Essie 'Cupid's Beau'

Today's swatch is 'Cupid's Beau', from Essie's Valentine's Day 2021 Collection:

'Cupid's Beau' is a vibrant, shimmery, reddish-orange polish with a metallic finish. It's not the typical type of shade you would expect from a Valentine's day collection, but it's a beautiful polish nonetheless. It's also really versatile, as it will be great to wear this bright, shimmery shade right into spring and summer, and since the orange leans more red than yellow, this darker orange shade will even work for fall!

The packaging was a little different for the 2021 Valentine's day collection than it had been the last couple of years, as Essie has steered clear of the Valentine's Day themed decorative bottle wraps that they had been using. I actually really liked those bottle wraps, as they made the bottle stand out, and they added an air of celebration, and festive fun to the collection - the bottles were dressed for the occasion! They were also really easy to remove, for those who prefer to be able to easily see the polish in the bottle at a quick glance. For the 2021 Valentine's Day collection, the bottle decoration was just limited to the bottle caps. I actually miss the wraps!

All in all, 'Cupid's Beau' is a lovely, eye-catching polish, and I enjoyed wearing it!

OPI Fall 2020 collection, 'Muse of Milan': 'Have Your Pannetone and Eat it Too'

It's Labour Day, today - Happy Labour Day! And with that, comes the unofficial end to the (relatively) relaxing days of summer. It's always sad to realize that the summer is almost over, but at least we still have all of the beautiful fall nail polish collections to look forward to! 😉

Today I have a swatch to share from the new OPI Fall 2020 collection: 'Muse of Milan'. The polish is called 'Have Your Pannetone and Eat it Too':

The colour lies in between a spiced pumpkin orange, and a very warm caramel brown - although it definitely leans more orange. It goes really well with my skin's warm undertones, and gives an overall very neutral look on me. This colour is so perfectly representative of fall, for me... it reminds me of pumpkin pie, yellowed leaves, and tan leather boots - all things that just scream autumn!

The formula was also very lovely. It took two coats for full opacity, dried well, and has a beautiful shiny finish. All in all, I'm really happy that I picked this polish up!

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear 'Crushed'

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear 'Crushed' is a gorgeous, shimmery, bright orange polish that just screams summer. It's one of those super-finely milled shimmer polishes that essentially reads as metallic on the nail. It gave great coverage, had a decent drying time, and there were no issues with application. The polish is really fun and cheery to wear due to the in-your-face texture, colour and shine. All in all, I'm really happy with this polish.

Revlon 'Tangerine'

Today I have another Revlon swatch to share. I had actually resigned myself to move on from the Revlon swatch series that I had been doing for the last month or so. Even though I would love to continue with it until I've swatched all of my Revlon polishes, as someone who typically runs off of inspiration, I prefer being able to freely choose polishes to wear on a whim... This is also why my 'Project Polish' has somewhat stalled! I'm realizing that for longer projects, it would probably be better for me to have one or more of them on-going that I pop back into from time to time, as opposed to working continuously on them until they are done. Polish is supposed to be fun! I don't like feeling like I have to wear a particular polish if there's another one I'm feeling more at the moment! With this in mind I'll create a new label for the Revlon Swatch Series, so over time the collection of posts will get more and more complete.

So back to the task at hand - my swatch and review of Revlon's 'Tangerine'!  'Tangerine' is a gorgeous yellow-orange creme polish with a subtle golden shimmer. It's slightly on the sheer side, but not quite in crelly territory. It can be built up to full opacity in 3 coats, as I have done in most of the swatch pictures (I left my thumb at two coats, which can be seen in the label shot in the collage below). I'm also wearing a glossy top-coat in the main swatch pictures (no top coat on my thumb).

This polish is so fun, and summery. Even though it is a rather bright shade, it works so well with my skin tone that it feels more subdued, and almost neutral on me! It still pops, but in a really harmonious way...

The polish was released as part of Revlon's Summer 2011 'Summer Romantics' collection, along with a light blue polish 'Blue Lagoon', and a light yellow called 'Sunshine Sparkle'. I also have 'Blue Lagoon', but I don't want to put any more pictures in this post, so perhaps I'll do a swatch and review on that polish in the near future!

Revlon 'Coral Me Wild'

Today's post is a swatch of Revlon's 'Coral Me Wild'. This polish is a pink-leaning coral crelly, with a glossy finish. As opposed to 'Craving Coral', which I discussed in yesterday's post, this polish really does give me strong coral vibes when applied to the nail. It has that perfect balance of pink and orange that is requisite for the perfect shade of coral.

I really love this polish! It's fun, cheery, and summery - although I'm not one to limit summer shades to summer only!  In fact, I believe that sometimes you need a pop of summer on your nails in the middle of a harsh Canadian winter!  😉

Revlon's 'Craving Coral'

Today's swatch is Revlon shade 902 'Craving Coral'. It's a warm, orange-leaning coral jelly polish with a high-gloss finish. In the bottle, I see more of those pinky, creamy undertones that make the polish seem more coral. However on the nail, in most lighting conditions those undertones don't really translate, and the shade appears to me to be more of a red-orange jelly. It's still a beautiful shade that works well with my skin tone, but it just doesn't scream CORALLLLL!!!! to me! 😄

L'Oreal Paris Vernis a L'Huile 'Coral Trianon'

Today I have a quick post featuring a swatch of a L'Oreal Paris polish from their Vernis a L'Huile line. The colour is called 'Coral Trianon'.  The colour is really nice, and I love the smooth, shiny finish of the formula.

