Wet n' Wild - Here Comes Trouble

Yay a drugstore polish! I don't buy Wet n' Wild polish that often, mostly because I feel like I already have every color they put out. I just don't get excited when I see Wet n' Wild. Not that they're bad or anything, just more...basic. I've said before, I'm probably unconsciously being snobby toward the budget brands, I'm working on it haha.

This polish is called Here Comes Trouble, from the Street Art collection that came out in the spring. Of course my CVS just got the display in, ugh. My town is the worst for getting limited edition stuff in late, if at all. My eye was drawn to this because I immediately thought of Essie's Strut Your Stuff from their Haute in the Heat collection for this summer. I haven't loved Essie formulas for the last year or so, so I was resisting buying it. Then I spotted this guy and my problem was solved as it's basically a perfect dupe!

It's a bright aqua blue crème. It was opaque in two coats, not super self-leveling but top coat saved it. It did stain my nails though, which is always a bummer. Oh well, my craving for this color is satisfied and I only spent $0.99 on it instead of $8.50! What do you think of this color? Do you like Wet n' Wild polishes? I need to pay attention to them more.

❤ Kellie

P.S. I updated my blog layout, what do you think?

Colors by Llarowe - Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star

Today I will be reviewing a nail polish from polish e-tailer turned polish maker Llarowe. Her brand is called Colors by Llarowe and this polish is called Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. I remember when she first posted about it on her facebook page, saying she was mixing colors and one of them was remarkably similar to Essie's infamous Starry, Starry Night polish, a very hard to find, and expensive when you do, vintage polish. As soon as it was available for sale I snapped it right up because I've been lemming SSN practically since I started blogging!

Purchased by Me

Twinkle is a dark navy blue jelly packed with tiny square silver glitter pieces, like a stunning night sky. The formula was a bit on the thick side, I found it worked best when I applied it slowly. This is two coats and a top coat, although it is nicely shiny on it's own. I have seen comparisons between this and SSN and it's a touch deeper in color but is otherwise almost indiscernible.

You can pick this up on Llarowe's website for $12 for a 12 mL bottle. What do you think of this polish? Do you own the Essie polish it's modeled after? If so, how do you think they compare? I still want the original haha, I'm a sucker for the "unicorn" polishes that are hard to find.

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BB Couture - Blind Love

Today I have a fabulous BB Couture nail polish to show you called Blind Love. It's a very cool gold silver hybrid foil. Gorgeous and I've heard it mentioned as a possible Chanel Kaleidoscope dupe. I've never seen it in person so I can't attest to that, but it is gorgeous in it's own right.

Nothing to Disclose

I love how this polish looks either almost platinum or gold in different lights, with just a hint of green tint. The texture is buttery and easy to apply without very obvious brushstrokes, as some metallics are prone to. This is two coats.

You can buy BB Couture nail lacquers from their website and from Overall Beauty. Be sure to follow their Facebook and Twitter to keep up with their latest releases and news!

OPI Exclusive & Max Factor Fantasy Fire

Hi folks! Happy Memorial Day :) Today I wanted to show you another gorgeous polish I got from my fab friend Scandalous. OPI Extravagance (oops!) Exclusive is one of the last Designer Series polishes that I wanted that I had yet to acquire and now it's mine! This one is a fab magenta purple with awesome linear holo that jumps out like 3D. I freaking love this. Two coats.

Here is Exclusive with two coats of Max Factory Fantasy Fire, the Clarins 230 dupe! Also a present from my girl :D I freaked out when I saw this in my package from her, how generous can you be my Southern Suga? I love how it looks over this OPI, so fab and color-shifty and holo!

And just because, here are some more shots of Fantasy Fire over Nicole by OPI Di-Vine is Divine, a deep berry purple smooth metallic. Gaaaaaahhhhh, amaze-a-balls!

Hope you all had a great day and will have an even better week!

OPI The Amazing Spider-man Collection

Yay! New OPI collection, woot woot! This one is inspired by the new movie The Amazing Spider-man, which comes out this summer. The collection has six shades and a new color of "shatter" special effect topcoat.

