L'Oréal Owl's Night — New LE Project Runway Collection

Here's Owl's Night, the second of the two L'Oréal polishes I picked up yesterday. This one belongs to the Watchful Owl subsection of the new Project Runway collection.

I swatched this with three coats, but you could easily get coverage with only two. Owl's Night has a deep, dusty plum base with lots of gold shimmer. I think this is a perfect fall color and I like it a lot. It looks like it might be a cousin of Chanel Or de Russie, but I don't have that one for comparison. In any case, it's a very luxurious color.

L'Oréal Cockatoo's Mystery — New LE Project Runway Collection

I love finding the limited edition drugstore collections! I think it's the thrill of the hunt. Yesterday in CVS I came across a whole series of Project Runway collections from L'Oréal. There were four mini collections, each with a wild theme: Charming Cockatoo, Watchful Owl, Audacious Amazon, and Sultry Raven. Each collection had two nail colors along with some other makeup products. I picked out one each from the Cockatoo and Owl collections.

First, here's Cockatoo's Mystery. It's an elegant, warm gray. I have a feeling there's probably an Essie dupe for this color, but if you can believe it I don't own any grays aside from this one now!

This may not be the most unique color, but I'm really loving it. This swatch is three coats. The formula was really easy to work with. I was expecting it to be a little chalky because of how pale the color is, but in fact it was completely smooth. I also really like L'Oréal's brush. It's flat, but not huge and mop-like! It's one of my favorite brushes out there.

Next, I'll show you swatches of Owl's Night!

Wet n Wild The Gold & The Beautiful

Here's a polish I picked up in CVS last week for about $2. Wet n Wild is a pretty awesome brand; they make nice polishes and they're very affordable. The Gold & The Beautiful is basically just dense gold glitter. I swatched it with three coats. It covers pretty well, but the nail line is still visible.

I think this polish is best for layering. You could layer it over a gold foil if you just wanted extra blingy gold nails. I layered one medium coat over four different colors to get a sense of the possibilities. (Index: Misa Heaven White; Middle: Wet n Wild Black Crème; Ring: Wet n Wild Teal of Fortune; Pinky: Zoya Mimi.)

This is definitely not a delicate gold shimmer, as you can see. I also think this polish would work very well for adding gold sparkle to a frankenpolish. If I can find an empty bottle, I may come up with something!

Pink Wednesday : OPI Shanghai Shimmer

My very first Pink Wednesday, in fact! And this polish is the very first bottle of OPI that I ever owned. It was given to me by a good friend in High School. We were on the fencing team together, and one day I spotted this beautiful color on her nails. Next time she was ordering some nail polish, she remembered how much I liked it and got an extra bottle for me! So nice! I wore it to senior prom.

This bottle is from before OPI went "Big 3 Free" and has the old black label. As you might expect, it applies easily and smoothly. It has a subtle greenish iridescence. This swatch is with three coats. As far as I know, this color is part of the permanent line and is still available (although now in the new formula.)

Chanel Blue Rebel

It was pouring rain the day I stopped by Chanel SoHo to pick up this polish. My shoes were soaked; my jeans were soaked from the knees down. But when you get to the door of the boutique, the tall, handsome guy in a suit opens the door for you and offers to take your soaking wet umbrella. He takes out a fresh plastic bag for you to drop it into so you don't have to drip all over the store. And because this is Chanel, the plastic bag has a Chanel logo on it. How could it be any other way?!

Here's Blue Rebel from the Les Jeans de Chanel collection in full sunlight. These pictures are two coats with regular clear polish on top.

And in the shade:

These pictures are fairly color-accurate on my monitor. Chanel Blue Rebel is very much a denim blue crème. It leans just the slightest bit towards green and has a hint of dustiness to it. This polish has a lovely and agreeable formula. It's completely smooth and opaque in two coats, and it dries quickly. I just checked the Chanel website, and Blue Rebel is out of stock, but Blue Boy and Coco Blue are still currently available.