It's Gray-T

I stopped at a Walgreens on the way home from work on Friday—after I'd stopped at a mall to get some polish from Claire's for a swap and happened upon a 70% off shoe sale, at which I bought these completely impractical but extremely happy-making wedge sandals.


Toes wearing OPI Lunch at the Delhi.

Anyway, at the Walgreens, I spotted a new to me Maybelline display with fall makeup in it, including two polishes, a deep red creme called Divine Wine and a grey subtle shimmer called Gray-T Glamour, which I'm sure they meant to be pronounced "great glamour" but in my head is "gray-tee", like Model T.



Having just been through the stash re-org that showed me I have more than enough reds, including dark ones, I let the wine polish be but grabbed the gray and one of the $1 off coupons from the display. Except the coupon wouldn't ring up and the cashier didn't feel she could override the computer on that because the coupon said something like "on pictured products" and there was no nail polish in the picture on the front of the coupon. Sigh. There was a line of people behind me, and I was tired and ready to get home, so I didn't argue or ask for a manager, I just paid full retail. I sure hope Maybelline didn't set up the coupon to not work for nail polish; that would just be wrong to put it in the display right next to the polish and then not honor it for that. Maybe on a day when I'm feeling more energetic I'll try it again, get another gray to swap.

I was a tiny bit hesitant to try the gray. While most of my newer Express Finish polishes are just fine, a few of them have been awful to apply—not just thick but oddly clumpy, almost like they had sand in them. This one was okay, though; a tiny bit thick, so I only needed two coats, but no grittiness or clumping. Maybe it's the slight shimmer in the formula that helped with that; the ones I've had trouble with have all been cremes. I didn't use topcoat for these swatches, but definitely would for a mani; this polish isn't as shiny on its own as some are and even though I didn't have application issues I think I see a few surface imperfections in the photos that a topcoat would smooth out.





Of course I couldn't resist doing a comparison, even though I couldn't find any greys in my stash with quite the same subtly shimmery finish. (I still haven't decided if it should be grey with an e or gray with an a, so I use both spellings.) For the comp, from my newly populated white/black/grey Helmer drawer, I chose Pure Ice Kiss Me Here (a name I don't get—kiss me here on my grey part?), Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Tailored Creme (from the Dollar Tree), and Rescue Beauty Lounge Stormy.




Top to bottom: Gray-T Glamour, Kiss Me Here (3 coats), Tailored Creme (4), Stormy (2).

No dupes here, though Kiss Me Here and Tailored Creme are not so different from each other that one needs to hunt throughout the land in order to get both. I'm quite liking the Maybelline, with its shimmer and cool-toned base color. There was a report at MakeupAlley that there's a nail polish only display for fall as well, which makes sense since there were ones for spring and summer this year, but I haven't run across that one yet.