. So I’m forced to conclude that it’s a neutral gray. When I bought this, I was scared that it would be too similar to OPI You Don’t Know Jacques, which is my favourite dirty taupe colour, but Chinchilly is much lighter and more grey. It is SO pretty. I love how grays are still neutral – won’t get any weird looks from people, but still remains somewhat edgy. And it goes with every outfit! Not that I’ve ever let that stop me from wearing a bright colour that totally clashes.

I love Essie’s. They apply effortlessly (the brush tends to get too much polish though, so wipe it off well before applying!), and dry to such a shiny finish. Sigh. They are $11.99 though, which hurts my wallet a bit. Hopefully the change to carrying more Essie colours doesn’t mean Shoppers will stop doing promotions on them! I always used to buy them when they were discounted to $8.99. Also, strangely the new bottle’s volume is 1.5 ml less than the original one, which was 15ml. Strange.

So, uh, to wrap up, I love Essie, this colour rocks, the thing about Shoppers was the best thing to happen to me all week (kind of sad), the end.