Today I have "Prelude to a Kiss" from Orly's Spring 2012 Cool Romance Collection

First thing's first: the name.  The Name!  Bleeergh- Orly, what were you thinking?  I knew I needed this shade in my life , but I had to cringe when I bought it.  It sounds like the title of a terrible Danielle Steel novel.



But look!

Daylight, Shade:

The color is ultra-flattering.  It's a pale, pinky-peach creme.  I have cool-toned, very pale skin with pink undertones, and Prelude to a Kiss seems like a natural extension of my skin color, but lighter & pinker.  It looks SO clean, and makes me look tanner than I am.  Very soft and pretty, and very work/interview appropriate.

I don't have anything else like it in my collection, but I believe it is an almost-dupe for Essie- A Crewed Interest.

Here it is next to the only other peachy color I have, China Glaze- Sunset Sail:

They look close in the bottle, but....

 

You can see they are very dissimilar (not to mention the micro-shimmer in Sunset Sail which I failed to capture.)

Polishes in a similar vein that I own are Misa- Blush Hour and famous Essie- Ballet Slippers, neither of which is really anywhere close (and neither could be called a peach):

Formula: I was hoping for a 2-coater, and in real life with careful application, I think you could get away with just two.  I did three for swatching purposes.  The first coat is definitely streaky, but a thicker second coat seems to even everything out. It doesn't self-level as much as I would like, but it's not completely unforgiving either. 

This polish is a great palette-cleanser, and I will definitely be keeping it.

Frida was the first polish from Zoya's Gloss collection that I had to try out.  Teal Jelly! (Need I say more?)

I immediately wanted to do a syrup manicure with it. 





 As you can see, Frida is very sheer (being a jelly finish and all), but is actually quite buildable for that happy, squishy look!

On the accent nail, I used Revlon's Blue Mosaic in between the third and fourth layers of Frida, creating the proverbially-known "jelly sandwich."





I loooooove hexagonal glitter! Do you?

One of my favorite ways to disguise tip-wear is to do a quick half-moon design. For guides, I used binder reinforcement labels (like this). Whoever thought to use these is a genius!

I created quite moderate half-moons- I actually would have preferred them to be a little smaller, but it's hard to judge how much nail the labels are covering.


The trick to using sticky labels (or to doing any tape manicure) is to remove the guide/tape while the polish is still wet. On this hand, I did all the nails, and then removed the labels, which let the polish dry too long and the lines were not as crisp as I would have liked. My dominant hand actually came out better because I only did two nails at a time, but I haven't figured out how to photograph it accurately.

The light blue color in this design is "Barracuda," by Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure, which was part of the Tracy Reese Spring 2011 collection:



Later, I decided to add some striping tape- because, why not?

I wanted to delineate the curve of the half-moon with the striping tape, but it's difficult to get the tape to lay flat along a curve. 

Window-filtered daylight:


As you can see, ^ this resulted in a lot of layers (9, I think!) of nail polish, so although it's really cute, I probably won't leave it on too long- it's just too thick-looking.

Oh look, Ham has found something:



A Zoya box! Nail mail time is very exciting for me, but the hound is indifferent. Let's see what's inside...


Zoya is very good to their customers, and frequently has ridiculous, irresistible sales.  Their most recent is a Back to School BOGO, which I believe continues through tomorrow!  If you order 6 polishes (3 of them will be free), you also receive free shipping....so, I believe I got 6 polishes for ~$24.00, which is an awesome deal. 

I decided to pick up the entire Gloss collection (three jelly shades), as well as Blair, Kristen, and LC.

Bottle shots!

Today I have on Butter London's "Trout Pout,"  a color I'd had my eye on for a while before finally capitulating.

It's a melony bright-pink coral, almost neon. It seems to look darker and pinker on nail than in the bottle.   The color is somewhat of a shape-shifter, looking in some lights much more coral/melon; in others it looks like a very bright coral-pink.


Artificial Light:



Natural, window-filtered light:


It reminds me of Essie- Haute As Hello's much pinker cousin.  The next closest I have to compare is also an Essie: Cute As a Button, which is much less neon than either of the other two (artificial light):



Formula: I'm not one to complain about thick formulas (I love them), but Trout Pout was a little difficult to work with- overly thick, too fast-drying, tending to drag and leave patches even by the second coat.  If you can't work very rapidly and complete each coat in 3 strokes, you're going to have problems. It's also not the most self-leveling polish in the world. If not for the patchy drag issues, it could have been a one-coater.


Bottom Line: I think the hassle is worth it for the color.

 What better way to begin this blog, than to share one of my very rare nail art successes?



This is A England "Lady of the Lake" (purple holo) with A England "Saint George" (teal holo), as well as some gold striping tape- the likes of which did not stay on for much longer than 24-hours, sadly.

I can't recommend A England polishes enough.  Their formula is dreamy: self-leveling without being too runny or too gloopy.  It practically applies itself.  Their color range also speaks to me.  Jewel tones, hello!