Rococo Nail Apparel #7676 Gold Leaf

Rococo Nail Apparel Gold Leaf uses the following blurb to describe the polish "Rococo takes its inspiration from the elegant splendour of 18th century Versailles. This hard-wearing nail lacquer contains large flecks of 24 carat gold leaf, which you can apply over colour varnish as a topcoat or alone for a glossy, quick drying golden finish. Luxury at your fingertips!

Now there has been a lot of buzz about this polish and I was very excited to take it home and try it out. The price tag was a whopping 32.50 american for this polish. I guess in the world of premium nail polish that its not TOO obscene. Its more than Chanel, yes, though I bet if Chanel made a version of polish with 24K flakes, it would be a much higher price tag. And since I just ordered 4 Le Metier De Beaute polishes to match my first 5, who am I to talk. 15.00 for FOUR ml!!! If i can stomach that, this isn't even worth discussing!!

I will start by saying there is certainly a learning curve with this polish. The flakes of gold are almost too heavy for the liquid base its suspended in and it makes it quite difficult to grab the flakes. It took me quite a few goes before I could manage to get some gold on the brush. My best advice is to shake up the bottle really well before use and well........... play around with it!!!

Here it is swatched over Gosh Black Passion.

It gives such a lovely effect, and the flakes really are the feel of very thin tin foil. So you can kind of lay them and fold them into the position you want.

This polish is available from Cult Beauty.

Rescue Beauty Lounge Teal

So someone recently mentioned to me that they wanted RBL's Teal. It is described as "Remember that perfect greenish blue Lanvin bag that you hesitated to buy in Paris and have regretted ever since? Well, if you can’t have that gorgeous shade in your hand, have it on your nails." Now I"ll be completely honest. My entire intent in posting this was to prove just how easy it was to find a dupe and convince her NOT to get this polish. I have been slightly turned off the brand as of late and wish I could just walk away from Ji and her brand of polish. I just cant though. There are too many colours I am dying for and they are just too unique. So anyways, on to the swatches!!

Now considering just how many blues, teals and turquoises I had i figured this would be easy as pie. NOPE!! Not a single one. The closest two I had were Illamasqua's Muse and Dior's Nirvana.

Rescue Beauty Lounge Teal, Illamasqua Muse, Dior Nirvana

Rescue Beauty Lounge Teal, Illamasqua Muse, Dior Nirvana

Rescue Beauty Lounge Teal, Illamasqua Muse, Dior Nirvana

Rescue Beauty Lounge Teal, Illamasqua Muse, Dior Nirvana

As you can see, neither of them are even close! Teal is just so much darker and richer. It is definitely a unique colour you must own if you are a lover of Teal. As I am. Here are some pics of the swatches. I must tell you I learned a valuable lesson. If you are going to take the pictures outdoors to get true colour shots, make sure the polishes are COMPLETELY dry first, otherwise the wind blows dust and makes a mess of the swatches like I learned the hard way.

Butter London Chimney Sweep

Chimney Sweep is described as "Smudgy, sexy, and just a little dirty. A proper charcoal grey with a touch of a metallic finish. Hot.". It is a dark shimmery gray. Seriously. Whats NOT to love?

Now since we have already established that I love it, the next question a sane person would ask (that would not be me!) is how unique is it? Do I already have a dupe of it? Well there were a few colours that I assumed I might have that could be considered dupes. It turns out I had far fewer similar shades than I thought I had. YAY me!!

Illamasqua Snap, Dior NY57th, Chanel Pearl Drop, Butter London Chimney Sweep,  Gosh Black Passion

Illamasqua Snap, Dior NY57th, Chanel Pearl Drop, Butter London Chimney Sweep,  Gosh Black Passion

So the colours I pulled out were Illamasqua Snap, Dior NY 57th ST, Chanel Black Pearl, Gosh Black Passion. From the bottles the Dior one is the only one that looks really like it could be a dead on dupe. But I swatched them all to see.

L-R

Illamasqua Snap, Dior NY57th, Chanel Pearl Drop, Butter London Chimney Sweep,  Gosh Black Passion

L-R

Illamasqua Snap, Dior NY57th, Chanel Pearl Drop, Butter London Chimney Sweep,  Gosh Black Passion

So NY 57th seems to be close enough for me to say DUPE! Snap is a little to light. Not quite as blackened. And Gosh Black Passion is just a smidgen too dark. While I really do love Chimney sweep, NY 57th if you can still get your hands on it I think is the winner. Its a one coat opaque polish where Chimney Sweep is certainly a 2 coater. And the Dior brush is..... well, its the Dior brush!!! If you don't know what I am talking about, stop now and go directly to a Dior counter and pick up a tester. Once you have used the brush you will be in love as well. That being said the Butter London polish is a great deal at almost half the price. If you aren't willing to pay Dior prices, or missed out on NY 57th, then go for it!!!

