Warm Hues from Bee's Knees

Back in August, I shared some water marbles I did with shades from Bee's Knees Lacquer Acotar Agaaaiiiiin collection. Today I've got some swatches of the warm tones from there plus a bonus polish that didn't make it into the water marble post. First up, a quartet of compatible shimmers: A Dreamer Born Into the Court of Nightmares (light yellow), When I Kill I Do It Slow (yellow orange), Illyrian Baby (light orange; this is the one that didn't make the marble post), and Truth Is Your Curse (red orange).

 

I used three coats of each for a juicy Skittles look. There's a tiny bit of nail line peeking through with some of the shade at certain angles, but I thought that was fine.

 

 

 

I then used these same shades for a funky French, first putting down a skintone creme base then adding black creme tips before slicking on the shimmers. The black tips let the shift and flash show up more. For some reason, I did them in a slightly different order, so below from top to bottom it's A Dreamer Born Into the Court of Nightmares, Illyrian Baby, When I Kill I Do It Slow, and Truth Is Your Curse.

 

 

 

Then it was time for Only You Can Decide What Breaks You to take a turn. This is a dusty rose shimmer with a gold/green shift.

 

Before I swatched this one, I added some base colors. I left my index finger bare. On my middle, it was Essie Talk Sweet to Me. On my ring, Girly Bits Don't Paddle Break a Nail. My pinky got black.

 

Then I added Only You Can Decide What Breaks You to give me an ombre look: three coats on my index finger, then two coats over each of the creme base colors. All my digits got clear topcoat.

 

The shift in Only You Can Decide What Breaks You really showed on all my nails, though of course the black brought it out the most.

 

 

In direct light, all the nails looked nice, but the nail with the black base was fascinating.

 

And look what happened in filtered sunlight—so beautiful:

 

I have to make a concious effort to avoid the Bee's Knees website sometimes, as I just know there are so many tempting things there. They do a really good job with shifty shimmers like these, and magnetics too, and I need to play with the ones I've got already before I buy a ton more. I successfully avoided the September launch but am not sure I'll be able to do the same with October. We shall see.

SinfulColors Sweet and Salty Collection

Since I was hiding out at home (except for trips to the grocery store every couple weeks) when the SinfulColors Sweet and Salty collection came out this past May, I never saw the display for it. (I am still mostly hiding out at home even now, though have made a few forays outside my home/grocery store bubble.) I did manage to get the polishes online before they sold out on from the Target and Walmart sites, and today finally I have swatches. There are six shades in this collection, three sweet and three salty: Donut Even, Chocolate Cake, Cookies & Cream, Pizza Party, Cheese Puff, and Taco Tuesday. Note that on the sticker on the cap it says "avoid mouth contact" (it also says that on the bottom label); sad that it's necessary to have that. I tend to think anyone who thinks these are edibles isn't going to heed the warning anyway, either because they're too young to read it or too high to heed it. These are all scented, too.

 

Donut Even has bar glitter "sprinkles" (or "jimmies" depending on where you're from) in a pink crelly base. Unlike Sally Hansen's donut-themed bar glitter, Mixture Perfect, which I shared recently, I would wear this one on its own. My swatch is three coats; there is the tiniest hint of visible nail line at certain angles, but it doesn't bother me. This was a little lumpy; I should have added topcoat to smooth it out (and been more careful in application ... I was more focused on getting the glitters distributed than in keeping the layers thin).

 

 

I also tried Donut Even as a topper over Sinful Colors Quick Bliss Juicy, a medium pink creme. Top to bottom: 3 coats of Donut Even alone, then 1 coat of it over Juicy on the other digits. The layering works just okay; it lets the glitter show more, but it's a challenge to get the crelly base to look even in one coat.

 

Chocolate Cake is a deep brown textured creme. I used two coats for my swatch though one might have worked as well. I could see using this for nail art if I needed tree bark or something like that, but I'm not sure I'd wear it as a full mani.

 

 

Cookies & Cream is a french vanilla crelly base filled with various sizes of matte black glitter. The base here is a closer to the creme end of the crelly spectrum than the one in Donut Even; my swatch is two coats and that seemed like plenty. I did add a clear topcoat to this one but still feel it looks a bit uneven.

 

 

When I got to Pizza Party, I went right to experimenting with layering. This has a warm light tan crelly base with white bar glitter (cheese?), red and yellow hex glitter (pepperoni & mushroom?), and tiny black hex glitter (?). I did two coats of it alone on my index finger and one coat layered over SinfulColors Hot Toffee, a warm brown creme, on my other fingers. I added clear topcoat to all my digits. The bar glitter is on the longer side and if it's the cheese, there's not enough of it.

