Barielle Karma Kollection: Swatches & Review

Hey folks, hope you're all doing well! I have a super fun review for you today, three colors from Barielle's summer shades the Karma Kollection. (Not gonna lie, it's my pet peeve when people turn words with a "c" into a "k" haha.) I haven't seen anything new from Barielle since last year so I was happy to see these.

Soul-er Powered is a warm sunny yellow with lots of silver and gold shimmer. It is really fabulous, maybe my favorite yellow shimmer ever! It is just so happy and bright, I love it. This is two coats, it was very nicely opaque and creamy.

Positive ZEN-ergy is a warm mossy green with silver shimmer. I love the shimmer in this shade, it makes me think of frosted glass shower doors haha. This one was super easy to apply too, a big plus. Sometimes these crème based shimmers can get thick but this was on point. Two coats.

I thought Positive ZEN-ergy looked familiar at first sight, and then I realized it is very close to a BB Couture polish I just reviewed! Sexy Centerfold is super similar in base color, but PZ has bigger shimmer particles.

Gotta Have Fate is a gorgeous orange coral, super creamy and opaque. This is also two coats. I swear I have a million corals, but I always want more! I think they look really nice on my skin tone. (The second photo of this looks a little muted, because the sun decided to hide and I only got one good sun picture.)

I usually love Barielle's polishes, glad they have new ones out. These are on sale at www.barielle.com for $8 each, and they are currently buy one get one 50% off. The three other polishes in this collection are really pretty too, Welcome-OHM is a crème plum, Do Unto Others is a blue/green jelly crème, and Buddha-ful is a beige with soft baby pink, blue, and light gray foil flakes. Check em out!

Products provided for review.

MAC Surf Baby Lacquers: Swatches & Review

Happy Friday to all, I am glad the week is over *phew* It's been a rather stressful and dorky few days for me. In case you haven't noticed, or are reading this by email or via feed, I have a new site design! Yes, I am very classy and important ;)

Today I have to show you the MAC Surf Baby nail polishes, which I admit I bought half because I like the colors and half because I adore the special packaging. (I forgot to take pictures of the awesome-sauce boxes though, duh doi, what was I thinking *face, palm*) With the extra prettyness though comes an extra $1.50 added on to the price per polish though. Oh well, 'tis the price we pay for goodies sometimes.

Hangin' Loose is described as a dirty pink nude. I see it as a fleshy peach nude with gorgeous shimmer that is very wearable, at least for me. The formula on this is lovely though slightly sheer. I was able to get this opaque in three carefully placed coats.

And you know they needed more color in there, so Ocean Dip is a mid-tone crème aqua turquoise. I can't find an exact dupe for this in my collection but there are a few that come close. Most of its sisters pull either too blue or too green. I find this a lovely edition to my stash. The formula was rather thin and watery, but it evened out at three coats.

You can buy these online at www.maccosmetics.com or at your local MAC counter, while supplies last as they are limited edition, for $15 each.

Essie Absolutely Shore

This is Essie Absolutely Shore from the new Summer collection. It's the palest pale green shade eva. The formula isn't the greatest but it's not the worst I've ever used either. Believe me, there are some doozy pale pastel crèmes out there and this doesn't even rank a 7 on the suck-o-meter (with 10 being the suckiest). It's more like a 5. This is three coats.

I rather like this. It is the only one I picked up from the collection, the rest didn't really speak to me. At least not yet. We'll see where the summer takes us ;)

Color Club Starry Temptress Collection

Color Club put out a glitter neon collection for summer this year called Starry Temptress which sounded a little crazy and more than a little cool to me. However when I saw them in person, I was less than thrilled. The polishes looked like one of their previous neon sets that they had just injected with glitter. Uhh, ok? I guess I'm not sure what I was expecting but it looked a little...cheap and sloppy. Well, never one to (HAHA!) judge a polish by its cover, I tried them anyway. *deep breath*

Space Case reminds me vaguely of Electro Candy only more bubblegum pink and more pearly. The glitter in this comes off white and more woven into the polish than swimming in it really. These all have weird glitter. They look nicely holo in the bottle but on the nail they get lost.

