Depend fall 2011

Breaking for another new collection. Just in - Swedish Depend's latest offerings. Check them out.

253: Greige type of color with pearl/frost finish. 254: Blue creme on the warmer side. 255: Bright turquoise with pearl/frost finish.

256: Muddy taupe creme. 257: Nude-ish creme. 258: Washed out plum purple with pearl/frost finish.

259: Dark forest green with pearl/frost finish. 260: Army green creme of the cooler variety. 261: Pink creme.

262: Black with pearl/frost finish. 263: Pig like pink nude sorta creme. 264: Berry creme.

Here they are on wheel, two coats each, first in sun:

...and in the shade:


Noteworthy: this finish that recurs in this collection is... Weird. It's not a frost, nor is it really a pearl. Maybe closer to frost, but still not. The interesting thing about this finish is it dries semi-matte, like it seems all Depend's polishes with this finish have done lately. I think these will be better without a topcoat (like they're presented here), but with ...not so much.

In the press release, Depend uses color descriptions as lilac purple and jade green. I can't see any of that here, but we all perceive and refer to colors differently. I do believe they think of 258 as the lilac (the flower, syrén in Swedish, comes in different colors of course), and 260 as jade, but it really is too greyed and dark to resemble the stone most of us think of. I'd say it's a camouflage - it's too cool toned to be olive. Depend also mentions a powder pink. When I hear that, I think of a light, slightly warmer, but pastel, pink. I can't find that either, though I'm thinking maybe they're aiming for that with 263, which I find to be a terrible shade, and can't imagine it actually flattering anyone's skintone - it's really pig like. No, that's an insult to pigs, they're dears.

If you're looking for good one coater staples, then I may point you to the dark, muddy taupe 256, which has that odd badly mixed pigments close to the bottle glass that some of the fall OPI's did, but it seems blended in the middle and ...yes, covers in one coat. The green 260 and the black-weird-finish 262, as well as the berry 264 covers great as well. All other need two coats. Some of the cremes were really thick, even thicker than usual, and don't level out as well as I'd like them to, so the thinner bottle may come handy when using those.

Overall, very little color for a Depend collection, but probably going well with the fall trends - as usual. Nothing really new or fantastic, but may make some great staples or just new colors to the average person.

Are you feeling any of these? Me neither. I'll use these as safe colors when needed. But holler if you'd like to see full swatches of any.

Swedish word of the day:
skitväder -noun crappy weather
It's closing in on us.

Houston we have a problem...

a VNL (visible nail line) problem that is! This is OPI Houston we have a purple (purple really?) from the Texas collection. It's a berry/beet color and the formula is jelly, hence the VNL. I can bare with VNL when it comes to light sheers but I don't like it with darker shades like this. It sort of makes your nails look dirty.

When comparing the bottles, OPI Houston We Have a Purple and OPI Miami Beet looks very much alike (the picture below is taken in full sunlight and the colors look a little lighter than they are).

Looking at the bottles, DH said that he could never tell these two apart. Look again I said and showed him the nail wheel below (not that he was really interested or anything). The big difference between them is of course the formula. Houston is a jelly and Miami Beet is a creme.

Houston on the left and Miami on the right showing one coat, two coats and three coats.

Swedish word of the day:
vår -noun spring
I'm longing!

OPI Swiss Collection swatches I: the cremes

So, the Swedish weather has decided to play tricks on us and refuse to give very good swatching opportunities... So I thought, what the heck, and decided that even though the sun may be absent, I sure am gonna swatch the cremes from OPI Swiss anyway!

Today the weather has been quite unstable, to say the least, therefore you get semi-crappy grainy photos. I have tried my best to make these as color accurate as possible. Hope you'll find them helpful! Shown in photos is all two coats, without both base and topcoats.



I'm Suzi and I'm a Chocoholic. From the sneaky press photo releases we've all taken part of already, with the names and all, I thought this was going to be brown. Well, apparently, in some parts of the world chocolate is reddish, because this polish is. I think more of bricks and terracotta when I see this one. It's actually rather nice, and I liked it way better against my skintone than alone in the bottle.



Color So Hot it Berns. Typical bright red. It freaked my camera a bit. I liked it, but I just happen to like red cremes in general. Although I don't have terribly many bottles of this type of color, I grabbed my The Thrill of Brazil to do a quick comparison, and they are the same hues, but Color So Hot it Berns is cooler. However, I'm pretty sure we all have something like this.



From A to Z-urich. A medium berry red. The type of color I just don't get, so I can't let you in on any secrets here. It made me feel like a granny.



Just a Little Rösti at This. Look, partial sun! A new take on the typical alizarine claws swatch photos. But I just couldn't miss out on an opportunity like that... Anyway. A beet type color. Looked absolutely pointless in the bottle, but it's another one I have to admit I kind of liked seeing on myself. Bt that might just as well have been the pure novelty factor. The name is super weird, and I haven't figured it out completely, but in Sweden, the rösti is yellowish (onions, potatoes). I have no clue, maybe you do?



William Tell Me About OPI. Dark eggplant reddish purple. Dries a lot darker than bottle color. Nice vampy, though not the least unique in any way. Completely ridiculous name. Isn't this whole putting "OPI" and "Suzi" in every other name starting to become a little too much?

Then this happened...

Which should have been obvious, because the last couple of swatches started to become a tad bubbly... And now the sky was black as the earth, and what little light there was, didn't really want to make it throuh my camera lens.



Ski Teal We Drop. A nice medium-dark teal, mostly blue leaning.

The formula on these was overall nice, average OPI creme style. Not the most opaque cremes there is, but you may get away with two coats of you're not the person who paints them super thin.

And just like some of you, I immediately started to consider dupes. The first one to come to mind when I saw Ski Teal We Drop, was American Apparel Peacock. Turns out they are not that close... And now I've partially surrendered to the nihrida type color comparison. Here are some squarish color charts.

1. Ciaté Paint Pots Superficial, 2. OPI Ski Teal We Drop, 3. American Apparel Peacock.

As you can see, Peacock is lighter, while Ciaté Superficial is closer, but still more green than the OPI.

With the dupish William Tell Me About OPI, I made it easy and brought out my bottle of the classic Lincoln Park After Dark. The bottle colors compares as follows.

1. William Tell Me About OPI, 2. Lincoln Park After Dark.

And before we go further, let's take a quick look at base colors painted on my beloved wheels:

1. OPI William Tell Me About OPI, 2. OPI Lincoln Park After Dark, 3. OPI Ski Teal We Drop, 4. American Apparel Peacock. (The Ciaté didn't make it to this round.)

And here are the finished results of the teals:

1. Ciaté Superficial, 2. OPI Ski Teal We Drop, 3. American Apparel Peacock.

And the eggplants...

1. OPI William Tell Me About OPI, 2. OPI Lincoln Park After Dark.

And here's where you see how much darker William Tell Me About OPI dries compared to its bottle color. It's only a tiny tad lighter than Lincoln Park After Dark, but maybe two tads redder. If you're crazy about vampies, maybe you need it, but if you're just into getting a nice, varied polish stash, you can skip it.

There was actually a few moments of sun here an hour ago, and I was hoping it would last so I could swatch the rest of the shimmers, but now it's again raining cats and dogs. Unstable it is...

Swedish word of the day:
solbrist -noun lack of sun
Because apparently there is...