September 10, 2008
First Ever Polish Addict Giveaway – Win Color Club Musique Collection!
Thanks to the wonderful people over at Color Club the Polish Addict is hosting its very first giveaway, ever!
Follow this link and fill out the entry form for a chance to win the entire Color Club Musique Collection including the 3 liquid lipstick shades. The winner will be chosen on September 23rd (which just happens to be my birthday : P). You can check out my swatches of the Musique Collection here.
This contest is actually the first part of a sort of two-part ordeal. My initial idea was to host a contest for the best franken made from Color Club polish but I realized that a lot people don’t have access to Color Club or have never tried the brand, so I decided to start off with a straight-up giveaway first. On the 23rd, I’ll launch the Color Club Frankenpolish Contest. The best Dr. Frankenpolish will win the Glitter Vixen Collection!
Anyone excited? I am! : )
September 9, 2008
Professional with a Twist: Zoya Deidra
Generally, I tend to associate work apropriate polishes with creme finishes, but every once in a while I encounter a good shimmery polish that can pass for work appropriate. Zoya Deidra is exactly that – a gorgeous mauve with glowing fine gold shimmer. I’m calling it a shimmer but the finish is probably more akin to a frost. This mani is 1 coat of Zoya Anchor, 2 coats of Deidra, 1 coat of seche. I had no application issues and it wore very well.
What I particularly love about this color is that it’s stunningly chic despite the fact that’s it’s fairly subtle. It’s refreshing when I find colors like this in my stash. It helps to stave off the plague of the work appropriate polish purgatory.
This picture is an accurate depiction of the color but there’s a good bit more shimmer in real life. In the shade, it’s sort of a borderline grayed out mauve but in the sunlight it just gleams gold. This color is probably too much for really really consversative offices but I think it would be a great color to wear just about every where else.
P.S. I recently had a bad break so this is one of the last long nail pictures we’ll have here on the Polish Addict for a while. Boooo.
September 8, 2008
Fall Blitzkrieg: New Glittery Goodness from Adorée
The title of this post is somewhat misleading. Adorée doesn’t release collections per se – they tend to respond to consumer and market feedback and release new colors accordingly. These new polishes coincide with Fall but they aren’t necessarily Fall releases. In any case, there are seven new nameless colors. Five of which are glitters, so I’ve grouped them together in this post. The other two are deep luscious browns which I’ll post about in the very near future. *crosses fingers in hopes that they’ll actually look good on me*
So without further ado, here are the Adorées:
Adoree 242 is a tyrian purple with multi-toned glitter. This swatch is 2 coats plus 1 coat of Seche Vite. Unfortunately, this polish dries bumpy because of the glitter. However, a coat or two of Seche satisfactorily takes care of the bumpiness.
Adore 245 is a tamer version of Orly Goth. 245 is solid black with small silver glitter, no bumpiness issues with this one. The black isn’t jelly but it does apply very thin so I needed 3 coats for opacity.
Adoree 244 is a jelly-ish light blue with multi-toned light iridescent glitter. The finish, which is like a mixture of frost and shimmer, reminded me a lot of Adoree Peony’s finish. This swatch is 3 coats, no bumpiness but there is visible VPL.
Adoree 243 is tough to describe. It’s a very dense pink, silver, and possibly gold glitter suspended in clear polish. This swatch is 3 coats. It did look good with 2 coats though. I just really loved it so I got a little carried away during swatching.
Adoree 246 is a jelly red with multi-sized orange toned glitter (similar to the glitter in Adoree Riding Hood.) Let me assure you that it’s a lot prettier in person than it is in my image. The formula is a little on the thick side but still workable. It also looks good over black which can be seen at the bottom of this post. This swatch is 2 coats.
Adoree Capri Sea is actually not new but I wanted to group it in with all the other glitters. My nails are very badly stained yellow so it’s throwing off the base color of this polish. (I’m too chicken-sh*t to try using bleach and nothing else I’ve tried has worked. Booo.) Capri Sea is duo-chromish (green to blue scale) glitter suspended in green tinted polish. It practically glows on your nail. I couldn’t photograph it properly but the duo-chrome quality of the glitter is really apparent over black, see below. Capri Sea, like 246, is a little on the thick side. This swatch is 2 coats. (Please excuse the typo in image above, the polish is named ‘Capri Sea’ not ‘Seas’.)
