Dior Blop and Wizz

When I was in Toronto for Indie Expo Canada earlier this year, I treated myself to two of the Dior summer polishes. It had been a long time since I bought any high end polish like that but it was a special occasion, on a vacastion and shopping with my friend the Canadian Nail Fanatic. I chose Wizz and Blop (I tried to get an older color, Metallics, too, but they only had the tester and wouldn't sell it to me).



Wizz is a coral with subtle shimmer. I've seen this described as watermelon, but it pulls more toward orange than pink on me. I was an easy two-coater; Dior formula and brush are some of my favorites. As with many Dior shimmers, the shimmer doesn't really show on the nail in indirect light.





The shimmer in Wizz does pop in direct light:



Blop is a deep slate blue creme. This was also two coats, though I think it could have been one if I'd been a bit more heavy handed with that first coat. It was plenty shiny without topcoat, too.





I don't know how unique these are in my stash (I really want to get back to doing more comparisons). I'm happy to have them regardless; the formulas are great and they remind me of a fun time in the summertime.

Christian Dior Golden Jungle Duo

When I put up my most recent blog post last Wednesday, I was in Montana, a bit less than 24 hours into a nearly month long road trip. Since then I drove to Illinois (stopping in South Dakota and Wisconsin to sleep along the way), visited with my mother-in-law, did a long weekend craft conference with classes and demos and nighttime entertainment, visited with my mother-in-law some more, and later today will head to Michigan to spend some time with friends. Since one of the things I'll be doing in Michigan is meeting up with my nail polish ladies, I thought I should do something nail polish related before then, like update my blog. Fortunately, I stocked up some swatches before my trip, so have something to share (other than the polishes I've bought along my journey, though I will get to those, too, at some point).

Today I've got the Christian Dior Golden Jungle duo, circa 2012. I was super into crack polishes at the time this came out and had to have it, yet until I swatched it before I left, I hadn't used either of the set, which consists of a golden metallic base color and a deep warm olive green crocodile effect cracking top coat.



On its own, the gold (no name that I could see, just a shade number, 148) is decent. I used two coats. I don't think this shade is especially flattering on me, but that's not its fault.





I compared the gold to another gold Dior in my collection, Golden Light (Or Lumiere). In the bottle, 148 (on the left below) looks lighter and cooler toned.



On the nail, the colors looked closer, but the finishes are distinct. 148 is a foil, while Golden Light is a shimmer. 148 is also more opaque; I needed to use three coats of Golden Light to 148's two, and Golden Light still showed a hint of visible nail line in some lights at some angles (not the one in the pick below). Left to right: 148, Golden Light, 148, Golden Light.



When I added the green crackle (shade 608), I did one thick coat, so the jelly nature of it didn't show up well. Trust me, it's squishy.





The contrast between the light base and the dark crackle showcased the pattern of the cracks. I wanted to try a more subdued combination to highlight the texture, so I put on two coats of Dior Shadow, a plum shimmer, then added the crocodile crackle. This combination looked really interesting to me; I will have to remember it when autumn comes around again, as I think it would be perfect with some of my fall sweaters.





Magnetic and thermal and textured polishes are all around again now; can crack be far behind?

Dior Summer Mix Collection Swatches and Comparisons

In the ever popular department of better late than never, today I've got the polishes from the Dior Summer Mix collection from 2012. These four lacquers were released last year but have only been in my stash for a few months, which is why I'm only swatching them now. There are four shades: Acapulco (yellow), Calypso (orange red), Cosmo (warm pink), and Lagoon (blue). Dior describes these as "sorbet-like color", also known as jelly finish.









It's no secret that yellow is my least favorite color of nail polish and sheer is my least favorite finish when I do wear yellow, so I was biased against Acapulco before I even got it out of the box. That said, I didn't entirely hate it. As yellows tend to be, it was a bit streaky, but by the time I had three coats on, it had pretty much self-leveled. My fear with sheer yellows is that they'll make my nails look stained, but this has enough opacity that it wasn't an issue; in fact, I think my tips look whiter under this than they really are. It's plenty shiny without topcoat, too.



These Diors might still be sitting in my swatching queue if not for the fact that I was intrigued to see how they compared to similar shades from the L'Oreal Miss Candy collection. Left to right below, three coats each: Dior Acapulco, L'Oreal Bananarama Love, Dior Acapulco, L'Oreal Bananarama Love.



