I've got some bottle spam for you today because, in the past three months, I've done what I refer to as "store hopping" and acquired a lot of polish, most of which I'll probably never wear but will happily franken with. I've managed to hit Dollar Tree, Sally Beauty, Meijers, two CVS, two Walgreens, Walmart and Kmart, broke my $2.00 per bottle limit and come to the conclusion that no one restocks often enough and Walgreens is boring. As often as I've been there, I continue to expect to find something special and am irritated when I don't.
Walgreens
is useful for Sinful Colors, Wet 'n' Wild and more recently, Essie which is where I've picked up several bottles of
Shine of the Times from their Luxe Effects collection for $8.00- that remains the most I've paid for a single bottle. I guess everyone is over the orange-to-green flakes because they're always in stock. Inset shows the color shift over black in sunlight.
The only new Sinful to come home with me is
Kissy although I knew on sight that it wasn't all that different from Wet 'n' Wild's
Teal of Fortune or their
Deeper Dive from the Spoiled line. While the inset shows it over white and in sunlight,
Kissy is vibrant green-blue layered over black
. Sinful Colors sell for $1.99.
I also picked up Sally Hansen (Insta-Dri) Uptempo Plum and Punk Rock from the Hard as Nails line but neither are as remarkable as they appeared in-store.
Punk Rock ended up being a different duochrome than I thought, somewhere between Sinful Colors Love Nails & Gorgeous, one of those slight aqua to blue duos, sheer like the rest of the line. The price was right, $1.99 and it could be good to franken with so I’m not too disappointed.
I am disappointed with Uptempo Plum though. It was in the discount basket and marked down to $2.95 so I picked it up more than once before deciding to buy it, won over by it’s appearance. In the bottle, it sparkled and seemed to have a slight purple to orange-ish duochrome but none of that translated to the nail when I applied it. Instead it was a vampy plum color with little sparkle and no discernable color shift. Now I know why it was in the basket.
Insets show both colors over white in sunlight.
The point of going to CVS was to check the Confetti brand for anything new and to find the Spoiled brand. Confetti had the same old colors I've already picked over but I found the Spoileds and noticed that most of them look like re-bottled Wet 'n' Wilds or Sinful Colors. I bought most of the glitters and a few of the shimmers with duplicates for $1.99 each, brought them home, swatched them and hated every single brush instantly- but I was warned, having read on others blogs that they were abysmal. All swatches were taken in full sunlight over white.
From left to right: Pet My Peacock, Shuffle the Deck, Jewelry Heist, Trust Fund Baby, Cougar Attack and Use Protection
From left to right: Deeper Dive, The Parking Meteor has Expired, Vitamin C, Ants in My Pants, Are Mermaids Real and Shrimp on the Barbie
Comparisons?
Deeper Dive = Teal of Fortune, Sinful Colors Kissy
The Parking Meteor has Expired = Sinful Colors What's Your Name and See You Soon
Vitamin C = 9.0.2.1.0range
Shrimp on the Barbie = Waves of Enchantment (LE, Mermaids Cove collection)
When I went out in February with my sister, we went to Sally Beauty where I purchased my first
Orly polishes (again breaking my $2 limit) and a few other brands that were marked down. Along with
Orly's
Meet Me Under the Mistletoe and
Fantasea, I got Finger Paints
Comets Collar, Savvy
Champagne for $1.99 a piece and three little bottles of a purple to green Sally Girl duochrome, $0.99 each.
Insets show polishes in sunlight. For Comets Collar, the polish is over black and white. Both Champagne and the Sally Girl are over white.
I can't remember where now but I saw
Orly's
Fantasea on a blog and had to have it because that orange with purple is an unusual combination. I
chose Meet Me Under the Mistletoe because of the sparkly duochrome. The bottles are huge, I had no idea! They’re only 3ml more than the standard size but they even feel huge holding them in my hand and the size offsets the $4.00+ price. I like the colors so much I feel the urge to go buy more so it’s probably good I go there just once a year.
Fantasea's inset on top shows the polish layered over black and white, the next two captured the color shift from gentle orange to reddish-pink. Mistletoe's duochrome, shown here over white, was a little harder to bring out but there's a shift from a green to a more blue color.
Meijers yielded several finds- the limited edition Color Icon polishes from Wet 'n' Wild, the Studio M and Pure Ice brands and three glitters from Milani.
Milani's Teal, Hot Pink and Gems. I might've been able to come close to duping these but large size non bleeding glitters are always good to have lying around.
The Wet 'n' Wild Color Icons I found on a shelf at the end of the aisle. There wasn't a display anymore, just 6 bottles crammed in between other miscellaneous cosmetics and I grabbed them all. Unfortunately I didn't get
Bow In My Presence but I did get an extra each of two others. $2.79 each.
The Crown Is Mine, Speak When Spoken To, Born Into Privilege and Jewels for Your Highness
The Studio M I bought were copies except for
Lust which could qualify for a polish version of TKB Trading’s
Libra Blues pigment, blue based with purple interference.
Electronica is a deep but not quite vampy purple with small particles of blue and pink mixed in.
Total Mystery is not quite as blue as it looks but I'm not sure how to describe it other than saying that there is a slight purple tone to it and it sparkles without being a metallic finish.
Total Mystery and
Electronica are layered over black here while
Lust is shown over both black and white. They were $2.49.
Electronica, Total Mystery and Lust
In my local grocery store, Remke's, I found some polishes that surprised me because normally the store has little in way of cosmetics.
These are from Diamond Cosmetics and I bought them for $3.00 something purely for the glow-in-the-dark novelty. They are colored in the bottle but extremely sheer so even several coats wouldn't change the color of the polish it's layered over.
Glo Worm Green, Tangeglo, Pink Flaminglo, Blue Moonglo
These are two "Artist Expressions" sets from Nailene, simply called
Warm, left and
Cool on the right. I didn't think to photograph the packaging but you can see them on Nailene's website.
Each comes with a glitter striper, a small vial with coordinating holographic glitter and a sparkly duochrome topcoat which is why I decided to buy them. The insets display the color shift of the topcoat when layered over black, photographed in sunlight. $8.00+
During a trip to Kmart, I found most of the newer Jordana Glitters. Initially I grabbed a bottle of each color but reconsidered and wiped out the rest. When I went back the next weekend, they still hadn't restocked so I almost feel bad for whoever came in after me wanting the same thing… I said
almost, I'm a believer in buying in bulk the first time. $2.99 each.
In the top row: Funky Gold Town, Celestial, Magenta Magic, Cosmic and L.A. City Nights. In the bottom row: Sequins, Celebration, Blue Bash and Copper Blaze.
And my last purchase from Kmart for $1.99 was a solitary NYC polish,
Broadway Burgundy Frost which is neither burgundy colored or frosty. Seriously? A good comparison would be Sally Hansen
Red Carpet, same concept but with less glitter. Inset shows polish over black and white, in full sunlight.
My Dollar Tree finds were Fingers Nail Art pens to be used for everything
but nail art (I draw on paper, not fingernails) and the Sally Hansen Chrome pens. I bought every one they had and they haven’t had any since, sorry to say.
Green Chrome, Fuchsia Chrome, Red Chrome, Pink Chrome and Silver Chrome
Caution,
Dare,
Boy Crazy and
Hottie
Dollar General is alright but the Dollar Tree seems to have a better selection and more variation, the point being that you never know what you may find so it’s always worth stopping in. You spend $20, you walk out with 20 things, that's my kind of store. -MK
