OPI and Apple Pie + Adoree Salmon Stream

The infamous OPI and Apple Pie that I swapped for through MUA.

OPI and Apple Pie

You know, it's not that bad. It's just dull. Applied really well in two coats. Reminds me of kinda old apple pie filling (mmm, appetizing). Brownish orangey creme. When I put it on, I realized it would make a great base for the slightly sheer...

Adoree Salmon Stream over OPI and Apple Pie

Orange-pink-gold-bronze duochrome (two coats over OPI and Apple Pie). Alas, it looks better in the bottle than on the nail but I still think it's pretty. I am woefully behind on my Adoree swatches (this was sent to me for review). And this is an example of that which plagues my desire to freshen manis up after a day of wear: I can never find a good topcoat that will dry the sucker and then end up with creases and dents and all sorts of ugly. :( The hell? My usual topcoats that work well with the first polish application don't work. And none of the other ones work for me either. Am I just cursed?

December Adoree swatches

This post was sponsored by... well, half me, half Esther's Nail Center. Whenever I receive Adoree polishes from Thresa at Esther's Nail Center, the package is always accompanied by a little sheet filled with dried dollops of Adoree polishes (a service available to all customers that Esther's NC calls "stroke samples"). When I saw this month's stroke samples, I immediately put in an actual order for four more polishes because they were more perfect for December than the ones I had originally chosen. December is a good month for glitter, especially ones I can put over white. :) I ended up only having enough time to swatch five of the eight this week.

Adoree Starlight White over Missha WH001

I don't know about you guys but I really liked this combo. Missha WH001 is a slightly jelly white creme (which applies like a bit of a nightmare) and Starlight White is a sheer topcoat with fine glitter and a slight white-purple duochrome that's more apparent in the bottle than on the nail. The glitter itself looks opalescent and flashes green and gold mostly. It does a nice job of softening a bright white. Reminds me of snow... :)

Close-up of Starlight White over Missha WH001

There's the purple duochrome... but it's only barely visible on the nail.

Adoree Wild Orchid

Bluish-lavender foil. I love the color A LOT but this is far too brushstroke-y for my taste.

Adoree Golden Star

Run of the mill gold polish. I can't tell if it's suspended in a yellow jelly or if it's a clear base: my nails are pretty stained so it's hard to tell if the yellow is the polish or my nails. :( Three coats above: definitely a layering polish, not a glitter polish.

Adoree Genuine Pink

Darkened mauve creme. It's more pink IRL. Two coats and super glossy. I can't make up my mind about this color: there's something about it that I really like. And then there's something about it that whispers "boring..."

Adoree Hamilton Blue

Multicolored glitter. Four coats on the index (left), three on the middle, two on the ring and one on the pinky (right). Reminds me a lot of Amour Rain Glitter (a favorite cheap steal of mine) but less dense. It looks tons better when layered over a creme, like so:

Adoree Hamilton Blue over RGB Minty

Mmm. Much better. Actually, looking at this picture, I think it'd be fun to try layering this over all colors of cremes. I wonder how different it would look if I layered it over a red polish, since this look probably always takes on the color of the base polish. (Worry not, I'll be showing Minty some other time.)

Close-up of Adoree Hamilton Blue over RGB Minty

I have to remember to try this out over other colors. Betcha it would make a funky skittles mani. Or horribly clashing. Or both.

November Adoree swatches

Some more swatches of Adoree polishes, which I received for free, courtesy of Thresa at Esther's Nail Center. I'll readily admit that my choices this month weren't fantastic but definitely nowhere near a complete loss. :)

Adoree Lemon Meringue

Reminds me a bit of Maybelline Banana Puddin': a slightly more saturated yellow and not as sheer. It still took four coats to even this out (and there are several spots where it still isn't even). This was an NOTD for a couple of days and there was no chipping and virtually no tipwear at the end of the third day.

Adoree Lime Light

I was so in love with the idea of this polish: highlighter yellow jelly with holo bar glitter. Wish it didn't look like such a disaster on my nails. Three coats are pictured above.

