Orly Purple Velvet

I have worn a lot of both of my matte Man Glazes - so I was really happy to find out that my local department store had stocked the new Orly mattes. The local prices are very high compared to Internet store prices, so I opted for just this one shade: Purple velvet.

This is gorgeous! The texture is not as interesting as shimmer packed Man Glazes, but it is not as flat as Opi mattes. This shade has a slight amount of silvery shimmer and although it's not too noticeable it still contributes to the velvety look somehow. The purple is absolutely beautiful, darkish, slightly to the red side and beautifully muted down with gray. Very easy to wear. Does not dry as quickly as Man Glaze, but still pretty fast. Lasts quite well for a matte polish. This is two coats.

Zoya Freja with diamond coat

Recently I have categorized Zoya Freja to metallics rather than greys. It is indeed very silvery, blackened one, not quite with foil finish though. It gives a beautiful futuristic and slightly decadent look and behaves well, covers with 2 to 3 coats. This time I got some sheet marks to couple of nails and end up adding one coat Orly Shine On Crazy Diamond on top of Freja to cover up the mess.

I have to say that although I'm not shy for bright or unusual colors I have issues with excessive bling, mainly with holographic and glitter polishes. I have one holographic polish and I'm seriously considering giving it away - I've barely had courage to try it to my pinkie. But sparsely scattered holographic or glitter particles I like, sort of. They give this funky dotted look, cover nicely some manicure disasters and are so much easier to remove than dense glitter polishes.

I tried to capture the beautiful holographic nature of Orly's topcoat - but that is not too easy. IRL this stuff twinkles like... ...crazy? ...diamond?

Sugar coated with Orly Rock Candy

There is actually at least one duochrome I like: Orly Rock Candy. This polish is very sheer by itself, but just one layer is usually enough for beautiful layering results. In the image you can see one layer of it on top of the previous Opi Tickle My France-y manicure.

The basic shade of this polish is different in natural and artificial light. In natural light there is pale electric blue dominating, in artificial light the basic hue is mint green. The hue shifts to mauve and pink depending on the angle.

Second take on Frenchies: Opi Pink Before You Leap (plus some additional bling)

After my first French manicure I decided to take a look to my small polish stash, surely there had to be at least one white to try out in tips. An oh yes, several years old but still in decent condition: Mavala Izmir. This is quite soft and sheer white and I certainly would prefer slightly more distinct tips. But it applied really well, perhaps I should try other Mavala whites, too.

On top I used Opi Pink Before Leap. Not the most typical choice for French manicure, but I think that it actually works beautifully with my skintone. And although the sheer dusty rose base shade is quite dark, the white and crystal microglitter makes the tips look quite crisp.


I refreshed the look on next day with Orly Groupie, a sheer gold shimmer with randomly scattered larger holo particles.