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.

Catrice Floralista

Continuing my completist leanings from yesterday, today I have the three colors from Catrice Floralista that I neglected to swatch earlier this month.

Coral's Enchanted Garden took three coats to cover to my satisfaction. Orange-y colors often don't look that great on me, but I liked this one quite a lot.





I don't have an overabundance of coral and orange in my stash like I do for other colors, so the closest match I could find turned out to be not all that close: Essence Colour & Go What Do U Think? (I got mine at Ulta).




Catrice (top), Essence (bottom).

The Essence is noticeably pinker, as you can see. The Catrice is definitely not a true orange, though; it also has some pink in it, just not as much as the Essence. Yay, I can keep them both.

Pink Spring is one of those names that make one wrinkle one's brow in confusion, as it is certainly not pink. It's purple. A warm, reddish purple, sure, but nowhere near reddish enough to qualify it as pink.



Finding things to compare to this one wasn't a problem since I'm a purple person. I pulled Joe Fresh Fig out even though it didn't look super close to Pink Spring in the bottle because a) you never know and b) Fig has been waiting a while to be swatched. I also grabbed American Apparel Dynasty.




Top to bottom: Joe Fresh, Catrice, American Apparel, Catrice.

Fig is the odd one out in this trio; it's darker, bluer, and dustier than the other two. Dynasty is not far off from Pink Spring, just a bit more cool-toned.

Walk in the Woods is a light tan creme that might look better on someone less pink-complected than I.



I couldn't put my hands on any close matches to this in the bottle (perhaps because I haven't yet gotten to sorting my neutrals in the great stash reorg of 2011), but I didn't let that stop me and got out Models Own Nude Beige and Revlon Grey Suede to compare.




Top to bottom: Revlon, Catrice, Models Own, Catrice.

Yeah, neither the Revlon nor the Models Own is close; they're both too pink. They are close to each other, though, despite the Revlon having a slight shimmer. I tried to get my index and ring fingers next to each other to illustrate that, but this is as close as I could manage:



Overall, I think this collection is a great set of colors for spring. Nothing crazy or new going on here, but the aplication is good and the bottles are pretty.

Recent NOTD: American Apparel Factory Grey

I hadn't worn a neutral in a while, so American Apparel Factory Grey seemed like a good choice. I got this in a swap with Smita. It only took two coats and wore well for the few days I had it on.





Before I took it off, I tried stamping it with Sally Hansen Insta Dri Uptempo Plum and Konad plate m3. I had some trouble getting the images to fully transfer, but hey, flowers in nature aren't always perfect, either, so I was okay with it. I double stamped my middle finger just to see if could do it without overlapping the flowers (I almost managed).