Ultra-Astral is a fuchsia (little fun fact, I never spell fuchsia right the first time, grr!) crème based polish where the white and holo glitter takes on a cool almost purple color, but it's definitely the same color and type of glitter as is in the rest of them. It's a strange effect but cool.

Every time I say Wink, Wink, Twinkle, I always put "tinkle" in place of "twinkle" and I don't know why. Weird huh. This one is your basic purple, I'm not jumping up and down over it. The opal (I suppose it's apal, not white really) glitter stands out nicely against the background but it doesn't really shine, it's just kinda there.

You Got Soul-Ar is the worst named polish but one of my favorites in this collection. I like the contrast of the opal glitter and the holo pieces actually stick out against the neon orange here. It went on nicely too, the others seemed really thick but this one slid on like butter. I don't know if I need it but I do like it.

Glitter Envy is a lovely lime green neon color but the glitter does not give me envy. It really gets muddled in this thick matte base and doesn't shine or bling or glitz at all. Too bad but I can imagine it being pretty with the right topcoat.

Otherworldly is a really pretty medium watery blue color and I like that you see depth in it with the glitter, but the un-sparklyness really detracts from it's beauty in my opinion. I have high hopes for this one with the glitter topcoat though.

So basically, these are not glittery. Even though they are glitters. Color Club obviously knew that too, so they included a glitter topcoat haha! Starry Temptress, the namesake of the collection, is the glittery angel they gave us to save all these none-blingy neons and make them shine. It's an opalescent glitter that sparkles with little multicolored snowy and holographic pieces. It's safe to say that these all look 100% better with the topcoat than without it, in my opinion.

With One coat of Starry Temptress: Otherworldly; Glitter Envy; You Got Soul-Ar; Wink, Wink Twinkle

With One coat of Starry Temptress: Ultra-Astral; Glitter Envy; Space Case; Wink, Wink, Twinkle

Well, I suppose ya can't la la love them all ;) I do like a few of these, but they're not all home runs for me. What say you, oh adoring public??

Products provided for review.

FingerPaints Peace, Love & Color Collection Part 2

Here is the second half of the FingerPaints Summer collection Peace, Love & Color Collection. These three were the stronger half for me of the six lacquers. I still don't really love any of them, however. I am not a negative nelly and hate to give poor reviews but I'm never going to lie ya know? Anyway, I'll stop being dramatic and just get on with it.

Groovy Green is probably my favorite out of the bunch, even though I thought I was going to hate it. It ended up having a pearl finish which you cannot tell at all by looking at it in the bottle. I was not expecting to like it because when painting it on it was difficult as all heck to apply, it was thick and not smooth and kept dragging on itself. But when I finally had it on nicely (after three coats) and looked at my photos of it, I really like how it looks on me. *shrugs* Go figure.

Give Pink a Chance is pretty boring. It's a slightly reddish dark pink crème that gave me bubbles. *yawn* Sorry I'm not really into this one. It doesn't do anything for me or my skintone. Three coats for opacity when I would've expected two.

Peaceful Purple is another glitter but this one has color to the base unlike All You Need is Color, although I would've liked a little more. It's a jelly and hard to handle like the other glitters in the collection. Thick and gummy, hard to make level out. The purple glitter is red based and very lovely and you purple lovers will adore it I'm sure. This is two coats. All I could muster without getting totally frustrated.

So this collection is unfortunately a bust for me but there are plenty more fish in the sea for me this year. Summer collections are usually not my favorite anyway and there has been more than enough good ones this year to warrant my love than last year so that's good! What do you think of FP's picks for the sunny season?

Products provided for review.

FingerPaints Peace, Love & Color Collection Part 1

FingerPaints has come out with a bright new collection for the summer, called Peace, Love & Color. I was quite looking forward to these pretties, but they turned out to be a little bit of a disappointment for me. I'm just not feeling them. They are plenty attractive I suppose but they just aren't my cup of tea.

Outta Sight Orange is medium orange with pink and silvery glass fleck shimmer glitter in it. I was thinking I would like this but I'm not crazy about it. I have a few other similar colors that I like better. This is two coats.

