rescue beauty lounge grunge and streetwear black widow: swatch pictures and review

recently, i was given a tip as to where i could find a treasure trove of old revlon streetwears, and this was one of the long-discontinued and htf polishes i scored! rbl grunge looked totally wack on me on its own (i'll do a full post on it soon, but in a nutshell: brown girls beware!), but i thought its fairly nude/neutral color would make a good base for black widow:


my inspiration was a manicure done by my friend eve, in which she layered black widow over a nude polish to create the effect of a nude slip dress topped with a black mesh, lace, and sequined overlay. her mani was far superior to mine though - i did 3 or 4 coats of the sw, but maybe i should have done even more!

here's a close-up shot of black widow so you can see all the various kinds of glitter it contains: black regular glitter, silver regular glitter, and black bar glitter:

swatch: rescue beauty lounge opaque nude

it's strange that i consider rbl opaque nude - a neutral - my comfort polish, considering that normally i gravitate toward vampies, bright pinks and orange-reds, and teals. but for some reason this polish always feels 'right' to me.


opaque nude is now unfortunately discontinued, but i have two bottles stockpiled so hopefully i'll never have to be without it! its application is great for a pale shade… pretty streak-free and opaque (true to its name) in just two coats.

to see how this polish looks on someone with a lighter/cooler skin tone, check out tobywoo's pics here.

bf says: "that's skin tone for a white person... you are not white. who do you think you are?!"

swatch: sally hansen salon quartz chameleon

the last couple of days have called for a neutral/"work-appropriate" mani, so i reached for this untried polish (from the fall 2008 sally hansen/tracy reese collaboration):


quartz chameleon went on smoothly and required three coats for opacity. honestly, i don't love this polish, as it's strangely close to my skin tone and kind of makes me look like i'm missing my fingernails. in addition, i think it's pretty clear from the polishes i typically wear that i don't like shimmer... but hey, at least this is no longer an untried!

bf says: "it's yoooou, babyyyy!"
me: "what?"
bf says: "THAT'S ALL I HAVE TO SAY!"