BNC #175 Silver Sparkle

(Silver Sparkle is not the polish's actual name, which was nowhere to be found on the bottle.)

I was walking around Trinoma when I chanced upon a stall selling Korean BNC polishes for PhP80.00 (USD1.78) each. The salesperson was quite annoying - she kept using hard sell tactics to get me to buy more products, so I didn't stick around very long to look at other shades.

Silver Sparkle is a hexagonal glitter polish much like TFS Nail Pleasure YL702. It can be made opaque in three coats, although it helps to have some sort of polish underneath to fill in the gaps. Here, I used Skin Food PK203 as the base.

I've been looking for a polish to blind people with, and this fits the bill perfectly. :P

Elianto Sparkling Diva: Racing Green

This pretty green comes from Elianto's new Sparkling Diva line. As its name suggests, the polishes in the new line have sparkly finishes.

This Christmas-y color turns opaque in two coats,

and looks stunning in bright light!

Sparkling Diva polishes cost PHP199.00 (around USD4.00) - pretty close to the price range of The Face Shop's Nail Pleasure line.

Skin Food Nail Vita BL511 (Secret Blue)

I found this polish's name through Jellynat's super helpful blog. It's a great resource for the names of Skin Food polishes!

I don't get why this shimmery bright blue is called Secret Blue, though.

This two-coater certainly isn't as blue as the deodorant...

although it is quite close to another Skin Food polish.

L: Secret Blue; R: Blue Sapphire

Secret Blue is shimmery, Blue Sapphire is solid creme

Elianto Glitter Shine Red

Sorry today's post is a little late, been pretty busy lately. O_O

Glitter Shine Red is a dead ringer for China Glaze Ruby Pumps and is also very similar to Essie Ruby Slippers.

I've always loved the look of bright red polish on short nails, and this smooth three-coater is no exception.

I happened to chance upon some really good sunlight when I was swatching this. Lucky!

I usually paint my nails at night since I have to get ready for class in the morning. The text you see under my hand is from my Statistics book. (Blech! XD)

Skin Food Pedicure Vita: Midori Shower

Yes, this Skin Food polish has a name! (I finally found a website listing most of SF's polish names! It does a much better job than the official site LOL)

Midori is Japanese for green, so I guess that would make this polish a "green shower"? Take note that Skin Food is a Korean brand and not a Japanese one, however.

As with most polishes from this brand, Midori Shower applies veeery smoothly in two coats - not at all like the lumpy disaster that was Elianto Lemon Green.

The polish also has some shimmers in it, but they're hardly noticeable. Can you see them below?

Elianto Shimmer Violet

Here we have a shimmery pink-violet that's great on its own and for layering.

The polish is layered over TFS BL605 on my ring finger. The bright blue from that polish makes Shimmer Violet closer to the blue side of the spectrum.

It's a three-coater alone and a two-coater when layered.

The Black Russian Dupe

(aka My Halloween Mani)

RBL's Black Russian is at the top of my list of dream polishes. Red glitter on a blackish burgundy base is such an awesome combination! I'm not too keen on paying a whopping $18.00 plus shipping for just ONE measly bottle of polish though, so the real thing will have to stay a dream (for now LOL).

This is what I wore to a small Halloween gathering last Saturday:

Already pretty close to the original, yes? Wait til you see it with a layer of Elianto's Grape Wine:

So ladies, do we have a dupe or DO WE HAVE A DUPE? :D

If you're not convinced yet, have a look at the swatch of the real thing here.

This "dupery" was made possible with two coats of Orly Goth topped with a layer of Winmax Nail Enamel #11, and of course, finished off with Grape Wine.

The Face Shop: BK902

BK902 really doesn't have any opacity to it - think of it as a super pearly silver topcoat with glitter.

Don't be hating its sheerness though, because it makes for some awesome results!

See how it turned a plain creme like the previously posted BL605 into something blingier:

Pretty, yes? :D

I wonder if it'll work just as well on other colors...