I also had high hopes for Psychedelic Sunshine but it turned out pretty terrible. A light daisy yellow with gold and holographic glitter? Sounds awesome but the formula was awful. The texture is so thick that it feels like glue and it is also really sheer. This is two coats and that's all I could manage dealing with. Ugh, too bad.

All You Need is Color looked really exciting from the promo pictures I saw, but I was dismayed when I realized it was just a straight glitter lacquer. I really don't care for plain glitter in clear polish, but it's a personal preference, you might love them. It wasn't terribly hard to make this opaque but it was difficult to make it level out evenly. I imagine you'd have to use a lot of topcoat. I also imagined this more blue rather than teal *shrug* I hear it's a dupe for Butter London's Henley Regatta.

Part 2 coming at you soon with the next three from this collection so stay tuned!

Products provided for review.

Misa Paradise Shore Collection

Ahh lovely Misa. You do not disappoint. Paradise Shore is made up of six bright summer shimmers with glitter, glass flecks, shimmer and even a bit of metallic glint. Very beachy and quite in tune with this season's trends.

Krystal Water is a turquoise shimmer with a gorgeous glaze of ocean blue. I wasn't expecting to love this as much as I did but I really think it sparkles and glows beautifully. This is two coats.

Endless Keys was another color I wasn't sure about just looking at it in the bottle, but on the nail it is spectacular. The crushed shimmer plates of gold in this juicy tangelo orange jelly look so radiant! This is also two coats.

Mega Margarita is a super icy looking green with tiny gold, green, and pink glitter that certainly remind me of it's cocktail namesake. Makes me thirsty just thinking about it! This one is totally a hit for summer, fantastic! Three coats here.

Summer Love is a bold fuschia pink with pink glass fleck glitter and a slight blue duochrome. This one is definitely close to China Glaze's 108 degrees but I think this one has a slight edge as it's not as sheer. Two coats here.

Mermaid Dreams is one I wore as a full manicure on a Saturday out shopping that I did not stop getting compliments on. Literally everywhere I went, someone commented on it. It's almost a foil metallic shimmer, a watery blue color that I imagine to be the color of a perfectly still lagoon. Three coats on this one, only because I did it in the car and the first two coats were janky.

Under My Sunbrella is so freaking fun. I really love it. I have been waiting for a fun yellow all summer. Well it's not even technically summer yet so I guess I haven't really been waiting haha. This is pretty warm, very buttery with tons of golden glitter. I think it would look nice layered too, but here is it on it's own. Two coats.

I've heard talk that this is super similar to another collection that came out this season, but oh well, a lot of collections come out every season that are similar in color families to each other, let's not dwell on that. I really love Misa's products because of their quality and performance. They last a long time on me and their formula is excellent. I personally love these lacquers A LOT and I think they are amazing summer colors. I hope you like them and that you enjoyed this review.

Products provided for review.

Chanel Mimosa

Chanel Mimosa has been one of the most anticipated lacquers of the year. It's the season's "IT" color, yellow, and it's a Chanel so of course it's going to get some buzz. The collection it's from is called "Les Fleurs D’Ete" which means Summer Flowers which is just darling. Mimosa is my favorite cocktail too, so how could I resist picking up this baby?

I missed out on some of the cult favorites from Chanel, Jade etc. so I had to pick this guy up before I missed my chance...just in case, even though I had heard some less than stellar reviews from reputable sources. I have to say while it's not the best yellow polish I've ever used, it's not the worst either. It covers pretty well in three coats. Sure, there was some initial streaking but that's to be expected in a light shade. You can also see on my ring finger, application isn't completely level, bah. But for a nice warm sunny yellow with delicious golden shimmer, it does its job well.

I could really go either way on this when it comes right down to it. It is never going to look good on someone who can't pull off a yellow, but it is really beautiful on the right skin tone. It's not the greatest formula but if that doesn't bother you and you have a little patience, then you might love it. It really makes me want to sip a drink on a beach and soak up some rays. *sigh*