The Color of August, 2009

 

You may remember several days ago I had a poll running asking you to pick one of five colors to see a post on.  L’oreal’s Flight and Carmen from Zoya had no votes cast for them, YDKJ had one, two votes were cast for Misa’s Love Bite, and one person wanted to see another set of colors to choose from altogether.  I’m sure I will blog about those two colors eventually, and the person what wanted some other colors will be in luck very, very soon.

But the clear winner, with six votes, was the nameless concrete grey from StrangeBeautiful.

 

 

I gotta say – I love this color.  It is a stunning, blue-toned grey creme.  My pictures don’t quite do it justice, as it’s much darker in person.

 

With flash

It’s obvious how over-the-moon I am about this color because of all of the pictures I took of it!  This is done at two coats, and application was flawless.  If it weren’t quite so expensive, I’d say that this varnish alone would be worth the purchase price of the whole set.

Sunny window

 

Indoors

I’d say the most true-to-life colors are the ones you see at the bottom.  Poking around Google images, I think that the best name for this color would be “slate grey.”

 

 

That swatch, from Polymax, seems just about right.

I wore this lacquer for three days without even the slightest chip threatening.  In fact, had I not needed to remove it for work, I’d’ve been thrilled to leave it on five days or more. 

It’s that great, that chic.

Sigh.

The bad news is that you can’t just buy this color.  You need to get the entire Library of Color.  And it’s limited edition, so if you want it, get it while you can.  The good news is that the other colors are gorgeous, too.  You can see my full set of swatches here.

These can be purchased at lucky scent (backordered, international shipping), Bergdorf Goodman (in stock, international by phone), or, as I’ve learned recently from Lucy and Mary, Neiman Marcus (same as above).

You get two videos to choose from today.  At first I thought I would cheat in *August*us Gloop, but I remembered I already did a Willy Wonka scene recently.  So you can skip over this video if you like --

 

 

-- and instead listen to this lovely piece that I only just found.  I have not seen (nor heard of) the movie this appears to have come from, but I now want to see it!

 

 

And there you have the Color of August, 2009.  A lovely choice, I must commend those who voted for it!

Skittles (Taste the Rainbow!) swatches

 

Well, I hadn’t planned to swatch the new StrangeBeautiful colors, but rather share them with you as I wore them, but demand was popular enough, so I got up early this morning and swatched them, one per finger, for your viewing pleasure!

 

 

First off, I have to say that this round the formula feels a bit more runny to me.  Nothing horrible; I mean, I didn’t get little drops of polish flicked on my clothes or anything (Hi, Nixxy!); but a bit more thin than I remember the last collection being.

Also, some of the colors needed two coats, and that’s a first for me with the SBs.  But, overall, I’m very pleased, very pleased.

These can be purchased from Bergdorf Goodman or lucky scent, but remember that this is a marrying collection.  You can’t just date which colors you want; take them all or let them go. 

[In other words, you have to purchase the entire “library of color.”]

As they have no names, I’ll give you the breakdown by (my) numbers, left to right, of the colors you saw above.

The bottle shots are indoors, all others in the ‘shine.  They also all include a base and top coat.  I didn’t plan to at first, but then I thought, “Oh, what the hey!”

And one other thing:  One of these bottles was hard to open.  No, wait, let me rephrase.  One bottle was im-poss-sible to open!  I tried everything I could think of, but it was a no go.  Eventually, I had to resort to, um, unorthodox means to open it.  Let’s see if you can figure out which one it was in the following bottle pics. . . .

 

 

#1 – a mustard yellow. A near-dupe or a dead-on dupe for OPI’s The “It” Color, judging from looking at the bottle and painted nail.  The SB may be a little paler.  (I have not yet worn the OPI, so I cannot compare applications.)

 

 

#2 – a blue-tinged concrete grey.  It’s the current leader in the Color of the Month poll (have you voted yet?).  It makes me think of the uniforms of the American Civil War, between the blues and the greys (the North and South, respectively).

 

 

#3 – a dark, inky blue with a purple cast to it.  This one surprised me by how much purple was evident in it as I was applying it.  I liked the color in the bottle, but putting it on . . . WOW, I’m in love.  And this is one coat.  Yup, one.  I was ready to apply a second but, as I looked at it, I thought, “Why bother?”

