Free beauty tips: Bronze

Showing posts with label Bronze. Show all posts

Vampy Varnish BB Couture Collection: Part I

Above: Napa Valley red, shown in 2 coats. This is a deep violet red or deep burgundy red-toned jelly base with coordinated glitter. No matter how many photos I took, they simply do not do this shade justice. Kim at Overall Beauty believes this is the best-selling one, and I can certainly understand that.

Above & Below: Union Square, shown in just 1 coat! Unbelieveable coverage on this metallic bronze shimmer with what appears to be tiny silvery pink glitter. Below, with a matte top coat.

Below: Mendocino Midnight has a special place in my heart, because I have always been partial to tealish green shades. I used 2 coats on this shade. It looks like a deep evergreen with hints of teal on the nail, and the small glitter reflects an emerald green sparkle in less direct lighting.

As many of you know, the lovely Kelly from Vampy Varnish recently had the opportunity to work with BB Couture in developing her own polish collection. You can read about her experience and see her swatches here. BB Couture polishes have always impressed me with their formula, their color selections, and their range of finishes. Combine that with Kelly's eye for color and style, and I knew these would not disappoint. I purchased mine from Kim at Overall Beauty last week. I happened to be on Twitter when Kim announced one of her fabulous sales...buy one get one free, limit 3 free. I jumped on that opportunity immediately, because it was only available for one day, and ordered the entire collection. This is the perfect trifecta of nail polish...the quality of BB Couture, the unique and beautiful polishes that Kelly designed, and the customer service of Overall Beauty! Congratulations to Kelly for doing such a wonderful job turning the colors in her imagination into such beautiful polishes!

Barielle Gelt Me to the Party

Good morning, Dear Reader!

Today is the final installment of the Barielle Holiday Hustle Collection with Gelt Me to the Party. Barielle describes it as "a copper bronze metallic," which is pretty accurate. The finish on Gelt Me to the Party is not the same as Wrap Me in Ribbon (the other they describe as metallic), which was almost like a chrome. As I applied Gelt Me to the Party, I thought that the finish reminded me of SpaRitual Steel Magnolia, where it's brush-strokey as it goes on, but once dry it's just a glowy shimmer.

Like the others in this collection, this one was easy to control, but the application was a little higher maintenance because of the finish, where if one brush stroke is at an angle it can show when it's dry. That just meant being a little slower and more careful than usual. However, Gelt Me to the Party is also a two coater, so the extra time is not significant. Here's the finished, dry manicure under artificial light.

Barielle Gelt Me to the Party Nail Polish, Two Coats Dry

As for the color, I think it's an unusual color and I like it, but not on me. It makes my hands look kind of pink, and it just doesn't do anything for me. I think this one might work really well next to brown skin, but I sure don't think it works with Irish skin.

That's the update for today, Dear Reader, and it wraps up Barielle's Holiday Hustle Collection. Until next time, love and nail polish to you!

*This polish was sent to me for review by the manufacturer.

Posted in Barielle , Barielle Holiday Hustle , Bronze , nail polish

OPI Holiday Wishes: Glove You So Much and Meet & Jingle

Above & Below: Glove You So Much is a rich burgundy shimmer.

Above & Below: Meet & Jingle, a true red shimmer.

Below: The 6 shades I've used so far from OPI's Holiday Wishes Collection.

This puts me halfway through the OPI Holiday Wishes Collection and today I have the 2 red toned shimmers for you. I wouldn't say that either one of these have any color or finish qualities that make them unique, but they are pretty shades nonetheless. They both applied nicely in 2 coats with minimal drying time. Glove You So Much is a burgundy shade and OPI describes it as "Glove You So Much! Almost as much as this rich burgundy!". It is a very deep, rich shade and both of these shades remind me of crushed velvet. The shimmer in them is so dense and fine that it tends to make the finish look plush and almost textured. Meet & Jingle, described "as rich crimson that loves to mingle", is a nice, true red shimmer. I've posted a photo of the 6 shades I've used so far for a comparison for you, and I'll be finishing up the other 6 later in the week.

Posted in Bronze , Brown , Burgundy , Creme , Glitter , OPI , Orange , Pink , Red , Shimmer

OPI Holiday Wishes: Shim-Merry Chic

Above: OPI's Shim-Merry Chic, outdoors in full sunlight.

Above: This picture was taken indoors with no flash in filtered sunlight coming through the window. It takes on a darker shade of bronze with less lighting.

Above & Below: These pictures were all taken outdoors in the sunlight and you can see that it's more of a golden bronze in brighter lighting.

Below: A close-up of the finish. This polish has small glitter as well as larger flakies, although the flakies are still relatively small, compared to something like the Nfu-Oh flakies.

