Friday, September 26, 2014

Selections from SpaRitual Wander Collection

Standing at Ulta looking at the display for the SpaRitual Wander collection for fall, my first instinct was of course to grab one of each color and go check out. My next instinct was to get none of them because they weren't on sale and I didn't have a coupon (or not a good coupon; I don't recall exactly since I'm at Ulta so much the trips tend to blend together). Then I managed to find that underutilized part of my brain that practices moderation and picked my three favorites and bought those. Left to right: Starry Night, Arroyo, Nomad.



I started with Starry Night, a brown shimmer. I think this an overused name for nail polish, though I must admit none of the others I own are brown, so that's different. My swatch is two coats, no topcoat. The labels on all the colors in this collection call the finish "sandy matte shimmer", which leads one to believe there will be texture, but this must be the finest-grained sand in all the land, as it's hardly bumpy at all. I'd call the finish closer to satin than matte, too.



Never mind the satin versus matte issue, though, because Starry Night looks much better with a shiny topcoat, which brings out the golden/olive shimmer.





In direct low light, the shimmer pops even more:



Arroyo is a dusty rose with gold shimmer, and has the same finish as Starry Night. Again, I swatched at two coats.





The change in Arroyo with topcoat wasn't as dramatic, though it did look nice.



In direct low light, the gold sparkled quite nicely:



Nomad is an olive green with gold and pink shimmer, and is also a two-coater.





Here's Nomad with topcoat:





And here's Nomad in direct low light:



I'm happy with my choices; I can see wearing any of these as a full mani. I actually did wear Arroyo to work for a week after I did these swatches. On my skintone, it's got that almost-but-not-quite-mannequin hands subtlety, but the gold shimmer adds enough interest that it didn't bore me after a day.

You can see swatches of the whole collection at The PolishAholic.

11 comments:

  1. My favourite is the first one with a top coat.

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  2. Starry Night and Nomad are my favorites. Very pretty with top coat. I don't think I could wear them without it, I need shiny lol

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  3. Isn't that logical part of the brain the least fun?? LOL. These are lovely. I always ignore my SpaRitual polishes but they are so pretty!

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  4. Not so keen on the first one but I love the last two :-D

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  5. Starry Night is gorgeous - I wonder what has happened to me - I like brown more and more ;)

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  6. SpaRitual really does come out with some lovely polishes! I wish they weren't so pricey in my area, but I was able to nab a clearance Wilderness for $3 the other week. These colors are really nice!

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  7. The shimmer looks so nice in these! Arroyo is my favourite, I love the soft colour :)

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  8. It's a great idea to make the collection with satin finish! Always two ways to wear - matte or glossy, both are beautiful and showing the different sides of one polish. It's one of the best collections of the brand!

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  9. Never tried this brand but found out is sold here too. Do you think is better than opi? Has here is more expensive.

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    1. Beautyshades, it's more expensive than OPI here, too. I don't think it's better as far as formula or wear time, but they do sometimes have unique colors that I think are worth the money.

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  10. You picked some great polishes! SpaRitual isn't too available around here anymore but they do pop up now and then at Winners so I snag what I can when I see them!

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