Here are the colors themselves - ignore the fact that the Nicole looks aqua.

Nicole's Fell From The Tree (NI 335) is a vibrant medium green that's a little brushstroke-y.  The shimmer is lighter than the base color and flows onto the nail like the lightest and next lightest parts of the bottle.

This picture is so incredibly color inaccurate.  The pictures in this post, taken in my lightbox, are much better at showing the color.  However, the picture above does show the finish of FFTT.  Definitely not a must have polish if you aren't a big green polish lover.

Orly Meet Me Under the Mistletoe (40309) has a dark green base with green and gold big shimmer or microglitter.  It pretty much looks like you'd think it would on the nail when you look at the bottle.

OPI Here Today... Aragon Tomorrow Suede (NN E48) goes on a little darker than what you see in the bottle.  The lighter shimmer just pops and sparkles with topcoat!  I want to say that the shimmer in this one was not as apparent as the shimmer in the Revlon suede until top coat was applied.  The shimmer in HTATS seems ever so slightly more golden than the Revlon's shimmer.

Revlon Emerald City Matte Suede (933) had wonky brush, but all of the bottles of EC that I checked had a wonky brush.  EC goes on darker than it looks in the bottle, which subdues the slightly lighter green shimmer just a little after top coat is applied.  EC's base is slightly darker and more blue than the OPI's base color.

The wear sucked on both suedes over Barielle Nail Camo.  I had chips in both after folding laundry!   I'm telling you, I may just have to break up with Camo.  It's either my crummy nails or a crummy base...   I can see a difference between the two colors, but "normals" who aren't into polish may not.

Outside, with the OPI on my middle finger and the Revlon on my index and ring fingers (and the Orly on my pinkie):

Using my natural light lamp with top coat on:

I'd have to say my faves are the OPI and Revlon, though I have to find a way to get them to wear better!

In these images, the base coat on long nails is NailTek Foundation II.  On the short nails, it's one of the CND base coats I mentioned above.

I know that Mockingjay was released this week, so I finally started The Hunger Games.  Hey, the cover matched my nails pretty well!  But after the attempted drowning of one domestic animal, and references to the killing and eating of another animal within the first twelve pages, I'm not sure if I want to continue reading this book.  If anyone's read it, is it worth continuing?  Is there more violence to cats and dogs in the series?  Yes, I'm a softie.

See how much pastier Obscurity looks over the NailTek as opposed to the more satin finish with the other base coat?  Or am I imagining things?   More short nail pics can be found at my link above, if you do genuinely want to compare!

I washed my hands and then raced to my artificial sunlight lamp.  Alas, only one drop of water remained on my thumbnail.  You can see just how much shinier the water is versus the more matte finish of the polish.  You can also see a little unevenness and patchiness in my application of this one.  I think having an actual Prowide brush would have helped, but would I buy a full bottle of this?  Most likely not.  I don't usually get the urge to wear a satin or matte black.

This is more solid of a polish than I thought it was, but I would suggest making sure you use a good base coat that you've thinned recently, or one that doesn't need thinning yet.  I dumped a load of thinner into the NailTek after it performed so poorly, but who knows if that'll help!  It didn't work for me in the past, so I don't know why it'd work for me now.  CND's Stickey is especially good if you want to add a glitter top coat or another polish color on top of your existing polish because it is "stickey."  Or even adding another coat of top coat to extend wear!  It looks green in the bottle, but you'd only ever see a coat of it over the very lightest of colors (or so I'm told.  I don't use it over sheers or pinks.)  I also had to thin Ridge Out, and if I used it for the short nail swatches, it's worked darn well.  Got thick really quickly, but that may just be a product of the Big 3 Free formula.

A long, long time ago, before everything was Big 3 Free , some people used to do the Stickey sandwich.  A coat of Stickey, two coats of polish, then another coat of Stickey before the top coat.  Did any of you used to do this?  Did it help with wear?  Now I guess CND would be promoting Shellac if you wanted truly chip-free wear for days!

Left to right, all OPI- Unripened, Obscurity, Sanguine and Nevermore:

Same order as above-Unripened, Obscurity, Sanguine and Nevermore- in full sun:

If you like then you shouldn't have a fly on it:

OPI's Unripened is very close to Nicole by OPI's Blues In The Night (NI 235.)  They both have dark bases with aqua shimmer and pink duochrome around the edges of the bottle with enough light.  The Nicole has a more sheer base, so I had to do an extra coat of it to compare it with the OPI.  I keep hallucinating that the shimmer in the Nicole goes from aqua to blue, too.  It seems like the shimmer in the OPI is finer and less dense than the shimmer in the Nicole.  I will have to recheck this in the sun!  In my opinion, if you have the Nicole, you don't need the OPI unless you love this type of color or you just want the whole go goth! set.

