Orly Jealous Much Comparison

I think we've established that I have plenty of mint green cremes (see Wheel D and Wheel F2 for examples). Thus my purchase of Orly Jealous Much, the mint green creme from this spring's Cool Romance collection, might seem puzzling, but we've also established that I can justify pretty much any purchase from one of my usual suppliers (I have not yet crossed the line into paying huge markups for HTFs on auction sites and such, so I do have some self control). In this case, the points in favor of getting it were: I got a price break on the boxed set of the whole collection, Orly is one of my favorite brands/bottles, and of course there's always "I will do a comparison and help people with their own purchasing decisions".

Here's Jealous Much on its own. Not surprisingly for a lightish creme, it took three coats for full coverage and settling. It dries with a pretty good shine, too, though if I were wearing this for a full mani of course I'd use topcoat because I just can't go back to waiting ages for a mani to dry. For the longest time, I avoided using quick dry top coat because I'd read in some magazine that those types of topcoats chipped faster. Perhaps that was a lie or perhaps formulas improved since that was written, because once I got my first week's wear out of a quick dry topcoat I have not looked back. Sorry I got distracted there; back to the mint. Here's the Orly:





I held my nails up next to the different tips on the mint wheels and pulled out the two that seemed closest in hue to the Orly: American Apparel Office and China Glaze Re-fresh Mint.



The other two mints were also three coaters. Office is really close to Jealous Much; it's just an eeensy bit darker but not so much that I could say which was which once my hand got more than a foot from my face. Re-freshmint is noticeably lighter than the other two but even that difference is on the subtle side. Top to bottom below—Office, Jealous Much, Re-fresh Mint.



Left to right below—Jealous Much, Re-fresh Mint, Office, Jealous Much.



I can make a case for needing both the China Glaze and one of the other two if you're a mint green lover, but even I can't defend having both the Orly and the American Apparel. The Orly is my pick of the two because the bottle feels sturdier (and it definitely holds more), the handle is easier to grip, and I'm more comfortable with Orly's marketing materials. Sure, the model on the Cool Romance display doesn't appear to be wearing pants, but it's not sleazy in any way.



At some point, I hope to swatch the others in this collection but so many other things have arrived in my stash recently (okay, they arrived because I bought them) I'm not sure when that might happen. If you've got particular polishes or comparisons you're interested in seeing before this collection sells out, let me know in the comments.