Hard Candy- Beetle

I about flipped my lid when I saw this in Wal-mart last night! I bought it as fast as I could, as if somebody was going to snatch it from me before I could pay for it. I admired it all the way home. I even called my BFF to tell her how amazing it was in the bottle! 

Now, I will just flat out say this, "FUCK YOU FLORESCENT LIGHTING!!!"  Once AGAIN I have been duped into buying a false profit under the disguise of florescent lights. I got home and slapped it on my nails immediately. At half a freakin coat on the first freakin nail I screamed out, "THIS IS ANOTHER DUPE FOR SPACE CADET! AHHHHHHHHHHHH!".

That's right folks. Instead of buying Orly's super new, totally exclusive, ground breaking FX technology in the form of Space Cadet you can now get it from not only Mac in the form of Mean & Green, but you can BUY IT AT WAL-MART. I mean how super exclusive is THAT?

 While this is an exact dupe to Orly Space Cadet and therefore an exact dupe to Mac Mean & Green I like this one the best. I can only speak for Space Cadet and Beetle though, as those are the only two I have. Beetle is at least twice as pigmented as Space Cadet which makes it need way less coats and dry faster. I don't know if you guys have ever actually gotten Space Cadet opaque before but in my experience it takes SO MANY coats that it goops up and never dries. This photo of beetle is at three thin coats. It dried super fast and is totally opaque.

 Here is the comparison of the two in the shade. Space Cadet is at 5 coats here.

 And here they are in the sun.

Let's do a quick price breakdown folks-
Mac Mean & Green = $13
Orly Space Cadet = $10
Hard Candy Beetle = $5

See you at Wal-mart.

Love, MM

It's Official.

Nfu-oh is officially my new favorite brand of polish.  I am sorry China Glaze.  I will always love you and I hope we can still be friends, just not best friends, and seriously the texts at 2AM have got to stop.  I cannot carry on a healthy relationship with Nfu-oh if you keep filling up my email box, and texting me at all hours of the night.  

I know you have always been there for me China Glaze.  You were so loyal and reliable and were always available when I needed you. We have always had great variety in our relationship but the spark just isn't there anymore.  Nfu-oh is so fresh and young and mysterious.  Let's face it, she has a great bottle.  I know it's painful to hear but I have needs you just can't satisfy anymore.  

This is 2 coats in indirect sunlight.  

Direct sunlight.  This is so gorgeous.  SO GORGEOUS. 

I did a quick comparison between this and Rescue Beauty Lounge Teal in case anyone was interested.

This is 2 coats of each polish.  They certainly aren't dupes.  Thank goodness.  But they are pretty close.

Vampy Comparison

Some of my favorite polishes are vampies, really dark red toned jellies or creams. Since a lot of the time online swatches seem to run together for me it makes it hard to decide which ones are similar, which aren't, and which ones I really want.

So, I did a comparison of 4 of the vampies that I think seem the most similar and most popular from swatches online and the bottles alone. 

Above from left to right we have China Glaze- Evening Seduction, Lippmann- Maneater, Zoya- Casey, and Misa- Love Bite.  These look really similar in the bottles as they do in a lot of swatches I've seen online.  But this is really decieving, because they are really not all that similar.

Ok, here they are on my nails in indoor lighting. Right away Maneater jumps out at me as the most different. It is clearly brown with barely any red in it at all. The next one that is the most unique is Love Bite. It's much more red and has the most jelly-like finish. Casey and Evening seduction are really close except that Casey more of a jelly and ES is a straight cream.

Here they are outdoors in direct sunlight.  Now I really see Love Bite and Maneater standing out from the rest as totally different. Maneater looks almost totally brown.  We can also see that Casey and ES really are very close, save the finish, even in direct sunlight. They both have a strong undertone of plum and a deeper burgandy. 

So none of these are dupes of eachother. 2 are close but not dupes. 

Here are swatches of each polish alone. You can really see how these could get jumbled without a side by side. 

For me the must haves from this are Love Bite, and Casey. If I had known that Maneater was so brown I totally would have passed on it.