Two-fer Tuesday (x2): Maybelline Rebel Bloom Collection

Double bonus two-fer Tuesday this week! I have all four polishes from the Maybelline Rebel Bloom Collection that is currently available at your local drugstore-- I wanted to get these all up together because this collection has been popular. After seeing these over on Fashion Footing I decided I needed to have them all, so when I stumbled across them you can believe I snatched them all as soon as I could.

There were only four polishes in this collection, but a very nice grouping. All of the polishes have a creme finish. Beach Blossom is a pinky beige nude, which is very close to being my mannequin hands shade. Rose Candy is a very bright pink leaning coral. Fiery Tulip is a magenta pink, while Purple Madness, as the name suggests, is a deep blue-leaning purple. The formula on these was all pretty good-- I think I used three coats with Beach Blossom and two coats with all the other polishes. They were all nicely pigmented and went on easily, no issues at all! Pretty much perfection.

Beach Blossom: 

Rose Candy: 

Fiery Tulip: 

Purple Madness:

None of these colors are necessarily ground-breaking or unique but they do make up a really pretty capsule collection and are perfect for spring and summer. The colors are all incredibly flattering and have great formulas. Plus, the packaging is cute and the price point is good, so if any of these colors appeal to you, I'd run out and get them asap.

Maybelline Clearly Spotted

Today I have a relatively new polish to share with you-- and one that I had actually been stalking the local drugstores for. This is Maybelline Clearly Spotted, which is part of Maybelline's Polka Dots collection, which is a collection of five black and white glitters in different bases. I really wanted Clearly Spotted because it was the one with a clear base (the others all have colored bases, which seem fairly easy to duplicate). It seems like a lot of mainstream brands are following the footsteps of indie brands and trying to make some more unique polishes-- there are a lot of black and white glitter polishes out there, but they're each a little different. It's nice to see the bigger brands doing something different. In any case, as I was stalking various drug stores, I saw a lot of miscellaneous bottles from the collection, but I had to wait until a brand new drugstore opened up two blocks from my work location before I managed to get this.

As I said, Clearly Spotted is a mix black and white glitter (large and small hexes) in a clear base, so you can wear it over anything. Here I have it layered over my Essence Cafe Ole and Cult Nails Mayhem manicure. Here I used one coat, and that was good enough to get plenty of glitter onto my nail. I found this polish to be generally easy to work with, though the larger pieces of glitter did want to migrate around on my nail so I had to be careful of that. This also was a little bit of a top coat eater-- I used one coat of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri and when it dried down it wasn't completely smooth-- but definitely not lumpy or textured enough to really bother me, so I only used one coat. This might not be an issue with other top coats, but just a head's up.

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Natural light - sun:

This is actually my first black and white polish, and I'm glad I finally managed to snag one. This probably won't be my last, either! I really like this over the neutral base color, and that some of the holo sparkle is still visible! Plus, it was a nice way to perk up my mani and make it last a few more days. What's really great about these black and white glitters is that they are extremely versatile, so I'm looking forward to trying this out over other colors.

Maybelline Downtown Brown

I have one other polish from Maybelline's fall collection, Downtown Brown! This polish was definitely raved about in the polish blogging community when it was released because of it's uniqueness, so I made an effort to keep an eye out for this and snagged it when I saw the display out at my local drugstore. Downtown Brown is definitely a unique polish to my collection, especially since I tend to shy away from brown polishes in general. I would describe this polish as a warm medium brown with a strong blue/green shimmer.

The formula of Downtown Brown was a little on the thin side, and the first coat was sheer and streaky. I needed three coats to get nice, even, opaque coverage. It also dried quickly, but I didn't have any issues with applying it.

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Natural light - shade:

To be honest, while Downtown Brown is definitely unique and I like it a lot, but I felt that in real life (definitely not in my photos) that the blue-green shimmer really dominated the polish and overpowered the brown base. I find the shimmer really pretty and love the color combo, which is so unexpected, but I wish it had been a little more on a subtle side.Still, this is a gorgeous polish and I'm glad I have it!

Maybelline Metal Icon

Tonight I have a cool polish to share with you, Maybelline Metal Icon. This was one of the polishes from the limited edition fall collection they released, and I believe Maybelline had revamped their nail polish line prior to this fall release. It took a long time for this polishes to show up in Seattle-- I didn't get my hands on this until October, while polishes and other items from this collection started popping up on blogs in August! Anyway, Metal Icon is a great polish, and one I find to be pretty original. It's an interesting silvery taupe polish. I want to call it a glass fleck, though I'm not convinced that's actually the right term for it, but it's made of very fine different color particles. Metal Icon walks the line between silver and brown, and sometimes even seems to flash a little blue too. Very interesting and lovely-- and perfect for fall (or winter)!

I found Metal Icon to be extremely quickly drying-- in fact, almost too quick. You need to put this down on your nail and not go over it again with the brush because you risk dragging it as it dries. It's also a little sheer with the first coat, but you can get decent coverage with two coats. I used three here and in general, didn't have any issues applying it.

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Natural light - shade:

Have you seen anything that comes close to Metal Icon? Polishes like this seem to be getting more popular, and some similar ones that come to mind are OPI Designer De Better or The World Is Not Enough, though I don't think either of those are dupes.