Wheel O12: Studio M and Cosmetic Arts Bright Glitters

Finally something other than orange and orange-adjacent cremes for Nail Wheel Wednesday. Today it's brightly hued glitters from Studio M and Cosmetic Arts, both brands that come from the same manufacturer as Color Club (you may recognize some of the polish names as being the same as the Color Club ones they are dupes for). I did something a little different with this wheel; instead of just layering the toppers over neutral cremes, I also tried them over the opaque shades in the group. I think my creative brain was just so happy to be done with cremes for a while that it demanded to play.



(all have clear topcoat in addition to glitter coats noted below)

1. Studio M Glitter Solar (2 coats)
2. Studio M Glitter Astral (2)
3. Studio M Glitter Twinkle (2)
4. Studio M Glitter Outer Space (2)
5. Studio M Glitter Envy (2)
6. Cosmetic Arts Cookies & Cream (2 over tan base)
7. Cosmetic Arts Pink Confetti Party (2 over tan base)
8. Studio M Surprise Party (2 over tan base) [had to fish for larger glitters; pink glitter has bled into the base so no longer as vibrant as when it was new]
9. Studio M Party On (2 over tan base)
10. Studio M Rave Review (2 over tan base) [had to fish for stars]
11. Studio M After Dark (2)
12. Studio M Off the Deep End (2)
13. Studio M Glitter Envy (2) plus Cosmetic Arts Cookies & Cream (1)
14. Studio M Glitter Outer Space (2) plus Cosmetic Arts Pink Confetti Party (1)
15. Studio M Glitter Twinkle (2) plus Studio M Surprise Party (1)
16. Studio M Glitter Astral (2) plus Studio M Rave Review (1)
17. Studio M Glitter Solar (2) plus Studio M After Dark (1)
18. Studio M Glitter Twinkle (2) plus Studio M Party On (1)
19. Studio M Glitter Envy (2) plus Studio M Off the Deep End (1)
20. Studio M Glitter Astral (2) plus Cosmetic Arts Cookies & Cream (1)


Bottles 1 through 5:



6 through 10:



11 and 12:



Bonus bottle shots to better show the glitter mixes:





















Bonus shot to show the pops of color from the tiny holo glitter in the first five:

Holding on to Last Year

Happy 2018! Mr. Karen and I celebrated the New Year by getting in the car and driving across the entire width of Washington State (well, after we'd driven south an hour plus to get to the freeway) to his eldest sister's house, where we hung out for a week or so with his mom and his other sister and various other family. We spent three long days of our trip looking at retirement places for his mom (one of them I think I'd like to move into when the time comes for me). Because there's a mountain pass between her house and ours, we weren't sure when we'd be back (the pass sometimes closes when there's too much snow), but here we are on our mountain in Idaho. We've had a lot of snow so far this season; here's me and some snow and trees I was skiing in yesterday:



As far as this blog is concerned, I'm going to extend 2017 for a bit longer. I want to catch up with the swatches and nails of the day in my backlog, then do my Top 20 list (which might be a Top 10 this time), then proceed with new stuff. (Somewhere in there I'm also planning to make New Year's resolutions, one of which will be to be a better blogger.) Nail Wheel Wednesday might be on hiatus until I'm caught up with other things; I haven't decided for sure.

Today I have swatches of some polishes I picked up on my travels in 2017, starting with Fresh Paint Blue Jean Baby. I really really shouldn't be buying cremes, what with having so very many already. I did pass on this one the first several times I saw it, spanning more than one trip, but finally the pretty blue got me and it came home with me. It reminds me of the base color of Essie Bikini So Teeny, one of my favorite polishes. I used two coats for my swatch; the formula was good.



I embellished Blue Jean Baby with a glitter topper I also got at Five Below. This is called Shooting Star and has gold stars, silver holo crescent moons, and turquoise hex glitter in a clear base.



Shooting Star was very well behaved; I didn't have to fish for the shaped glitters, and I didn't have to use topcoat to make it smooth.



Meijer was the source of the next two polishes I have to share, starting with Studio M Good as Granite, a charcoal shimmer. This was almost a one coater, but I did two. I'm not a fan of these new round bottles. They do seem more sturdy than the old rectangle ones, but that they reduced the volume from 15ml in the old ones to 10ml in these new ones and kept the price the same is super annoying. Sure, they're still inexpensive, and I probably will never use up even 10ml, but them being sneaky about a 33% price increase per ounce is sucky. Yet I am weak and still buy the polishes, so they won.





Good as Granite got topped with another Studio M shade, Under the Moon. It too gave up the shaped glitter without me having to fish, though I did add topcoat to smooth out the moons a bit; not sure if that was strictly necessary or just seemed like a good idea due to where the moons fell on my nails with this one.