 

 

#4 – I’ve gone through ecru, beige, and ivory, and none of them seem quite right; it’s got a slightly more yellowish tone than any of those.  Even old parchment doesn’t seem to describe it quite right.

 

 

#5 – heavily brown-toned red.  I’m almost tempted to call this a muted brick, but luckily this is one of the colors I know where the genesis sprang from specifically: the dull red shell of a lobster.

 

 

#6 – yellow-toned medium brown.  This is the color I’m feeling “iffiest” about.  At one coat this color looked nasty.  Two’s better, but I’m reserving my judgment until I do a full mani with it.  Hmm. . . . 

 

 

#7 – this one I feel safe calling “beige.”  Like the colors described above and below, these are not even close to being a one-coater, like all of the other SBs I’ve worn/tried.  Two comes out quite well, though.

 

 

#8 – a slightly dirty sea foam color.  As would probably come as a surprise to anyone who’s seen my varnish collection, I actually love the earth tone colors.  But then again, it wasn’t until recently that colors like that were even released in polish form.  Glad to expand my options :)

I’m liking the mix in this collection; some colors are very vivid and noticeable, and some are very subtle.  A nice mix, I think.  The muted colors remind me of The Corpse Bride.  Other than the bright blue corpse, of course.

 

 

But wait – THERE’S MORE!

 

A special offer, for today only, at Lucy’s request I am adding in a shot of Femme Fatale, the less-than-stellar star of this post, this time over a coat of black lacquer.

 

(This picture I forced out of focus with my plant.  I’d meant to crop it, but I kind of like it, so I left it :)

 

This is one coat over one coat of Sally Hansen’s Black Out from the Xtreme Wear collection.  (I got that because CVS was putting on clearance any white-capped SH XW polishes, and I figured, who couldn’t use an extra black?  I’m pleased as one coat was quite sufficient!)

So there you have it; the first quick-and-dirty review and swatches of the second Library of Color.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

A mysterious package

[FYI, this is very picture heavy. I just wanted to make you feel like (with all due respect to Walter Cronkite) You Are There!]

Okay, so I get home late one night to find . . . a mysterious package! Dunh dunh DUNH! Well, okay, it isn’t so mysterious, since it was an order I was expecting. But I was too tired to actually go through all of the steps required to truly document its arrival, so I wait until the next day to open it for y’all! Yeah, I know. *nodding* I just care that much.

First, the box.

Huh. Fragile. Must be Italian.

(This is the best clip I could find. If 5 minutes is too long for you, just jump to the 1:00 mark.)

(Aaaand – just because I found it by accident and it’s a GREAT recap of the movie – check out the bunnies!)

(And, as long as we’re on the topic, sort of, one of my all-time favorite You Tube clips!)

Mmmmm – num num num!

Yay!

*Ahem* Sorry about that. Where were we? I swear the internet has destroyed my attention span. Let’s see. . . .

Oh, right! The mysterious but not mysterious to me, only mysterious to you package.

Well wrapped on the inside. . . .

Bubble wrap – and what’s that stuff in the corner?

Ah, free samples? I thought these smelled great . . .

. . . until I realized it was probably this perfume. Whatever it is, it’s nice!

Inside, a sealed envelope, and now you know where I ordered from. . . .

And a hand-written note to me! Times like this are what I love buying from a person directly, rather than ordering online.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand!

Hmm – see the color starting to poke through?

Becoming clearer here. . . .

Almost there! (The suspense killing you yet??)

*Aahhhhhh* [Hmm, that was supposed to be A Heavenly Choir, not Someone Running From A Serial Killer With His/Her Arms Waving.]

Anyway, you *knew* it was polish, but did you know it was the new StrangeBeautiful Library of Color? Didja? Didja, huh??? You might have suspected, when you saw it was from Bergdorf Goodman, anyway.

Aren’t they lovely?

It looks like they have added their company’s name to the bottom.

And now, if necessary (or even just if curiosity’s gotcha), you can see the ingredients.