Every year when OPI's Holiday Collection comes out, I am never disappointed. Holiday Wishes offers a wide range of colors and finishes, with only a few that I consider just average. Today is my first pick from the 12 shade offering and it's called Shim-Merry Chic. It's a golden bronze shimmer with multi-colored shimmer and glitter flakies. In darker lighting it appears almost as an olive bronze shade, while brighter lighting brings out a more burnished or antique gold look, bordering on bronze. Although it doesn't scream "Holidays" to me as much as a red or green shade would, it's actually a very nice hue for the Fall and Winter months. It has more than enough sparkle to definitely work during the Holidays, but I'm drawn to it because it's unlike anything else I have.

In other news, the rest of my shelves are ready for my polish storage project, so I'll be working on that again today. I want to get through swatching the rest of the Holiday Wishes, because that will clear off a section of my untried's, making room for more! Actually, I think the only polish I'm expecting right now is from my Sephora F & F order (code is FF2009 for 20% off everything...as if you didn't know that!). The only polish I ordered was Absinthe Makes The Heart by OPI for Sephora and the rest of my order was MUFE items. I just had to have that polish for the name alone, but it's actually an extremely pretty shade. How many of you caved and ordered from the F & F sale? What did you get or what are you planning on purchasing? I have a feeling I'll be placing another order before it ends.

Posted in Bronze , Glitter , Gold , OPI , Shimmer

QRS Autumn Bronze and Yesterday's Prize Winner!

Above & Below: QRS Autumn Bronze...I'm oddly captivated by this shade. Outdoors, no flash.

Below: Indoors, with flash.

Below: My Greta girl, who thinks her owner takes too many pictures of her nails, but always likes to accompany me for the outdoor shots.

Congratulations, Natalie! She won the 5 piece Orly Treatment set in the daily giveaway I posted about yesterday. If you haven't seen her blog, Nani's Nails, check it out here. Out of all the giveaways during this month of Natural & Organic Beauty thus far, I think this one generated the most entries. So take note of that Orly, and keep up the great work! They make an excellent polish and an extensive line of top coats, base coats and treatments. I assigned each entry a number as I received it and used random.org to generate the winning number, which in this case was 15.

I have one more QRS polish to share with you this evening (scroll down if you missed the earlier posts today on QRS) and 6 more left to swatch from my order last month. If you like these polish colors, don't forget to use the $3.00 Body & Soul discount coupon (see details in the right hand column above) should you decide to place an order. This shade is called Autumn Bronze, and in the bottle it looks like a tarnished brass color. To be honest, I thought it was going to be one of my least favorites. It's not gold and it's not olive, although I did see touches of both when I held the bottle up for inspection. It is a shimmer and if you click the pictures you can see more detail of the shimmer hues. Now, some people may not like this shade because it is different and a little hard to describe, but I owe Autumn Bronze a big apology. It's different alright, but different isn't a bad thing! It appears more gold in some lighting, more olive in other lighting. The first coat was streaky, the second made everything fine. I don't know what it is specifically that I love about this one, but if Autumn Bronze will accept my apology, I think we'll have a long and happy friendship.

For those of you in Canada, Q-Nail/QRS will be offering shipping to you in the near future. They had a glitch in their system a while back that allowed you to order, even though they aren't quite set up for that yet. They honored the orders at that time, but will soon be ready to accommodate you on a regular basis.

Posted in Body and Soul Codes , Body and Soul Contests , Bronze , Gold , Pets , Quirius by QRS , Shimmer

Nubar Venetian Glass Collection

Good morning, Dear Reader!

The manicure I had planned for today was thwarted yesterday when samples of Nubar's Venetian Glass Collection for Fall 2010 came from the manufacturer yesterday. I wanted to swatch them right away despite the fact that I didn't have enough natural light for pictures, so I used artificial light.

The collection is eight colors, all opaque glass flecked polishes, with five kind of leaves-changing-color shades and three that are just really cool. I was excited about opaque glass flecked polished, since most glass flecked are pretty sheer on me. I did two coats for all, I think one or two might have been better with a third.

Oro is a yellow gold, with an almost foily finish.

Nubar Oro Nail Polish, Two Coats

Caramello is a browner golden shade, also almost a foil.

Nubar Caramello Nail Polish, Two Coats

Bronzo is a coppery bronze.

Nubar Bronzo Nail Polish, Two Coats

Arencia is a Fall orange.

Nubar Arencia Nail Polish, Two Coats

Rosso is a pink red, and sorry about the sloppy swatch on this one. I wear out doing eight!

Nubar Rosso Nail Polish, Two Coats

Those were the five I think of as fall leafy colors. The other three are my favorites, I think.

Vino is a great burgundy.

Nubar Vino Nail Polish, Two Coats

Vaso is a great light purple glass fleck.

Nubar Vaso Nail Polish, Two Coats

This last one is a complete manicure with top coat. Verde is a deep green with visible green, blue, and gold flecks.

Nubar Verde Nail Polish, Two Coats

That's Nubar's Venetian Glass Collection for Fall 2010, available June 30.

I should have more swatches for you this week, too - notice for another mystery package was left when no one was around to sign for it.

That's the scoop for today, Dear Reader. Until tomorrow, love and nail polish to you!

