Borghese Scintillare Fall 2010 Collection

Borghese collections normally have at least one must-have shade in them, if not more. The Scintillare Collection contains 6 shades, 4 of which I picked up. I must say after swatching these...I need the other 2! These are all glitters and they're absolutely gorgeous. The other 2 polishes are a purple with multi colored glitter (matte finish) and a sparkly gold glitter, which I don't believe has a matte finish.

Above & Below: Mediterraneo Sea is a stunning shade of dark turquoise/teal with multi colored glitter. This one dries to a matte finish (above), but as you can see, a clear top coat amplifies it significantly. These have quite a smooth finish, although they look a bit grainy in my photos.

Below: Vigneto Berry, a deep fuchsia with matching foil glitter gave me a bit of a problem formula-wise. It was rather thick and left some less-than-desirable streaks and lumps. Again, this one has a matte finish, but after adding a clear top coat (second photo), I was more than satisfied with the finish.

Below: Nero Magico is a lovely black based shade with silver glitter. This one dries to a gloss finish. I have some other black polishes with silver glitter, but this one stands out as being the most bling-y of them all!

Below: Scintilla Magic is a red creme with red foil glitter...or so it appears in the bottle as such. This one has glitter that sometimes look red and other times gold. What's interesting about it is that when I removed it, the glitter is actually silver on the cotton ball.

This is a very nice collection from Borghese with some stunning and unique shades. Scintillare means Sparkle in Italian, so it's a very fitting name for this collection. I don't quite understand why half of them are matte and the others are gloss, but you have the option of adding a top coat if you're not happy with the finish. I actually like them both ways, but I'll admit the top coat brings them up to a remarkable level.

I used 2 coats on these highly pigmented polishes, and other than the fact that Vigneto Berry was too thick to get a nice finish with (I've since added thinner), the application on the others was fine. This brand has always seemed a bit pricey to me at $8.00 a bottle for a drug store brand, but with sales you can often get them bogo, bringing them down to $6.00 each.

China Glaze 'Tis the Season LE Sets

Not only do we have the enticing 16 shades to look forward to (end of October) from the China Glaze 'Tis the Season Holiday Collection, we also have the option of purchasing some of these LE gift sets. Some of them include a shot glass, peppermint cuticle oil, a stuffed reindeer, and a candle. These would make fabulous gifts for your friends...or if you're like me, fabulous gifts for myself!

N.Y.C. Berry Bloom LE Collection

I spotted 2 table top displays of N.Y.C./New York Color cosmetics at Rite Aid earlier this week and picked up a few items. They're on sale right now bogo/50% off, so armed with several $1.00 off coupons and the kind assistance of the cashier who separated everything into multiple orders for the deepest discount, it was a great bargain. These products are from the Berry Bloom LE collection, and cost me only $4.99 for everything. I also picked up a couple of products from the Sun Soaked LE display, which I'll show in my next post.

Above & Below: Peony is a rich plum shade with multi colored shimmer. This is shown outdoors, and I used 2 coats for the application. There was one other berry-toned polish in the Berry Bloom Collection. The polishes retail for $1.99.

Below: The Individual Eyes/Custom Compact is called Berry Bloom and contains 4 shadows, shade primer, and a creme illuminator. The shadows are shown below.

Below: Swatches of the shadows. These are fairly pigmented and I'm looking forward to using them, particularly the second and fourth ones from the top. I love the gold sparkle they have.

Below: Lippin' Large Lip Plumper is a berry tinted gloss that has a minty/tingly feeling on the lips. The shade is called Mulberry and while it feels nice on the lips, I don't notice any real plumping action going on! This retails for $3.99.

There is another eye palette in this collection, along with another polish and a Lippin' Large Lip Plumper. It also contains 2 blush shades, 2 roller ball eye dust products, and 2 lip gloss pot shades with an embossed flower design. I don't have too much from this line other than nail polish, but the shades and pricing appealed to me, so I'll give them a try.

