Sinful Colors Blue by You vs. ORLY Royal Navy comparison and video

As I sit here writing this blog post I am reminded why I want my own stretch of land far, far away from anyone else. Today is a perfectly lovely day, nice breeze blowing and some clouds. Oh yeah, and then there is my neighbor across the street with the doors on his beat up jeep wide open, blaring "music" so dang loud that my walls and windows are rattling.

I am going to repeat that just so there is no confusion: the walls and windows of my house, are RATTLING. Because some inconsiderate window licking douche nozzle has decided it is ok to flood the world with "musical" noxious clouds of obscenities and misogynistic hate.

Anyway, this ex-con isn't going to change any time soon; this is NOT the first time this has happened. I'll just have to hope his meth lab gets discovered... or blows up. He's woken me up so many times now that I'll take either one. #sarcasm (kind of...)

ANYWHO!

I have another video up! Yay! Click here for a direct link! 

This video is comparing Sinful Colors Blue By You to ORLY Royal Navy. Sometimes I will look at colors in my collection and think "I already have you... why do I have more than one of you in different brands?!" The answer is because I am a nail polish addict. 

I am CEO, Queen and Grand Royal Empress of La Lacquer League.

That doesn't mean that Her Royal Highness doesn't like a good deal! And I KNOW I can't be the only one! So I am going to be swatching different colors in my collection side by side to see if they really are dups for each other. Just because they look the same in the bottle doesn't mean that they actually are. We are all familiar with finding a polish that is BEAUTIFUL in the bottle and suddenly an evil stepsister when it gets on your nail. 

I also don't believe that being the same color in the end constitutes a dupe. At least not in my book. The end result might be similar, or exactly the same, but what if the higher end polish only required 1-2 coats while the lower end polish required 4-5. Personally, that is a big enough gap that I would still purchase the higher end product. We all know how long it takes for 4+ coats of polish to dry!

That is why I am not just going to show you final results but actually record videos of the application process. You can see exactly how it applies and then judge the final result for yourself. 

 Left: Sinful Colors Blue by You, Right: ORLY Royal Navy

 I truly had to try very hard to get this picture. The ORLY polish IS darker than the Sinful Colors polish, but it is by such a small amount that it is hardly noticeable. The Sinful Colors polish is not a perfect dupe for the ORLY polish, however, I feel that it is close enough.

 
Based on the price, application, color and finish, I suggest the Sinful Colors polish. The ORLY polish is so much more expensive and I did not feel like it truly delivered something that was worth the increase in price. Unless you are truly on a journey of collecting polish, you will be just fine with only one of these in your stash.

You can always check out my nail polish collection on google docs here: My nail polish collection

If you see any polishes in particular that you would like me to swatch, review or compare just let me know!

 

ORLY Matte FX Flakie Polish Application/Swatch review on Youtube

I can't be the only person who has an obsession with flakie polishes. I would say it started with Zoya Fleck Effect and snowballed from there. Actually my first Zoya polishes were when Zoya was having a huge sale on 3 bottles for $10.00, no shipping. I went bananas! Now Zoya and I are good friends haha

So when I stopped by Sally's and saw that there was a new display for a matte collection and it included two flakie polishes, I just about squealed.

 As you can see there are 4 polishes in this collection, with the two on the right being the flakie polishes. There is also  a slot for ORLY's matte top coat if you just want to grab that for over any of your polishes.

 Here are the two beauties I snagged up! The one on the right is called Green Flakie Topcoat and the one on the right is Pink Flakie Topcoat. I'm not going to say that I buy polishes for the names, but... Come ON ORLY! Such a big nail polish brand, amazing polishes and absolutely NO imagination or attention put into the polish names? Pretty disappointing. Plus, "Green Flakie" is really stretching things. Even in the bottle it looks blue.


Here are the polishes swatched on a nail wheel over two coats of Wet n' Wild black. Green Flakie is on the left, pink flakie is on the right.

If you would like to see a video of the application, as well as the polish in different light settings, check out my newest youtube video: Click here for a direct link to the video or click on the embedded video below.

Swatch + Application video of Salon Perfect 901 Kaboom

Price: $3.98

Product Amount: 0.5FL OZ 14ml

Can be bought at: Walmart

Lowest Price Found:  Walmart

Layered Over: None

Coats: 5.5

Similar To: None that I can say for sure right off the top of my head. I do know that it reminds me of some indi polishes I saw on Etsy a while back, but I can't remember the name exactly. Overall I haven't seen any other main stream brands do this. 

In some ways it does remind me of feather polishes. However, the particles in this polish are all round, rather than long, thin rectangles.

This was such a fun manicure! I got a lot of compliments on it as well as people asking how I had done it. Imagine their shock when I said it was only one polish! 

