Adventures in Matte Land

I was a little skeptical of the whole "matte thing" but being one not to shy away from a challenge, I found a girl willing to swap her Essie Matte About You on MUA.  Here are the results of my findings.

Butter London - Trout Pout with Essie Matte About You (Index finger layered with Essie Flawless then Matte About You.)

I hunted this down at Ulta.  It was the last bottle and looked like it could have been opened but I gave it the benefit of the doubt.  It is an absolutely gorgeous color on it's own but with a matte finish gives it a pretty interesting look.  I plan on experimenting with other brights in the near future.

L'Oreal - Waters Edge with Essie Matte About You

Waters Edge is supposedly an Essie Greenport dupe.  As I don't own the latter, I can only rely on pictures from other blogs and it looks pretty close.  I really like this family of colors (being a Pisces) and it also looked pretty neat as a matte, but I still prefer Trout Pout.  Incidentally, I also ordered ILF from Manglaze who happens to be the purveyor of fine matte polishes.  It's supposed to be a nice teal color so I'll be swatching that as soon as I get it (which I hope is soon!)

Formula wise, MAY is nice, not too goopy like Seche Vite can be and dries quickly, which from what I understand is typical in a matte polish.  I like that this type of topcoat allows you to turn your normally glossy polish matte as opposed to turning your matte polish glossy.  Anyways, its a nice addition to my top coat family and it will probably be one I'll be using frequently to "tone down" a lot of the bright shades in my collection.

butter LONDON Love at First Brush

It was hard to decide which butter LONDON polish to buy first but I managed to choose Wallis because a) I was looking for a gold polish and b) it looked absolutely lovely on all the swatches I found online.

Named for Wallis Simpson, the woman who so beguiled a king he abdicated, is a mature shade which, in my opinion, is pretty work appropriate especially on shorter nails.  It feels like a dark brown/black that's been washed with an almost matte gold layer of shine, not so much shimmer.  Its an absolutely gorgeous color and has sort of got me jonesing for the rest of the line.

Judge for yourself:

The most wonderful thing about this polish is that it only took two coats for me to be happy with it opacity wise.  Lately I've been on a "two coat policy," in which, a polish passes or fails solely based on if I can get it opaque in two coats.  Clearly, Wallis doesn't disappoint. 

I'm always curious to see how shades like this come across on Asian skintones.  For example, I look terrible in most green polishes so I've pretty much decided to give up on them.  The interesting thing about Wallis is that its not a bright gold by any stretch.  Its more of a patina-ed gold that gives it a very interesting olive tone to it.  This actually brings out the red in my skin even though you can't really tell in the pictures.

In the beginning, I wasn't sure if I'd like this polish.  But, in the week or so I've had it, I've worn it three times.  I think that's saying a lot.  I'm not sure about tip wear yet so in terms of longevity, its still yet to be tested, but when it comes to my overall first impression, butter LONDON's Wallis is as equally charming as the Duchess of Windsor herself.

Orly Galaxy Girl or How I Learned to Love the Multichrome

As of late, I have not really had much love for nail polish that sparkles.  I should probably explain that when I was a child (an only one I should mention) the only shades of nail polish I was allowed to wear had to be in the very barest pinks, beiges, and any other color that qualifies as an "80s nude" shade.  This is why seeing my Aunt's best friend paint her nails in one of Chanel's deep chocolate brown nail polishes when I was around 12 or 13 played such an important role about how I viewed polish in my adulthood.  

Its very much like my obsession with shoes and handbags; keep the outfit simple and classic, go crazy with the accessories.  (And nail polish is definitely an accessory.  I should also note that I took piano lessons from my early childhood into my teens so my nails were always a stubby, not-so-attractive length so I didn't feel as compelled to paint them.)

Anyways, whenever my nails get to a point where I think they're "long enough" I decide it's time to get to painting.  I recently placed my first Zoya order and picked up a few beautiful shades -- Kristen, Codie, Kiki, Reece, Adina, Yasmeen, etc. -- a nice mix of "flat" colors and colors with glitter and duochromes.  Of the colors I bought Kristen and Codie were the ones I fell in love with.  They were perfect and neutral enough to wear in most situations and I was happy. The others just didn't feel right quite yet.

So they've been sitting in my polish box -- relegated to a fate unknown -- but hope for sparkle wasn't lost on me it seems.  Today, while perusing the Facebook nail polish group I belong to, I was inspired by a couple gals that had taken a trip to their local Ulta and discovered a cache of nail polish bottles.

I decided I would drag my husband to the one and only Ulta store in San Diego hoping to find some diamonds in the rough and I wandered in feeling like I wouldn't find anything.  The store is huge compared to the beauty stores I normally go to and it features a salon but the selection feels -- incomplete.  Despite serving a client base of young college aged women who attend UCSD nearby, and the generally upper middle class, I was disappointed with the selection as soon as I walked in.  I wandered aimlessly around the store searching for any sign of nail polishes besides the ones in the Sally Hansen aisle and finally, after the kids had gotten tired of being warned not to touch anything and consequently taken out by my husband, I found what I was looking for.  Tucked in the back near an alternate entrance and the "salon" was a oblong shaped island that featured the more popular OPI/Essie/Orly shades.  I must've circled it five times.  I decided to stop in front of the Orly polishes, searching for some life in the sea of common colors.  I picked up a bottle on the top shelf of the polish rack.  It was Galaxy Girl.  I was only really familiar with Space Cadet -- mostly as a cheaper alternative to the more elusive Clarins 230 -- but I thought, "why the hell not?" and picked it up along with Out of This World after some humming and hawing.  They were labeled with prices, but I thought as long as they didn't go over $8 I'd be happy.  

These were the (3) shades I decided on (L-R Out of This World, Yara, Galaxy Girl).  The Orlys ended up being a little more than I expected but I also signed up for the Ulta Perks Card and the girl took off an extra $3.50 from my purchase so it was like getting the Zoya polish for free!  (That's Kiki in the background in case you were wondering.)

After wandering around some more, I found a disheveled aisle of clearance items.  Sifting through separated bottles of OPI, Essie, Zoya and Orly was a little sad but I managed to score a bottle of Zoya's Yara for half price.  Not wanting to jinx my already good fortune of finding a Zoya color I was sort of wanting and two Orly colors that looked hard-to-find, I decided it was time to checkout.  In the Orly's were a little more than I expected but I figured they'd be worth it.  I'll let you be the judge.  

Here is Galaxy Girl paired over Wet N Wild's Morbid:

It was really difficult to capture the color shift fully...especially with a plain ole' point-and-shoot but you can kind of see the chameleon glitter shining here.

At certain angles, It just looked like a dark nail polish with a very fine green glitter.

In any case, it is an absolutely beautiful duo-chrome and I'm really excited about it.  I have yet to try Out of This World (mostly because I ran out of cotton balls and nail polish remover) but I'd imagine it won't disappoint me either.  

I think the thing I loved about Galaxy Girl the most was that I could do (1) layer of it over Morbid and it still looked amazing.  I think I'm definitely going to be experimenting with this one.