 First up is My Boyfriend Scales Walls, a color OPI describes as "cityscape white". I guess that means dingy and slightly grey? Wa, wa, wa ;) I actually like this color, it's not a stark white and it's got a pretty decent formula for such a light cream. This is three coats.

 

The shatter topcoat is called Shatter the Scales, it's a dark slightly blueish forest green with silver shimmer. It dries matte but I put a shiny topcoat on to beef up the hawtness.

This is Just Spotted the Lizard is described as a "reptilian yellow-green". I see it as a Chanel Peridot dupe haha. It's metallic gold with green duochrome and a blue tinge on the edges. This is two coats.

This hot and spicy orange is Call Me Gwen-Ever. It's a muted less bright orange than we've been seeing trending lately. It has coral undertones, which is delightfully different. This is two coats.

Into the Night is a shimmery metallic midnight blue. It's not really a cobalt and not really a navy, it's like a combination of those two. I didn't love this one, it's pretty but nothing too exciting. The brushstrokes were present, but not really a problem. Two coats.

This is Number One Nemesis, another Chanel dupe (Graphite this time). Foily with glitter, green tinged nickel pewter. I like it as much as I do the other dupe I showed you the other day, Smoky Feather. This is two coats.

And the token pink, Your Web or Mine. This one I didn't expect to like, but I ended up enjoying a lot. It's a frosty rose pink. Brush strokes are gonna happen when you have a frost, it's just their nature. However, these are manageable. I feel a little "grandma" wearing this but like I said, I do like it. This is two coats.

I think this collection is a win, save the blue that just doesn't work for me. I am not really into comic books, or Spider-man in particular, (am I the only one who didn't know the name was hyphenated?) but that never stopped me from partaking in some awesome colors. You should be able to pick these up in stores around May for $8.50 each. What do you think of these pretties? Are you planning on seeing The Amazing Spider-man?

Products provided for review.

Jessica Cosmetics - Smoky Feather

Hi everyone! Today I want to show you one of my favorite new polishes, Smoky Feather by Jessica Cosmetics. It is my first Jessica polish ever, crazy huh! I really like their bottle design, the handle is nice and grip-y and the logo is sleek. I got this polish mainly because it is a dupe for Chanel's Graphite, which I passed on when it came out but have been regretting ever since. In fact, this collection trio, Peacock Queen, are all dupes for Chanel's Fall 2011 polishes that caused such a big splash.

The polish is an olive green tinged pewter metallic shimmer with tons of microglitter that just glows! This swatch is two coats. It's really super beautiful in person.

I bought this on NinjaPolish.com for $6, which is a $20 price difference from the Chanel polishes. I've heard that it's slightly less sparkly than Graphite, but honestly at that price, it's hard to discriminate.

Products provided for review.

Claire's - Candy Shop

I suppose Deborah Lippmann could take it as a compliment that her polishes have been duplicated so often these days. Yesterday I showed you a Revlon take on one of her creations, and today it's a Claire's version of her pink glitter bomb. Candy Shop by Claire's is a dupe to Lippmann's Candy Shop. They really pulled out some creativity on this one huh? Haha. This is three coats.

You can get this at Claire's retail stores for about $5. They always have a BOGO 50% off sale on cosmetics, so be sure to take advantage of that.

Whimsical Cinderella

Sinful Colors has really stepped it up in the last few years on their polish selection. They had the same tired selection for like ever, then suddenly they started producing new colors every so often. Cinderella is one of the new ones, a beautiful glass fleck sky blue lacquer. The shimmer is pink/orange tinted which makes the polish unique, in my collection at least. It is rather sheer but layers up nicely. This is four thin coats. It's got a slightly jelly finish so it can gum up if you layer on coats too quickly.

Next, I decided to put Revlon Whimsical on top of Cinderella. This is a dupe of Deborah Lippmann's Glitter In the Air. It's much cheaper and a smidge less sheer, but otherwise exactly the same. It's a pale blue milky base, small glassy blue glitter, a little bigger round metallic pink glitter, and large metallic pink and blue hex glitter. This is two coats.

