Icing Passion

I'm a sucker for three things: mini bottles, layering, and a good deal. This was all three.



This little mini bottle of Icing Passion was something that I stumbled upon in a package of five polishes that are all different tints of frosty whites and was in the clearance bin at my local Icing store. What can I say, it looks shocking like, oh, I don't know, six polishes in my collection. Not that it's not nice, because it is - it gives a nice little frosty finish to any dark polish (shown here is Ulta's Little Black Dress, I believe) and gives a nice little kick on the second day of your manicure if you are like me and are too lazy to change your polish but need a little something different. The bad part is that it's nothing special.

So what does this mean? Yours truly needs to stop falling for polish because it's cheap. *sigh*

Happy day, all!

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China Glaze Frostbite

If I had to name a favorite polish, this one would be it.

China Glaze - Frostbite

Hands down, China Glaze Frostbite is a such a homerun polish to me. It's pigmented as heck, applies smooth as butter, it's almost blindingly blue and wears like a champ for me. Did I mention that it's blue? Like really blue? Like jewel-toned, glowing from my fingertips blue? It is. And it is FABULOUS.



When I first got back into polish about a year and a half ago, Frostbite caught my eye at Sally's and it was love at first sight - angels sang, streams of sunlight poured out of the horrid flourescent overheads, I may have even smelled chocolate, I'm not even sure. Whatever happened, it was magical. I have worn this so faithfully ever since that when I heard a rumor a year ago that this might be discontinued, I actually bought a backup. Thankfully, that seems like it was false info; either way, though, it makes me feel good that I have a security blanket of Frostbite-y goodness.


Do any of you obsess over a polish like I love Frostbite? It's like a margarita in a polish bottle to me, and as today is my birthday, I thought this would be a fab one to share. Viva la birthdays!


Happy day, all!

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Jessica Tourmaline and Quirius Sand Castle: two polishes I didn't know I'd like

This isn't really a themed post. The only thing these two polishes have in common is that I thought I'd hate them but I actually was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed them.

Jessica Tourmaline

This cool lavender pink falls between foil and frost for me. It doesn't have the sort of full-foil effect that a lot of foils I'm used to have... but it's not as ugly as most frosts. It looks like it's just a lavender pink creme with a lot of fine silver glitter thrown in. It's not particularly elegant or pretty but somehow, it really appealed to me when I put it on. Three coats, if I recall correctly.

Quirius Sand Castle

Quirius sent me this one a long time ago, right before their half-year closing of their website. Since they weren't going to be available for purchase for half a year, it didn't make sense to review it then. So I forgot about those polishes until my recent collection reorganization... and found this. I kinda groaned when I saw it: frosty non-color. But then when I swatched it, I realized that 1. it doesn't quite give me mannequin hands but it's sort of a complementary color and didn't look so bad and 2. I actually like the frostiness. Why? I'm not sure. I certainly am not a huge fan of the brushstrokes but otherwise, it applied very nicely in two coats. I forget how easy I find Quirius polishes to apply, especially given that they are a fairly inexpensive brand.

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TiNS Something Blue

Those familiar with the Asian brand TiNS are generally better acquainted with the glitterbombs that are their glittery nail polishes. I recently tried out a few of their non-glitter polishes and have found them very satisfying. I just wish these were easier to get ahold of in the US! And cheaper.

TiNS Something Blue

This is the coolest light blue frost ever. It's almost icy cold in appearance. But it flashes magenta! Usually, a flash becomes obvious when it's in sunlight. Not so with this polish: I swear, it flashes magenta more when it's in the shade. It looks kinda eerie: an icy blue with this floating aura of pink. It applied so smoothly and was opaque in two coats. My only complaint is that it's brushstroke city. But it doesn't really detract from the look of the polish, imo.

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Dare2Wear Prism swatches: Silhouette, Pirouette and Kiss the Rain

I'm not entirely sure what the story is with Dare2Wear polishes. I am under the impression that they are a relatively old brand, found mostly in dusties... except they have some newer collections like Disco Tech (mixed glitter awesomeness, omg). Anyway, I ordered these from BeautyWests.com against the advice of some NBers -- questionable CS, minimum shipping of $25 -- but they were the only place I knew of that had this set so... I took the chance.

(Actually, I thought BeautyWests was great. It got to me relatively quickly and was well-packaged.)

I was thrilled when I got them and saw that they contained holo glitter! They're a bit unusual for holo glitter'd polishes though as they are also somewhat frosty-looking. (They're not actually frosty; they just have very bright flashes of shimmer in different colors that appear silver in these photos.)

