Matte Topcoat Comparisons, Part 8

In my previous matte topcoat comparison at the end of January, I said I'd have another one "before too long". That turned out to be not so true, as here it is two months later, though I guess that could be considered soon if one has a very long time horizon.

Today I've got four new to me matte topcoats: Glitter Guilty Mattify Top Coat, Rescue Beauty Lounge Matte Top Coat, H & M Matte Top Coat, Kleancolor Madly Matte. I bought the RBL; the other three were gifts from my friend Trish, who has excellent nail polish hunting skills.



Here they are on the nail over Wet 'n' Wild Black Creme, in the same order as the bottles above. The RBL is the winner of this quartet when the scores for matteness and ease of application are combined. The Kleancolor comes in second; it's decently matte and readily available (at Amazon and other places), but it didn't level as well as the RBL. I'm not sure if that was due to the formula or the brush; in any case, a second coat might have resolved the issue, but I am generally too impatient to do two coats of topcoat. The Glitter Guilty and the H & M are in a photo finish for third; they're just very slightly less matte than the Kleancolor (but still definitely matte, not satin).



Here's another look at these four:



I advanced the top two from the first group to a matte off with my two current favorites from my stash. Left to right: Wet 'n' Wild Matte Topcoat, Rescue Beauty Lounge Matte Top Coat, OPI Matte Top Coat, and Kleancolor Madly Matte.



And on the nail below. The RBL is really good. It's also really expensive at $18 a bottle, which means that the 99 cent Wet 'n' Wild remains my overall matte topcoat champion.





I haven't gotten any more matte toppers since I swatched these, so there is no Part 9 of this series in the works right now. Of course if I do see a mattifier I don't have, I will buy it, so I expect this is to be continued.

Links to all the episodes in this series (so far):

Part 1: OPI, Barielle, China Glaze, Sinful Colors, Butter London, Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics
Part 2: Revlon, NYC, Essie, Claire's
Part 3: OPI, Essie, GOSH, Cult Nails, Icing, Ulta, Fing'rs
Part 4: Orly, Salon Perfect, OPI, Sally Girl
Part 5: OPI, elf, L'Oreal
Part 6: Nicole by OPI, OPI, Sally Hansen, Formula X for Sephora, Deborah Lippmann, Dolce & Gabbana, Nails Inc., Nina Ultra Pro, Illamasqua
Part 7: Fresh Paint, OPI, CK One, Wet 'n' Wild

Essie Resort 2014 Swatches and Comparisons

I so very much appreciate small collections like the Essie Resort 2013 group; having one come up on my swatching schedule feels like a treat, as I know I'll probably have enough time left after trying the colors to do some comparisons, too, and I love doing comparisons. The four shades in this group are Find Me an Oasis, Cocktails & Coconuts, Resort Fling, and Under the Twilight.



Find Me an Oasis is a pale icy blue creme. I used three coats for my swatch; letting them dry more in between would have been an excellent idea, as I still see some streakiness in the finish here.



When I on Find Me An Oasis, I was reminded of Essie Borrowed & Blue from the 2011 Wedding Collection. Left to right below: Oasis, Borrowed, Oasis, Borrowed. Borrowed & Blue is a touch darker and definitely easier to work with; I used two coats of Borrowed to the three for Oasis.



Cocktails & Coconuts is a warm tan with silvery shimmer. I used two coats for my swatch. I didn't do a comparison for this one, as I couldn't think of any similar polishes in my stash. I have colors like this, yes, but none with this sort of shimmer (at least none that I found flipping through my nail wheels; perhaps there's something in a box somewhere waiting for its turn to be on a wheel).





Resort Fling is a squishy, shiny, peachy orange creme (or crelly, I suppose). My swatch is three coats.



For comparison, I grabbed two other squishy orange shades from my stash. Left to right below: Rescue Beauty Lounge Starfish Patrick (4 coats), Essie Resort Fling (3), and Cult Nails Scandalous (3). The RBL is the sheerest of the bunch, and slightly more red than the Essie. The Cult Nails color is even more red.



Under the Twilight is a very deep blue creme. I used two coats for my swatch; if I'd been inclined to use topcoat for this, I could have stopped at one coat of color, it's that pigmented.