Sinful Colors are found in Walgreens for $1.99 each and Revlon nail polish can be found at most large retailers and drugstores for about $4 or so.

The Jeans Collection by Nubar

Hi dear readers, hope you are all doing well these days :) The Jeans collection by Nubar is similar to the much hyped Chanel Les Jeans collection, similar in that it basically dupes the three shades completely. I rarely shell out the dough for a Chanel lacquer so I wasn't too interested in the three seemingly ordinary blue polishes, even though there was significant hubbub before their release. I was more than happy to see more affordable dupes come out soon after. Nubar is a brand that I whole-heartedly adore for their bottle shape, color selection, and formula, so I was excited to see their take on the "denim" collex.

Faded Jeans is a light sky blue shimmer. I have to say I don't own any jeans this color and if I did it was probably back when I was in middle school haha. This is two-ish coats, it was a tad streaky. Beautiful subtle shimmer, though gosh.

Boyfriend Jeans is a gorgeous grayed out cornflower blue. It's a perfect jelly crème formula, two coats. This is probably around the color of most of the jeans I wear, standard and casual. Two coats.

Dark Wash Jeans is a deep blue jelly crème, almost peacock in color. I wore this for almost a week, it is so gorj! This reminds me of my deeper colored "nice" jeans, haha. This is my favorite of the collection. Two coats.

The retail price for the set of three is $19.99 on bynubar.com which is cheaper than one bottle of the similarly colored Chanels. That equals awesome in my opinion ;)

Products provided for review.

AKA Franken: Inception

I am such a bum! Seriously, I hate not posting every day and I feel crummy leaving you hanging for so long without a genuine post. It's the end of the semester for my university career, the last one EVER before I earn my degree. WOW. It's pretty crazy to say that. I have worked a looong time to earn this Bachelor's degree and I am gonna cherish it :)

This is a little baby franken I made, to wear on my nubby nubbins. I can't stand it when my nails are different lengths, so when one breaks or tears, I have to cut them all down :/ I made this out of the Revlon paradoxal dupe, called Perplex. I have wanted a holo color like this forever, so I decided to make my own. I added some of China Glaze's OMG, but not wanting to run out haha I also put in some OPI DS Shimmer. I tried to add flakies, which would make this even more epic, from CND's Sugar Sparkle, but they all fell to the bottom :P Oh well, this is my creation; I named it Inception! (p.s. if you haven't seen that movie, you need to seriously RUN and get it! It's in my top 5 of all time!)

 

Will be back to posting regularly soon soon :)

*P.S.  You may notice that I have discontinued using "Intense Debate" as my commenting system.  It just has too many bugs and makes my site run slower.  Unfortunately, this has made me lose ALL of my old comments from all of my cherished readers :(  This makes me epically sad and believe me, I wrote a very strongly-worded email to the ID people.  Hopefully they will find a way to fix this soon.  I am planning on writing back on the previous posts, answering questions, etc. but they will be on the blogger system.  I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. 

xoxo,
kelliegonzo

icing vs. chanel

icing the accessory and beauty chain store sells a brand of nail polish that you may or may not be familiar with. i've shown you a few swatches of them on my blog before. it's safe to say i'm a fan. their brush is large and wide, their formula is usually decent and they come out with new colors all the time, and good ones too. plus they're pretty cheap. another big plus is that they often times do duplicate colors of popular shades in other brands.

chanel came out with a three piece collection called Noir Et Or Paris-Shanghai that included a solid metallic gold, a flaky iridescent glittery gold glaze, and a matte black. a few weeks ago i saw a three piece set in a local icing store in my closet mall that had a similar color scheme, a solid metallic gold, a flaky iridescent glittery gold glaze, and a solid black.

as far as price goes, icing has chanel beat. chanel = $25 each, icing = $12.99 for set of 3. how about in terms of all the other stuff? well, not having the chanels, i wouldn't be the best judge but i can go off of what i have read on other blogs. they seem to be basically the same idea and the average consumer wouldn't know the difference at a glance.