I apologize about the sloppiness of the these swatches. I was in a bit of a hurry but wanted to show you guys what these two colors look like over black. I used two coats of Milani Black Magic and 1 coat each of Capri Seas and 246 respectively. Capri Sea blew me away, really amazing.
Adoree is available from Esther’s Nail Center in the U.S. and Pro Nail Store in Europe, specifically Sweden.
September 6, 2008
New Nail Blog: Perfectly Polished Tips
Tink, writer of Perfectly Polished Tips, is after my own heart. She RAOK’d me the much beloved and, for me, much sought after white version of OPI Bubble Bath. More importantly, I love her site. She covers new collections and celebrity trends, plus she has awesome nails. <3 She did use Zulu for a franken… but oh well… no one is perfect. Haha. : P
September 4, 2008
Je Ne Sais Quoi – Givenchy Dandy Moiré
I am appalled by the size of the bottle of the limited edition (of course) Givenchy Dandy Moiré. Every other company on earth sells this amount of polish as a ‘mini’. The size itself actually isn’t the issue, I love minis. The problem is the size to price ratio.
Seriously? A 15 dollar ‘mini’?
It doesn’t even apply well. The fomula is too thick and it chips fairly easily. At 15 dollars per .18 fl. oz., it needs to apply perfectly. It needs to apply like Jesus himself is doing my nails. Not only that but it needs stay on my nails, unchipped, for the rest of my life.
Why did I buy this? Am I really such a blind consumerist that I can’t resist buying something I know isn’t worth the amount of money I’m spending? Ugh, I don’t really have an answer to that question, there’s just something about this color that drew me to it. It’s not as impressive in real life as it looks on Sephora’s website. (Of course. Oh man, how I abhore Sephora.) However, I admit that the blue and green shimmer is mesmerizing even though it’s not as blingy as advertised. What was really… just… bizarre… about this color was other people’s reactions to it. I wear nail polish every single day of my life. No one cares. I hardly ever get compliments, comments, anything. But, Givenchy Dandy Moiré was a topic of conversation with almost everyone I encountered for 3 days that I wore it.
I broke my professional color vow and wore it last Friday during my office’s casual day. The female attorneys loved it. So much so that yesterday, one of the victim advocates asked me where she could buy it or something like it locally. I told her that she should skip the unreasonably priced haughty Givenchy and check out OPI Yoga-ta Get this Blue which is basic and readily available in our nail polish deficient little town.
Then Friday night at dinner, my friend’s boyfriend and his friend noticed Dandy Moire. They thought it was black and stated that it “didn’t suit my skin tone”. Even though I knew that they were teasing me in response to me mocking college football, I launched into a tirade about the merits of navy shimmery nail polish on dark skin. I’m sure they regretted mentioning it at all after I imparted more information about nail polish than they ever wished to know.
Saturday night, a very drunk boy awkwardly hit on me at a bar by complimenting my ‘black’ nails. Even my male roommate who only discusses nail polish in the context of taunting me, commented on Dandy Moire. He also thought it looked black. The strange thing is that I wear black and ‘almost black’ polishes all the time. No one ever notices or says anything. So what was it about this particular color that made people feel the need to comment on my nails? I’m completely baffled. I guess there is just something intangible about this color that makes it more strikingly noticeable. I still think the 15 dollar price tag is absolutely ridiculous, but I guess I like Dandy Moiré.
September 2, 2008
Fall Blitzkrieg: OPI La Collection De France
I’m a little late to the party (check out Scrangie’s swatches) but, of course, I have to give you guys my take on one of the biggest collections to hit us this Fall. I wasn’t all that excited for OPI France when I initially saw the promotional images. OPI has a proclivity for releasing several reds and ‘almost blacks’ in just about every collection and, frankly, it gets old. The promos of France made it seem like more of the same. Consequently, I wasn’t expecting to like these. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this collection is actually pretty cool.