Do you have any cosmetics from N.Y.C.? If so, what do you think about them?

Love & Beauty (L.A. Girl) From Forever 21

Back in January I ordered some Love & Beauty polishes from Forever 21, and I have 4 of them to show you today. These are made by L.A. Girl and without researching it to be sure, I imagine there are dupes to these in the L.A. Girl line. These are a great bargain at $2.80 each, because they come in a wide range of colors and finishes, and the application is above average.

Above: Black/Purple is a black creme with fine purple foil glitter. I used 2 coats on this and I'm quite certain I have several similar shades.

Below: Magenta/Black (gotta love those original names!) contains an overload of magenta foil glitter in a black tinted base. I used one coat over Black/Purple, as it would take 4 coats to get the same look using it alone.

Below: Orchid is a pale silver lavender metallic shade that covered nicely in 2 coats. This type of finish sometimes shows brush strokes, but I had a smooth application on it.

Below: Rose is a medium pink metallic shade that was less foil-like that Orchid. This seemed quite sheer, but I was satisfied with the look 2 coats provided. This one has tiny pink and gold glitter and while I'm not a huge fan of pinks, I think this is very pretty.

I have one or two of these in a creme finish, so I'm anxious to try those out and see if the application and coverage is as nice as these were. All in all, these are nice polishes, especially for the price.

New Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Shades: Sequin Scandal & Problem Child

Here are two of my favorite shades from the recently released Fall 2010 Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Collection. There are a wide range of finishes in this collection, and if memory serves me correctly, there may have been one or two other shades (a red or raspberry, and a silver?) with this crushed glitter type of finish.

Below: While green might not be your thing when it comes to nail polish, I love it! This rich dark olive shade with multi colored glitter is very pigmented, and the name alone--Sequin Scandal--would have been enough to persuade me to buy it. The gold glitter is the most prominent, but the other colors stand out well also. This reminded me somewhat of Color Club Snakeskin, but they are by no means dupes.

Below: Problem Child is another one with a great name, but it's also a gorgeous shade. This very deep purple hue is filled with primarily violet, almost fuchsia glitter. This one has a lot of black in it, which makes for great coverage. This shade looks darker on the nail than in the bottle, particularly in lower lighting.

I'm starting to see this display everywhere I go, so if you haven't been able to locate it, don't give up! I had no problems with the formula on these, and because they both seem to have a deep charcoal base, they're nearly opaque with the first coat. Two coats easily covered the few thin patches I had after the first coat. Have you spotted these yet? If so, did you pick any up?

4 Shades From BB Couture Infamous Lovers & A Code

Overall Beauty sent out their newsletter Sunday and it sounds like she's having a little sale! The Saints of Ruin Collection and both the Guys and Gals Infamous Lovers sets are on sale for $50.00. Use code Summer09 to save $3.00 on all orders over $25.00. Kim mentioned that the sale is for 3 days only, so I'm assuming it ends tomorrow. She recently reorganized the BB Coutures polishes into color families, which makes searching very easy now. Sign up for her newsletter if you haven't already (right column of her site).

Above & Below: Romeo is a rustic red with a hint of pink creme shade with fine silver and lighter pink glitter. The glitter is subtle, but it is noticeable. As always with most BB Coutures, I used 2 coats and had great coverage. The top photo was taken outdoors, while the photo below was taken with an Ott lamp.

Below: Juliet, a medium mauve creme with a hint of silver glitter, is a creme for the most part. The glitter in this one, perhaps due to the lighter shade, is not terribly obvious.

Below: Pocahontas is a trickster because this taupe creme shade with fine silver glitter changes from a medium brown-based taupe (shown below under artificial lighting) to a much greyer-based taupe (second photo) under an Ott lamp. I have cloudy skies today, but outdoors it looked more pink-based, but still a taupe shade.

