Laura's Lacquers

So, I've got two Revlon polishes to show you and they're both copycats. First up is Carbonite. 

Carbonite was Revlon's offering in order to appease the masses of impatient nail polish enthusiasts in search of a cheaper alternative for Chanel Graphite. First I'll show you Carbonite, and then we'll look at some comparisons, shall we?

sun

Buddy was being a total baby and he kept mewing around my feet while I was taking these pictures.

meooooooooooooow

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This is two coats although you could really get away with one. Carbonite is a mainly silver foil/metallic with some smaller brassy particles and a kind of all-over steely shimmer. The formula was quite lovely, no problems to report.

And I'm sure you're all wondering how this compares to the one and only Graphite. I, being a thrifty person, am not in possession of it myself, so I have graciously scoured the internet to find comparisons for you.

Here is one from Cafe Makeup, here is another one from Cafe Makeup except in the shade. Here is a very thorough comparison from nailXchange.

In my own humble opinion, I think that Graphite is vastly sparklier and prettier, but I do like the look of China Glaze Whitecap layered over Carbonite. Yes, Carbonite might be a good-enough alternative for those who are against buying Chanels on principal, but I would really prefer to have Graphite. Ah well, I'll see if I can tweak Carbonite at all to make it sparklier.

I hope this has been informative!

And in the same vein as yesterday's post, I have another Halloween-y polish for you today.

So I've seen three versions of Black Magic: this one, the black base with shimmer, a plain black creme, and a bar glitter from last year's Fantasy Makers.

Here is the shimmer in the bottle omggg YUM

Only lamp shots of this one for you today, because I layered over it! But first I'll talk about Black Magic by itself. It's a black base with silver and orange shimmer. It's quite pretty in the bottle but on the nail it's not as noticeable. This was two coats.

The formula was good, very opaque and it's a nice, vampy color for Halloween. I also love the tombstone bottle, that's too adorable.

Buut it was a little too dark and I'm not quite ready to fully jump into fall, so I put Orly Space Cadet over it. Here are my first pictures of Space Cadet which aren't layered over anything, so you can see the green base. I thought layering it over something darker would bring out the duochrome better.

shade

shade

shade

lamp

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Does the sun hate me or what? It's kind of ridiculous that it always seems to disappear when I need to take manicure pictures. Ah well, one coat of Space Cadet and the glorious duochrome goodness came out to play! I love this color, it's so unique. Sorry for the smudges on my index finger, I'm not sure what happened there. 0.o

Also I'm totally getting stuck in a rut. Sorry for all the boring swatches lately but I am SUPER busy right now and I don't expect things to settle down for another week, at the least. So bear with me, I'll try to do more nail art whenever I have time, and Naomi has been giving me tons of crazy awesome ideas that I want to try! So hopefully I'll be able to do some of that soon. 

Anyway, I will be back tomorrow, mon cheries! Until then, adieu! *blows kisses*