Favorites: Purples! (or, watch how my swatching has changed, lol!)

Hello there!

We're down to the last of my color-based favorites posts--after this I'll turn to my favorite specialty polishes, and possibly my favorite fall, Halloween, and holiday polishes, if people are interested. I can also do a series of my favorite nail art if people are interested in that; just let me know in the comments what interests you. I always prefer to focus my attention on things I know people are interested in! :)

For now, I've saved one of my favorites for last--purple. From magentas to plums to grapes to blurples--who doesn't love a good purple? Interestingly though...As I started going through all of my favorite purples, I realized a lot of them are duochromes, and I was hoping to do a separate post on duochromes. Looks like I might just have to do a post just for purple duochromes!

So let's see what I come up with when I rummage through my bag of pretty non-duochrome polishes...

::rummage, rummage, rummage::

Ah yes! Here we go! Let's start with something on the soft side...

China Glaze Tantalize

Soft and feminine, a rich lilac with an icy blue shimmer. I have no idea what one would wear to have tea with the Queen of England, but I think this color might just work.

Enough of that soft stuff...let's go to the dark side!!!


Color Club Glitter Wonderland

Strangely misnamed, this polish doesn't have glitter in it; it has a fleck finish. And, to top it off, my best pictures of it, in retrospect, suck. Probably because the bottle is in focus and the polish isn't--how that made it through, I just don't know. Ah well--live and learn...and along the way, wear this polish, 'cause blurple in a flecked finish doesn't get better than this.

Grrr...focus fail...

Color Club Winter Affair

I hope you like this polish, because you'll probably be seeing it again if I do a 'favorite holiday polishes' post. This is a rich burnished plum polish with a fleck finish...and again, I can only find out-of-focus pictures of it. Looks like I'll be swatching it again...But in the meantime, you get the gist, I hope.

Focus FTW!

Zoya Carly

Okay, this post is quickly turning into an extremely humbling journey through some of my worst early swatches. This one's in focus, but the clean-up is atrocious--clearly this was before I discovered acetone and a nail brush. ::shudders::

If there is such a thing as a reurple (red+purple), this is it. Okay, it's more like a magenta+grape sort of purple, but I like that coinage and I'm going to stand by it. No matter what you call it, though, you have to agree that the rich flashes of color here are beautiful.

Clean-up needed on aisle one...

Zoya Lotus

One of my favorites of the favorites, this is a smoky, deep lavender with red-purple flecks in it. This polish has amazing depth and beautiful flashes of light. It truly is a work of art.

Fergie by Wet n Wild Ferguson Crest Syrah

Horrible name, beautiful polish. This is a bit of a cheat on my part, because this really is a subtle duochrome, that shows gold and brown at the edges in certain lights. But, in most lights, it doesn't, so I'm going to include it here. The thing is, the duochrome that peeks out now and then is like finding a $20 bill on the sidewalk while walking to pick up the $1000 prize you just won--it's awesome, but you didn't have to have it to make it a really good day. This polish is, in essence, a blackened plum--but with a fleck finish that keeps the colors dancing through one another from all angles. That this comes from Wet n Wild just goes to show that you don't have to pay a ton of money to get a stunning polish.

Was this tip wear or Seche shrinkage? Either way...>.<

a-England Avalon

Do I even need to say anything about this polish? Is there anything that can be said about how amazing it is that hasn't already been said? This shows exactly why purple is the color of royalty--a luxurious blurple in a smooth-as-satin finish that just envelopes the nail in muted light. Even in my less-than-skilled swatch, the stunning beauty of this shines through.

Clean-up, aisle two...

Windestine Heartbeat

Last but not least, a stunning beauty of a polish (and the swatch doesn't make me twitch all over when I look at it!). Including this polish in this post also might be considered a bit of a cheat, since I'm going to do separate posts on my favorite glitter polishes. But this glitter is so tiny and fine, I think it can easily fall into more of a fleck-type category, and darn it, I'm sticking with that.  The base color of this polish, a deep, sugary plum, is set alight with magenta purple glitter...it's pretty here, but so much more stunning in person. If you think you might like it from the pictures, go get it, because I guarantee you, you will gasp when you see it IRL.

Finally...a decent swatch

And, that's it...for now. I have a swatch spam post that I'll be showing you in the next few days that I realized, completely coincidentally, contains almost all purple polishes, several of which would have certainly been included in this post if they weren't already ear-marked. So there is more purple hovering on the horizon.

Thanks for taking a look--and thanks for your patience with my old, yucky swatches! This post has truly made me want to go back and completely reswatch every post from my first year blogging, lol!! If only I had infinite time...

Hugs and loves,
M.