At first glance, I thought Under the Moon was a dupe for Shooting Star, but there weren't any stars in it, just silver holo moons and turquoise hexes. They sure do look similar, though.



I do like living out here on my mountain, but I do also miss Michigan sometimes, with its Five Below and Meijer stores.

Top 10 of 2016

I've done a Top 20 list every year I've been writing this blog, but 2016 was such a messed up year for me with all the travel and moving and my mom dying that I wasn't even sure if I wore 20 different polishes, so I'd decided to skip it. Then my friend Mel did a series of posts about her favorites in her blog Delicious Color, and I reconsidered. As it turned out, I had worn more than 20 polishes last year, but it was definitely a much smaller pool than prior years, so I decided to do a top 10 this go round.

Rimmel Mind the Gap Victoria, a light cornflower blue creme.



Kiko Velvet Satin Midnight Blue, a very deep navy matte shimmer.



SinfulShine Illusion, a blue shimmer.



Studio M Cherry Blossom, a pale pink shimmer topper, swatched here over Studio M By Design, a vampy berry creme.



LA Colors Color Craze Gel Magical, a lilac with gold and pink shimmer that can be worn alone or as a topper.



Orly Frenemy, a black jelly with silver holo microglitter and flakies, swatched here over Orly Makeup to Breakup, a dark teal blue creme.



Orly Color Blast Multicolored Gloss Glitter, a mulitcolored hex glitter topper, shown here in a jelly sandwich with Essence Nail Candies Peachy Keen:



Revlon Magnetic, blue glitter in a purple/blue duochrome shimmer base.



Lit NYC Power and Lovergirl, the former a blue/purple duochrome shimmer and the lattter a multicolored glitter topper, swatched together here.



I've pretty much gone back to my drugstore roots with this list. That makes sense, since I was on the road so much and dealing with other things, paying attention to indie releases was not a priority (and even if it had been, I wasn't home for weeks at a time, so getting them shipped to me would have been a challenge). I'm not sure what 2017 will bring. I have plenty of older indies in my untrieds, so I may start working through those as a supplement to the things I've been buying off the shelf recently.

Wheel R6: Glitters from Studio M, Pure Ice, and Others

(all three coats, no topcoat, except as noted below)

1. Massini Sheer Denim [I got back into nail polish before this brand changed to Studio M; still not sure why they did that]
2. Massini Brown Velvet (2 coats)
3. Studio M Pink Glitter
4. Studio M Rudolf (2 plus topcoat) [pretty much a Slammin' Red dupe that was released with a holiday collection one year]
5. Studio M De-luxe-cious (3 plus topcoat)
6. Studio M It's a Hit
7. Pure Ice Don't You Wish
8. Pure Ice unknown [this is labeled Spitfire, but I know that's wrong]
9. Pure Ice Spitfire
10. Pure Ice Dreamy [square glitter makes this more interesting]
11. Pure Ice Super Star
12. Pure Ice Cheatin' (4)
13. Pure Ice Strapless (4)
14. Pure Ice Strapless (4) [this is an alternate version with silver glitter added to the blue; not sure if this was a mistake batch that made it to stores or what]
15. Pure Ice Once Again
16. Pure Ice Rescue Me
17. NYX Girls Carnival
18. Freshcover Sequin Dress
19. Viva la Diva 71
20. Precision Rebel Red in You

Bottles 1 through 6:


7 through 11:


12 through 16:


17 through 20:

FingerPaints Poolside Paradise Swatches and Comparisons

My apologies for skipping Nail Wheel Wednesday yesterday; I had a lunch meeting that took up my usual blog post writing time, and I've been too busy with post-vacation catching up this week to work a day ahead like I sometimes manage to do. I have a wheel already picked out for next week, though.

Today I have summer shimmer comparisons featuring the FingerPaints Poolside Paradise collection, which first popped up in my Sally Beauty stores in June but which I've still seen hanging around recently despite the fall stuff already showing up and pushing out summer colors. This collection has a rainbow of six shades (well, there's no indigo, but that's okay, indigo is not really a summer color anyway): Be My Baby, Aloha Lei, Hula Aruba, Margarita Mambo, Surf's Up, and Wild Bikini. The finish on all of these is a dense almost metallic shimmer.



Be My Baby is a deep pink, let's say pink-leaning red to fit the rainbow theme. I used three coats for my swatch.



For comparison to Be My Baby, I pulled Sally Hansen Leis-y Days (which I've only seen at Walgreens so far but have heard of also showing up in CVS Nail Bar displays, too), Butter London Lolly (from their Summer 2014 Lolly Brights collection), and Color Club Wing Fling (from Summer 2012 Take Wing collection).



You can see them on the nail below, in the same order as the bottles above (three coats each). The Butter London is the closest to Be My Baby, with Be My Baby being just a touch warmer (it's also a lot less expensive). The Sally Hansen is cooler toned and its shimmer is more visibly silver and less dense. The Color Club has similar shimmer to Be My Baby but it is cooler toned and much more pink.



