Entries for Monday February 28

Morgana Cryptoria’s Brew HaHa

• Manufacturer: Morgana Cryptoria
• Availability: released as part of the 2010 Halloween 'Haunted Eyes' collection
• Color Range: muted blue-grey with green-gold sparkle
• Staying Power: 4 out of 4 stars
• Cost/Amount: $9.50 for a 3.5 refill baggie
• Would you purchase again: yes
• Similar shades:

This color is a bit darker than I imagined, based on the pictures from Morgana’s website. It’s definitely a deep blue-grey. I can probably use it as a contour or accent shade, but it’s also dark enough that I can probably use it for a non-“bright” liner color.

Morgana Cryptoria’s Skeletons in your Closet

• Manufacturer: Morgana Cryptoria
• Availability: released as part of the 2009 Halloween Treats collection
• Color Range: medium purple with pink and green duochrome shimmer
• Staying Power: 4 out of 4 stars
• Cost/Amount: $9.50 for a 3.5 refill baggie
• Would you purchase again: yes
• Similar shades:

Entries for Sunday February 27

Orly’s Cosmic FX collection

• Manufacturer: Orly
• Availability: beginning fall 2010 through salons, retailers, and some etailers
• Contains: six duochrome foil nail polishes
• Cost/Amount: USD$10 for 14 ml / .6 fl oz
• Would you purchase again: yes

I jumped on this bandwagon late…but I jumped on it nevertheless. Maybe that’s a good thing, though: I had the supreme luxury of looking through the hundreds of photos, swatches, nail wheels, indoor and outdoor pics, dupes and near-dupes…and was able to steer clear of the least interesting of the group.

Physician’s Formula Shimmer Strips Custom Eye Enhancing Eyeliner Trio kits

• Manufacturer: Physician's Formula
• Availability: beginning winter 2010 through drugstores, some beauty supply stores, and midrange "all-in-one" stores (Ulta, CVS, Rite-Aid, Fred Meyer, Target, Kohl's, et cetera)
• Contains: three eyeliner pencils with built-in sharpener
• Cost/Amount: USD$11.95 for .03 ounces / .85 grams
• Would you buy these kits again? yes

I haven’t had the best of luck with retractable eyeliners. I’ve tried Sephora (difficult to apply, uneven application) and Bare Escentuals (pricey, crumbles when sharpened) with less than satisfactory results. I’d just about decided to write off the whole “retractable eyeliner” thing as Something That Did Not Work For Me - because I love my fluidlines, gel liners, loose powder liners, and Sephora’s Flashy Waterproof Pencils. I have had excellent luck with these, though. They apply easily, they have good color payoff, they don’t tug or crumble or skip, and you get a decent amount of product for the money you’re paying. Each pencil contains just over .28 grams of product, you get three pencils in a set, and the sets are either $10.95 each or $11.95 each, depending on where you buy them.

Entries for Saturday February 26

Zoya’s Gemma

• Manufacturer: Zoya/Art of Beauty
• Availability: originally released as part of Zoya's Intimate collection
• Color Range: olive-moss creme with faint muted blue iridescence
• Staying Power: 3 out of 4 stars
• Cost/Amount: USD$7 for 14 ml / .5 fl oz
• Would you purchase again: yes
• Similar shades:

This is going to sound really odd, and possibly triply so considering that I chose to buy this color…but here goes. When I was a smallhuman (around 6 or 7 years old) there was a toy that was a monster-figure that was kept in a plastic green barrel - along with a bunch of green slime with a kind of a blue tinge to it. This slime-stuff felt like slime, would drip like slime…but would not stain walls or skin. Realistically, it was more like a quasi-viscuous blob of phlegm. And we played with this. (I know. Shut up.) I can’t for the life of me remember what this toy was…but when I first saw photos of Gemma, something was nagging at the back of my head. It looked familiar for some reason. Then I remembered this toy. Oh yeah, that’s why it looked familiar.

It also kind of makes me think of something a bit more contemporary…isn’t this exactly the color you’d expect Slurm to be, if it existed in real life?

