L.A. Girl Essentials Avocado Sparkle

How about another random one from the stash? Random is fun.


This is L.A. Girl Avocado Sparkle. Amazing color, horrid formula. Cheap, though. The color is a light avocado green base with blue/violet/pink flash and gold microglitter. The glitter is perfectly smooth and the flash is very visible. Such a gorgeous color. Shame about the formula. This is about five coats. It's watery and sheer, way more thin and sheer than it should be. I mean, really... WHY IS THIS SO SHEER?! Is it because it was cheap? I can't make sense of it. It's like water!

Ah, well... great color.

LA Girl METAL Metallic Nail Polish Collection

This review has been a long time coming. I've had these since summer and for some reason could never finish swatching all of them. Same thing happened when I bought all those LA Girl Rock Star polishes last year.

Anyway, I did finally finish them so here they are! This is the new-ish LA Girl Metal metallic nail polish collection. I am missing one color- Pink Steel. I know I'm not much of a pink wearer, but I'm actually kinda bummed out that I didn't get to swatch that one.


Alkaline Blue. Bold blue foil. Very dense silver-based foil finish.


Antique Gold. This is almost more green than gold! Completely gorgeous. Many different shimmering iridescent particles combine to create this golden tarnished olive color.


Brass. Not so much brass as it is dirty rust. Very odd and unique color- silver-based foil with heavy brown creme type pigment... Definitely don't see many like this.


Bronze Medal. Little bronze glass fleck type particles in a sheer base. This is one of the more sheer colors in the collection and you're seeing five coats in this picture. Nice end result but took a lot of work to get there.


Chromium Green. This color appears more blue in my pictures than it looks in real life. Though, in real life, it is actually more of an aqua/turquoise than a true green. Very pretty shiny dense foil finish.


Copper Alloy. Ugh, I can't even stand how pretty this is. Look at how rich and Autumn-y that color is! It's copper and red and rust with gold highlights. So much depth and sparkle. Looks like it's on fire. Total surprise love for me.


Deep Sea Mica. Deep blue/green duochrome shimmer. I don't know if I'd really call this metallic, it has a bit of a glass fleck look to it but the particles are very small. This one is also a bit sheer, it needed four coats, but it's easily layered over another blue or green.


Gold Plated. Warm gold sheer foil. Sheer foil is an unusual description, I know, but it's right in between a true foil finish and a glass fleck metallic like the Milani metals.


Graphite. Great name for this color. Dusty charcoal grey foil. Silver based. Very opaque.


Iron Red. This one is crazy. I wouldn't call it red as much as I'd call it magenta or deep pink. It has so much color for a foil. Yes, it's silver based and foil finished, but it's so freakin' bright! Weird and awesome.


Metallic Olive. If you like green, you need this. I don't know if 'olive' matches this color. I'd call it evergreen. Leafy. Not really olive-y. Many different tones and colors- tiny iridescent green particles. Sooooooooooo pretty.


Millennium. Deep purple foil. Another color you don't see that often! I don't have another polish in my collection that matches this. Very dense and opaque. Very purple. I'd definitely recommend this one, too, if you're looking for unique colorful metallics. I bet this would Konad well.


Obsidian. Black with silver metallic flecks.


Sterling Silver. Silver foil. Not much else to say about it...


Trilogy. This collection is full of weird colors. This is a mauve-mulberry-purple foil. Kinda funky, definitely unique. Seems to have a bit of warm chestnut tint to it as well.

The formula on these is very hit-or-miss. Some are super opaque in one coat, others need 4 or five coats, while the rest look fine at two or three coats. There doesn't appear to be any consistency in the formula. Some are quite thick and almost gel-like in texture. The drying time is long, but they seem to wear pretty well once they're dried.

Some really gorgeous colors in this collection. The greens and the purple Millennium shade are especially nice. Silver and gold foils are rather common, but they do have their place in this set. Copper Alloy was a nice surprise, too.

At $4 a piece they're quite an inexpensive polish. The formula isn't perfect but some of the shades are totally worth getting. I've heard that you can find this brand in some dollar stores, but I've never seen this particular collection anywhere but LA Girl's website. I have ordered from them before and everything arrived safely and fairly quickly. Which reminds me, I've been meaning to order some of those Disco Brites that I keep forgetting about... They glow under blacklight!

(These were sent to me for review.)

LA Girl Rock Star Swatches

So.... I've had these since June and didn't finish swatching them until August.... And now that it's almost October I'm finally getting to post them...

Anyway, these are awesome. I've found two new favorite polishes with this collection, and I just looooove looking at these. My first experience with LA Girl has been very positive!


Addict. This is kind of a jelly red-burgundy-wine shade with tons of tiny little shimmering flakes. Some of the flakes look gold, but some take on a redder shade because of the jelly base. Really sexy looking and it reminds me of fall. It's a warmer version of China Glaze Stroll.


Backstage. My least favorite... it's pink. Actually, it's not so bad, it's really pretty cool. It has a bit of duochrome to it. It's a medium almost-dusty pink with tons of shimmer. Different kinds of shimmer. Sort of glass-fleck, little round particles like OPI Hollywood Blonde, tiny broken flakes... And it has a little gold duochrome or flash.


Crowd Surfing. I'm thinking this was meant for layering, it's very sheer. I think this is four coats? Three or four, it's been a while and I don't remember. Haha. It's a sheer blue-green base with green pearly shimmer particles and opalescent flakes.