Posted in Bronze , Burgundy , Glass Flecked , Gold , green , Nubar , Orange , purple , red , Venetian Glass Collection

China Glaze Crackle Glaze Metals

Good afternoon, Dear Reader!

I'm back much sooner than I'd planned because I have swatches of the upcoming China Glaze Crackle Glaze Metals to show you. China Glaze sent them for review and they arrived this morning, and once the bottles had cooled down to room temperature, I got to swatching.

I used them all over a charcoal shimmer - I figured charcoal would let them show up well and show us their opacity, and I thought shimmer would work better with the almost-chrome finish of all six Crackle Glaze Metals. I did just single nail swatches for this preliminary test drive and look at them - in addition to the fact that I was racing predicted storms for sunlight and didn't want to change lighting conditions halfway through, all six are gorgeous and I'd rather put a little more thought and effort into full manicures with them than just pairing them with charcoal.

Since I used three colors on each hand I split them up as I figured you'd want to see them, putting the true metallics (silver, gold, bronze) one one hand and the others (teal, pink, lavender) on the other so you can see how they look relative to one another. They all have top coat, and this is in good sunlight.

First, we'll look at the true metals. They are, from the top down, Cracked Medallion (bronze), Tarnished Gold (gold) and Platinum Pieces (silver).

China Glaze Crackle Glaze Metals Swatches, Round I

I think you can see how well these apply, and the application was the same for all six shades in the collection. The consistency of the polish is like normal polish, and so it was easy to apply a thin coat. With crackles, I pay no attention to how even or opaque the crackle is during application - when it splits up, the pieces become much more opaque and things even out. When applied, these looked somewhat sheer, but you can see that all three broke up beautifully and are opaque enough to completely cover the charcoal base between cracks. Here's the same picture with the polish names added - I find labels on pictures can be distracting, so I figured I'd let you get a first impression without them and tack on the labelled version for reference.

China Glaze Crackle Glaze Metals Swatches Labelled

China Glaze Crackle Glaze Metals Swatches, More Round I

As for the colors, I really like them a lot. I've always loved metals and chromes, but the fact is, a chrome finish isn't the most forgiving. If there's one ridge in a nail, and I have many, a chrome finish pretty much places a neon sign flashing "RIDGES" on that nail. These have the same overall effect as regular chromes without that shortcoming, and they are really solid renditions of each color.

For Round II, also from the top down, I have Oxidized Aqua (teal), Haute Metal (pink), and Latticed Lilac (lavender).

China Glaze Crackle Glaze Metals Swatches 2

China Glaze Crackle Glaze Metals Swatches, Round II

Here, you can see that these three are as opaque as and broke up just as well as the first three, and the colors are stunning. These three will require a little more thought to pair up with good bases. Here's the labelled version of Round II.

China Glaze Crackle Glaze Metals Swatches, Labelled Round 2

China Glaze Crackle Glaze Metals Swatches, More Round II

All six swatches have just the one coat of top coat, and you can see that the crackle layer isn't terribly thick, which is nice. I'm a huge fan of this collection, and I'll be trying them out individually this week.

That's really all I have for today, Dear Reader, so until tomorrow, love and nail polish to you!

Posted in Bronze , China Glaze , China Glaze Crackle Glaze Metals , Crackle , Gold , Lilac , metallic , nail polish , Pink , Silver , Teal

MAC Pret-A-Papier: Brown Bag & Originality

I'm a little late posting these, but hey--I still have the OPI Alice in Wonderland polishes and China Glaze Up & Away sitting here, so these made it in to the rotation pretty quickly! I'm not entirely sure why I bought these, but I'll blame it on the fact that I was out of some of my MAC staple items, and there they were at the same time!

Above & Below: Brown Bag is shown in the shade with no flash above, and in the sunlight below. This is an odd polish, and I haven't decided if I love it or hate it yet. It's a tan/imitation gold creme with the tiniest gold glitter I think I've ever seen. It's so tiny, that it's really not even noticeable. The coverage was good with 2 coats, although the formula was a bit thick.

Below: Originality is a golden bronze shade with all kinds of texture going on. It's a shimmer that covered nicely in 2 coats, and has a variety of gold and coppery glitter shapes and sizes mixed in.

Below: In the sunlight, you can see how the glitter turns more multi colored. The finish looks a little rough, but it's actually quite smooth.

I'm a fan of MAC polishes and always like to pick some up from their LE releases. These are not 'wowing' me at the moment, and I'm a little indifferent about my thoughts on them. The formula was decent on both of them, although Brown Bag could use a drop or two of thinner. Brown Bag is described by MAC as a dirty beige, which is an accurate description. The miniscule glitter could have easily been left out of the formula, because it is so subtle. Originality, described as a coppery bronze frost is thankfully, not a frost in my opinion. It's bright and shiny, and the glitter is pretty, but again, my indifference to these is making me question what appealed to me about them in the first place. But they're a brand that I like, and the term LE has caused me to buy a good percentage of my collection without putting too much thought into it!

Posted in Beige/Khaki , Bronze , Copper , Creme , Glitter , Gold , MAC

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