Now the only thing is that in order to get it to full opacity, like it is shown here, I did have to use about 5.5 coats, plus base and top coat. The particles are suspended in a clear base so it takes patients to build it up.

Of course this could be used as a layering polish as well. The first 2 coats were certainly thin and sparse enough to be able to still see a base color. Now there are a few things to note when using this polish:
 

Having to use so many coats isn't my main concern. I am not overly concerned about the world supply of nail polish, or even my own for that matter, but this polish SNAGS ON EVERYTHING. If you watch the video (link down below), I mention that the polish settled right before my free edge,so I had to seal my free edge even more than usual. Well the polish dries to a matte, textured finish, and that texture was really obnoxious on my free edge. 

I have never had any textured polish give me problems with snagging. OPI Liquid Sand, Sally Hansen Sugar Nails and Zoya PixiDust are just a few of the textured polishes that I have used that have never given me any problems with snagging, and I don't use them with a top coat! I did use a top coat on Kaboom and yet it still snagged horribly. I ended up lightly filing the tips, but this doesn't just fix the snagging issue, it can also decrease the life of your manicure because you are breaking the seal between the polish and you nail. So I prefer not to have to file the edges of my manicure.

I really suggest watching my application video (for a direct link click HERE), or just click the play button below, so that you can have an idea as to how it applies.

Best way to remove ANY nail polish! Nail polish remover pods

I am so excited to be able to say that my first youtube video is up! I thought it would be appropriate to do an accompanying post. If you want to see the video itself it can be found here:Nail Polish Remover Pods Review

Please take a look and let me know what you think! If you find it helpful be sure to like and subscribe :)

The video is reviewing and showing how to use Nail Polish Remover Pods. I have found them to be the best way to take off nail polish, gel polish, ASP Light less Gel/ Resin, and I thought other people might like to know about them.

All you do is put your nail polish remover into the pod, and put your finger into the top of the pod. Here are my suggestions to make things easier:

1. Do one hand at a time! You get 10 in a pack but they are not air tight. You can move around a little bit, but for the most part you just have to wait. 
2. Designate one or two pods for your thumbs and one or two for your pinky. The pink part will get stretched out, so marking off the ones for your biggest and smallest fingers will keep them from leaking as much as possible. 
3. Have a spare towel or napkin handy and keep your hand over it. This way if there are any leaks or spills it is not a big deal.
4. Put Vasaline, lotion or cuticle oil around your finger. This will keep the polish from making your skin dry. 

 

As you can see from these pictures you do look like an alien for a little bit, but it is so worth it! The polish comes off so easily and just settles to the bottom. In this case it looks like fairy dust! So pretty!

Let me know what you think and what other reviews and comparisons you would like to see.

Introduction to TMNTCupcake!

This being the first post of my blog, I feel it is important to make it clear what I want this blog to be and give some background on my nail polish addiction!

When my collection started and how it brought me here

I started using nail polish on a, somewhat regular basis, about 5 years ago. This was back when there seemed to be hardly any choices available. There was a small section in Walgreens, Walmart and Target for some Sally Hansen polishes, and on the other end of the spectrum was Wet 'n Wild with a few random bottles. Other than that, Sally's was the only place to get nail polish. At the time Sally's seemed SOOO expensive for polishes and nail care.... Oh how times have changed!

I started truly collecting polish about 2 years ago and have not looked back! Like most Nail Polish Addicts I think we don't realize just how many we have for a while, and then suddenly BAM! it hits us.

It hit me when I was reorganizing my collection. I sat down and actually cataloged all of my polishes in excel.

If you would like to see my catalog of polishes you can view it in google docs here: Nail Polish Collection Catalog. For some reason it is showing two extra pages (9 & 10), and I cannot figure out why, so please just ignore them.

What will this blog be?

While cataloging all of my polishes, and all the other odds and ends in my collection, I realized that there are so many things that I wish I had not purchased. Or at least, I wish that I had known more about them before purchasing. In my collection I have polishes that are either exact dups, or so similar, that I do not need both and I wish I could have seen side by side comparisons. Looking up swatches is great, but lighting can change the color of a polish, and without seeing them in the same light, side by side, it can be difficult to tell if they are similar or not.

I am not saying there are not reviews out there. There are. However, the majority of the time they do not cover what I need to know.

So I decided to start my own blog and Youtube channel (TMNTCupcake's Youtube Channel) to review, demonstrate and compare products in a way that would have helped me. My hope is to help other people find products that work, nail polishes that are dups for higher priced brands, and to save others time and money when considering purchases.

I am always open to suggestions on making my blog and youtube channel more interesting and helpful. So please, if you have any constructive criticism, ideas, products you would like to see compared/reviewed, please let me know!