this is one coat of the black (the icings are all no names in this 3 piece set) over my faux Halloween Dita claws, and one coat of the iridescent gold.  good opaque black, but can't really compare it with black velvet because it isn't matte.  the glitter is awesome, slightly more coppery in hue than illusion d'Or.

this is two coats of the no name gold.  it is warmer and slightly more coppery than chanel's gold lame.  good quality, slightly brush-strokey but that is to be expected from a metallic.

so who says a "save" isn't as good as a "splurge" :)

xoxo,
kelliegonzo

i purchased these products myself. please see disclosure statement for more information.

milani dress maker

i have limited access to milani as a brand in stores, but knew i HAD to have their new polish dress maker. why? because it is a dupe for the immensely coveted chanel jade polish from last year. and because i'm obsessed with mint greens :) so a lovely friend on twitter offered to find it for me! so nice!!

this green is literally perfection. amazing mintyness but not too pale, not too bright, with subtle green/silvery shimmer! this is three coats because it was a tad thick.

i have since realized that i could've ordered it online really easily haha. and it so happens that i visited my hometown like two weeks after i got this bottle and was able to find the entire Haute Value collection on display in a local CVS haha. so i picked up a new bottle and just had a contest for it on my facebook page :) congrats again Christina! be sure to become a fan of my page, as there might be more FB only giveaways coming up there soon ^_^

xoxo,
kelliegonzo

i received this as a gift from a friend. please see disclosure statement for more information.

opi and icing comparisons

hidey ho folks! i have been in a bit of a funky mood today unfortunately, and i don't mean funky as in funkadelic and listening to Earth, Wind, & Fire and Wild Cherry. i've just been a bit down in the dumps :P but i'm alright and we all have those days i 'spose. i went to see the movie "Devil" tonight w/ some friends hoping a good scary flick would cheer me up. .... .... did it? .... no. it sucked. m. night shamalamamama ding dong sucks again. bummer. it was the first trailer i've seen in a long time that has genuinely scared the crap outta me, but no, i do not recommend it.

here is a lovely comparison between two opi's from their hong kong collection that came out early this year and some cheapy icing colors. i like icing polishes as they are usually ok in quality and you can get them on the continual "buy one get one half off" cosmetics sale that icing stores have all the time (no joke, it's always going on). i also enjoy the brush (when it's not a wonky one) as it is thick and wide like opi's, only a bit poorer in quality.

gorgeous in gold is the dupe i found for opi's bling dynasty. well, it's not exactly a dupe. it appears so in the bottle shot but it turns out that GinG is slightly more bronze and less shimmery than BD. the formulas are different too, BD is more of a foil and GinG is more a metallic kind of formula. both are shown with two coats.

the dupe for jade is the new black, a big hit with the polish community and myself personally, is jaded. this is basically a perfect dupe. i wouldn't be able to tell the difference myself if i hadn't have written down which fingers i swatched them on! of course, the opi formula is better though. it is more free flowing and creamy. jaded is very opaque but i got a tiny bit of drag when applying it. two coats for each :)

so if you wanted these colors but maybe missed them in your local stores or don't want to pay opi prices, you might be able to find them in icing for less. and just to throw in another icing to round out this post, chartruesly yours is similar to, but not a dupe for, opi's who the shrek are you? polish that is part of the shrek collection from this summer. i don't have that one to compare unfortunately.  the formula was THICK on this guy, but i really enjoy the color.  it's very uhhh...unique in my collection :)

lamp light

flash

i know i've seen an icing collection that looks SUPER close to the Alice in Wonderland collection opi did earlier this year. hmmm :) anyway, not saying anything definitive OF COURSE (haha) but in the interest of avoiding buying dupes or seeking them out, it seems that icing puts out a lot of colors that are similar to opi shades. have a great friday night luvies!

xoxo,
kelliegonzo

i purchased these products myself. please see disclosure statement for more information.