China Glaze - Ingrid

Ingrid is a medium brown with warm golden-brown shimmer.  This has been untried for a while but I didn't buy it when it launched - at first I thought, "no way, that color is going to look awful on me" and then I saw everyone's gorgeous swatches and bought it.

Basecoat:  China Glaze Ridge Filler (1 coat)

Color:  China Glaze Ingrid (1 coat)

Topcoat:  David (1 coat)

I should have listened to that little voice.  This is a lovely polish, but oh I seriously HATE this color on me.  It looks awful on me.  It's not Ingrid's fault - she's gorgeous - I just think something about my skin tone and the tones in this polish do not work.  At all.  I'll probably give this to my mom - it will look great on her since she isn't Latina like me.

That said, this had the usual China Glaze awesome application, and cleanup was simple.  I really wish I didn't hate this so much on me, but y'all, this isn't even a "try it without a tan".

Zoya - Anastasia

Anastasia is a brown with multicolored shimmer that flashes gold and purple.


Basecoat: Salon Sciences Instant Artificials (2 coats)
Color: Zoya Anastasia (4 coats)
Topcoat: David (1 coat)

Application was pretty good. The consistency of Anastasia was a little thinner than I expected it to be, and I needed four coats to be totally opaque. I had some issues with streaking but overall it was a pretty good application. Cleanup was about average.

This is a hard polish to accurately capture in photos. In typical indoor light it looks flat brown. But add any kind of halogen or daylight and it shimmers both purple and gold. Very pretty.

After I wore this for a day I added a coat of Color Club Femme Fatale on top, and it kicked up the purple shimmer a notch but left the base color intact. By the time I took it off I figured out that I liked it so much because it reminded me of Tease-y Does It. I'm not going to do a comparison because I don't think they are *that* similar, but I liked this combo in the same way.

Sula Paint and Peel - Dove

My worst nail habit is that I peel off my polish. It's why glitter bomb manis like Mad as a Hatter don't bug me, because I know I'm going to end up peeling it off anyway, even though I shouldn't. So when I saw Paint and Peel, I didn't want to try it at all - why encourage my bad habit? But when it went on clearance I had to pick it up.

Dove is a grayish brown creme.
Since I figured I was going to hate this color on, I decided to follow the directions on the bottle. I did not use a basecoat or topcoat.

This is FIVE COATS of Dove. I have tons of bubbles, lots of streaking, and the surface is nowhere close to even. I like the other color I bought (Teal) a lot better, so when I wear that one I'll use basecoat and topcoat - hopefully it will help.

The best thing I can say about this polish is that it peeled off in awesome full-nail sheets.

OPI - My Private Jet (brown non-holo version)

Well, I was prepared to get the brown non-holo version of MPJ, since I didn't pay an arm and a leg for it, but I wasn't prepared to be this disappointed in it.

Doesn't look too bad in the bottle, right?

Basecoat: NailTek Foundation II (1 coat)
Color: OPI My Private Jet (2 coats)
Topcoat: David (1 coat)

The application was really nice, and this was definitely a two-coater. This is pretty in the sun and the glitter is nice and visible, but indoors it looks boring and the glitter looks like little silver specks.

Big ol Meh.