Rescue Beauty Lounge Aqua Lily

Wayyyyy back on March 24 I pre-ordered my choice from the Rescue Beauty Lounge Fan Collection: Aqua Lily. I finally received it this week, so I wanted to share some pictures.

Aqua Lily is an opaque turquoise with a pink/lavender shimmer.

Rescue Beauty Lounge Aqua Lily

It's difficult to see the shimmer in the picture above, but it really looks beautiful when you throw a little light on the subject.

This type of shimmer is, in my opinion, very typical for an RBL polish. It's more like a vein of color through the polish than straight-up shimmer. It's subtle, like a Chanel shimmer. This isn't always something that makes people happy...including me, in the case of Piu Mosso. If you click that link, you'll see that the picture of that gorgeous copper shimmer looks incredibly similar to the picture above.

My experience with Aqua Lily was much better than my experience with Piu Mosso, however. For one thing, the formula is much better. It's very pigmented, and I didn't experience any of the dragging that I did with Piu Mosso.

Plus, the shimmer shows up a lot better.

In some lights, it looks practically duochrome, though I was hard-pressed to capture that on camera.

I did very, very little clean-up with this manicure. In that respect, it's worlds apart from Piu Mosso.

A couple things: I'm still getting the dull-ish finish that I got with PM. And it's not Seche Vite's fault, either, because for a while now I've been exclusively using Cult Nails' Wicked Fast quick dry top coat (which is amazing and warrants an entire post of its own, but I'll get to that another day). I also got a huge chip about six hours after putting this on, but I fixed it and since then I've just had minor tip wear/miniscule chips. Definitely more chippy than most polishes on me, though.

Overall, this is a beautiful color with gorgeous pink/purple shimmer that I find delightful. The subtlety of it doesn't bother me, though it wouldn't hurt, of course, if it was more prominent.

Did you buy any of the fan collection colors? What's your take?

Quick NOTD: OPI Don't Touch My Tutu!

Here's a quick phone cam shot of OPI Don't Touch My Tutu from the New York City Ballet collection. I reviewed some of the other polishes in this collection here. To reiterate, this collection is fantastic and I consider most of these colors must-haves. They're classic, and almost more important, the formula is beautiful.

This is three coats. There was some very, very faint streaking after two coats but it was so negligible I almost hate to mention it. I'm wearing it over one coat of nail strengthener with Cult Nails Wicked Fast top coat.

I may eventually end up with this entire collection. I just ordered Care to Danse, the soft lavender shade. OPI really hit a home run with this!

NOTD & OPI New York City Ballet Collection

I've been excited about the OPI NYCB collection for months. When I had the opportunity, I purchased four shades: Pirouette My Whistle, My Pointe Exactly, Don't Touch My Tutu and Barre My Soul.

Pirouette My Whistle

My Pointe Exactly, Don't Touch My Tutu, Barre My Soul

I did a manicure with Barre My Soul almost immediately. What strikes me about these polishes is that they are not streaky, a rare quality in these kinds of sheers.

For today's manicure, I chose to pair My Pointe Exactly with the glitter, Pirouette My Whistle.

Here's some closeups of Pirouette, which is gorgeous just in the bottle.

I did a base coat and then began with Pirouette, followed by My Pointe, another layer of Pirouette and another layer of My Pointe.

I love love love this. I think Pirouette would look fantastic with any of the shades from this collection, as well as any number of other sheers/jellies.

Have you purchased any of these? What are some layering combos you have done/want to do?