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.

Maybelline Express Finish 50 Second Nail color - Summer Sunset

I'm experiencing technical difficulties at the moment. I can't get my camera to transfer pictures to my computer properly. I did manage to upload two of the five I had of this polish, although they're hardly the best of the lot...I'll be working on fixing the issue.

Anyway, here's a polish that was much, much prettier in the bottle than it is on my nails. When I spotted this one in the store, it was a gorgeous coral pink color with an almost glass-fleck golden shimmer; the perfect summer color, I thought. Since I adore glass-fleck polishes, I snapped it right up - only to find that the drool-worthy gold shimmer didn't show up nearly as much on my nails. Disappointing. :(

I figured it was going to be somewhat sheer, so I used a white base coat. And sure enough - the pics show four coats plus top coat, but looking at my nails in the sunlight, I could still see some streakiness. It really could have used another coat. Now, I'm impressed if a polish is opaque and matches bottle-color in two coats, I'm not really phased by doing three coats, I can even tolerate a four-coater for the sake of a great color...but five is really pushing it, in my opinion. Sigh...I realize I may be biased here; I'm just not a fan of sheer polishes.

So...this wasn't a bad polish, by any means. It's still a rather pretty color, and it did dry quickly, although I didn't time it to see whether it dried in fifty seconds (Am I just imagining things, or did they change that? Didn't it used to be "sixty seconds"?). It just wasn't what I was expecting or hoping it would be, and was too sheer for my personal taste. Oh well...at least the polish I replaced it with for this weekend turned out to be a beauty - I'll have pics of that one up on Monday, once I've straightened out my camera issues.

I hope everyone has a terrific weekend. See you at the beginning of next week! :)