Sure, a few of the colors were fairly run of the mill OPI type stuff. I’m not doing back flips for OPI Louvre me Louvre Me Not (ducks to avoid thrown stones, tomatoes, assorted rotting vegetables), but there are several solid gorgeous, unique colors in this collection. There have been a few complaints about colors in the France collection being thick and difficult to apply but I didn’t have any real trouble with them.
As a side note, I really feel like OPI did a good job of designing colors that are representative of French culture and fashion. I say that because I felt like they could have done more with the Indian collection, it’s good to see that they were spot on with France.
*Dies* OPI You Don’t Know Jacques is my absolute favorite color from this collection. Seriously, every once a while an amazing color like this comes out and renews my passion for nail polish. The color is tough to describe, grayish, brownish, dirty, mushroomy? This is my current NOTD, 2 coats, love it. I’ve said it a million times and I’ll say it again, love these grayed out mushroomy colors. I just can’t get enough.
OPI Yes… I Can-Can! is a shimmery eggplant type color. The base color seems similar to OPI Lincoln Park After Dark. The shimmer seems multi-colored, I see flashes of green, silver, and violet in the bottle. On the nail, it’s silvery and serves to give Yes… I Can-Can! depth. This swatch is 3 coats but with careful application good coverage is possible at 2 coats.
OPI Tickle My France-y is my second favorite color from this collection. It’s a grayed out subtle nude pink – it is chic and sophisticated perfection. Earlier last week, when I went back into the professional nail color purgatory, Tickle My France-y was the first color I chose for the big switch. This color was so beautiful, so flattering that I didn’t even care about being forced to wear professional colors. This mani was 3 coats.
OPI Parlez-vous OPI?, another stand out color, is a grayed-out (or smokey as OPI puts it) plum. The application was slightly troublesome, my bottle was chalky and thick but it’s workable. This is 2 coats.
OPI Louvre Me Lourve Me Not is my least favorite color from this collection. Sorry guys, I know I’m completely alone, everyone else loves this one. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this color but I have a predisposition to disliking shimmers and I’ve just had my fill of shimmery mid-range purples this fall. You can’t really see it in my image but Louvre Me Lourve Me Not has blurple and violet shimmer. This swatch is 3 coats.
OPI I’m Fondue of You is a reddish light chocolaty brown with reddish brown shimmer. I don’t love this one. It’s pretty but not special. This swatch is 2 coats, I think the color would look better with 3.
OPI Eiffel for this Color is an ‘almost black’. OPI says it’s wine but it looks dark purple with violet shimmer to me. It’s similar to Yes… I Can-Can! but they’re different enough to warrant owning both if one is so inclined to do so. Normally, I would say boo to an almost black but I, surprisingly, like this color. This swatch is 2 coats.
Scrangie called OPI Crepes Suzi-ette a ‘mom’ color… it is – but – it’s hot. I think this one ventures into the realm of work appropriate. I’m actually surprised that I like this color too. I probably wouldn’t have batted an eye at this creamy reddish caramel in a store, but it’s actually very flattering on the nail. I would even dare say that it’s unique. This swatch is 2 coats.
There will always be reds in an OPI collection, shockingly there were only two in the France Collection. One of which, OPI Bastille My Heart, is a deep burgandy with violet shimmer throughout. Pretty, but standard.
OPI Baguette Me Not, a creamy salmon, is another shocker. Totally didn’t expect to like this ‘mom’ (haha) color but I love it. Very chic, very work appropriate. This swatch is 2 coats.
OPI A Oui Bit of Red, the other red in the France Collection, is a mid-range bright red. I love reds and I would have loved this one too, but for the shimmer. The saving grace is that the fuschia shimmer is very subtle, hardly noticeable. This swatch is 2 coats.
Finally, OPI We’ll Always Have Paris. Love. It. This is the color that I wanted the annoyingly almost black OPI Lincoln Park After Dark to be. I love LPAD but I always wanted it to be more noticeably purple and vampy. OPI granted my wish with We’ll Always Have Paris. Strangely, OPI says this color is dark coffee… definitely looks dark reddish purple to me.
Special thanks to OPI.
The Polish Addict 
