CQ Corduroy

Here is the other CQ I mentioned I picked up recently, CQ Corduroy. It's in the same color family as Slate, a teal green that is mostly green, but much lighter and very dusty. It's not as light as Finger Paints Vintage Velvet, and it's a bit more dusty. It's a squishy jelly creme with great coverage, two coats here.

I have been consistently impressed with this brand - I'm not a big fan of the bottle shape but the shades I have are all really cool!

CQ Slate

I recently picked up a few more CQ polishes that I'd been eyeing, and I am not disappointed! I've found these at Rite Aid, but I've been told some people have seen them at CVS, so it's worth a check. They're cheap, if I remember they're only $2.99. Slate is a deep teal green - it is mostly green, but definitely has a blue cast. It reminds me of a chalkboard, so the name makes sense. It's a jelly creme. Can I just tell you how much I love and adore this? I don't have anything like it in my collection. I wore this without swatching it last week, for about four days. I had no chips or tipwear - it lasted extraordinarily well! I think it would make a great layering base, but I haven't experimented with that yet.
Pigmentation was nice too, this is two coats. It's squishy and glossy on its own - but you might want to double up on your base coat, I neglected that and ended up with hulk fingers the first time around.

Mmmm. Isn't that great? I have Corduroy to show you this week too, which is in the same color family but lighter.

Nina Ultra Pro Mossy Britches

Oh my goodness, it's finally October! I have a lot to show you this month and it should be quite fun.
Anyway, this is another fall shade - it's actually quite like the CQ I just showed you guys recently, Golden Green.  I do have a comparison shot to show you for this!
So, Mossy Britches - love the name! - has actually been out for a while, I think I first picked this up last year, and it's in regular stock at Sally's Beauty Supply. It's a olive green based shimmer absolutely loaded with gold. There are bubbles on my nails, but that is not from the formula - I was using up the last of my base coat, and it's sticky and gloopy, so please ignore the bubbles. I used two coats for this swatch. It's a perfect formula, really - between medium and thin, and I like the brushes and the bottles. Easy to work with! Application is nice and even.

Okay, so you can click to enlarge this if you want to see the minor differences I'm talking about. These are essentially dupes. The biggest difference is formula - the CQ is more prone for brushstrokes, so you have to baby it a bit. Also, the shimmer in the CQ seems to float suspended in the olive base, so the base color comes through a bit more and it seems to have a bit more of a glow. Other than that, they're virtually the same shade!

I can deal with babying a formula, so I think if I had to chose one it'd be the CQ. Either way, they're both beauties!

CQ Golden Green

At the same time that I bought CQ Idyllic, I also purchased this one - CQ Golden Green. C'mon, I'm a fiend for olive greens, go figure! It looks a lot like Nina Ultra Pro Mossy Britches, which I did swatch on Magic Maid. I'll be reswatching it for you all here, and I'll do a comparison between the two.
Umm, this is amazeballs. I am so in love with this color. It's a perfect olive green shade that's shot through with gold shimmer, which seems to be suspended in the base color. It glows. I had to be a little careful of brushstrokes, but not too bad, really. I did two thin coats and tried to wait in between, for it to dry a bit. That helped, also - I didn't push the polish around much on my nails if I could help it.
I don't even know how the ding on my ring finger happened, so my apologies for that.

Umm, please click to enlarge these? Seriously. Isn't that a beauty?
I don't know if I have ever mentioned it, but I probably should make a note of this somewhere. All the photos I take on this blog are in natural light, and with base coat. If for any reason I ever take a photo inside, or with flash, I will post that. Also, I rarely use top coat before I photograph something. If I do, for instance with neon shades, I make note of that in the post as well.
Alright, have a good evening! I'll be trying to get all of the fall shades I've nabbed posted before October hits, so I can play with some ideas I've got going on in my head, but I probably won't finish them. Fall is my favorite nail polish season, followed closely by the holidays.

Focus On Duochrome: CQ Idyllic

CQ Idyllic is a drugstore gem I found one day while looking unsuccessfully for a discontinued Sally Hansen. These I've seen at Rite Aid - I don't know if they're found anywhere else. You can get this multichrome stunner for under $5! I want to say it was two or three dollars.
This is a shimmer, I used three layers here. It was thick enough on its own not to have to layer it over another color. It flashes brown, gold and wine red. It's stunning! Very fall feeling, as well.

I just love this so much. It was a joy to photograph, too by the way! So easy to capture all the pretty colors. I'm glad I snagged this when I saw it, I didn't know it was going to be quite this beautiful.