Dior Tuxedo

So Dior has released the new Dior Tuxedo Vernis. I love it and was about to jump on the bandwagon when my wonderful friend puckettk the penguin got it first. After comparing it to a bunch of her polishes she debated how much of a NEED this colour is. So do I need the dior? The brush is to die for, and the polish is high quality and lasts. I thought Id post the pics that my penguin friend (shes a penguin and I'm a monkey. What more does a friendship need?) took.

Illamasqua Phallic, Dior Tuxedo, Chanel Blue Satin, Chanel Nuit de Russie

Phallic, Tuxedo, Blue Satin

From Left to Right:  Essie Midnight Cami,  Dior Tuxedo,  Illamasqua Phallic,  Chanel Blue Satin,  Chanel Nuit de Russie

As you can see, Dior tuxedo is markedly darker than Phallic. The closest dupe would be Blue Satin. Now I have Nuit de Russie and Illamasqua Phallic but i DONT have blue satin. And if I have to choose between Blue Satin from Chanel and Dior Tuxedo, Dior wins hands down! So I guess I will be buying it!

Cult Nails Hypnotic Nails Collection

Cult Nails just posted pics of the soon to be released fall collection. Not all the polishes even have names yet, let alone a release date but I thought I'd post a pic of each of the colours!!!! I am SOOOOOO excited! I love her polishes. And each and everyone in this collection will need to come home with me. Maria - I hope you dont mind im re-posting the pics you put up on your blog! They are too pretty not to scream from the rooftops!!!!!

currently nameless

Also nameless as of yet.

Enigmatic

Hypnotize Me

So are you guys as excited as I am about this collection? I think I need all of them. The teal I wonder how close it will be to Illamasqua Muse, and Enigmatic looks like it might be similar to my Nars Tokaido Express. But I love em and cant wait till they are mine!!!!!!!

Chanel Steel & Strong. Worth it? You Tell Me!!!

Chanel Steel & Chanel Strong are two limited edition polishes from the Soho Collection. Steel is a a charcoal gray-black with silver/gray micro-shimmer. Strong is a deep, burgundy-brown with burgundy micro-shimmer. They are both interesting colours that caught my eye and so of course I caved and shelled out 30.00 a pop for these to colours. We all know the Chanel Jade phenomenon as I call it. I see Chanel Peridot going down that road too! Better to buy and regret than have a 300.00 price tag on ebay to contend with down the line!

Was I happy with them? Yes. And No. I dont love Chanel polishes. I find they chip far more easily than other brands and arent always a joy to apply. They are no Illamasqua as I say. But they do make the most unique colours around. I dont know how they do it, but time after time, they set a trend.

Then I spy 2 Deborah Lippmann polishes that look oddly familiar.

Dont these two polishes look familiar? I would describe Hit Me With Your Best Shot as a charcoal gray-black with silver/gray micro-shimmer. I would describe Pump Up the Jam as a deep, burgundy-brown with burgundy micro-shimmer. Notice I describe steel and strong the same way I describe these two? And I will choose a Lippmann over a Chanel ANY day of the week. But just because the look alike in the bottle does not mean they will translate into dupes on the nails. Thanks to the lovely BluMochi I have very nice comparison pics. Mine didn't turn out as well as hers so I asked if she minded my using hers. Luckily she is a sweetheart that didn't mind!

 

L-R Chanel Steel, Lippmann Hit Me With Your Best Shot, China Glaze Jitterbug, China Glaze Awaken, Chanel Strong, Lippmann Pump Up the Jam

Now the difference between each polish is so negligible I would call them both dupes and say GO WITH THE LIPPMANN!!! They are 66% of the cost and a much nicer polish to work with in my opinion!

Gosh 541 Gasoline

 

Gosh Gasoline is a bright purple polish multicoloured shimmer.  It has been a polish I must have bought 20 times already! It seems everyone and their dog likes this colour and is unable to get it in the united states. So that means I get to run to shoppers, pick it up, run to the post office and mail the darn polish (repeat another 20 times or so!!).