I first thought Under the Twilight was purple-leaning, so I grabbed Zoya Pinta for comparison, but then I looked at the bottles and Under the Twilight looked not so purple-leaning anymore, so I pulled Butter London Royal Navy to represent blue-leaning deep blues. Left to right below (one coat of each): Zoya Pinta, Essie Under the Twilight, Butter London Royal Navy. The Essie has just a touch of dustiness to it compared to the other two; it's more blue than Pinta but not as blue as Royal Navy.



This is a nice collection, with a good variety of shades, especially given it's only four colors. The two most flattering for me are Find Me an Oasis and Under the Twilight.

Wheel N6: Glitters from Barry M and Other Brands

(all are three coats except as noted below; all have one layer of topcoat as well)

1. Barry M Pink Iridescent
2. Barry M Silver Cascade [nearly a 2 coater]
3. Barry M Once Upon a Time
4. Barry M Red Glitter [almost a 2 coater]
5. Barry M Blue Glitter [another nearly 2 coater]
6. Barry M Silver Sea [shimmery base works really well here]
7. Barry M Green Glitter
8. Paul & Joe 021 Hallelujah [square glitter was hard to find when this polish was new]
9. Paul & Joe 014 Confetti [love the delicate mix of colors here]
10. Paul & Joe 015 Venus
11. Paul & Joe 016 Mediterranean [pretty sure this was my first round glitter polish]
12. Rescue Beauty Lounge Look Rich Be Cheap
13. Rescue Beauty Lounge Locavore
14. Rescue Beauty Lounge Frugalista
15. Rescue Beauty Lounge Black Russian (2 coats) [okay, this is really a creme with scattered microglitter]
16. Models Own Purple Haze (4 coats)
17. Models Own Disco Mix (4 coats)
18. Kiko 270 Sparkle Touch
19. Kiko 231 Sparkle Touch
20. Chanel Illusion d'Or [looks quite nice next to the Kikos; I should do a mani with these three, layering over a base color]

Bottles 1 through 7:


8 through 11:


12 through 15:


16 through 20:

SinfulShine Swatches and Comparisons

Some nail bloggers are great at keeping up with press releases from all the brands. I am not, but one from Sinful's PR firm did catch my eye recently (and by recently I mean last month, which shows you how bad I am at keeping up with things in general). The headline said "SinfulColors Introduces SinfulShine", and I thought that was a little odd, because my Walgreens stores have had the display for months; I included a picture of it in my display post at the end of April. At the time, I called the line "Sinful Shine", with a space, but the press release makes it clear it's "SinfulShine", no space. The defining characteristic of this line appears to be the gloss; the press release talks about "GelTech (TM)" which is "a self-curing polymer formula that delivers the same high shine gloss as an acrylic UV cured gel". I guess that's what makes it worth a dollar more than the regular Sinful line; these are priced at $2.99 versus $1.99 for the regular ones. That's still quite affordable compared to a lot of drugstore lines.

Anway, seeing the press release reminded me that I'd bought some colors to try out, and it was about time I actually did that and shared the swatches. I chose four of the thirty-two colors to sample: Wisp, Alfresco, Man Hunt, and Amazonian.



Wisp is a white creme. It's been a long time since I bought a plain white creme. However, my inventory of my go to white creme, Sally Hansen Insta Dri Whirlwind White, is dwindling. When it was discontinued, I stocked up, but my stock won't last forever. Thus I thought I'd check out this SinfulShine white as possible replacement. My first impression of Wisp is that it looks like a strong candidate. I needed only two coats for full coverage and streaks were not an issue as they often are with light shades. I didn't notice it being super shiny, but I have topcoat for that so it's not an issue (swatch does not have topcoat, as per usual, so you can see the polish in its natural state).



I did a side by side comparison of Wisp to Whirlwind White, and it not only held up, I liked it a touch better because it seemed to be a brighter white. Granted, the SinfulShine may yellow in the bottle slightly with age as the Sally Hansen seems to have done. Left to right (each at two coats): Whirlwind White, Wisp, Whirlwind White, Wisp.



One of the reasons Whirlwind White was a staple in my stash is how nicely it worked for stamping, so I tried Wisp in that capacity, too. I used Sally Hansen Insta Dri Fuchsia Flare for my base color (because it dries fast) and stamped with Wisp (using some plate I did not write down and now have no recollection of which one it was). I think it worked pretty well; there are a few places where the image didn't transfer completely, but it's been so long since I did any stamping I bet that's more down to my technique.



