2017-10-27 EDIT: I’ve layered Queen, Please! over Crown for Whatever, and added the swatch photos at the end of this review. Worth it.
This is another stunner from China Glaze’s recently released Halloween-themed collection. I’ve previously reviewed Sin-derella, which is drop dead gorgeous.
Queen, Please! (84079) is a sheer but extremely shimmery, pale pinked champagne microglitter with a golden mint flash.
Over the summer, The Face Shop released a collection of makeup and nail polish in collaboration with Marvel! The characters included in the nail polish were Black Widow, Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Thor. Captain America’s logo was used for some of the makeup items (they were super cool-looking—kind of wish I’d picked up one of the palettes!). You can see the collection here.
I hadn’t tried The Face Shop’s nail polishes before, or any of their makeup at all, so I didn’t feel like going whole hog and ordering all four Trendy Nails Duos. I picked up two: Spidy (Spider-Man) and Thunder Storm (Thor). No idea why they didn’t just go with the original character names. And Spidey’s misspelled, to boot!
Anyway. The packaging is nice, and makes for collectible items:
Each Duo comes with two small bottles of polish.
Thunder Storm (02) comes with a magenta and green flake topper (1) and a soft metallic gold (2).
Purple and green seems better suited to the Hulk, but for whatever reason they went with Thor, instead. I’d have gone with a silver and red flake for the Norse
god—seems more obvious, no?
I don’t know exactly when this shade was released, but a quick Google tells me that the earliest online reviews are from 2011, and that Deborah Lippmann spent ages trying to get a nail polish to match a rose gold Rolex watch. That is exactly the kind of dedication I like in my nail polish brands!
Rolex Day-Date in Everrose Gold Image: rolex.com
As a result, Glamorous Life—pity she didn’t go with a horologically-inspired name—is less of a pink rose gold and more of a classic jewelry rose gold. It’s not basically pink (see The Semiotics of “Rose Gold”), but a regular yellow gold that’s been slightly warmed up with the addition of some copper, making it less brassy and more bashful.
Deborah Lippmann Nail Color in Glamorous Life
It’s weird when I Google for images of this polish, because a few of them look quite blush pink, and the others look more like mine, a soft gold, or maybe a touch copper. It could be that the color has changed over the years, but I don’t really remember this bottle looking especially pink when I got it, either. It also looks gold in the photos by a couple of bloggers who swatched back in 2011/12, so maybe I’ll just chalk it all up to lighting differences. I can’t see my bottle looking very pink under any lights, though. Batch inconsistencies could be a culprit, too.
Pure Ice, a brand developed with and exclusive to Walmart, is one that I haven’t tried very much in the past. I think I may have owned one or two before I recently bought this one.
Shine with Gel Tech Nail Polish is their newer line of nail polish. I believe their regular Nail Color line is still available, but it’s not on Walmart Canada’s website.
Good Glistener (1280) is a semi-opaque light taupe with gold shimmer.
Pure Ice Shine with Gel Tech Nail Polish in Good Glistener
Last December, I picked up three of Essie’s Winter 2016 polishes from Shoppers Drug Mart when they were supposed to be on sale for CA$7.99. I suspect that because they were from the new collection, they rang up at regular price. I asked if they could check the price in the flyer, and they kindly honored it for me, which was cool. The shades I got were Oh Behave!, Party on a Platform, and Satin Sister.
Today, I’m reviewing Oh Behave! (1006)†. Essie describes it as a “minx peach frost”. It’s a very Essie shade to me: a semi-sheer pinked copper with warm golden shimmer. There’s a hint of milkiness to the color, but I wouldn’t go as far as calling it a pastel. I say it’s semi-sheer because you can easily wear it with one or two coats to get a sheer look, but it gets just about opaque with three coats as I have in my swatch.
[† The code is 1890 on my bottle sold at Shoppers Drug Mart. The retail bottles have shade name-and-code stickers on top of the bottle cap and a clear sticker on the front that says “Essie Nail Lacquer”. Essie bottles made for salons have an embossed “e” on top of the bottle cap, no clear logo sticker on the side of the bottle, and a shade name-and-code sticker on the bottom of the bottle. The salon sticker also folds out with an ingredient list, but I’ve never peeled it off as I like to keep the labels intact. The retail packaging also displays either no shade code or a different shade code from the salon packaging. I wish they wouldn’t do this! Currently, I just keep the salon codes in the database, but I should probably try to update it with the retail codes, too.]
Essie Nail Lacquer in Oh Behave! (retail bottle)Essie Nail Lacquer in Oh Behave! (retail bottle)