The L'Oreal is more sheer and a touch more lemony (as opposed to the Dior's every so slightly orange-leaning egg yolk-y tone).

Calypso is an orange red; this swatch is three coats, no topcoat.



Cosmo is a warm pink; again, the swatch is three coats, no topcoat. I think this is the most universally flattering color of the group.



Since they're both warm and reddish, I thought it made sense to put Calypso and Cosmo in the same comparison. I didn't find any close matches with the L'Oreal gellies but it's interesting to see them together anyway. As with the yellows, the L'Oreal colors are more sheer than the Dior. Left to right below (all 3 coats): Dior Cosmo, L'Oreal Jolly Lolly, Dior Calypso, L'Oreal Mango Momma.



Lagoon, the blue one, is the most opaque of the bunch. I used two coats for the swatch compared to three for the other color in the collection (still no topcoat here).



I didn't compare Lagoon to the L'Oreal jelly blue on the nail, as I could see from looking at the bottles that they weren't even close. Sometimes appearance in the bottle can be deceiving, but here it's clear that the Dior is closer to turquoise and the L'Oreal is more of a royal blue.



Versatility is one of the selling points for jelly polishes, so I did a couple of experiments with these Diors. Here they are at one coat over a white creme base (the sadly discontinued Sally Hansen Insta Dri Whirlwind White, for the record):



To the above, I added the same unnamed Mardi Gras multi glitter I used in the L'Oreal Miss Candy post, then another coat of the Dior shades, and ended up with a party on my nails:



The different colors higlighted different parts of the glitter polish (and the blue, being more opaque, submerged it more than the others).



I give Dior credit for doing something a little different than the subtle shimmers I'm used to seeing from them. These are fun colors for summer, for sure. I don't think they're four times as fun as the L'Oreal jellies, which is about what the price difference is between the two lines (around $23 for the Dior and $6 for the L'Oreal before any sales, which are a lot more common on L'Oreal than Dior).

Dior Amazonia and Golden Light Layering

Not quite a month after I first posted Dior Amazonia and Golden Light, I got around to trying them together, putting one coat of Golden Light on top of two of Amazonia.







I'm undecided on this combination. The dark base seems to bring out the brushstrokes in the gold but it also brings out pops of color in the shimmer that I didn't notice when I used the gold alone. Here's a differently lit shot showing both things at once.



Now that I've looked at these pictures, I'm wondering if Golden Light over a lighter base would be just the thing. Maybe in another month I'll have tried that.

*****
Reminder: my Halloween giveaway closes tomorrow (October 10th) at midnight Eastern US time.

Dior Amazonia and Golden Light

Today I've got two polishes from Christian Dior which were released as part of the Golden Jungle collection for Fall 2012. The first is Amazonia, a deep warm dusty green almost creme. Here's two coats, plus topcoat, which it did seem to need:





There is a very fine, very subtle shimmer in Amazonia. It didn't show up in the lightbox at all, and it wasn't sunny when I was swatching this, so the best I've got to show the shimmer is this half-shadow, half-flash shot (which I did before I decided to add topcoat):



Because the shimmer is so shy, when it came time to do comparisons, I picked two cremes, MAC Fatigues and Catrice Sir Yes Sir.



Left to right below—Dior, MAC, Dior, Catrice. The Catrice was two coats like the Dior; the MAC was three. (No topcoat.) The Dior is darker than the other two, but all have a similar khaki green look to them.



Flash enhances the differences (and confirms that the MAC and the Catrice are pretty near dupes to each other).



The second polish, which I bought mostly to keep Amazonia company since I thought it might be lonely with no companion from it's collection, is Golden Light. It's also known as Or Lumière (as shown on the bottle) and Golden Era (as shown on the Nordstrom website when I bought it) and Sparkling Bergamot (as shown on this Japanese blog); in any case, it's shade number 207. Since Amazonia is shade 505, I'm thinking this gold is a repromote, but as I've only been buying Dior polishes since early this year, I didn't have it already. I did have trouble getting it, though. When my order arrived from Nordstrom and I slipped the bottle of Golden Light out of its opaque Dior box, I found it was nearly empty. It hadn't leaked; there was no sign of polish on the outside of the bottle, in the Dior box, or on the Nordstrom packaging. Very curious. I filled out the return form and popped it back in the mail asking for a replacement.



