L'Oreal Summer 2012 Collection

In my end of April display post I said I'd be buying the two glitter polishes from the L'Oreal summer display as soon as I saw them on sale. As it turned out, when I saw them on sale, there was also an in-store coupon $2 off, which worked just the way I'm sure they hoped it would: I bought all four polishes in the collection. Left to right below: Pink Carat, Precious Coral, Silver Sparkle, and Gorgeous Gold.



Pink Carat is a warm medium pink creme. I used three coats but if I might have been able to get away with two. Ice Queen had trouble with the formula of her bottle of this, but mine behaved. Not sure if I got lucky or she got unlucky or what.



Surprisingly, I didn't find any dupes for this in a quick flip through my nail wheels. It's in the same color family as OPI Charged Up Cherry and Sephora by OPI Diva in Training but not a match for either. Maybe I need to study my coral wheels a bit harder since it seems I should have something like this already.

Precious Coral is a red-leaning orange creme. Like with the pink, I used three coats of this but could have probably stopped at two.



Again, I didn't find any exact matches for this in my stash. It's similar to Orly Poison Apple and OPI Off With Her Red, though it's more orange than either of those.

Enough with the cremes, let's get to the exciting stuff: glitter! Silver Sparkle is so many things besides silver. I put on three coats, no topcoat, and then proceeded to take many, many photos because it was just so pretty. The base is pale, pale silver, and it's packed with small metallic glitter and larger iridescent glitter that glows in soft blue, green, and gold.







I added a layer of topcoat and took some more photos just so I could keep looking at Silver Sparkle. If I were getting married again, I think I'd wear this polish.





At three coats of Silver Sparkle I could see just a hint of visible nail line, and I bet you know what that means. Yep, layering experiments. Here's one coat of Silver Sparkle over Pink Carat. I don't see much silver in this combination; the warm pink base brings out the gold and colorful side of Silver Sparkle.



And here's Silver Sparkle over black (Wet 'n' Wild Wild Shine Black Creme). This is one coat of the glitter on all nails, but on my ring finger I used a lighter touch and left a couple bare spots, which normally would bother me but in this case makes me think this polish might be the key to doing "galaxy nails" the easy way. The black base really deepened the colors of the iridescent glitter.



If there hadn't been one more polish in the collection that I needed to swatch, I might have kept this combination on, I liked it so much.





Gorgeous Gold had a tough act to follow. I was hoping it would be a gold version of Silver Sparkle, despite it not really looking like that in the bottle. I used two coats plus topcoat, and it's no Silver Sparkle. It's a gold shimmer base with several sizes of gold hex glitter. The base is slightly yellow-greenish, which provides some contrast with the warmer gold of the glitter.





Gorgeous Gold is not so gorgeous on me. Look what Narcissistic Nails did with it, though: a sponged ombre with a milky pink and a copper finished with this gold. Looks great on her!

If you couldn't tell, Silver Sparkle is far and away my favorite of these four. It might even be a Top 20 of 2012 candidate. The two cremes are fine. The gold is not for me.