Aloha Lei is a yellow-leaning orange. This is three coats.



Aloha Lei's partners in comparison are Butter London Chuffed (from Lolly Brights) and Color Club Sparkle and Soar (from Take Wing).



Left to right below: Aloha Lei, Chuffed, Aloha Lei, Sparkle and Soar (all three coats). These are very, very similar to each other, so the FingerPaints is a great alternative if you don't want to pay Butter London prices and missed the Color Club when it was out.



Hula Aruba is a sunny yellow, and as with other colors, I used three coats for my swatch.



To see how they'd match up with Hula Aruba, I pulled Sally Hansen Hello Sunshine (another of the ones that popped up at Walgreens earlier this summer) and Studio M Daisy Does It (a rebottle of the Color Club by the same name from Take Wing).



Left to right below (all three coats): Hula Aruba, Hello Sunshine, Hula Aruba, Daisy Does it. As with the oranges, these are close enough that one wouldn't need all three, though the shimmer in the Sally Hansen seems ever so slightly finer grained than the other two.



Margarita Mambo is a spring green, and yes, I used three coats.



For comparison to Margarita Mambo, I found Studio M Fly With Me (same story as with Daisy Does It above, a Color Club Take Wing rebottle) and Sally Hansen Summerlime (another Walgreens find).



There was a lot more variation in these greens than with the previous comparisons. Left to right: Margarita Mambo, Fly With Me, Margarita Mambo, Summerlime. Fly With Me is more yellow toned than the others, while Summerlime is less yellow than either and has a softer more scattered shimmer.



Surf's Up is a bright royal blue. You guessed it—three coats for my swatch.



I had a full complement of blues for comparison with Surf's Up: Sally Hansen Searsucker (yep, from Walgreens), Butter London Airy Fairy (from Lolly Brights), and Color Club Sky High (from Take Wing).



Left to right: Searsucker, Airy Fairy, Surf's Up, Sky High; three coats of each. Airy Fairy and Surf's Up are very similar to each other. Searsucker and Sky High are both lighter and a touch more turquoise-leaning. The Sally Hansen has a bery pretty pinky glow to it.



Wild Bikini is a purple. A gorgeous, gorgeous purple. How many coats? Not three—only two.



I was on a roll with comparing these FingerPaints to Butter London Lolly Brights, Color Club Take Wing, and Sally Hansen Mysterious Summer Complete Salons (I mean really, why haven't I seen a separate display with just these in it? Sally Hansen puts out new displays all the time, but I've only seen these as part of that one sidekick at Walgreens that I put in my early July display post). The only one of those three groups that had a purple was Butter London, in the form of Stroppy.



Left to right: Wild Bikini, Stroppy, Wild Bikini, Stroppy. They're dupes as far as I'm concerned. In the bottle, the FingerPaints looked warmer toned but on the nail I couldn't tell them apart.



Before I moved on to something else in my swatching box, I decided to have a little layering fun with these FingerPaints. And the Zoya Bubbly colors got in on the fun, too, since they have not been far from my reach since I did a swap for a set after I sent Lucy's samples to her after swatching them (with her permission, of course).

Top to bottom below, over black creme: Zoya Muse (thanks for the tip, Tracey!), FingerPaints Surf's Up plus Zoya Muse, Fingerpaints Surf's Up. I do believe the black brought out a hint of a duochrome shift in Surf's Up.



I next tried the yellow and orange over black, with their Bubbly counterparts. Top to bottom: FingerPaints Hula Aruba, Hula Aruba plus Zoya Alma, FingerPaints Aloha Lei plus Zoya Jesy, Aloha Lei.



I was quite entranced with the Aloha Lei plus Jesy combination over black; this would be a great Halloween look.



Left to right below, again over black creme base: Zoya Harper plus Binx plus Staasi, FingerPaints Be My Baby with Zoya Harper gradient, FingerPaints Wild Bikini plus Zoya Binx gradient, FingerPaints Margarita Mambo plus Zoya Staasi gradient.



The most successful of this last set of experiments was the Wild Bikini plus Binx combination, as those two polishes had a good balance of blending and contrasting. The three Zoyas together isn't bad, just the black seems to make them all very similar so I think I could have pretty much the same effect with three coats of any one of them. Be My Baby over black is very pretty, like a glowing ruby, but the pink base of Harper seems to hide that glow. Staasi blends in too well with Margarita Mambo.



I like this collection so much that I'm going to forgive FingerPaints for enticing me to buy the pretty in the bottle, lumpy on the nails Enchanted Mermaid polishes. These I do not feel any urge to cover with shell pieces. I also like that they're a more affordable alternative to the Butter London shimmers and just as pretty.