Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Color Club Untamed Luxury, Part I: the glitters

Here are my first set of swatches done with a wrist brace on. And they took much longer and don't look half as good as they should. I just couldn't wait to try the new Color Club collex (provided by Color Club for my review).

So I'm not sure if my swatching was particularly bad or if these polishes were particularly difficult to make look good. One thing I kept thinking throughout was that these were seven missing Revlon Street Wear polishes; that if I had found these polishes in Street Wear bottles, I would be frantically searching for their names online. They're very old school Street Wear glitter type polishes to me: brilliant in the bottle, somewhat difficult on the nail, often gritty and streaky but ultimately kinda cool... sometimes. Anyone else get this vibe from these polishes?

Color Club Resort to Red
Basic red shimmer... almost frosty in appearance. A little brushstrokey but very easy to apply (especially while in a brace...). Two coats. Very meh to me.

Color Club Snakeskin

Apologies for the sunlight washing this one out a bit: it's more of a mossy metallic grey color than straight up grey. Something that's a little more obvious in shade but I didn't get a good shade pic of this. It's also dotted with tons of gold microshimmer, as you can kind of see in the larger photos of this (and in the closeup). Two coats, also very easy to apply.

Closeup of Snakeskin


Color Club Ms Hautie

One of the ones I think most resembles old school Street Wear. Holo glitter with a purported red flash in a metallic grey base. This took me two tries to apply properly. For my first try, I used thick coats and the third coat just destroyed the mani. For my second one, I used three very thin coats and it came out alright. This definitely needs topcoat because the holo glitter looks very gritty in this base.

Ms Hautie in bottle
See that pretty red flash there? COMPLETELY disappears on the nail. Boo!

Color Club De-Luxe-Cious


Another polish that I should have applied a second time because the first time didn't go so well. Everyone use thin coats with this one! Otherwise, it'll be translucent AND be brushed right off the nail by the third coat. This one is also very reminiscent of old Street Wear: sheer dusty blue shimmer base with opalescent and/or holo glitter. Oddly enough though, this isn't as bumpy as it looks: it actually has a pretty smooth, glossy surface when you see it in person. But it does appear bumpy. Its definitely an interesting, unique polish but it also looks a lot like someone's failed franken.

Color Club Red Velvet

Basic idea as seen before in China Glaze Lubu Heels and Eyeko Vampira (red glitter in a black jelly base) but it seems that Red Velvet is a little more dense that Vampira (though I don't know how it stands next to Lubu Heels). This one needs topcoat. It looks terrible without topcoat. Three coats.

Color Club Covered in Diamonds (over Red Velvet)


Come on. This is so a missing Street Wear type of glitter. It's like the bar glitters: great idea, looks kind of cool, ultimately kind of messy and uneven. These are irregular flakes (not flakies though) that are kind of thick and stick up all over the place and are hard to place evenly. Sometimes it looks like opalescent confetti gone wrong, and sometimes it looks like the coolest stained glass ever. I happen to like the effect from a distance but closeup, it just looks a mess. Two coats.

Closeup of Covered in Diamonds (over Red Velvet)

Color Club Untamed Luxury

Well, of course I was gonna love this one! Teal jelly suffused with blue (rather than perfectly matching) square glitter. I LOVE square glitter. Three coats. Very happy with this one.

Closeup of Untamed Luxury

Well, that's that for this half of the collection. I hope to get the rest swatched before the end of the week! (Grr, dumb wrist brace.)

Ahh! Last day of August! Now I get to count up how many nail polishes I get in September for exercising... Aug 26 (25m cardio), Aug 29th (35m cardio), Aug 30th (45m cardio), Aug 31st (60m cardio+very mild strength training). I don't have time to tally it now but I'll post about it the next time I have a swatch to post. :)