Pantone names Radiant Orchid Color of the Year 2014

The color authority Pantone has chosen Radiant Orchid as the successor to this year's color of the year, Emerald. I personally love jewel-inspired colors, especially in a nail polish, but when I saw Radiant Orchid, I gave a squeal. You can probably understand why when you see this!

How unbelievably gorgeous is Radiant Orchid?!  Here's how Pantone describe it on their website: 'Radiant Orchid blooms with confidence and magical warmth that intrigues the eye and sparks the imagination. It is an expressive, creative and embracing purple—one that draws you in with its beguiling charm. A captivating harmony of fuchsia, purple and pink undertones, Radiant Orchid emanates great joy, love and health.' 

What does this mean for us makeup and beauty junkies? Well, you can expect to see Pantone's Color of the Year influencing our makeup bags quite heavily in the upcoming months, with the imminent arrival of Benefit's latest tint; aptly named Lollitint, and in the new Dior Trianon Spring makeup collection.

I personally cannot wait to see what Sephora and Pantone create together, if they team up like in previous years! Radiant Orchid has already got me longing for Spring!

Dior Summer 2012 La Croisette Swatches and Review

I recently had the opportunity to try the Dior Summer collection, this year called 'La Croisette.' Like the Spring 'Garden Party' collection, there are two nail varnishes, with with I did this accent nail manicure:-

Accent nail: Shade 231 Bikini

Other nails: Shade 401 St. Tropez

Wow, these colours literally scream summer! Bikini is a hot coral colour and St Tropez is a robin's egg turquoise colour. Both varnishes have no shimmer, but are super saturated in pigment making them really bold on the nails. The brush on these is the usual Dior flat brush that applies colour to the nail in one stroke. The application on these was smooth- no dragging, pooling or gathering around my cuticles. I only had to use two coats to reach maximum opacity, which is always a good thing.

I absolutely love these two colours! St Tropez is especially pretty, as it is so close to being a perfect robin's egg blue colour. There is also a matching eyeliner in this shade in the La Croisette collection that may just have to be purchased at a later date!

Have you tried any of the La Croisette collection?



Dior Garden Party Spring 2012 Collection - Swatches and Review

Okay, I know I'm late to the party in reviweing these. Truth is, I've had them from the first week they were released and have worn them on numerous occasions, just never had the time to sit down and take decent pictures of them!

Dior's Spring make up collection for 2012 is named 'Garden Party' and is inspired by Christian Dior's love for flowers, and the rose garden he planted himself at his house in Normandy. According to him 'After women, flowers are the most heavenly collection.' The collection comprised of the most beautiful make up clutches, and two eyeshadow pallettes with beautiful bright spring greens in one, and mauves and lilacs in another. But of course, I was there for the nail varnish!

There were only two varnishes in the Garden Party collection, so let's take a look at them:

Waterlilly, and Forget-Me-Not

(By the way, that's the tips of my fingers you can see in the reflection of the lids.

I'm waving hello to you! :P)

I wore Forget-Me-Not first, take a look at the swatches:

Sorry about the glare on the first two pictures- it was a mega bright day!

As you can see, Forget-Me-Not is a medium purple creme varnish with a high gloss finish. I liked the colour, but I didn't love it. For some reason, it just doesn't look unique enough to warrant the hefty price tag. I'm sure if I did enough hunting, I would be able to find a fairly decent duplicate for a snip of the cost!

The brush for these varnishes are the short, wide ones with rounded tips, that I personally find make application a whole lot easier, as it just takes one swipe. The formula of the varnish however, is kinda tricky to work with! Look at my middle finger. See that bump? Yeah. You have to be really patient with this varnish, as it will bubble like microwave popcorn if you're not careful. Slow and steady wins the race with this. The formula is quite thick, therefore I found the drying time to be quite long.

As I mentioned above, both these varnishes are rose scented. Now, I don't know if you have tried any of the scented Revlon varnishes, but they smell pretty okay- not too strong, and true to the thing they are meant to smell like. This (and the Waterlilly varnish too) smell GROSS. An overpowering chemical smell. I was dying to get my top coat on just to dilute the fragrance. Headache central.

Take a look at Waterlilly:

 Please feel free to enlarge the images, so you can see the shimmer better.

Now this is a unique varnish, worthy of the price tag. I love, Love, LOVE this lacquer. Look at the colour. A beautiful spring green, with a hint of aqua to it to stop it looking like all the other yellowy spring greens out there. This is gorgeous. Look at the shimmer in the bottle. Lush.

Unfortunately, the same application problems I had with Forget-Me-Not were present in the application of Waterlilly. My pinkie finger had some serious bubbling issues, but because I loved the colour so much, I took it all off and re painted my nail. That's dedication! I would say that Waterlilly's formula is perhaps not as thick as Forget-Me-Not's, but you still have to be careful and apply thin layers.

Again, that horrible chemical-y smell is very much present with Waterlilly. Yuck.

So, what do you guys think? Do you like the colours? Have you already tried them? If you have tried them, what did you think of the scent in them? Personally, I loved Waterlilly and think it would make a great addition to any polish collection. Forget-Me-Not is fine, but it isn't a unique colour in my mind. If Dior had made the Forget-Me-Not a shimmery polish like the Waterlilly, then I'd be drooling and be able to say its a great mini collection.

Let me know what you think!