CQ - Vintage Gray

This looks very gray in the pictures, but is actually more of a "greige" creme in real life. Greiges and taupes really don't usually appeal to me that much, but I like this one because it does lean more toward a mouse-y gray in some lights. The first pic is closest to being color-accurate of any I took, although indoors the polish definitely takes on a more taupe/putty shade.

Here it is outdoors with flash:
And in shade, no flash, looking very gray:
It went on smoothly, but there was a little bit of minor bubbling on a few nails, which you can see in the pictures on my index finger; it was another scorching day here and I think the heat may have had something to do with the bubbling problem. Pics are three coats plus base and top coat.

Even with my nails being as short as they've been lately, I still somehow manged to break one of them yesterday, in such a way that I couldn't fix the break without it still being obvious and making all the nails on one hand look uneven. So - I took a nail-clipper to all ten of them and -chop! Off with their heads! My poor nails...they're almost as short now as they were when I used to bite them years ago. Good thing they grow back - in time!

Maybelline Express Finish 50 Second Nail Color - Scene Steeler

A very dark steely gray polish, with a silvery shimmer. I like this; I'm very fond of the darker, more vampy colors, and I think this one makes my nails look like black pearls.

It went on quite nicely, dried very quickly, and wore well (as well as anything ever does for me - I'm really hard on my nails most of the time.) Pics are three coats, plus base and top coat.

Here it is in the sun: (hmmm...looking at this picture I can see that i filed the nail on my third finger really unevenly - dang!)

And in shade:
Incidentally, I stopped by Rite-Aid this evening, and since I can never pass by any nail polish displays without stopping to take a look, I had a quick glance. They had a Sinful Colors Shanghai Nights Display, but they were all out of Bamboo, which is the only one of that collection I was really interested in...Lol, I guess everybody else was, too! I did spot a nearly full Sinful Colors Colors of Darkness display tucked away on a bottom shelf. All of those colors looked verrrry vampy, and I am verrry interested in at least a few of them. (Which means watch this space for swatches...;)

Vampy, dark, and brooding colors (yay! ;D) seem to be quite the trend in Rite-Aid at the moment; I also happened upon a Wet'n'Wild Color Icon Insomnia display, which was all about dark, vampy reds, blues, and purples and glitters in black jelly bases. I am currently quite intrigued by most (ok, all) of them as we speak...There are only two of each color in the display and they seemed to be going fast.

I did notice one thing about the Wet'n'Wild Insomnia collection, though - one of the colors, Prowler, a purple glitter in a dark jelly base, looks to me like an exact dupe of Night Prowl, one of the polishes in the regular Wet'n'Wild display. Since I already bought Night Prowl in the 0.43 bottle for ninety-nine cents, I don't think I'm going to be in a big hurry to pay $1.99 for 0.29 oz of Prowler... Just sayin'... All the other colors in the display, though, looked new and different.