Essie - Double Breasted Jacket (Jiggle Hi Jiggle Low, winter 2014) + comparison

I love this strawberry red creme from Essie! The Jiggle Hi Jiggle Low collection was a bit of a bore, it went from white in a gradient to cherry red, no other colours in sight but the namesake of the collection: a golden silver. I remember I was a bit disapointed by this non variety of colours but Double Breasted Jacket made up for that! It is such a lovely deep strawberry red with a perfect formula that there is just one option: be happy!

Essie - Double Breasted Jacket

I compared Double Breasted Jacket with China Glaze Seas the Day, Elevation Polish Ave Secretan and Essie Silken Cord.
Next to Seas the Day, the Essie is a sliver darker and has a pinch more blue in it.
Next to Ave Secretan, the Elevation Polish is a bit darker and more blue and more pink.
Next to Silken Cord, DBJ is more blue and makes Silken Cord looks like a tomato red.

 China Glaze Seas the Day, Elevation Polish Ave Secretan, Double Breasted Jacket and Essie Silken Cord

Essie Silken Cord, Double Breasted Jacket, Elevation Polish Ave Secretan and China Glaze Seas the Day

OPI - Love Athletes in Cleats (MLB Collection, 2014)

Again a polish I wore last year.....OPI Love Athletes in Cleats, it's from the MLB Collection, that is it's baseball related. It was a little extra colllection that year and for me this was the only polish that was remotely interesting. The rest was just too frosty and/or boring to my taste.

Love Athletes in Cleats is a rasberry red with loads of silver/pearly white glass flecks floating around.
I remember the consistency of the polish being a bit fluffy but workable.

OPI Love Athletes in Cleats

OPI - Die Another Day (Skyfall, Holiday Collection 2012)

It has been a long time.....I know!
I haven't stopped wearing polish or making nail pics, it's just that there are just 24 hours in a day and that is sometimes not enough to do everything I would like to do.
I'll try to post a bit more frequently but I don't know if it's going to work: let's say I'll try.

To start I came upon these nails I did some months ago; OPI Die Another Day.
A lovely glowing red with a hint of orange.

OPI Die Another Day

OPI - Got the Blues for Red & Fashion a Bow & I Sing in Color gradient

Even though it is 14 Celsius over here...I made a effort to get into the holiday spirit and made this red gradient with stardust! Base colour is OPI Fashion a Bow (one of the greatest reds e v e r), the gradient was made with OPI Got the Blues for Red and I Sing in Color and I finished it all of with China Glaze Fairy Dust. It's all kind of Christmassy right?!

OPI - Got the Blues for Red & Fashion a Bow & I Sing in Color gradient

Essie - Color Binge (Leggy Legend, fall 2015)

Essie Color Binge is a fruity orange red: it is definitely a red with a large helping of orange.
The formula was OK, but not splendid. It was kind of opaque in two coats, but not very convincingly...
The color is lovely and I really wanted to love the polish but the formula just lets it down too much to make it a favorite.

Essie - Color Binge

Chanel - Métal Grenat (golden oldie)

This is, by far, the oldest polish I have in my possession! I was a baby when I bought it and in my mind it looks completely different....
The way I remember Métal Grenat is a fairly opaque burgundy red with golden shimmer, the way I perceive it now is a reddish brown jelly with golden shimmer. I fear that the red pigment has changed/disappeared over the years leaving me with this translucent dead leaves colour.....and perhaps the base has yellowed a bit as well!
I remember riding my bike and looking at the ground seeing all these mushy brown leaves laying on the road..."they look just like my nails, same colour >ieuw<"

Chanel - Métal Grenat

It is a nice colour and the shimmer is gorgeous but it is much nicer in my head :-)
Next time I will try some undies in burgundy and Seche Vite as topcoat. I used Poshé here and it pulls the polish like crazy to the middle. I guess that has something to do with the old formula of the Chanel (with all kinds of yummy smelling poisons!).

Zoya - Oswin (Ultra PixieDust Collection autumn 2014)

It's been a while that I showed (and wore) a PixieDust/liquid sand type of polish. So it was time to wear Oswin by Zoya, a deep red dust with big crimson (that how "they" call them and I guess that they are just that) hexes (hence the Ultra PixieDust). This is the only one I bought from this collection, because the other two (Noir and Arianna) seemed to be more translucent and less matte and that are just the two qualities I do not like in a PixieDust. Oswin is opaque and matte and thus a friend of mine!

Zoya Ultra PixieDust - Oswin

This could be a splendid polish for Christmas as well as for autumn!
I used two easy coats of Oswin; there was some colour loss (especially the big hexes) after just one day of wearing it: the edges of the glitters became silver. For the pictures I dry brushed them a bit to give them back their crimson red colour.

NYC - Ruby Queen (Crystal Couture Collection, holiday 2014)

A few weeks ago I bumped into NYC Ruby Queen when I was strolling through the city looking for Sinterklaas presents. It is such a nice mix of glitter that I couldn't leave Ruby Queen standing on the display.
There are pink glitters among the red ones drifting happily along in the red jelly base: love that colour combination. Stephanie from Short 'n Chic blogged about this colour the same week I bought it and she mentioned a green glitter in this collection as well. Having enjoyed this glitter as much as I did I went back to the store...but unfortunately, The Netherlands only have the red, purple, gold and blue one >sigh< and those didn't speak to me very loudly..... *can't have it all*

NYC - Ruby Queen

It was hard to get it photographed right: the polish isn't jam packed with glitter, so it looks like strawberry soup most of the time in my pictures! In real life it sparkles and glitters much more, this makes it look like there is much more glitter in there then there really is.
To round things up: Ruby Queen is a lovely polish and because of the pink glitters a bit different and wearable (not only at Christmas).

OPI - Red Hot Rio (Brazil Collection, summer 2014)

I love myself a good and juicy R E D. And OPI provides them in abundance this year... Let's recap, it started with: 

Gwen Stefani for OPI: Over and Over A-Gwen

Brazil Collection: Red Hot Rio

Coca Cola Collection: Coca Cola Red

Ford Mustang Collection: Race Red

Fashion Plate MLB Collection: Short-Stop! and Love Athletes in Cleats.

Gwen Stefani Holiday Collection: Cinnamon Sweet, Fashion a Bow, Just Beclaus, What's Your Point-settia? and Red Fingers and Mistletoes.

Well that is 11 fairly straight forward reds in one single year (and I didn't count the almost reds, corals and neons...nor the Mariah Carey Holiday Collection 2013 that was consistent of just reds and golds). As much as I love OPI I think this is an overkill and a huge lack in creativity and imagination! Man they don't even try to make all these reds special or different it's only creme or crelly and (when in luck) a sniff of glass fleck of glimmer.

OK, that said: I bought this Red Hot Rio before the big red polish wave was on it's top....and I must admit I like the colour and the crelly formula of this one. It flows like butter on the nails, self levels like crazy and the red is a beautiful and quite chic blood red.

As is the case with most reds....it is impossible to get the colour right in the pictures.... It sort of is OK in these pics, but it is a bit deeper in real life. This was two layers, but next time I think I will do three to make it look even more squishy and deep!

Love this one, but OPI should stop the red overload: I have more then enough reds!!

Right?!