Revlon Decadent

Today I have Revlon Decadent for you. I actually swatched this in 2011 with the intent on using it for a Football Friday post, but that never happened. Decadent is from Revlon's 2011 Christmas collection. This is a lovely, shimmery blurple polish. I would say that the purple base has red tons, but there's a ton of blue shimmer in the polish, leading to it being "blurple".

Decadent was a little streaky in the first coat, but two made it nice and opaque. If you use thinner coats you may need three to get complete coverage. The formula was good. This is just luminous-- it glows! Of course, my pictures make this lean heaving to the blue side, while in real life it is more purple.

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This was a limited edition polish, but it looks like you can find for sale online for a relatively low price if you like it! 

Revlon Royal aka Massive Photography Failure

Tonight's polish is simply put, amazing. Revlon Royal has been sitting in my stash for ages-- I picked it up when the Top Speed line was first released and the polish blogging community was raving about it. Since I love blue polishes, I couldn't bear to pass it up. However, once I bought I left it sitting and languishing in a drawer.

I have varying things about the formula on Royal-- for some it was easy to use and for others, a nightmare. Luckily, my bottle had an excellent formula. Royal is a deep cobalt blue polish with a jelly formula. You know those cobalt blue tiles you can find for your house? That's what Royal looks like. It's stunning. After swatching this I decided I had to wear it as a full manicure and I can't stop staring at my nails. Royal goes on smoothly and you don't need to use thick coats. Despite the jelly finish, Royal is a exceedingly well pigmented and goes on almost opaque in one coat. However, there is some visible nail line and I ended up using three coats to give me the look I wanted. With the jelly finish the polish is a bit translucent and so it makes the polish glow.

Revlon Top Speed polishes are supposed to be dry within 60 seconds-- I didn't time how long it took for this to dry, but it did seem to dry relatively quickly. My only issue was a little bit of bubbling-- though this doesn't seem to be a problem with a top coat.

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These pictures are definitely the most color accurate-- Royal is a deep cobalt blue. The color is very rich and I love how juicy it looks.

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Ugh, I think these pictures are terrible! They don't accurately capture the color (except for the ones in artificial light)-- it looks too light and almost blurple, while in reality Royal is most definitely blue with no purple . Also, I couldn't figure out how to eliminate the visible nail line from them. I guess I need to try again, but maybe with some underwear to get rid of the VNL. If anyone has any suggestions for how best to photograph, let me know!

Here are some pictures that I took with my iPhone that are better in terms of accurately  portraying what it looks like on the nail. Sorry for the wear and tear-- I'd already been wearing this for a day and my nails take a beating at work.

I think Royal has shot its way up to the top of my favorite blue polishes. You are not going to find a better, more amazing blue polish.

Revlon Spice It Up

Today I bring to you the eponymous polish from Revlon's Spice It Up Holiday 2011 Collection-- Spice It Up. I originally saw this over on Polished Claws Up! and immediately feel in love with it, so I started scouring the drug stores for it. I was able to find a virtually untouched display at Walgreens and grabbed this and Mistletoe-- and then went back for a few more later.

Spice It Up is a deep burgundy polish that has red and gold shimmer throughout. This color doesn't necessarily scream out "holiday" but there is a lot of richness and depth to this polish so it fits in perfectly. This went on really nicely-- formula was great. This is nicely pigmented and so only two coats were necessary to make it opaque. This is another Top Speed polish, and I don't recall any issues with drying (as in, it didn't take very long to dry between coats). My pictures make this look more brown, sort of similar to Julep Boris & Nicole, but Spice It Up is definitely more red. The second picture in artificial light really shows you the red sparkle, though it's a bit blurry when you blow it up to full size.

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I really like Spice It Up. I'm sorry my pictures don't capture more of the velvety redness of the polish, but this is definitely a winner in my book. If you see this, I would grab it!

Revlon Snow Bunny

Happy 2012 to everyone! I hope you all had a good time sending out 2011 and ushering in 2012. Has anyone made resolutions?  I have made a few that pertain to this blog:

1) Be better about my daily hand care and nail maintenance
2) Post more consistently
3) Swatch all of my un-swatched polishes (this is a stretch)
4) Explore other realms of makeup (not something that will necessarily end up on the blog, but for my own enjoyment)

 Nothing necessarily life-changing in any way, but some goals I have going into this brand new year! Now... onto the polish!

I'll be the first to say I am not really into white polishes. Plain white polishes, while they do serve a purpose, remind me too much of white-out (and therefore middle school) and I can't bring myself to wear a plain white polish alone. However, after seeing recent white polishes from a few holiday collections, I was intrigued enough to pick up one: Revlon Snow Bunny from their Spice It Up Holiday Collection. (Plus, I love the name!)

