Textures from Foreign Lands

I'm wrapping up this shortened edition of Texture Week with some polishes I bought during my recent travels. First up, a few I got in Canada last weekend (plus a domestic buy for comparison's sake). Left to right: Revlon Diamond Texture (from Rexall in Canada), GOSH Frosted Silver (from Super Drug Shoppers Drug Mart in Canada), GOSH Frosted Purple (ditto), Orly Plum Pixel (from Ulta in the US). Revlon I can get easily near home, of course, but I haven't come across this new core shade anywhere before (though I admit I haven't been looking super hard). GOSH I've only seen in the US in a couple of super fancy Walgreens stores.



Here they are on the nail, in the same order as above:



The silver ones were three coats and the brownish purple ones were two. The Revlon silver seems slightly finer-grained than the GOSH, but it's not something you'd notice unless you were looking for differences. The GOSH purple is a bit coarser-grained than the Orly but again it's not really that noticeable; the colors are pretty darn close.







The next two textures I have to share part of my haul from Minsk, IsaDora Sugar Crush in Ocean Crush and Purple Crush.



Ocean Crush is a turquoise with gold microglitter. Purple Crush is a slightly dusty purple with a medium hex glitter and microglitter. I used two coats of each, and you can see that Purple Crush is perfectly opaque but Ocean Crush still shows a hint of visible nail line.



I still haven't figured out how to hold two bottles at once.







Also in Minsk, I got three textures from the Lux Visage Sahara collection. I don't know if these have names since I can't read the words on the labels, but they do have numbers. Left to right: 67 (blue), 55 (orange), 65 (purple).



All of these needed only two coats and have microglitter in with the texture. 55 Orange has yellow glitter; 65 Purple has pink glitter, and 67 Blue has silver shimmer. I liked these a lot; if I'd tried them before I left Minsk I would have been very tempted to go back and scoop up more colors, luggage weight limits be damned.







And now I'll wrap up with a very special polish I got in Canada last Saturday: Girly Bits Bette Davis Eyes, which is part of the 80s Girl Bands collection that opens for pre-order on June 2nd at noon EST. It was very exciting to get a preview of the collection as part of our workshop and even more exciting to be able to buy some of them. Bette Davis Eyes is a light silver fine grained textured shimmer. There are tiny pops of rainbow color in the shimmer, which makes it more interesting. My swatch is three coats.





I know not everyone will want to wear Bette Davis Eyes textured, so I added topcoat to show how it looks shiny.





And finally here's a low light photo blurred to show how pretty the pops of color are in the shimmer:



I bought one more color from the 80s Girl Bands collection and Pam kindly gave each us a another color of our choice to review, but those aren't textured so they'll have to wait 'til next week.

Textures from L'Oreal and Revlon

Three more textured collections today as this Texture mini-Week rolls on. First up is the L'Oreal Miss Denim group of six limited edition textured cremes: Vintage Rose, Indigo Classic, Skinny Jeans, Blue My Mind, Distressed Turquoise, and Jean & Tonic. I've only seen these at Bed Bath & Beyond so far but I'm sure they'll show up more places soon.



Vintage Rose is a vibrant warm pink.





Jean & Tonic is a teal green.





The remaining four Miss Denim colors are all blues, so I did an ombre with them. Left to right below: Distressed Turquoise (light blue), Blue My Mind (medium blue), Skinny Jeans (bright periwinkle), and Indigo Classic (navy). Skinny Jeans doesn't quite fit into this ombre, what with its purple-leaning ways.





All of the L'Oreal Miss Denim shades were two coats. The base colors are quite shiny which makes a nice effect to see the light bouncing off the areas in between the texture particles.

Revlon has done some textured creams, too, in the form of their Leather polishes from the Uptown Tweeds & Downtown Leather limited edtion display which hit stores this spring. There are four colors: Leather Skinnies (grey), Rock Chic (blue), Downtown (deep purple), and Motorcycle Jacket (black).



Four colors, four fingers; of course I Skittled them. These are very pigmented; I used two coats for my swatches but I really think I could have stopped at one from an opacity standpoint, though of course that would have meant less texture building up. Like the L'Oreals, the base colors in these Revlons are shiny. The texture particles appear to be smaller than the ones in the L'Oreal textures.





Finally, I have the eight glitters in the Revlon Haute Rocks LE collection, which they describe as "pebbled texture". Top row: Seychelles Sand, Brazilian Beach, Moroccan Oasis, Caribbean Cove. Bottom: Tahitian Toast, Balinese Bay, Lana'i Lagoon, Mayan Riviera.



Eight is divisible evenly by four, so I bet you can guess what's coming—yep, two sets of Skittle swatches. Top to bottom below: Seychelles Sand, Brazilian Beach, Moroccan Oasis, Caribbean Cove (all three coats).







Top to bottom below: Tahitian Toast, Balinese Bay, Lana'i Lagoon, Mayan Riviera (all three coats except for Lana'i Lagoon, which was two).







