Etude House BL009

Etude House - BL009, 2 coats

Ah, it's good to be back home - especially when you've got half a dozen packages waiting for you at the post office! I received a bunch of Etude House lacquers from Hong Kong and among them was this little beauty, known only by her code name BL009. *cue James Bond music* The abundant green shimmer is super sparkly and the base colour lands somewhere between dark, inky blue and teal. I had to trim a few stray hairs off the brush but otherwise application was a breeze.

Guppy 77 & SpaRitual Optical Illusion

Guppy - 77, 1 coat

77 is an olive green lacquer packed with golden shimmer. The formula was wonderful and application trouble free - very nice for a cheapo polish! Guppy is a Korean brand and not widely available outside Asia, but can be purchased from the seller jolieeeee on eBay for under two euros each.

Guppy - 77 & SpaRitual Optical Illusion, 1 + 2 coats

SpaRitual Optical Illusion is murky olive green glass flecked jelly with two nearly identical siblings: Orly It's Not Rocket Science and China Glaze Zombie Zest. I found the Orly slightly more saturated and "prettier"; I don't own the China Glaze polish and thus cannot compare the two.

H&M Happy Purple & GOSH Gasoline

H&M - Happy Purple, 2 coats

Happy Purple (perhaps a slightly strange name for such a vampy lacquer?) is a deep eggplant shimmer with some sparse, small magenta and blue glass flecks. The base is not blackened and the polish does look purple even in low light. The formula was fine and I could have gotten away with only one coat, but I always do two out of habit.

H&M - Happy Purple & GOSH - Gasoline, 2 + 1 coats

Gasoline is one of my very favourite lacquers - silver, pink and blue glass flecks in a reddish purple jelly base. It's just about the only polish I recall ever buying a backup of! The cloudy winter's day did no favours for this pretty lacquer and I'm sorry for the subpar pictures, I'm still trying to figure out my mum's camera.

China Glaze Pink-Rox-E

China Glaze - Pink-Rox-E, 2 coats

Look what I got in the mail! A long time lemming of mine, Pink-Rox-E is a super girly peach/salmon leaning pink creme with golden glass fleck. I've read other bloggers complain about its sheerness but I got away with two coats - maybe they changed the formula between different batches? My skintone positively looks like death here, but the sun refused to come out for my little photo session.

Stuf. 56 Beam & Orly Space Cadet

 

 stuf. - 56 Beam, 3 coats

This stunning purple to orange to green duochrome was yet another of my eBay bargain finds along with another lacquer by stuf., a blue to violet iridescent glitter which is a dupe for Sinful Colors' Pearl Harbour. Incidentally, 56 Beam is a dead-on dupe for another HTF lacquer, Rimmel's Zeitgeist, which I also own. The only difference between the two is that Zeitgeist is more opaque, requiring two coats whereas the stuf. lacquer had thinned down probably due to its age and needed three coats to eliminate VNL. Stuf. were an Australian brand who closed down years ago so eBay is your best bet if you wish to hunt this pretty little gem down.

 stuf. - 56 Beam & Orly  Space Cadet, 3 + 1 coats 

Since the Orly is also sheer I layered it over the stuf. lacquer. They're identical in their duochrominess with the execption of Space Cadet being a glass fleck foil and 56 Beam a shimmer. Me likes! Pics taken with mum's Canon PowerShot S95 (I still prefer my G6 over it, the S95 messes up the colours and I had to do a lot of colour correcting).