Below: Adam is naturally my personal favorite of these four shades because it's green! This muddy olive shimmer shade carries a coppery pink haze with it in any lighting, but is more obvious in brighter lighting.

I obviously adore Adam for his green-ness, but Pocahontas is running a close 2nd place for my favorite of these four. Taupe shades are coming at us fast and furious from just about every polish manufacturer, but I'm not complaining. I was intrigued by the different versions of taupe that this one polish produces. The application was very good for me on these and I continue to be amazed not only by the excellent formula of this brand, but also by the colors and finishes that they introduce at a rate faster than my wallet would like!

Come Monday...weekly newsletter

The last week of September, how did that happen already?!! Lots of possibly useless information for you today, not too many polish collections that we aren't aware of, but I do have some things I'd like to share with you today. The photo above is the water tower in our town that's positioned on the St. Joseph River as you enter into Lake Michigan. We watched it come tumbling down this morning in a planned removal, as a new and larger tower has already been built. I thought it would have been more dramatic--had it fallen into the river, I'm sure it would have been--but it just swayed a little bit, then came over just like a tree. Hey, I live in a small town, so this was big news and exciting to watch!

On to some information you can use now! Maybe I'm behind the times, but I didn't know you could buy individual Ott light bulbs. I bought a unit with the lamp from Joann Fabrics a few years ago, but on a recent trip to Lowe's I saw the individual bulbs for around $8.00. We bought one for a lamp in the living room and I imagine you could use the bulb in almost any lamp if you've been wanting an Ott light for your nail photos but want to save some money.


Below: I picked up some Martha Stewart Iridescent Halloween glitters at Michael's last week and I'm hoping to use them in some Frankens. Let's hope they don't melt!

Below: That dark green/teal shade is the one that convinced me to buy the pack, although they all look very pretty.

Below: A little unrelated, but we're here to discuss nail polish and the occasional beauty-related topics, so here's a picture I took when I got my haircut last week. The cut came out well and once I master how to style it right, I might post a picture.

How many of you keep stalking the MAC website to see if Venomous Villians is up for purchase yet? I've got my carefully chosen list at the ready...I don't want to go too overboard because I need to keep some funds set aside for Sephora's Friends & Family sale and the Rescue Beauty Lounge sale, both happening in November. I've heard rumors that Sephora may start their sale October 21, but I don't think that's been confirmed yet.

Last but not least--winners! The winners from the Friday Follower Freebie were Amberski (prize #1), and Nikki (prize #2). Feel free to eMail your full name/address to me, or I'll be sending you a a request later this evening.

Have a great week everyone, and don't buy too much nail polish!

Old School Week: Maybelline Part II

This post concludes Old School Week, so I hope you've enjoyed seeing some of the older polishes! I should do a Maybelline Week, because I have at least 30 more of the older Express Finish colors, but we'll save those for another time.

Above & Below: Wild Violet is a fuchsia based violet shimmer that flashes a blue-toned iridescent violet. I wouldn't call it a duo chrome, but it does have a little bit of color-shifting action going on.

Below: Tassled Taupe is one of my favorite shades and it was probably ahead of it's time trend-wise when it first came out. This darker taupe creme shade is shown indoors and outdoors, and the delicate gold shimmer is visible in any lighting.

Below: Planet Pluto is a shade I prefer over a darker color, and is shown here over Wild Violet using 2 coats. This multi-colored multi-shaped glitter shade appears to be mostly gold in the bottle, but the glitter is holographic and changes color with any movement of your hand. The bar glitter in this is very fine, so it's easy to get an even coating of glitter.

Below: Matte Blue is a bit frosty or pearly, and it's an icy blue with a slight hint of grey. I prefer this with a clear top coat, as shown in the last photo.

I sometimes tire of all of the new polishes, so it was fun for me to recall some of these older ones. Naturally though, I'm never satisfied because I'm anxious to get back to some of the newer ones tomorrow!