I am not sure what to make of these pebbled textures. They're not any more textured than any other chunky glitters. They were accompanied in the display by Revlon's matte topcoat, but I did not use any on my swatches, as these glitters dry matte all by themselves. I didn't think I was doing particularly thin coats, but almost all of these look like they could benefit from layering over a base color. Yet I have seen swatches of them looking pretty much opaque, like in the ones Tracey did for Nouveau Cheap. Maybe I needed to do more dabbing than stroking? I think I need to play with these more.

Tomorrow to wrap up Texture Week: textures I got in foreign lands such as Canada.

Textures from Nicole by OPI, Rimmel, and Sally Hansen

Yesterday I mentioned that I was planning to write about textures, and today that's just what I'm going to do. Last week, there was a post at Jezebel titled Textured Nails Are a Horrible Trend That Needs to Die ASAP. I know about this only because it was linked in a polish-centric Facebook group I'm in, and FB decided to show it to me on my news feed, which I took as a sign I should read it, which I did. I get not liking textured nails—or glitter or frost or whatever—but saying a trend must die seems quite a bit overwrought, as my friend Lizzy says. I was planning to do another texture week anyway, but this article seemed like a good reason to move it up in the schedule. Don't like textured polish, Jezebel? Here's a whole bunch of it!

Because Wednesday is rather late to start a week, and I had more than enough unpublished texture swatches to fill a whole regular week, I'm going to have to put more than one collection in each post. Today I have Nicole by OPI Rougles, Rimmel Sweetie Crush, and Sally Hansen Sugar Shimmer.

The Nicole by OPI Rougles consists of four shades: Sand in My Shoe (yellow), On What Grounds (pastel teal), I'm Stucco on You (pastel purple), and Rock the Look (pink). These were an early spring release this year.



Unlike the NOPI Gumdrops, which were shimmery/glittery textures, these Rougles have more of a matte look to them, with very tiny colored speckles mixed into the texture. They reminded me of speckled Easter egg candy. On the nail, they covered in two coats.









As you can see, the texture in these Rougles is very fine-grained. They're bumpy, yes, but not to the extent they're going to catch on things. The texture gives these sweet pastel colors a bit of an edge. I liked the effect enough that I wore I'm Stucco on You for a full mani; I layered it over an existing pale purple mani and for some reason failed to take photos until I had some tipwear (if I recall correctly, I put on the Rougles while I was out of town).



Rimmel Sweetie Crush has five colors: Sherbet Sweetheart (yellow), Fizzy Appplelicious (pastel green), Blueberry Whizz (blue), Violet Swizzle (pastel purple), and Candyfloss Cutie (pink). This was also a spring release this year; in my area, it showed up several weeks later than the NOPI Roughles.



Because there are five of these, my thumb got to get in on the swatching action. I needed used three coats of each color; the palest ones were still a tiny bit sheer at that point but wearable.



These Sweetie Crush shades are fine grained shimmery textures with an almost pearly look to the base colors. The yellow and green ones the standouts here, despite their sheerness, as I haven't seen textures in those hues before.



The Sally Hansen Sugar Shimmer colors are a permanent line (well, as permanent as anything from Sally Hansen) that got added to the lineup late last year. These are similar to the limited edition Sugar Coat colors that came out last summer, first in a group of textured cremes and then second release that had textured cremes and textured shimmers. There are eight colors in the Sugar Shimmer line; I have six of them to share today: Mint Tint, Work of Tart, Sugar Cloud, Berried Under, Sugar Plum, and Cinny Sweet.



These are the shades from the Texture Three Ways display; I haven't checked to see if any of my stores have stocked the remaining two in the line, Taffy Tart (dark blue) and Gummy Grape (purple).

I Skittled the three cool colors. Top to bottom below: Mint Tint, Work of Tart, Sugar Cloud, Mint Tint.



Mint Tint is a pastel green that reads like a creme texture, though in the bottle I could see some golden shimmer. It has the best coverage of this trio; I used two coats. Work of Tart is a teal blue with golden shimmer that show on the nail in most lights, probably because the base is more sheer than Mint Tint. I used three thin coats and feel like that wasn't quite enough. Sugar Cloud is a pastel blue with pink shimmer that's even more sheer than Work of Tart. I used three coats and there's still quite a visible nail line.







The three warm shades also got Skittled. Top to bottom below: Berried Under, Sugar Plum, Cinny Sweet, Berried Under.



Berried Under is a purpley pink with fine gold shimmer that disappears on the nail. I used two coats. Sugar Plum is a dusty rose with golde shimmer that does show up on the nail. It's more sheer than Berried Under; my swatch is three coats and I feel like a fourth would have made it look better. Cinny Sweet is a raspberry with very shy pink shimmer; my swatch is two coats.







I feel like maybe Sally Hansen is spreading herself so thin releasing new stuff all the time that she didn't take the time to make her textures the best they could be; some are too opaque to show the shimmer, some are too sheer to cover the nail in a reasonable number of coats. The sheer ones could be used for layering, so that's something.

That's all the texture for today; tomorrow I'm planning to share textured shades from L'Oreal and Revlon.