Close-up of Lime Light

Video of Lime Light

Adoree Tudar [sic] Brown

Deep brownish red. Very vampy and jelly but sheer and relatively hard to build. Three coats is pictured above.

Adoree Glamour Pink

Dusty carnation pink with green and gold shimmer. Really beautiful and one of the more interesting pinks I've run across lately but it needed to be thinned out with thinner and clear polish. Which I may do because I like this one a lot but it's a PITA to apply. Three coats pictured above. Beautifully sparkly in the sunlight.

Close-up of Glamour Pink

Video of Glamour Pink

Off to my SO's family's house for Thanksgiving today. The last and longest leg of my trip. My nail polish collection has grown though! I stopped by Inglot yesterday and got a handful of polishes -- including their new "breathable" (*rolls eyes*) polish. Wish I could've bought more but at $10 apiece (or $14 for the breathable polish), that wasn't going to happen. I also succumbed to an Illamasqua: Collide. I just couldn't resist the multi-colored glitter. Also, Inglot was closed when I got to Times Sq and I needed to pass time til it opened. Did you know Inglot has a nail art line? They look like those cheapie nail art pens that you can get from China off of eBay. Anyway. No idea if I'll get more polishes while at my SO's house: maybe during Black Friday shopping?

Oh... for those in NYC, Inglot is having a 20% sale in the morning on Black Friday. You lucky New Yorker ducks. Go nuts for me. :)

Adoree swatches, Part II

More Adoree swatches, continued from yesterday!

Reminder: Polish or Perish readers can get a free glass nail file with every order at Esther's Nail Center with code POPGNF (put it in the 'message to seller' box).

(And since I already posted about the fact that I got half of these free from ENC yesterday, I feel idiotic mentioning it two consecutive days in a row. Especially since the new FTC rules aren't in effect until December 1st. Not that the chances of the FTC coming down on this small blog for not disclosing freebies is terribly large, but I try to follow the spirit of laws that make sense to me. When laws don't make sense to me, however... I'll at least not advertise my flouting of them on a blog. I'm old enough to remember the days when people were cautious about what they posted online. :P)

Seaport Blue

From left to right, four coats (index), three coats (middle), two coats (ring) and one coat (pinky).

This is an amazing fine cobalt blue glitter. I have many blue glitters but this one is my favorite so far. Most glitters apply somewhat unevenly: some strokes are much denser in glitter and some lighter. This one spreads so easily and evenly onto my nails. Even though it takes four coats to become opaque, it's a very predictable progression from just a glittery topcoat to a solid glitter; it's very easy to control the amount. I also love how vibrant this color is: it's such a true blue.

Adoree Autumn Cover

Orange-coral creme, for those who don't think that fall has to be the depressing prelude to winter. ;) (I did expect this to be a more muted orange shade when I requested it.) The photos make it look more saturated than it is. Super easy application, two coats and so glossy.

Adoree Fairway

HELLLOOOO GREEN! Lime green with chartreuse shimmer. Two coats pictured above, probably could've used three. Glows in the sunlight and applies very well. More olive-leaning than Zoya Midori. This was the first Adoree I swatched and I remember being happy with how easy it was to work with. I'm more of a green creme type though.

Adoree Red Tulips

Okay, technically, this is under the name "Ted Tulips" on the ENC website. But I'm going to assume that it was either a typographical error based on the proximity of the "t" key and/or the keyboard equivalent to an anticipation error (where the speaker/typer knows that they have to use a "t" in the second word but jumps the gun on it). Or maybe someone at Adoree knows someone who likes tulips, named Ted. Either way, this was the most headache-y polish for me of the bunch: it looked like it was going to be phenomenal (gold hexagonal glitter in bright red jelly, which reminded me of fall foliage) but ended up being tough to apply. (It was a bit thick and harder to build up.) Also, the gold somehow gets swallowed by the red jelly and it was not as glowy as I had hoped it would be.