This colour is very on trend right now, as it is a very close match for the 2019 Pantone colour of the year, 'Living Coral'.

L'Oreal Paris Vernis a L'huile - Orange Triomphe

Today, I have a quick post about another polish that I've tried from the L'Oreal Paris Vernis a L'Huile, line of polishes. This one is called 'Orange Triomphe'.  This is a very dark orange which is right on the border between an intense orange with lots of red, and an orangey red with a touch of yellow! Either way, I really like the colour. I tended to favour cooler reds in the past, but now that I've started exploring some of the warmer red shades, I've found myself really appreciating the different energy the shades convey, visually. In general, I feel that the cooler toned reds seem to range between classic, and sultry, while the warmer reds seem to range between sassy and flirty. For me, 'Orange Triomphe' fits right in with that observation: As a brighter, warmer red, I think it appears very youthful, and sassy on my nails.

Zoya 'Amy'

Today's manicure feature's Zoya 'Amy':

On Zoya's website, they describe 'Amy' as "a full-coverage, red orange foil metallic".  It originally came out in Zoya's Summer 2013 'Irresistable' collection which featured 6 metallic foil polishes.

'Amy' is absolutely mesmerizing. It's glowy, shimmery, sparkly...  it's everything! I've been doing a lot of simple manicures lately, with no nail art or embellishments, but even so, I haven't been bored because of colours like this. Colours so lively and eye-catching that they can truly shine - even on their own. Needless to say, I loved wearing this polish!

Zoya 'Cole'

Today I have a simple manicure to share. This is Zoya's 'Cole':

This is a warm, peach pastel shade which is perfect for springtime. I really like how soft and pretty  this colour looks. I really enjoyed wearing it!  I also think it would look nice with a little bit of gold stamping as an accent. 

Sparkly Halloween Jack-o-Lantern Mani

Today I have a Halloween Manicure to Share:

I really wanted to do a Jack-o-Lantern manicure, and at first, I thought I would use a typical creme orange polish, and an orange glitter.  However, as I was looking through my collection for the orange glitter, I came across a glittery metallic coppery-orange polish that I thought would look amazing with the orange metallic glitter polish. I decided to use the two polishes for more of a Glam-o-Lantern look!

Here are the polishes I used:

Polishes Used

Polishes Used

OPI 'A Woman's Prague-ative'

Bundle Monster 'Straight Up Black'

OPI 'Orange You Fantastic!'

The orange metallic foil polish, 'A Woman's Prague-ative' is from OPI's Euro Centrale Collection from Spring 2013. The orange glitter polish 'Orange You Fantastic' was from OPI's Summer 2014 Coca-Cola Collection. I really can't get over how nice they look paired together!

For this manicure, my thumb, middle and ring finger on both hands are painted with a layer of 'A Woman's Prague-ative', and then with 2 layers of the glitter polish. When looking at it in real life, the glittery combination would sparkle through the full nail jack-o-lantern images stamped in black over the middle and ring finger nails. Unfortunately, that doesn't quite translate in the picture, so I just thought I'd mention it.

Below, are rotated images of my thumbnails which provide a better view of the cute Jack-o-Lantern Faces I stamped from Moyou London's 'Festive Collection' - plate 29.

My 'Thumb-o-Lanterns'

The stamped image on my middle fingers was from Bunny Nails plate HD-C, and the stamped image on my ring fingers was from ÜberChic Beauty plate Halloween-03.

Stamping Plates Used

Moyou London Festive Collection - 29

ÜberChic Beauty 'Halloween-03'

Bunny Nails Plate HD-C

All in all, I absolutely love the way this manicure turned out. I normally try not to repeat manicures, but I could definitely see myself using this polish combination again to do another 'Glam-o-Lantern' manicure in the future!

Coral Compilation Mani

For this manicure, I picked out a bunch of coral polishes that are all similar in tone but have different finishes, and put them together for a subtle skittles mani. I used 'Sally Hansen's 'Crushed', a metallic finish polish, on my thumb and ring finger; 'Hello World', a jelly finish polish from Nicole by OPI on my index finger; 'Kiss Me Coral', a frost finish polish by Revlon, on my middle finger which was then covered with a chunky red heart glitter polish called 'Have a Heart' from Nicole by OPI; and finally, on my pinky I used a crème polish from Revlon called 'Craving Coral'.

Polishes Used

Nicole by OPI ‘Have a Heart’

Revlon ‘Craving Coral’

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear ‘Crushed’

Revlon ‘Kiss me Coral’

Nicole by OPI ‘Hello World’

I haven't been doing a lot of nail stamping or designs lately, so I've been trying to do a lot of interesting combinations to add some element of fun into my manicures! I found this to be an interesting way do a monochromatic look but still have some subtle visual interest. 

It's also really nice that I got a chance to use some of my older polishes for this manicure. I love going back and rediscovering over-looked gems from my collection.