Mystic Lilac is so beautiful. It’s a light lilac colored polish with a gorgeous, subtle green shimmer–almost an aqua color–that really sparkles in sunlight. It’s a pretty sheer polish, but builds up well. These are 3 coats.
The aqua was hard to capture with the camera. It’s more evident in real life.
From China Glaze’s holiday collection, ‘Tis the Season To Be Naughty & Nice, is Party Hearty, a multi-colored glitter topcoat for the Christmas season. The polish is clear based with small silver and gold glitter, medium green glitter, and big red glitter. You can do several coats of this polish on its own over bare nails, or layered over other polishes. Here are some layering ideas for you!
Just thought I’d mention that I tried water marbling for the first time today. It was sort of a failure :P, but I’ll post pictures soon!
Ever since product pictures were revealed for MAC’s Venomous Villians/Maleficent nail polishes, the beauty community has suspected that two of the polishes from Orly’s CosmicFX collection, Galaxy Girl and Space Cadet, were dupes for MAC’s Formidable! and Mean & Green. I wanted to post some comparison swatches of the four polishes along with my thoughts.
To get it out of the way, you definitely don’t need all 4 polishes. Space Cadet and Mean & Green, and Galaxy Girl and Formidable! are so similar to one another that unless you’re an avid collector of some sort, it’s be redundant to add them all to your collection.
Pictures are below. I’ve posted several because getting the same light on each finger while photographing proved to be impossible. Please forgive the messiness!
USED: (no base or top coat)
Orly Galaxy Girl (index finger): 2 coats
MAC Formidable! (middle finger): 3 coats
Orly Space Cadet (ring finger): 3 coats
MAC Mean & Green: 4 coats
MAC Formidable! is beautiful, but is exactly the same as Orly Galaxy Girl. (Full review here.) I have seen people say that Formidable! has more of the blue sparkle than Galaxy Girl, but this was not my experience at all. Formidable! was perhaps slightly more sheer, but when coated to opacity (I used 2 coats Galaxy Girl and 3 coats Formidable!), they look exactly the same.
Mean & Green was EXTREMELY sheer in one coat. And although Mean & Green and Space Cadet contain the same colors and the same multichrome, Space Cadet appeared to be much more “sparkly” than Mean & Green. Space Cadet (full review here) is, for lack of a better description, all bling-bling all the time. Even in low light, the pink sparkle is beautiful and stands out against the olive/emerald green base. Mean & Green, disappointingly, did not exhibit as much of this pink sparkle as I would have liked. That being said, these are pretty much the same polishes. If you have one or the other, you shouldn’t be disappointed.
So what’s the bottom line? Here we go: Orly raised their prices with the CosmicFX collection for the first time, so Galaxy Girl and Space Cadet go for around $10 online. Formidable! and Mean & Green, on the other hand, cost $13 at MAC. What’s more, all of the MAC polishes are sold out online and likely at every counter and store you’ll find. Case in point, MAC is amazing at marketing limited edition collections. You may still have a chance to find the Orly polishes at Sally’s and on online retailers. In addition to being cheaper, the Orly polishes have a more consistent formula which means quick drying time, beautiful sparkle finish, and long-wearing quality polish. Also, I’ve seen at least a dozen complaints online about some of the MAC polish brushes being wonky. (If you received a polish with a wonky brush, you should be able to contact customer service to get a replacement cap.)
Before I start with another polish from MAC’s 2010 F/W trend collaboration with Jin Soi, I think it’s fairly obvious that with this manicure I decided to experiment a little bit with my nail shape. I went for a round shape (whereas I usually rock the squoval) but immediately after this manicure I went back to my comfort zone. Squoval fits me better, I think! Now, on to Jade Dragon. To see my review & swatch of another polish from this collection, Earthly Harmony, click here.
Jade Dragon is described as an emerald green frost. As was the case with Earthly Harmony, the description of Jade Dragon on their website and the actual product differ quite significantly. I think it is important to review this for readers who may not be able to get to MAC to check it out for themselves. If you’re in love with the color based on MACCosmetics.com, you’re going to be disappointed.
Jade Dragon has a deep emerald green base with beautiful blue specks of shimmer throughout. While the sparkles cling to the side of the bottle, in application they are a bit less prominent. I found that mostly they are obvious in flashes of direct sunlight and especially on the sides of the nails. Even though it’s described as a frost, Jade Dragon is definitely a sparse shimmer.
Formula was great, nothing noteworthy which is generally a good thing. Even with my favorite top coat, Sally Hansen’s Mega-Shine, it was completely dry really quickly. As I mentioned in my review of Earthly Harmony, I’m actually not sure if MAC knows how to make a polish with the shimmer (or, in the past, flakies) sufficiently suspended in the base. However, I think Jade Dragon was more successful in this venture, though it definitely wasn’t a homerun.
I have no regrets with Jade Dragon! I’m really happy with the color, so even though I was looking forward to a bit more blue shimmer, it is present enough to not be a complete disappointment. This color is a gorgeous unique addition to my collection.
MAC, please step it up and start taking actual pictures of your products! It can be downright misleading when you fake it, and it’s painfully obvious that even though there have been rumors you’re going to switch to actual swatches for years, you still haven’t done it.
If you don’t know about Confetti already, you should run to your nearest CVS and see what is left of the display! Confetti polishes cost only $1.99 and have a pretty fantastic formula (especially for an inexpensive polish). I picked up 3 yesterday: My Favorite Martian, Wedding White (I meant to get White Tie, but that’s another story :(), & Tiara.
So why is it a big deal that you run and get these right now? Well, CVS is currently being sued by Sally Hansen for selling Confetti polishes in the drugstore chain due to a non-compete clause. So while most CVS stores have retained the displays, the polishes aren’t being restocked when they sell out. Get to it! :)
I knew My Favorite Martian was a little on the sheer side, so I decided I wanted to layer it–but I couldn’t decide over which green polish I already owned. So I just decided to do all of them! :D
MAC Peppermint Patti, Icing Jade & MAC Beyond Jealous.
As it turns out, My Favorite Martian is a bit more opaque than I anticipated. I was hoping that the base color gradient would be a bit more obvious, but that’s okay. Love the green!!
Base coat: Gelous
Top coat: Sally Hansen Mega-Shine
A very small haul for me this time, just 2 products from each line. The palettes didn’t strike me as unique at all, so those were an easy pass. I’d like to get more of the Superslick Liners, though. They’re all gorgeous. I got:
Aristo-cat Lipstick
Last year I got every single color from the F/W Nail Trend collection. Jin Soi is amazing and has done it again–I’d love to have every single one of these. Due to circumstance, that’s not possible this year, but I did walk away with:
Jade Dragon
Big SdP - I.
Oi meninas!
Post rapidinho para mostrar mais uma estampa da placa “I” da “Big Sdp”.
Os esmaltes que usei foram:
1 x “Base Cetim” da “Skin Color”.
4 x esmalte “Ácqua” da “Big Universo”.
Placa “Big Sdp - I”.
Esmalte “Preto Fosco” da “Risqué” para carimbar, (deu super certo).
Esmalte “Platinum” da “Sancion Angel”, (usei alguns glitters nas florzinhas).
1 x “Extra Brilho” da “Dote”.
Beijos!