Caronia: Butterscotch

Allow me to begin with a cheesy pun...

I Can't Believe It's Not Butter(scotch)!

In the bottle it has a pale golden brown-orange color very close to the sugary treat, but it turns out more orange on nails:

Eh... it's not so butterscotch-y anymore, but it's still a very pretty three-coater.

Elianto: Red Violet

I missed seeing my actual fingertips, so I cut my nails short. :P

Elianto comes up with some pretty strange (remember Ironic Pearl?) and uncreative names. Today's shimmery polish, which they call Red Violet, falls under the latter category. Still, it gets the job done describing the color - but only very slightly.

I can see hints of it, though I don't think there's very much violet in this red. Do you?

I was already happy with one coat, but I'm sure a richer color (with more shimmer) can be achieved with more.

Boring name aside, I'm definitely going to experiment with this color again.

The Face Shop: GL111

This is a beautiful, pale shimmery/frosted  yellow-gold similar to last week's BR803.

I love the sparkle distribution on this one!

Three-coater, btw.

Also, because I am a sucker for blogs that poke fun at things, I highly recommend visiting Stupid Nail Polish Names. Thanks to Deez Nails for mentioning this awesomely funny blog!

(Shame it hasn't updated in a while, though.)

The Face Shop: OR202

Here's a pretty nearly-peach orange with some subtle shimmers:

It reminds me of candy somehow.

The Face Shop: Red Sparkle

The second polish in Vintage Face Shop II is a super cute red jelly glitter. Jelly polishes and glitter polishes are already awesome enough on their own, but I think they're even more amazing when combined.

It's quite sheer, unlike Skin Food's one-coat-wonder glitterbombs,

but it builds up very nicely in three coats.

In their current line, the closest polish to this would have to be OR204.

The Face Shop: Pale Yellow

The first polish in part II of the Vintage Face Shop series is a pale, shimmery yellow:

It's very sheer, so I layered it over Orly Spark.

After three coats, it ended up looking like Bobbie Pinacolada.

Now I'm wondering why I even bought Pinacolada in the first place if I could already replicate it with polishes already in my stash. LOL, it's a classic case of impulse buying!

The Face Shop: PK103

Pink isn't my favorite color, but for some reason I'm drawn to pink nail polish.

Here we have a bubblegummy, pearly pink with very slight shimmers:

This is a three coater.

I thought of painting it with little black dots and modded French tips, but then it didn't seem like such a good idea anymore after I finished my pinky.

Heh, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Caronia: Princess

If I were my own kind of princess, I would probably wear rainbow-colored manicures every day. If I were a regular, real-life princess, I guess probably would wear this pale, frosted peach.

The last member of the Workplace Wearable series is a sheer, frosted polish with just the slightest hint of shimmer. It's probably best worn over more opaque polishes, but it's alright as a standalone color too. Since it's sheer, however, it takes four coats to make it solid.

This concludes the Workplace Wearable series. I hope you didn't fall asleep from all the neutralness. XD

 Louder colors coming in the next posts!

Sneak Peek: Workplace Wearables

The Face Shop Nail Pleasure: YL702

The Face Shop has recently released a new nail polish line called Nail Pleasure. Polishes in this line retail for almost double the price of their regular polishes (P185.00 = around $4.00) and come in different bottles:

I suppose the price increase comes from the new packaging. Personally, I like the regular bottles better. They're much sleeker looking.

YL702 is a yellow glittery polish that can probably turn opaque after several coats, but for this swatching, I chose to layer it over a really old Covergirl polish I've had since high school:

It's a frosted red called Cabernet. For a 6 year-old polish, it still applies really well.

I was trying to do something like this stock photo I found on deviantART,

but it didn't turn out quite the way I expected. I do like the amount of glitter YL702 has in just one coat, though.

Maybe I'll try this experiment again some other time.