Orly - Sweet Collection [Picture Heavy]

Hello everyone!  I hope everyone had a great weekend.  It was the perfect weather to try out these babies, the Sweet Collection by Orly.  It was released in April of 2010 but was sent to me to review recently.  As always my opinions are my own.

Lemonade - pastel yellow creme.  3 coats.

Lollipop - Light purple creme.  3 coats.

Cotton Candy - Pink creme.  It looks to me like there is a slight orange tone to it, but not enough to be noticeable.  I used 3 coats.

Pixy Stix - Medium pink creme.  This one had some orange tone to it too.  I'd say it was just shy of a coral.  It reminded me of the pink a flamingo can get with plenty of shrimp in it's diet.  But I'm weird.  2 coats.

Gumdrop - Light turquoise creme.  It had enough blue in it to not be a mint green, but it was close.  Great application, 2 perfect coats.

Snowcone - Light blue creme.  Orly describes it as a baby blue, but I feel like it is richer that a baby blue.  2 coats.

My favourites in this collection were Pixy Stix, Gumdrop, and Snowcone.  They weren't your typical pastel colours that we have all seen a million times and they applied wonderfully.  The others were your staple pastels and had some minor streaks that were remedied by applying the polish with the brush as parallel to the nail as possible.

The free lip gloss that came with each bottle.

Lemonade, Lollipop, Cotton Candy, Pixy Stix, Gumdrop, and Snowcone.

The lip gloss had the fuzzy brush that reminds me of a pussy willow.

RIP little fly that got stuck in my polish outside.  A rare casualty of swatching outdoors.  I tried to save it, but I won't go into details about it... :(

[These polishes were sent to me by the PR company to review.]

OPI - Fiercely Fiona

Here she is!  This is picture heavy because I was having trouble capturing the colour.

With Flash

Natural Light - I was worried it looked too much like Banana Bandanna

 Indoors with Flash

 Indoors without Flash

 Comparing the pastel yellow of my moiturizer bottle with the slightly green yellow of Fiercely Fiona.

Hope I was able to capture it ok!

OPI - Banana Bandanna

This is what I wore on Friday after removing Brisbane Bronze.  I found it ironic that the day I wear a nice sunny colour the weather was crap.  The application on this was horrible.  It was streaky and chalky and took 5-6 coats to get it somewhat even.  It ended up looking like tool handle dip.  :(  The colour is really nice though.  It had a really fine yellow shimmer to it that was almost naked to the eye.  I wish it applied nicer.

With Flash

Sunlight.

Salley Hansen FAIL

Sally Hansen, I got beef with you!

Picture taken by Corey Williams.

This is the SECOND Xtreme Wear polish that has been gloppy and messy and streaky and just plain nasty. I used "White On" for a base colour for my awesome Rescue Beauty Lounge - "Square Pants" that Brooke from Getcha Nails Did was sweet enough to send me as a swap. (Which I still need to choose some colours for her! I have not forgotten!)

NOTE: I am not angry about the yellow colour on top, I'm PI$$ED about the yucky white underneath. It applied like year old white-out. It looks like I applied while drunk. It was so hard to handle and the brush was flimsy, thin, uneven.

The yellow on top is RBL - Square Pants. It applied very nicely. The brush was nice. It wasn't streaky. No complaints. I put the white underneath because Square Pants is a sheer, and I wanted it opaque. The White by Sally Hansen = fail. I didn't even bother cleaning it up before snapping photos. Nope, I wanted to show it in all it's gooey glory.

And yes, the pictures are dark I took them in my bathroom because it's 11:30pm and there is no sunlight to be had. And yes, my fingers look like they have a major case of lobster hands. I was steam cleaning the carpets today and doing some WoW raiding so the blood was flowin' and my skin is pale and transparent so when the blood is pumping you can actually SEE the veins. Makes for a lovely photo, no?

So it brings me to this: I want suggestions for sheer undercoats. What do you use to make a sheer opaque? I don't want "white" or "nude". Tell me what you like to use. What brand and colour? Last time someone told me "white" I stupidly chose Sally Lameson Xtreme Fail and came out with the above.

L'Oreal, Revlon, Wet n Wild

Got some new polishes the other day!

Wet n Wild Wild Shine - "Wild Orchid"

L'Oreal Resist & Shine Titanium - #734

Revlon Glimmer Gloss - Banana Blaze

So far I've only tried the L'Oreal #734

It is a very dark polish with a copper/red luminescence to it. These photos were taken indoors and the colour isn't true to life. In most lights it looks almost black with the coppery red shining in the middle. I think I will try and take some natural light photos tomorrow when the sun is out.

The formula was fairly thick compared to most polish, so it was a little difficult to manage. A bonus with it being thick was that it went on almost completey opaque with one coat, but I used two coats for good measure. One thing I did not like about it was the brush. It was very flat on the end so it was difficult to not smear it on my cuticles on my pinky finger. I'm sure with some practice I could apply it just fine.

Overall the polish looks wonderful, and unlike with most thick polishes it didn't bubble.