Snow Bunny is a snowy, shimmery silver white polish. Not surprisingly due to its light color, it's a little on the sheer side, but using thicker coats can make this polish pretty much opaque. I used three coats in the pictures below. You can see a little bit of visible nail line on my ring finger, but in real life it's not that noticeable. Unfortunately, using thicker coats did make the polish slightly gloppy and does take longer to dry.

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I like Snow Bunny because it's a not a stark white-- the shimmer makes it interesting and fun and wintery.  Snow Bunny has a very light and ethereal quality to it-- sort of light and fluffy, like snow banks. I think the shimmer makes it fun and wearable, while the color is perfect for winter.

Revlon Mistletoe

The next polish I have for you is Revlon Mistletoe, from their Spice It Up 2011 Holiday Collection. I saw Mistletoe featured on a couple other blogs and it was one of the few polishes that jumped out to me in the display when I saw it. To me, Mistletoe is a unique color and there aren't many out there like it. The base is a deep greyish pine green with a golden shimmer through out the polish. I've seen several bloggers compare it to L'Oreal Owl's Night, which I swatched here. They are similar in terms of shimmer, but the base colors are definitely not the same.

Mistletoe is a nicely pigmented polish, but I found the formula to be a little on the thick side. I only needed to use two coats, but I had to be careful to avoid gloppy polish. You'll see from my pictures that I had a little bit of trouble controlling the polish and it got a little sloppy. But that was pretty much the only issue I had-- Mistletoe is from Revlon's relatively new Top Speed line and the polish did dry pretty quickly. At least, I certainly didn't notice that it took an inordinate amount of time. (I think Revlon promises these polishes set in 60 seconds, but I didn't time it.) I used Cult Nails Get It On base coat and Essie Good to Go top coat in these pictures.

I'm not real thrilled with the pictures below... I think I need to go back and reswatch this at some point in the future. I put Mistletoe on as a fully manicure for yet another holiday party and I do think these pictures really show you the true color of this polish. I think you can tell there is a greenish tinge to the polish, but my photos make it look kind of grey and brown. I think the pictures in natural light are the best.

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The only polish that I can think that might be in any way similar to this polish is Rescue Beauty Lounge Anne, a polish that I just received (!!) because it was recently brought back. Now that I have all the polishes from the Tudor Queens collection, I will be swatching those soon and you can decide for yourself! In the meantime, while I don't necessarily gravitate towards green polishes, Mistletoe is a very unique color and so I needed to have it for my collection.

Football Friday: Revlon Royal Cloak

Hi all!! Can you believe we're back to Friday again? Am I the only one who feels like time goes by faster as we get older? We're practically to Thanksgiving now; it's hard to believe. I'm already making lists for Christmas. Ahh!

We are rapidly approaching the end of football season-- the Huskies only have three more games to play in the regular season. Right now the Huskies record sits at 6-3-- so far all of our loses this season have been to Top 25 teams. This weekend we head down to LA to play the USC Trojans, who are currently ranked #18 in the country, though they are currently ineligible for post-season play due to NCAA sanctions. For the last two years we have managed to beat USC thanks to our wonderful kicker, Erik Folk (also my favorite player-- I have a soft spot for kickers), despite being the underdogs. Given that we haven't really been good at competing with Top 25 teams at all this year, I'm not really sure if we stand a chance this year. USC is a good team and even though they won't be able to participate in post-season play that hasn't affected their game at all. They managed to take Stanford down to the wire last week, while we played a dismal game again Oregon at home. Despite the unfortunate outcome of last week's game, my husband and I hosted an awesome tailgate-- the last until 2013, when we're back in Husky Stadium. Anyway, tomorrow we play the Trojans in their stadium for the second year in a row and I'm not sure we'll be able to pull off an upset for a third year in a row, though it would be pretty amazing.

Since this is an away game, I decided to pull out a pretty straight-forward purple. Revlon Royal Cloak was part of Revlon's Masquerage Collection for Fall 2011. This was available in pretty much all local drugstores and the first few times I saw this display, I passed it by. Yes, I glanced it and thought Royal Cloak was pretty, but I wasn't compelled to grab until I saw some swatches on other blogs. Then I had to have it and so quickly went out and found a display that had it. I've been saving it specifically for a Football Friday post!

Royal Cloak is deep purple violet with lighter colored violet flakies suspended in it. The first coat when on a fairly well, though a perhaps a bit streaky, but a slightly thicker second evened everything out and gave very nice coverage. The color is deep and gorgeous and the flakies just give it added depth. I liked the pictures I had seen online, but wow, this is so much better in person.

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It probably doesn't mean anything, since it doesn't take much to win me over when it comes to a purple polish, but I really like Royal Cloak. The flakies make it really interesting and the color is fantastic. Plus, the formula was excellent-- I was really impressed. I highly recommend Royal Cloak-- it's a great, beautiful polish.

Go Dawgs! Beat the Trojans!