Revlon Spring Minis

You may have noticed that I took a longer weekend break from posting than usual, but I had a good reason: I was in Illinois to attend my niece's wedding. She was beautiful and happy, the weather was great, and I got to spend time with family I don't see often enough, so that's all good. My nails, I'm sorry to say, did not look so great, but of course that was a very minor annoyance that affected only me. I'll have that story another day, after I've gotten the photos off my camera. Today I've got some swatches I did before I left of one of the Revlon mini sets they released this spring. (You can see the display in this entry.) This set is made up of Waterfall, a light blue shimmer, Sparkle, a silver and holo glitter, and Garden, a lime green creme.



When I swatched Revlon Blue Lagoon to see how it stacked up against Chanel Riva, Elizabelle wondered how the blue in this set compares to Blue Lagoon. Having now had a chance to get them side by side, I can say they're close enough to be declared dupes. Here are the bottles, Waterfall on top and Blue Lagoon on the bottom:



And here they are on the nail, again Waterfall on top and Blue Lagoon on the bottom, three coats of each:



If I stared at them long enough, I could almost convince myself that one was an eensy weensy bit darker or had ever so slightly larger shimmer particles, but I'm pretty sure that was all in my head. If you've got Blue Lagoon, you don't need Waterfall to complete your Revlon blues set unless you collect by name instead of color/finish.

The next one in the set, Sparkle, also looked familiar. Here it is with its big sister Belle from the Just Add Sparkle collection that came out near the end of last year. Both have small silver and transluscent holo glitter mixed with large silvery holo hex glitter in a clear base.



I layered two coats of each over the light blue twins, and it was hard to tell them apart at a glance. Some nails got more hexes on them than others, but that was an application issue; the bottles seemed to be equally hex-rich.


Top to bottom: Belle (over Blue Lagoon), Sparkle (over Waterfall), Belle, Sparkle.

The only difference I could see was the small silver glitter in Belle was mostly square, while Sparkle's was rounded. (You might have to click on the picture to make it big in order to see this yourself.) I don't think that's enough of a difference to make Sparkle a must have if you've already got Belle.


Top to bottom: Sparkle (over Waterfall), Belle (over Blue Lagoon).

So if neither Waterfall nor Sparkle are truly the "fresh new shades" promised by the display, what about Garden? Here it is on its own (two coats, no top coat):



If Revlon's made this color before, I sure don't have it. What I do have is other bright greens, so for comparison purposes, I pulled out a couple of them: Orly Green Apple and Sally Hansen Complete Salon Grass Slipper.




Top to bottom: Grass Slipper (2 coats), Garden (2), Green Apple (3).

Green Apple is the odd one out in this trio; it's lighter and softer than the other two. Grass Slipper is a touch deeper and yellower than Garden, but I don't think it's a big enough difference to make a person go running out to find the mini set if the Sally Hansen is already in one's stash.

Even though none of these minis fills in a gap in my stash (admittedly a hard task at this point), I can't feel bad for buying them because I do like the bottles quite a lot. They're a good size for minis (.25 fl. oz./7.5 ml), and the tall handle makes them much easier to manage than other minis I could mention (*cough* OPI *cough*). Even the fat-on-the-bottom shape that I'm not so fond of in the full sized Revlons doesn't bother me in the smaller footprint of the mini. And if you don't already have big bottles of these colors/finishes, the minis are a good value even at their full retail of around $8.