 

 

Taco Tuesday has a light yellow crelly base with small bar glitter, hex glitter, and shred glitter in shades of red, green, and peach. It's messy like tacos can be sometimes. I went right to layering with this one, too. Index finger has two coats of Taco Tuesday alone; my other fingers have a base of SinfulColors Raisin the Roof plus one coat of Taco Tuesday. All fingers have clear topcoat.

 

 

I saved the best and brightest for last. It's Cheese Puff, a yellow orange textured creme that definitely matches its inspiration. I did two coats for my swatch.

 

 

I decided it would be a fine idea to try layering the other two "salty" polishes over Cheese Puff, so below you see (top to bottom) Cheese Puff plus Pizza Party, Cheese Puff plus Taco Tuesday, Cheese Puff plus Pizza Party, and Cheese Puff plus Taco Tuesday. I don't hate these combinations; I think Cheese Puff is a better base color for the glitters than the two shades I tried with them first.

 

I give SinfulColors much credit for putting out this quirky collection. Donut Even and Cookies & Cream are the most mainstream of these, and even they are a departure from "normal" nail polishes. I'm not sure I'll wear these much, but they sure were fun to play with.

Sinful Colors Quick Bliss

Today I have nine of the Sinful Colors Quick Bliss shades, bought at Walmart in person before before I went into isolation for the pandemic. Since then, two more colors were released, but I haven't been able to get those since the Walmart closest to me doesn't carry the brand anymore, and I'm staying close to home. I do have a preorder in for a set which includes them plus an exclusive shade but shipping of that has been delayed twice and I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever see them. Ah well, time will tell. For now, let's enjoy the ones I do have. Top, left to right: Sweet Cheeks, Juicy, Climaxxx, Cherry Chaser. Bottom: Blackcherry, Flushed, Ice Ice Cherry, Hit the Spot, and Bite.



There are two pink cremes, because of course there are ... that's what a lot of people want. I probably shouldn't have bought them because my interests are elsewhere now, and I have several lifetime's supply of pink cremes already, but my completist nature got the better of me, so I have them. Climaxxx is the lighter pink, swatched at three coats on my index and middle fingers. Juicy is the darker pink, also three coats, on my ring and pinky. They're fine. This is supposed to be Sinful's quick dry line, but I didn't notice them being especially fast, maybe because of the three coats I used. Two didn't seem like enough to me. I'm not crazy about the names for these; Climaxxx is just trying too hard and Juicy would seem better suited for an orange rather than a pink.



Ice Ice Cherry is also pink, but much more up my alley because it's a shimmer that works as a topper. It's got pink and gold shimmer with a bit of shiftyness to it.



I added one coat of Ice Ice Cherry over the pinks, and it made them so much more interesting to look at.







I played with the reds and yellow orange next. Top to bottom: Hit the Spot (yellow orange creme) with cloud design in Cherry Chaser, Hit the Spot alone, Cherry Chaser (orange-leaning red creme), and Sweet Cheeks (pink-leaning red crelly). All of these were three coats. You can see that Sweet Cheeks was not quite opaque at that point (and I swear my nail line wasn't actually dirty).





You know I had to try Ice Ice Cherry over these. I added another cloud to my index finger with it and put one coat on the other three nails.







I wanted to take advantage of the sheerness of Sweet Cheeks by doing a jelly sandwich, so I put two coats of it on, fished some glitter out of SinfulColors Love Sprinkles, and topped with two more coats of Sweet Cheeks. There's my next Valentine's Day mani sorted.





For reference, here's what Love Sprinkles looks like in the bottle.



The next shades I tried were what I think of as the two sophisticates in the collection: Flushed, a rose gold flecked shimmer, with an accent nail of Blackcherry, a vampy red subtle shimmer. I used two coats of each of these.





Direct light shows off the shimmer in Blackcherry better than indirect:



I added one coat of Ice Ice Baby to my accent nail, and the deep base provided by Blackcherry really brought out the pink to gold shift in the topper. Cool.



Bite was the last one I bought (first store was sold out or hadn't gotten it yet, I don't know which) and the last one I swatched. This lime green has blue and pink shimmer it in.



I used three coats for my swatch and my nail line was still visible (though did not look as dirty as Sweet Cheeks had made it look). The pink shimmer I could see in the bottle was mostly absent on the nail, letting the blue dominate, though at some angles I could see the pink too.







I did one last swatch before I put these away, of one coat of Bite over a cool green creme base. I liked this better than Bite alone. If I'd used a brighter, warmer green for the base it would have looked closer to Bite by itself; I plan to try that next time I pull it out. If I remember, which let's face it, I likely won't.



I think Sinful did a decent job with the shades in this new (well, new-ish by now) line. There are the reds and pinks for the mass market but also some interesting things for those of us who want more. One of the newer shades I don't have yet is purple so I'm looking forward to seeing that.