Street Wear Vice and E=mc²

Whenever I start trying to swatch on a theme, I inevitably get bored if there are more than twelve polishes that follow that theme in my stash. Hence, I haven't gotten through as many Street Wears as I've wanted to in the past year. But here are two more...

Revlon Street Wear Vice

Gunmetal grey shimmer. A little bit on the sheer side for a dark grey polish: three coats. And it's so totally brushstrokey, which I think is normal for polishes from this era. But it doesn't mean I love it. There's still something kinda badass about this polish though and I liked it better than I though I would.

Revlon Street Wear E=mc²

I would have been happier with this polish if I could ever get it opaque. This is four coats and I think six would've been perfect but I didn't have the patience for six that day. Still, I really liked this manicure, even though it was a bit sheer: it looked icy and textured and odd... and that appeals to me. This photo was taken after the second day of wear.

Close up of E=mc²

Sparse-ish blue and silver glitter in a grey-blue shimmer base. Interesting, though maybe not pretty.

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Yesterday's NOTD: Street Wear Prince Charming

Today's kind of bumpy but I had a great day yesterday. I didn't have any classes so I stayed home in the morning and early afternoon and worked my tail off on my poster for APS and on data analysis. Then I got sick of sitting around inside so I went to my favorite cafe in the neighborhood, had a Thai ice tea with coconut milk (yum) and wrote three, four pages of my second year paper. I still have so much work I have to do but having all of yesterday to myself to concentrate on research work was really good for me. If only I had more quiet days like that.

Street Wear Prince Charming

I went back and forth on whether I liked this polish: it was my NOTD for two days (and not a single chip with Nubar Nu Nails and Poshe). When I first put it on, all I could see was the unfortunate shimmer/glitter combination that looked gritty and bumpy and required several layers of Poshe to smooth over. Also, this is four coats and it's still pretty sheer (granted, my nails are pretty stained but four coats, c'mon). So I was not immediately happy with this polish, even though I loved it in the bottle. Because I didn't have time to change my mani, I kept it on for longer than I would have normally wanted but then the polish grew on me. It's light blue shimmer with gold/seafoam green flash (at least somewhat visible in most lighting) and sprinkled with holo glitter. It's playful, unexpected... but because it's got that gritty, somewhat frosty look to it while being sort of sheer at the same time, I think it looks kind of cheap. I think all sorts of polishes can look, well, polished and classy -- this is not one of them.

I still kind of like it though!

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Street Wear FX Flash (!!!)

I just wanted to post this beauty. I've had these photos for awhile but could not wait any longer... Finally, a lemming that lives up to its hype!

But then again, I paid 25¢ for this. And the fact that I got it for a freakin' steal probably makes me love this polish even more.

Here it is, over Avon's Textured Teal (a dark blue creme).

Revlon Street Wear FX Flash

Check out the gold-teal duochrome glitter!! It is so reflective and beautiful and the polish is just SO CHOCK FULL OF IT. It's also chock full of black microglitter, which looks more like black specks. As a result, it looks like I've got weird grime all over my fingers -- nope, that's just the microglitter. Sigh, it's chunky as hell but I'm happy to keep layering some thick topcoat over it until it's smooth and glossy...

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Stash photos: my untried Revlon Street Wear polishes!

A little something different this morning: some stash photos! I only have about a dozen more Street Wears that are actually tried but I attempt to keep my trieds separate from my untrieds. Hence, this photoshoot was only of my untried ones...

Hope you enjoyed the pics!

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As pristine as the newly fallen snow: some white swatches

This is probably going to be a visually boring post as it is devoted to one single color: white. But hopefully it'll be informative to somebody -- hopefully, D's whet some appetites on white nail polish with her Underware comparisons.

I'm pretty much always on a quest for a perfect opaque white creme. WnW White is often recommended. But in my experience, it isn't as fab as WnW Black. Very streaky and chalky on me.

I can't locate photos of all the opaque white polishes I've tried out and so before I forget, here are some of the ones I've tried but won't be showing photos of:

• Anna Sui 015: Soft white. As much as I love the candy rose scent of these polishes, this one was a nightmare. Three coats, totally uneven, goopy, and it never dried. (And it resembled White Out in texture.) Smelled nice... but nice-smelling nail polish is of no use to me when I can't wear it!

• Rescue Beauty Lounge Underware: Stark white. D's covered this one already. I've heard tell that this is a brilliant one-coat wonder! For me, that was simply not true. Three coats, also uneven. I tried it under the pastel jellies like Bikini Bottom for the "lit within" look... It looked pretty bad because the Underware was very streaky. So whatever power other people have over RBLs... I certainly do not possess it.

• CND Cream Washed: Beige-white. Not opaque at all. Trust me, I tried...

• OPI Alpine White: Stark white. It's been years since I've used it but have found this to be a pretty trustworthy white: two coater for me, IIRC.

OPI Tickets to Paradise

This is definitely not meant to be an opaque polish: the photo above shows five or six coats. It also leans a bit pinkish grey. It's a very nice polish with a pleasant jelly finish but not quite what I want in an opaque white creme.

Missha WH001

Soft white. Four coats, still VERY uneven. It was only a couple of dollars but totally not a worthwhile polish for me.

CND Brilliant White

Stark white. Four coats, very easy to build (please ignore the ugly chips that happened because it refused to dry for hours and hours). Certainly very close to what I want in a white (opaque, smooth and creamy in texture) but four coats was pushing my patience. Brilliant White was probably one of the better ones I've tried though!

American Apparel Cotton

Cream white. I like how soft this white is: it just has a tinge of tan in there. It does even out in three coats -- and does apply quite nicely for a white -- but man oh man, did this totally not dry at all.

Revlon Street Wear White Out

And saved the best for last: I need backups of this one. It's closer to a softer white than a super stark white. Passable at two coats but really needs three... but when you apply that third coat, it's opaque white polish perfection. So smooth (though not glossy). And so easy to apply! I hate having a discontinued polish be an HG of any sort -- and thus, the search continues -- but really, quite a jewel of a polish and one of the ones that I got for 4 for $1. :)

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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. :)

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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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