Viva La Diva Rocks / Fall/Winter 2010

Fall sure is here! Not only are we lucky to get nice, dark, interesting new polish shades, on top of that the weather sucks so bad here in Sweden that there's practically no natural light to photograph them in! I'm honestly quite embarassed to post these photos, but I hope you'll trust me on this: these lacquers are way prettier in real life!

These are the three shades that are part of the winter collection Viva La Diva Rocks: 121 Fallen Angel, 122 Hidden Moon, 123 Head Bang- as always, the Viva La Diva polishes comes foremost with numbers, not names. They do have names, but they aren't printed on the bottles.

These photos were shot today, in the gloomy, rainy fall ridden outskirts of Stockholm: 121 Fallen Angel.



What can I say? I love this color. You just can't go wrong with a nice purple shimmer. Beautiful, irregular glassfleck specks in blue and magenta, in a sheer purple jelly base. After three coats, I can't see any visible nail line, but I don't have any troubles seeing through my tips when holding them to a light source. This polish really is purple, and not blueish like it comes out in these photos. As usual, there's the famous problem of making magenta tones stick to camera lenses, especially in lack of sun.

Unique? Not exactly. Actually, the shimmer appears to be very similar to that of OPI Ink. Shown below is one coat of each:

...which shows the main difference: the base color. Purple versus charcoal. Though, the shimmer particles in the Viva La Diva are a bit larger, and dispensed in the purple jelly they glow, and I was ridiculously happy, looking down on my nails when wearing this manicure.

Although, we know there are many siblings of OPI Ink, and I'm sure if I tried harder, maybe I'd even come up with another purple jelly base sister of this Viva La Diva in my own stash. However, I just don't care. I like this polish anyway.

Next up, 122 Hidden Moon!



Teal blue metallic shimmer. Three coats. This one just barely makes it over the fine, but well patrolled, border line between frost and metallic, brush streaky and smooth. I was afraid it would be a failure, but it landed OK! When using this polish, you will have to watch your brush strokes, and a few fine lines will remain, but in my own opinion, it doesn't matter. I really like this one as well! It is a really nice color, and I did search my stash for dupes and came up short.

The third color, 123 Head Bang, will be posted separately in the future.

Outside the Viva La Diva Rocks collection, the brand also put out another two new colors.

Very fall appropriate. 124 Brown Sugar, a sort of camel beige brown color, and 125 Chocolate Love, which is... well, chocolate colored.

And here's an overview of all the new colors, on wheel.

In natural, cloudy lighting.

And with flash.

The two polishes I tried so far were both very pleasant to work with. Unlike the previous collection, which consisted of only pastels and the like, these had a great formula, not too thin, not too thick. The coverage was decent, and I used three coats for both, which was absolutely necessary with Fallen Angel, but maybe just precaution with Hidden Moon. As I tried the other three on the wheel shown above, I came to the conclusion that Head Bang and Brown Sugar were both nice in two coats, but Chocolate Love was more sheer than I expect a creme of this color to be- I used three coats on the wheel, and the ransparency was almost a bit jelly like.

Since we've been bombarded with brown and taupe colors lately I do not care that much for Brown Sugar or Chocolate Love, though I realize they have a well deserved place in the displays of Swedish cosmetics stores. The three polishes in the Viva La Diva Rocks collection, which also consists of a bunch of pretty makeup, I really like, and are bold enough for being from one of the usually not very daring Swedish brands.

So, what do you think? Do you like any of these?

Last, I can now also reveal that my significant other has promised me my own light box, meaning, allowed the purchase of some lamps and such. I hope to have it built and ready soon, this way being able to provide good enough photos even though I live in a black hole half the year. Fingers crossed.

Swedish word of the night:
mörker -noun darkness
Because everything seems to be.