About a week later, the replacement arrived. It looked like this:



Really? What are the chances? At this point, I didn't know if they'd gotten my return and just sent the same bottle back to me (I didn't think to mark it) or if there was a bad batch of bottles in the warehouse. This time I called to get an exchange. The third time was indeed the charm, as I got a full bottle. I have to give credit to Nordstorm; this process could have been a huge hassle, but with Nordstrom, it was pretty easy—I didn't have to pay for return shipping either time (or even print my own labels for the return boxes).

Golden Light is a sparkly pale gold shimmer with darker reddish gold flecks in it. It's on the sheer side; these swatches are three coats, and there's some definite VNL going on (Visible Nail Line).





Sheer as it is, I really should have tried Golden Light layered over Amazonia, but for some reason that didn't occur to me until I sat down today to write this post. Duh, me.



I am not as overstocked in gold polishes as I am in many other categories, but of course I went ahead and did a comparison anyway. I chose Borghese Trevi Gold and Sally Hansen Diamond Strength Infinity Band, as those two seemed closest to Golden Light based on a flip through my nail wheels.



Left to right below—Dior, Borghese, Dior, Sally Hansen. The Sally Hansen is two coats; the others are three. No dupes here; the Dior is more delicate and sheer and has a flecked shimmer finish rather than the metallic/foil of the other two. Maybe I should have looked at my layering topcoat wheels for comparison candidates rather than my gold wheels.



There are other polishes that came out with the Golden Jungle collection, but I missed them and don't feel like paying inflated Amazon seller/eBay prices right now. There's Bengale, a warm brown creme (or almost creme, I'm not sure) that I believe was a Neiman Marcus exclusive in the U.S. market, and a duo consisting of a gold foil polish (not Golden Light) and a croc effect crackle topper in a color similar to Amazonia. Since Dior is not sold in any of the retail establishments I frequent, I have a harder time keeping up with their stuff than other brands that I see more frequently. Ah well, they're pricey, so the more I miss, the more money I have left in my budget to spend on other things.

Christian Dior Shadow Swatches and Comparisons

I was intrigued when I heard that Dior was releasing Les Violets Hypnotiques, a collection of three purple polishes. I am all for more purple in the world. The most interesting of the three seemed to be Shadow, the true shimmer in the group (the other two are "almost cremes", with a very, very sparse dusting of tiny shimmer particles), so I grabbed that pretty much as soon as it showed up on the Nordstrom website. Here it is in the bottle, looking gorgeous, with copper and pink shimmer in a brownish plummy base.



On the nail, the shimmer is less prominent. This is two coats, no topcoat. I'm thinking I should reconsider my "no topcoat for swatches" general rule, since I'm wondering if a shiny finish would have brought out the shimmer more (and I almost always wear topcoat when I do a full mani). I just wonder if I have the patience for that (and how much topcoat I'd consume).





Being me, I have about eleventy hundred deep plum shimmers, so I pulled out four of them to do comparison. Left to right below: Wet 'n' Wild Megalast Disturbia (old bottle, but I believe this made the leap to the new bottle style when they did the most recent relaunch), Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Problem Child, Dior Shadow, P2 Color Victim Rich, OPI Teasy Does It.



Left to right below: Shadow, Problem Child, Shadow, Disturbia (all two coats). In indirect light like this, Problem Child makes a great substitute for Shadow. Disturbia is not as close, as its shimmer blends into the base more than the other two.



Flash brings out the differences in the base and shimmer colors. Shadow's base has a brownish dusty quality to it that sets it apart.



Here's a close up of Problem Child just because I think it's pretty, with the fine purple shimmer and copper mini flakies.



Left to right below: Shadow, Rich, Shadow, Teasey Does It (all two coats). Rich is darker than Shadow, with bright purple highlights in its shimmer. Teasy Does It is more a wine color than Shadow's plum.



Here they are in the glare of the flash:



Teasy Does It actually does look a fair bit like Shadow looks in the bottle, despite being redder in tone; it just needs more dense shimmer.



Shadow's base color makes it unique among my deep plum shimmers, but given that there are alternatives that are fairly close (and the fact that the Dior is $23) I can't say it's a must have. (Well, no nail polish is a MUST, but you all know what I mean.)