Clarins 230 Comparison

I was recently gifted BeYu 209 and Max Factor Fantasy Fire by a dear sweet friend of mine - Kristy. If you don't know about her lemming-inducing blog, click here. You're welcome.

I decided to do a little comparison since both of these are a little easier/cheaper to get than The Pee.

Here they are swatched at one, two and three coats.

Opacity: Clarins 230 is the sheerest needing at least three coats while the BeYu is most opaque--you could definitely get away with just two. Fantasy Fire is a little more opaque than 230 but also looks best at three coats.
Colour: Compared to 230, the BeYu is very red while Fantasy Fire is very blue.
Shimmer: 230 has the most duochrome shimmer followed by Fantasy Fire and then BeYu 209 which has the least.
Overall: I think they are all very pretty but 230 is still my sweet baby :)


A few more pictures? From index to pinky: Clarins, BeYu, Max Factor, Clarins

Precision Toxic Love Fall 2011 Collection

I stumbled upon these polishes at a nail supply place here in Melbourne. They had a big rack and sell these for $6 which is a steal. I picked up these three colours that were sitting at the bottom of the rack looking kinda lonely.

Click to make them larger if you so wish

Swatches...

Intoxicated. Pink leaning purple shimmer. This is three coats. It applied really nicely. It reminded me a lot of China Glaze Cowgirl Up so I did a quick comparison.

As you can see, Cowgirl Up is much more pink and a little more brushstroke-y. Also, those beautiful blue shimmery flecks in Cowgirl Up is much more visible than in Intoxicated.

Toxic Wast-ing My Time. What a name... This was a little thinner than the others but it was good at three coats. It's kind of a warm chestnut brown with a heavy gold shimmer. Very pretty.

Poison Ivy. HOLY SHEEET! Just look at this. I want to cry for the beauty that is this polish. Dark forest green with lots of pretty gold shimmer. Intense love. Two coats.

No information for these polishes came up in Google so I sent the company and email and apparently these are from the Toxic Love Collection for Fall 2011 and they have been released early in Australia to coincide with our different seasons. How nice! Usually companies release collections here sooo much later than in the US. Yeah, you know I'm looking at you Revlon.

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Black Holo Comparison

I got more nail wheels in the mail yesterday so I decided to dig out all my black holos and do a little comparison.

From L to R we have Bloom London, Glitter Gal (Sparkle) Black, BK 02, Catherine Arley 805 and Economy Class (my MPJ franken)

I made the franken about a year ago and sent some over to a friend with the original charcoal MPJ and she confirmed they were dupes in terms of colour and holoness except mine was a little more opaque. I've since added just a touch of clear to get an exact dupe.

Also, I decided not to include ChG Let's Do It In 3-D, CC Revvvolution etc because I felt they weren't dark enough to be considered black.

Anyway, enough jabbering from me...

I've kept the pics extra large so click for a lot more detail. This is 2 coats of each except for the MPJ franken which is 3 coats.

You can see here that the first two, Bloom London and Glitter Gal Black are scattered holos while the other three are linear.

Closeups...

Again, you can click to make them much bigger.

At first I thought these two were dupes. But as you can see, the Glitter Gal is clearly more holo- the particles in it seem to reflect a more distinct rainbow than the Bloom which is really, really weak.

Out of these three, the least holo was Catherine Arley 805. The holo effect in this one seemed a little less pronounced and it mostly reflected red/orange/yellow instead of the full rainbow.

The other two (BK 02 and my MPJ franken) are very similar except the BK is almost opaque in one coat while my MPJ franken requires at least three. Also, the base colour of the BK is very obviously black while the franken leans charcoal.

After I did this comparison I decided to do my nails in BK 02.

Can you see a corner of my middle nail broke off? It's too low down to make all my nails that length :( Oh well, what can you do.

Hope you enjoyed!