Fyrinnae: Round II

About a year ago I placed my first order with Fyrinnae. Despite seeing lots of enthusiasm from people whose opinions I trusted, I had hesitated to buy from their web site for various reasons: it was frequently closed, I had problems getting an order to place, and then the kicker: it was black. I have a less easy time judging colors when they’re either on or surrounded by a dark background. If the page is edged in a dark color? Not a problem. Darker header and footer? Not a problem. Pale center color but not white (like palest blue, palest grey, palest pink, palest brown)? Not so much of a problem if it’s truly near-white. But I just don’t feel like I can really see and accurately judge colors when they’re against a black background. So despite the raves, I didn’t order from them. And then, after a hellish time trying to place an order, I finally got about 15 samples of various colors. The quality was good, turnaround time was a teeny bit long (three weeks) but it clearly stated that on the site…but they colors weren’t a whole lot different than colors I’d gotten from other companies. They weren’t dupes, I just wasn’t seeing anything amazingly special or different in any of these colors.

They behaved a bit like my Aromaleigh colors: similar pigmentation levels, similar adhesion, similar behavior when I applied them wet. All of these are good points, the product quality is definitely strong and it’s excellent value for the money…but since I was half-expecting something dramatically different from Fyrinnae because of others’ enthusiasm for the products, not seeing that “something different” was kind of like being a kid at Christmas. There was all that build-up for The Amazing New Toy, which - when opened and assembled with all the blinkenlightzen and everything - was pretty much like your old toys. I wasn’t even seeing a great amount of colorshift in the Arcane Magic samples I’d ordered, and I’d really been looking forward to that. (I really dislike any colors that will only show their full effects if you use a certain product to apply them. That just pisses me off. It feels gimmicky. Plus, the two times I tried Pixie Epoxy I strongly disliked the way the product felt on my lids.) Then, about a week ago, I decided to give them another try.

OPI’s Designer Series Illuminate

• Manufacturer: OPI
• Availability: part of OPI's Designer Series collection (debuted fall 2008)
• Color Range: warm medium brown with green iridescence and holographic shimmer
• Staying Power: 4 out of 4 stars
• Cost/Amount: USD$9 for 14 ml / .5 fl oz
• Would you purchase again: yes
• Similar shades:

There’s a noticeable green flash to this polish even in the bottle. It’s a slighter flash - on par with some of Zoya’s middling duochromes, or the green flash in Laney - but it’s there. One coat gives me a light tan with barely any of the green flash and a sparse, scattered holographic effect. Two coats deepens the brown and increases the holographics. It took three coats for me to get the green flash to a level where I was happy, though. (Nomad’s Dream, another OPI color with a brown base and a green flash, is much the same way.)

Entries for Friday February 25

Aromaleigh v1’s Erebos

• Vendor: Aromaleigh v1
• Availability: released as part of Aromaleigh v1's Mythos collection
• Color Range: dark indigo with multicolored sparkle
• Staying Power: 3 out of 4 stars
• Cost/Amount: USD$5 for 1.2 grams
• Would you purchase again: yes
• Similar shades:

As another of Aromaleigh v1’s “last hurrah” colors, this one is a dark color, but not as rich as some of Aromaleigh v1’s previous colors. It shows up best when foiled. It’s definitely a dark indigo, with no blackening - so that’s a positive.

Aromaleigh v1’s Phoebe

• Vendor: Aromaleigh v1
• Availability: released as part of Aromaleigh v1's Mythos collection
• Color Range: metallic deep-sea blue sparkle
• Staying Power: 3 out of 4 stars
• Cost/Amount: USD$5 for 1.2 grams
• Would you purchase again: yes
• Similar shades:

I’ll admit it, I’m a sucker for good rich blues. Aromaleigh had so many of them, too: Loretha, Drama Teal, Frigid Gloom, Destinationunknown, Infidel, Ozone, Spaceoddity… I wavered on this color for a while, then decided to go ahead and get it. (It’s not like she’s going to be re-releasing the collection later.)

Entries for Thursday February 24

BareMinerals’ Bronze Ambition kit

• Manufacturer: bareMinerals/Bare Escentuals
• Availability: beginning April 2008 through the webstore and boutiques
• Contains: 3 eye colors
• Cost/Amount: USD$36.00
• Would you purchase again: yes

One of the first wave of “get the look” kits released - buy three colors, get a slight discount - was later reconfigured to add a brush. This also increased the kit price, though…by $14. Since the various brushes come in just about everything and are available from dozens of sellers on Ebay, I’m not entirely convinced that this was a good decision for the customer. (It also stunk if the color combination you happened to like, was bundled with a brush you didn’t like.)