Dare2Wear Kiss the Rain

I loved this song as a moony fourteen year old girl in a "long distance relationship". (Actually, I still quite like this song and I've long since outgrown both being fourteen and that relationship. Thank heavens on both counts.) And I really love this nail polish even though it would take at least five coats to become completely opaque on me. Still, a dusty light blue with a pink flash and holo microglitter... hard to argue with that combination. There's something really ethereal about this polish in person: it's serene and twinkling all at once.

Dare2Wear Pirouette

This is one of the more unique polishes I've seen lately. Totally ugly-pretty. The base color is somewhere between a pumpkin and a terracotta shimmer but what really makes this go *POW* is the amazing greenish-gold shimmer and holo microglitter interspersed throughout. ...it's seriously ugly but so incredibly pretty. Three coats.

Dare2Wear Silhouette

Mauve (taupe??) shimmer with ridiculously bright silver shimmer and holo microglitter. This one was so shimmery and sparkly that this was the only photo I could get that was in decent focus. Three coats, pretty thick (but manageable) stuff.

I took videos of all three but I swear, the sparkle made my camera wiggy. So instead of showing three very blurry videos, I thought I'd just post one:

Video of Kiss the Rain

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Damone Roberts, Orly Secret Admirer, & Diamond Cosmetics Hi Ho Silver

(2 coats)

I like this mint green. It's certainly my favorite of the few I have (Essie's Mint Candy Apple, Claire's Dream Catcher, BB Couture's Laguna Lagoon). There's isn't a hint of blue in it (which is my preference) and the application is OK. Although, it got a little bit glue-y on the second coat. Still, after applying and slapping on a healthy coat of TC I was good to go.

Warm-toned girls, this mint is for you.


(Bottom 2 fingers = 2 coats)

I picked up another Orly milky sheer. I am so happy with Orly right now. YES the color is gross when it is sheer but the soft orange works on me when I build it. Further, look at the 2 coats. Look at how not horribly streaky it is! It IS possible to have a milky sheer that doesn't look like garbage at less than 4 coats. At this point, as far as I'm concerned, anybody that charges more than Orly but can't achieve this level on non-streakiness for a milky sheer is just ripping me off.


(2 coats)

I swatched this once and threw it in my swap pile. Crazy crazy silly silly me. I pulled it back out and reswatched. It's REALLY brushstrokey but what a great color!

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The rest of the Barielle Wildflower (Spring 2010) swatches

My first post on Barielle's Spring 2010 collection can be found here. I bought those three early from the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund. About a month after that, I received the second half of the collection from Barielle to review. Definitely liked the first half better but the second half had one polish that I just unexpectedly fell for.

Barielle Blossom

It's a color we've seen a lot this season so far: pastel pink-peach creme. This is three coats and doesn't apply particularly well. In its defense, I didn't shake it up and it's been sitting around for over a month. If my stash wasn't such a mess, I'd do comparisons. But as it is now, I can't find any of my recently swatched polishes. (Drawer's jammed, actually. Yes, I'm such a winner.)

Barielle Snapdragon

Why is this called Snapdragon? (Why do I spend so much time thinking about how companies choose names for polishes?) I liked this better than I thought I would but it's still a bit of a hot, frosty streaky mess. Two coats, actually more pigmented and easier to apply than you think. But... I think I would've liked this better as a straight-up metallic. That wasn't so brushstroke-y. At least it's a pretty shade of green.

Barielle Daring Dahlia

Three coats, a bit watery and thin. Somewhere between a darkened magenta and a red-leaning purple. I've covered this before but I'm not so hot on this sort of color. So when I saw this in the bottle, I was like, "Urgh, another one of these cremes." But I was wrong! I mean, it looks mostly like a creme but it's got a gorgeous secret shimmer that is subtly stunning (...contradiction?). Wonderful in the tiny bit of sunlight that I got when swatching this but then I had to take photos of it in the lightbox... and my technique with the lightbox seems to kill shimmer. The shimmer looks like it's a very fine hot pink. I took a highly color-inaccurate photo with flash to prove that there's shimmer in here:

Close-up (with flash) of Daring Dahlia

See! Shimmer! :D The color's totally off though.

I have to give major credit to this collection for having an interesting variety of polishes (finishes, colors... really, everything) but I don't know if it hung together so terrifically. I wanted so badly to like a lot of the polishes in the collection -- especially June Bug and Myrza's Meadow (which was in the first review) -- but they didn't really live up to my expectations. :(

read more "The rest of the Barielle Wildflower (Spring 2010) swatches"

More of the Street Wears that I thought I wouldn't like...

Continued from yesterday...