Close-up of Red Tulips

Adoree Sea Turquoise

Slightly greyed sky-blue creme with just a tinge of teal. It's darker than most pastels but applied like a pastel: thick, streaky, chalky. Took three coats to get it smooth though it settles down to a lovely glossy creme when you finally do even it out. Strangely enough, this polish looks very different in the bottle than it does on the nail: in the bottle, it's more grey but on the nail, it shows up as a more vibrant blue.

On the balance, I am enjoying these polishes immensely. $5.50 is a decent price for a huge bottle: 0.65fl oz compared to the typical 0.5fl oz. I personally wouldn't be able to ever finish a bottle -- I doubt I'll ever finish any bottle of polish considering how many bottles I have -- but for those who are interested in getting quality and quantity for their money, these seem like pretty good bets. (Adoree definitely knows how to do glitter!)

For those who are wondering, Adoree has a stable and wide-ranging collection and, as far as I know, has not discontinued any colors. The company introduces new ones every so often but not on a seasonal basis. So it doesn't have that lemmingish, limited edition excitement of new collections... but this also means you will not anguish for some discontinued shade. :D

Adoree nail polish swatches and a new Polish or Perish perk for our readers!

Sometime over the summer -- oh so long ago -- I ordered some Adoree polishes. Someone had mentioned them in the poll about lesser known brands they'd like to see featured on the blog and I had taken it upon myself to track down all the ones I had never tried. Google brought me to Esther's Nail Center and my credit card bought me a small batch of Adoree polishes at $5.50 each. (ENC also does this amazingly cool service for its customers: stroke samples! Ask for samples of particular nail polishes and they'll send them to you on a piece of paper so you can see what the actual polish looks like. Much better than colored dots on a screen.)

After I received my order, I started talking to one of the co-managers of ENC about the line and she proposed the following: for the next few months, ENC would send me four Adoree polishes a month free of charge in exchange for a review that ENC could republish on their own website. In addition, there would also be a Polish or Perish reader perk for purchases made at ENC: a free pink glass nail file with every order with code POPGNF! (Details are in the sidebar.)

So you can expect a monthly Adoree review from me for the next few months at least. This month's is heftier than usual since I've also folded in a couple of the polishes that I ordered during the summer in addition to the ones I requested for October.

Adoree Galaxy Black

I really haven't ever been so disappointed in my camera (and my photography skills) as when I was taking photos of this polish. It's so glittery and attractive in person but it's hard to capture photo or video. In these photos, it looks like what it is: silver glitter in black jelly. IRL though, it sparkles like you would imagine a black glitter to sparkle. This was a NOTD and held up very well with Nubar Diamont: much less tipwear than I usually experience. Three coats.

Close-up of Galaxy Black

You gotta believe me, it looks like it should be made of black glitter.

Adoree Mexicana

Another polish that's ridiculously hard to capture. Mexicana is a rosy-orangey bronze with gold shimmer (not fully duochrome but approaching it) but what makes this exceptional is it's slight purple (!!) flash. That's right, a purple flash overlaid on rose, bronze and gold! I was so surprised by it and took about a fifty photos trying to show it but it didn't come out in any of them. I forget whether this was two or three coats...

Adoree Spring Leaf over Maybelline Banana Puddin'

Not just another neon green: neon green jelly with bright blue (and gold, it looks like) glitter! This one probably cannot be built up to opacity (haven't tried it yet) but works very nicely over an opaque base. In this case, my NOTD was Maybelline Banana Puddin' (I'll post that soon) so I decided to spice it up by layering this blaringly loud green on top of it. Not one for neon greens but the blue glitter gives it an interesting spin.

Adoree Spring Leaf in the bottle

Adoree Wild Inkberry

And what is predictably one of my favorites of the bunch: silver glitter in purple jelly. Need I say more? :D

Close-up of Wild Inkberry


Video of Wild Inkberry

The major thing that annoyed me about the Adoree polishes was the label: either they didn't have their names (only numbers) or if they had their names, the labels fell off! Sigh. Comparatively unimportant compared to the actual polish quality (which is quite good) but it's annoying to have to tape labels back on. So far, I've been favorably impressed with the brand. Stay tuned for the second half of the polishes!