The next color I chose was Alfresco, which Sinful's press release called a sky blue. I'd say it's more of a light cornflower blue. It's got a very subtle shimmer in it. Like Wisp, two coats was enough for full coverage.



The shimmer is a little more visible in low light.



I was of course curious to see how Alfresco compared to my beloved Essie Bikini So Teeny from last summer. They are definitely very close relatives, with Alfresco being a bit darker and having finer and more secretive shimmer. Left to right: Essie (3 coats), SinfulShine (2), Essie, SinfulShine.



I also had a couple fairly recently acquired cornflower blues in my swatching boxes that I pulled out to see how they measured up to Alfresco. Left to right below (all two coats): Elle Ship Shape, SinfulShine Alfresco, Sinful Colors Sail La Vie. All of these have a subtle shimmer. There are slight differences between them, but they're close enough that I bet I could wear them all at once and no one would notice my nails didn't quite match.



My next pick from SinfulShine was Man Hunt, a dusty olive drab with silver shimmer. This was also full coverage in two coats, and the shimmer was much more visible than that in Alfresco.



The base color in Man Hunt reminded me of Rescue Beauty Lounge Diddy Mow, so I did a quick comparison even though I knew the shimmer in Man Hunt was too prominent for it to be a dupe (that's okay, Essie Sew Pysched fills that slot). Left to right below: RBL, SinfulShine, RBL, SinfulShine.



The last SinfulShine I have to share today is Amazonia, a dark green flecked shimmer (so yeah, that's three shimmers from this line, each with a different visual texture). I used two coats of this for the swatch.



For the longest time, Sally Hansen Salon Project Runway was my white whale of dark green shimmers (does that even make sense? is Moby Dick only an old person's cultural reference at this point?), so that was my first choice to compare with Amazonia. Left to right below: Sally Hansen (3 coats), SinfulShine (2), Sally Hansen, SinfulShine. Amazonia is a touch darker and more yellow toned and its shimmer is perhaps a bit more coarse, but it might just be close enough to scratch the itch for the super hard to get Project Runway.



On the whole, I liked the SinfulShine colors I tried. I'm not convinced they're glossier than any other polish, though. Perhaps I'll do a wear test on them one of these months, but don't hold your breath waiting.

Recent NOTD: Rescue Beauty Lounge Be Humble

I took a break from strips to do a full manicure with liquid nail polish for a change. Since I'd had all the patterns going on from the strips, I chose a quiet polish: Rescue Beauty Lounge Be Humble from the recent Emoting Me collection. I used two coats of the color (over treatment and base coats and under top coat).



Looks like yet another greyed taupe creme up there, right? But it's not really; there's some blue and lilac and pink shimmer in it, as you can see in the bottle detail shot below.



Depending on the light and the angle, I could sometimes see a hint of the shimmer on my nails. Also depending on the light and the angle, the overall effect was sometimes more grey and sometimes more taupe, with varying hints of purpleness showing up. All that shiftiness certainly made it more interesting to wear than a straight up greyed taupe creme.





Here's a more grey, slightly shimmery face in low light:



Four days into wearing Be Humble, I got a chance to take some photos under direct sun. The shimmer in the bottle definitely popped more in the bright sunlight, but it still remained shy on my nails.



I was ready for something with a bit more pop at this point, so I added a coat of one of the Mardi Gras glitters I'd picked up at Rite Aid (yeah, I was trying not to buy any of those, telling myself that surely I had the same polishes in other bottles from Blue Cross, but that didn't last once I spotted a few that I defintely didn't have in the pumpkin or snowman bottles that make up most of my Blue Cross stash). This particular Mardi Gras polish has two sizes of holo glitter in a very sheer rose pink base.



One coat of the Mardi Gras on top of my existing Be Humble mani added such a nice sparkle:



In the sun, it was even better:



I really should have put topcoat on over the glitter, but I was feeling lazy and since the Mardi Gras dried pretty quickly on its own, I didn't need the quick dry aspect.

The RBL wore fine; you can see some tipwear in the day four photo but that's not surprising. I did get a large chip in my middle finger, which was not the fault of the polish or topcoat (Diamond Dry) but once again my weak and peely nails—not much any product can to to hold on when the nail is de-laminating underneath it. The color of Be Humble is one I waver on; at times I liked it and thought it was flattering, while at other times I was bored with it (thus the glitter) and wasn't sure it looked that good on me.