Butter London HRH, Gosh Gasoline, Illamaqua Baptiste

No matter how hard I tried, I just could not get the true colours to show up! The colours in the below swatches are much more true to real life. While Gasoline is a much lighter polish originally, by the time you do 2-3 coats its much more similar to the Butter London and Illamasqua in shade of purple. The glitter however is so unique and gorgeous I guess I will just have to continue to mail this out to all my American friends. Because honestly, there is no dupe i have!

Gosh 593 Midnight Blue

Gosh Blue Monday is a metallic blue with lighter blue micro shimmer. One thing I really love about Gosh nail polishes is the quality. They are equal to many high end brands but without the high end price tag. I just wish we here in Canada got a larger selection of their colours!

When going through my stash to find similar colours, I found 2 colours that in the bottles looked like dead on dupes!

In the bottles, both Tarina Tarantino Meteor Night and Illamasqua Phallic looked like dead on dupes. as it turns out, they are all slightly different yet very very similar. For those unable to get gosh midnight blue, I highly recommend picking up Illamasqua Phallic. Its a slight tad darker but thats it.  Or if you already have the Tarina Tarantino one, you're all set!

Cult Nails Inaugural Collection

New nail polish brands pop up all the time. That’s not new. What is new (for me at least) is when a new brand proves itself to be both HIGH QUALITY and CREATIVE. Welcome Cult Nails. I would never have heard of this brand before if not for other obsessed nail polish lovers. It is the creation of nail blogger R3 Daily (aka Maria Morrison). Now being the high quality that they are they are all 3 Free (meaning free of  Toulene, Formaldehyde and Dibutyl).
But they aren’t just 3 free. They are also free of Phthalate or Camphor. Other big perks with the company are that they are cruelty free, dont test on animals, or use derivatives that are animal byproducts or tested on animals.
What I like most about them though is the “cotton ball initiative” Taken directly from thier website

“All polish is Vegan friendly. In keeping with our green initiatives all packaging is recyclable and some even reusable.  We use only recycled boxes to ship our polish that can be reused or recycled by the consumer and utilize cotton balls for our packaging materials. This not only allows the polish to be protected during shipment, but supplies our customers with some of the materials  needed to remove their old polish once our product arrives! The cotton ball initiative, as we like to call it, was a concept from Maria’s 12 year old daughter.”

Brilliant job on the daughters part!!!

my kind of kool-aid, iconic, living water, quench

Now onto the colours!
Quench would be in my opinion the most dupe-able and least original of the bunch. Not a boring colour in any ways, just a classic red.  Looking through my stash, I found about 4 others that looked like possible dupes. So to sum up quench, a classic red. Nothing earth shattering or innovative, but just a gorgeous basic red.

quench, estee lauder enchanted garnet, laura mercier daring, dior red tea, deborah lippmann lady is a tramp

Now for My Kind of Kool-Aid. It is described as “gravender”, creme polish with a delicate shimmer”. Seeing as I own about 45 different purples I thought of course I have a dupe in my collection! But I was very very wrong!  As you can see, the closest is Rescue Beauty Lounge’s Insouciant. The base colours are very similar but the shimmer is very different.

My Kind of Kool Aid, Illamasqua Stagnate, Butter London Scoundrel, Rescue Beauty Lounge Insouciant

The most original of the bunch is by far Living Water. I have NOTHING like it in my stash. There were a few Lippmanns that I thought might be similar but NONE! Its described as “deep blue jelly polish with ice blue and emerald green glitter inspired by the phosphorescent sea-water.” The base is a dark Navy almost black with blue, teal and green micro glitter. LOVE LOVE LOVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cult Nails Living Water

Now The Last one in the collection is Iconic. Cult Nails describes it as “deep berry creme with gorgeous red flakes and hidden gold shimmer throughout.” Once more I have nothing very similar in my stash. The best I could Compare it to is Since I fell for you, though as you can see, very different.

Deborah Lippmann Since I fell for You, Cult Nails Iconic

All in all I think it is an excellent collection. The polishes are all high quality and have always lasted me with minor tip wear at least 3 days (trust me. in my life it doesn’t get better than 3 days. I also change my polish 3-4 times a week usually). Most of my friends who have this polish can get a good 5-6 days out of it before chipping. And the best part? They are only 10.00!!!!!! Much more affordable than other cult brands (no pun intended!)!!!!!! And they ship to Canada. Whats better than that???