Revlon Street Wear Scheming

Another polish that looked like it was going to be a super sheer mess but turned out to be an interesting color. Reminds me of a lighter version of OPI At Your Quebec and Call. The above is three coats and should probably have been four.

Revlon Street Wear Prissy

Yes, it is very prissy. A pearly frosty light pink. More opaque than I thought it would be at three coats.

Revlon Street Wear Mmoody [sic] over ELF Chocolate

This one was definitely too sheer to wear alone so I layered it over ELF Chocolate (nice polish but crap brush at $1). Mmoody over it is this really lovely greyed out slate blue shimmer.

Revlon Street Wear Gun Metal

Three coats. Not a great warm silver.

Revlon Street Wear Gold Mine & Ggold Mmine

One of the few times the double first-letter polish is probably exactly the same as the original (Ggold Mmine and Gold Mine). The quality of Gold Mine seems to be worse than Ggold Mmine (the streakier one is Gold Mine) but they are the same color: a very sheer duochromey olive gold and dusty purple. Three coats, nowhere near opaque. Might look interesting layered over the right color but all in all, a huge disappointment because it was so pretty in the bottle.

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These are the Street Wears that I thought were going to be ugly: sheer, pearly, metallic, frost...

After the really light colors, these Street Wears were the I next most dreaded swatching. It turned out that I had reason to dread some of them... but there were some surprising beauties in this bunch!

Revlon Street Wear Steelo

It's not a bad silver metallic (according to the bottle, it's a "foil") considering that metallics only seemed to have gotten really good in recent years (like the China Glaze Khromes). It was the least watery of the metallics I've tried... but still flooded my cuticles several times. This is three coats.

Revlon Street Wear Raw

Probably should be a layering polish but I kind of like this sheer pearly purple grey duochrome without any base... This is three coats and was very easy to apply.

Street Wear Burnt

There's another Burnt but it's a dijon-colored creme. This one was a TOTAL shocker. I thought it was going to be another pearly sheer duochrome but it turned out to be this gorgeous dusty purplish green-grey. Opaque in two coats. I have no other color like it. :)

Revlon Street Wear Sky

Pearly sky blue. Streaky and not opaque, even though it's three coats.

Revlon Street Wear Shooting Star

Light grey shimmer base with red and silver microglitter. Actually, a very pretty and interesting color. Pretty easy to apply. Three coats.

...I have more of these for you tomorrow. :)

read more "These are the Street Wears that I thought were going to be ugly: sheer, pearly, metallic, frost..."

Anne & Florio - Frosts, Flashes, and Metallics

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Second part of 3. Anne & Florio polishes were purchased in Beauty Buffet in Bangkok for about 1 dollar each.

Pink Frost

(3 coats)

Meh. It's a little bit too sugary for my tastes.

Pink w/ Green Flash

(2 coats)

A light pink shimmer w/ a green flash: I can't believe how much I liked this one! It was strangely flattering and a little fun.

Pink Metallic

(1 coat, 2 coats index)

So this is what they are talking about when they complain about "brush strokes". :)
Almost full coverage w/ 1 coat.

Grey Metallic

(1 coat)

I wore this one as a NOTD. A super light grey. I got a couple compliments on it. It's hard to see but there is an ever so slight pink cast to the color. The wear on this was not so good. No chipping, but the tip wear for 24 hours was insane to me considering I wasn't using my hands a lot.

I'm happier w/ this set than the cremes.

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Avon swatches: Nocturnal, Sunshine, Golden Wine and Golden Rose

Well, today's a special day for me: a double anniversary! It's my second anniversary with my SO: two years ago today, I decided to send the most flimsy Facebook message to this really interesting guy I had met walking out of the library the month before. And he sent me a FB message back asking me out... a very long message asking me out. It was like, "So... I'm not doing anything and all my friends are out of town and if you're not doing anything and have nothing better to do -- for instance, if your friends were out of town too -- maybe we could go get dinner... but only if you really want to. It's cool if you don't. But it's really cool if you do. Umm... here's my number." 

It's also been exactly three years since the day my advisor called me to tell me I had been (more or less) accepted by my current doctoral program. I missed the call and spent hours in agony after I looked up the area code and realized it came from this university's town. (She didn't leave a message the first time around.) 

So if this relationship and doctoral program goes well, it'll be my lucky day. If either or both bomb... it's gonna be the most depressing day ever. 

Anyway, enough yapping about various anniversaries... on to polish! Today, I have some Avon Nailwear Pro polishes for you. Avon is my biggest surprise of late. I always rejected the brand out of hand as boring and probably not of great quality. Yeah, I was wrong. (And now, I can't wait to see what else Avon has coming up in this line of polishes... good quality polishes for cheap, frequently with free shipping... you can't go too wrong with that!)