And there we have it!! I wasn’t too sure, looking at the online promo pictures, but in person I am *totally* digging these muted colors! Including the second one, which is looking like a darker, greyer cousin to Misa’s Dirty Sexy Money, and its inky neighbor which was inspired by the J. Herbin company.

That link, by the way, will not only lead you to a brief description of this collection, but also one of the two sites I know of where it can be ordered. I can’t vouch for this company, though, as I’ve never used it. You can also order from Bergdorf Goodman, but they don’t ship internationally.

Well, as they get worn, I will let you know what I think, and there will be pictures!

When you’re Strange . . . Beautiful

As promised, here are the last six colors from the premiere StrangeBeautiful Library of Color.

It’s amazing how polish choices can be so visceral. When I first got my haul, the dark olive color (which, for some reason, reminds me of camo), was the color I liked least. Yet when it came time to pick a color to wear, it was the first one I reached for, as I mentioned in my first post about this line.

And the last color that I finally wore? The dark teal, which by all rights should have been my itching to jump on my nails from the word “go.” But you can’t always tell which polish you will most want to wear from day to day.

Now that I’ve worn them all, I don’t think I could pick a favorite, even if forced to. There are some I like more than others, but as soon as I decide I really like one, another one falls into my field of vision, and I can’t decide. So I give – I won’t even try.

So, on with the countdown. (Wow – I’m channeling Casey Kasem now.)

This first color is described as a “midcentury modern orange.” I’m not completely sure what that means, but I believe it’s the color (or one of the colors) whose genesis came from the Mid Century Modern Knoll Fabrics. It definitely has a “modern” feel to it, the way OPI’s The “It” Color does, with its mustard-leaning yellow. This reminds me strongly of a Sunkist orange with some black added to it.

This next color is a dark, inky blue that was, according to Jane Schub, “inspired by a fear of swimming alone in a deep dark lake at night.”

(Best of the pictures I took – sorry!)

This next one, I predict, is going to be a showstopper for many of you out there. (Scrangie, are you looking? I think I’ve got a color for you!)

This is called an “Art Nouveau teal.” It’s definitely darkened, and reminiscent of Rescue Beauty Lounge’s Stormy In fact, as Kae pointed out, the bottle designs are very similar, so I did a side-by-side shot of SB’s teal and RBL’s Stormy:

You’ll notice two things. Firstly, though the SB (on the right) appears to be larger, it is also much more narrow than the RBL. After scouring the Web (read: surfing several sites for up to ten minutes and becoming bored), I am unable to determine the size of the SB bottles. RBL is 12 milliliters, and judging from these pictures, I’ll guess that SB is about the same amount.

Secondly, this is not a dupe for Stormy. They’re in the same family, but I would consider this polish to be much more teal, and a little more “blackened,” to my eye.

(Excuse the weird marks on my nails – for the life of me I can’t see them IRL.)

Next comes this yummy chocolate brown color. Sigh. It keeps pushing to be my favorite of the group.

Here’s a lovely fuchsia. Like many in this library, it is a dark version of the color.

And last, but certainly not least, is the light pink shade of the family. In a New York Times blurb, it is said that Ms. Schub realized ‘the pink in a Warhol painting she saw at the Dia:Beacon museum [would make a wonderful nail polish]. ''It had black in it,'' Ms. Schub explained. ''It was a little off. It turned the corner from being pink to something very beautiful to look at.''’

(Try to ignore the weird state of the polish on my tips – I thought painting a swatch of white on just my nail tips was a good idea. I know. But this was awhile ago.)

So there she is, in all her glory. I don’t want to repeat my first post on these too much, so I’ll just say that they applied beautifully, and they are so pigmented that two coats has been, without exception, perfect.

Again, you can buy these from lucky scent who does have international shipping (but, whoa, is it pricey), or Bergdorf Goodman, who only ships to the US and Canada, though there is a phone number you can call and, apparently, have something shipped outside of those borders.

I’d hoped to end with The Doors’ People Are Strange, but apparently they’re not allowing that on the web. So instead here is one of my favorite scenes with Peter Sellers and Keenan Wynn from Dr. Strangelove:

Enjoy!