Double Platinum. A taupe-grey-charcoal toned holographic glitter. It looks cooler indoors and warmer outdoors (I didn't get an indoor picture). I think there's a mix of regular silvery glitter and holo glitter in this, and the base is slightly tinted a smoky color. This is three coats. I've had issues with this one settling- the glitter settles in the bottom a bit so be sure to shake it a lot before you use it.


Electric Guitar. Golden orange shimmer base with glitter and flakes. I can't decide if the glitter in this is holographic or opal-type glitter... It changes colors, but not all of the colors like holo... Either way it's really, really fascinating and pretty.



Groupie. This is one of my new favorite polishes. It may have taken OPI Ink's spot in my top favorite polish list. It's a rich, eye-catching purple (I know, it looks blue in the pictures) with a glass-fleck-like shimmer... The shimmer particles are large and sparkly, like little pearls or diamonds. It also has crazy awesome duochrome that I wasn't able to capture in a picture. It goes all different shades of purple and blue, a little red, maybe a *hint* of gold and green if you catch it at sunset. I need backups.


Head Banging. Shimmery bold teal. Teal doesn't normally make me think of fall, but this one does. I have no idea why. I want to wear this with plaid. This is another shimmer that seems glass-fleck- it has those large, defined shimmer particles and it looks awesome in the sunlight.



Heavy Metal. Black with silver shimmer particles. I'm not calling this glitter, it's too small and fine and not as sparkly/reflective as true glitter. It's large particle shimmer like the rest of the polishes in this line. I am not normally wild about the black with silver shimmer combo, but this one gets my attention. I don't know why... it seems like it stands out more than other similar shades. The shimmer in this one is... more shimmery?


Live On Stage. Gold and holographic glitter in a slightly gold-tinted base. This is kind of similar to Claire's Goldmine and CND VIP Status, but it's not a duplicate of either. The main differences between Live On Stage and those other polishes is that this is a more neutral shade of gold, the glitter balance is slightly different (this has less holo glitter) and the glitter is less dense in this. This is three coats. This one also settles on me like Double Platinum, so I make sure to shake it before applying.


Overdose. A combination of bright blue glitter, red-toned purple glitter and tiny silver glitter. This is so pretty. Right off the bat, I'm sure people will say this is a duplicate of Sally Hansen Rockstar Pink, Wet n Wild Glitz, Sinful Frenzy or Pure Ice... something... Pure Ice has one kinda like this but I can't remember the name. Anyway, this is different than all of those- the overall tone of this one ends up looking blue once applied, and the tiny flecks if silver really brighten the whole look. I prefer this to all of them.

Paparazzi. Pretty hot pink shimmer. Okay, you know I'm not crazy about pink but this isn't so bad. It has depth. It is pretty- look at it! It has large particle shimmer and a sort of violet-pink duochrome.



Party Animal. This one is really cool but wouldn't photograph well. My bottle had also dried up significantly when I went to swatch this so I kinda globbed it on and covered it in topcoat. LOL. Anyway, this is a super, super dark and rich vampy burgundy with lots of little metallic broken flakes, or really big, flat shimmer. Sort of like Addict but darker. Definitely one of my top favorites from this collection.


Punk. Ahhh, this is so cool, I wish I could have gotten better pictures of this!! Are you tired of hearing me say "large particle shimmer" or "glass fleck" yet? Cause I have to say it again. This one is also. It's really vibrant blue with lots of duochrome. The most dominant color of the duochrome is a darker blue or purple shade. There's some pink too... There is more duochrome in the bottle than on the nail, but it is still ridiculously hot.


Rock Star. This is a tough one to describe. It's kind of like that awesome Hot Topic Iridescent Black I had last summer... It's a dark base, black, or maybe black-red. It has tiny little flecks of flat, weird shaped shimmer and they change color. When you change the angle of your nails, you can see that the flecks are iridescent. I didn't seem to capture any of the color shift in either of these pictures, but it's there in real life.



Scandal. I didn't think I'd like this one as much as I do. It's a soft purple, maybe lavender? But it has strong pink duochrome. So it's like a pearly, pinky, purply glass-fleck shimmer with a subtle touch of gold. Not a whole lot of gold, but there's a little in there. This is really sheer, I'm pretty sure this is four or five coats. Probably meant to be sheer, but I don't like sheers. Might be good for layering.


Supernova. A smoky grey base with stringy holographic glitter. This is so cool! I love these types of glitter. It's thinner than bar glitter, so I think that makes it stringy. This is great for layering, but I like it alone too. I did four coats in this picture (and I smudged my middle finger right before I snapped the picture, ugh).


I think this is all of them.... Am I missing one? I ordered all of them so they should all have been photographed... I just can't remember!

The formula on these is... just okay. Not awesome, not horrible. They're a little thick and some are pretty sheer. The drying time is kinda slow but not awful. With Seche Vite these seem to take maybe half an hour to an hour to be *fully* dry and non dentable. They're set almost instantly, and mostly dry in about 10 minutes, but they stay dentable for a little while. I think it's cause I do so many coats.

I love these. Love love love. This is one of the coolest polish lines EVER. I mean... it says Rock Star right on the bottle, I had to have them! I love the names, I love the colors, I love that they're packed with shimmer and glitter and flakes and duochrome. I could go on about these for hours. They rock.

I got all of mine from LA Girl's website. That model on the main page... omg... So cheesy.