First up, dupe alert...! 

Avon Nocturnal and OPI You Don't Know Jacques! (L to R: OPI, Avon, OPI, Avon)

OPI YDKJ, a polish that I simply adored when I first got it, is maybe just a smidge darker and glossier than Nocturnal but they are very, very, very similar. I prefer Nocturnal because unlike YDKJ, Nocturnal only needed two coats to be opaque. There was still some VNL and uneven spots for YDKJ at three. 

Avon Sunshine

A basic yellow creme. Not incredibly special, either in color or in quality. This is three coats. It's not at all the worst yellow I've used but it's not the best either. (Still, this was easier to apply than quite a few of the yellows I've tried...)

Avon Golden Wine

The gold really shines (or rather, shimmers) in this wine red shimmer. I was afraid it was going to be like Golden Twilight, where the gold is just swallowed up by the base color. The gold here isn't totally present on the nail like it is in the bottle but it's definitely there. This was an NOTD some time ago: I used Diamont topcoat and the tipwear was after a day. Two coats. 

Avon Golden Rose

Well, Golden Wine and Golden Twilight were so great, I thought maybe Golden Rose would be similar... Nope! I found this frosty peach pink pretty unattractive on my nails and, surprisingly, it was somewhat difficult to apply. I found it very thick and brushstroke-y. Definitely not a fan of this one.

Overall, my experience with Avon polishes has been overwhelmingly positive. They're very pigmented, are often perfect in two coats, they dry quickly and they have good staying power. Cheap and good. Qualities I love in my polishes.

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Beige/nude/off-white/light gold Street Wear swatches: Slip, Chick, Nothing, Lighten Up & Whip Cream

Now that I seem to have fifty bajillion Street Wears, I probably should swatch 'em right?

I wasn't looking forward to swatching the beige/nude/off-white/light gold polishes. I rarely am. And some of these looked pearly and frosty and downright disastrous in the bottle. ...I was pleasantly surprised! They're still frosty or pearly but the quality was surprising. I'll explain more in a minute. But first, I gotta say: non-completely-round caps are genius. GENIUS. Why? Because for someone who does a dozen swatches at least in one sitting, I use a lot of acetone... and then I always reach for a dab of lotion between swatches. (Right now, using Jojoelle Red and White Peppermint Cake Shea Souffle Cream which smells delicious on my hands but not when applied to any bigger expanses of skin. Weird huh?) The lotion keeps my cuticles from looking like complete nightmares but then my lotion-ed hands make opening polish bottles a pain. Especially non-rubberized round-topped bottles like Essie or even OPI. The Street Wear bottle tops are rounded but they are actually tetradecagons (14 sided polygons), which provides just enough traction for my lotion-y hands. So yay for those.

Revlon Street Wear Whip Cream

I didn't think this one would be as pretty as it is. It's a frosty off-white and it's very bright. So not the sort of color I enjoy usually. But this polish applied so smoothly and easily. It took three coats for complete opacity which surprised me because I'm used to cheapie-like frosts taking at least four coats to reach any color that I can stand. It's a fairly clean look for a frost, imo.

Revlon Street Wear Chick

This is more of a pale yellow gold Very frosty and somewhat streaky but the polish was still pleasantly thick and not horrible to apply. Again, three coats.

Revlon Street Wear Lighten Up

I was hoping this would be a better idea than it looked in the bottle. Whitened gold shimmer with gold microglitter. Bumpy and the glitter is eaten up by the shimmer. Three coats, not even close to opaque.

Revlon Street Wear Nothing

This one I REALLY liked as a nude shade for my skintone. Not quite mannequin hands though (which is fine by me -- the mannequin hands thing kind of creeps me out). It's got just a bit of gold shimmer to it to keep it from being flat. Three coats here, could have used a fourth. Forgiven because the application was extremely easy. This polish just glided right on.

Revlon Street Wear Slip

This one I wanted to like a lot but knew that I would not like it on my nails. Sheer shimmery light gold base with holo glitter. This is three coats pictured above and because it feels sort of streaky, I'm not entirely sure that this would make a good layering polish either. There's still something subtly pretty about this though.

With all the Street Wears I amassed, I was thinking maybe I should do something like "Street Wear Sunday" every week but then I realized that that would make blogging feel like work. So, no scheduling for me. Just going to swatch and post my Street Wear collection as I make my way through them.

Anyway, I'm sooo glad it's the weekend. I'm going away for a few days to celebrate my anniversary with my SO (it's actually in ten days but we have a long weekend this weekend). Should be fun! :D

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