Both bottles (neon skittle tips always help when handling dark polishes, right?):

Unripened on the index finger and Blues in the Night on the thumb:

I compared OPI's Nevermore to Nicole by OPI's Party At 3AM! (NI 240), but they aren't incredibly similar.  The Nicole has a dark base with pink-purple shimmer while the OPI's base looks more purple than murky charcoal with a larger amount of pink-purple shimmer.  It was really difficult to accurately photograph this one- it's purple with pink shimmer, but think that'll show on my camera?  Apparently not!  How silly of me, thinking my camera would work!

Both bottles, OPI then Nicole:

Nevermore in the bottle (with an Unripened fingernail):

Nevermore in the bottle and on the nail:

Unripened, then Sanguine and Nevermore, plus the Nevermore bottle:

OPI's Sanguine is a pretty dark red shimmer.  It applies darker (and maybe a little warmer) than what you see in the bottle, and it does look like it verges on brushstroke territory if you're not careful.

Sanguine on the nail with bonus palm freckle:

OPI's Obscurity is a matte (OPI's words; I'd say it's slightly more satin-y than truly matte) black that dries really quickly.  And you'll want to have a very even base to put this on over, because it shows every flaw in your nail.  It also doesn't seem to wear very well, but that could have been my NailTek Foundation II just being awful.  I had a chip on one finger before even leaving the house!  I did try topcoats over this one, and the NailTek (yep, the basecoat as a topcoat) just made Obscurity look more like paste.  CND's Super Matte made it look kind of satin-like.  And Essie's Matte About You made it completely matte and dragged off a little bit of color, too.  And I had painted my nails the day before!

Obscurity on the nail:

If you get any kind of oil, moisturizer, etc on this color, it's gonna show.  Buff your nails with a soft cloth often.

I will be doing individual posts for the colors, too.  Wish me luck in getting better pictures for that!   And remember to enter my giveaway if any of these catch your eye!

Two coats in sun then shade with totally unnecessarily large images (ugh, sorry):

Bottle picture in sunshine:

Three coats under GE Reveal bulbs:

And now the more interesting part of this entry- NEW (to me!) POLISH AT TARGET!!  Woot!  I found the new Revlon Matte line, but alas, the beautiful ruby color was already sold out.  Fire Fox (IIRC that was the name!) looked like a shimmery tomato-y red orange.  There may have been a white as well, but I don't rock those well so I didn't pick it up.  I did pick up the shimmery green, Emerald City, and noticed a trend among the bottles- they all had wonky brushes.  I picked the bottle with the least wonky brush, and I'll have to do some trimming before I use it.  I also found some new Nicoles- a shimmery green named Fell From The Tree, a Sapphire in the Snow-inspired indigo creme called Midnight Snowfall, and three glitters.  The blue and black glitters, Such A Go-Glitter and Pitch-Black Glimmer, seem to be Alice-inspired.  The dark pink glitter, Sensational Scarlet, reminds me of something, but I can't quite place it yet.

If you've read this far, don't forget to enter my OPI Halloween giveaway!

A couple of these are dupey, but I'll cover that in another post with a ton more pictures.  If you'd like to win this adorable set of dark polishes, just drop a comment on this blog post!   For an extra entry, you can tweet about it and let me know by posting here or mentioning me (@honestbabes) so I can see it on the off chance I log into Twitter. If you have trouble commenting, you can also send me an email at honestbabe at honestbabes dot com, or you can reach me on Makeup Alley as suggrr.   If there are any problems with the commenting system here, I definitely want to know!

This contest is open to everyone around the world, and the only thing I ask is that you please don't put it up on eBay.  Just enjoy it, gift it, put it on a peddle stool (), whatever.

ETA: In my epically awesome awesomeness, I forgot to say when I'll draw for a winner.  How about midnight EDT on Friday, September 3rd?  Should give me enough time to get oh, five or six responses.

SpaRitual is made by Orly, which explains the rubber handles.  SpaRitual retails for US$10.  I've heard that Orly colors sometimes become SpaRitual colors, not the other way around, so if there's a SR color you like, look for a dupe among Orly first.

Lady Sings the Blues has an opaque dark blue base with silver hex and tiny regular silver glitter.  Across the Universe has what appears to be a very dark blue base with green blue and silver hex and microglitter.  The silver glitter looks blue due to the smoky base color.  Across is a lot more sheer than it looks, and almost more gray than blue.  I'd say this one needs more layering, while Lady can be worn with 1-2 coats.  I paid about US$13.33 for Lady, since it came in the trio pack for the Anniversary Sale, and a full $18 for Across.  I'm sure Lady will also be $18 when it's finally released by itself.

I came upon the Nicole Gossip Girl collection at Target, mysteriously priced at $7.04 and attached to cards promoting the Gossip Girl TV show and third season DVD set that comes ouit this fall.  There were two dark blue/teals, a white with glitter, and Nicole... Spotted! (NI 324), a sheer, blue green polish with copper, green blue and blue glitter.  Minus the copper glitter, the rest of the glitter almost looks iridescent and icy when I layer it over other polishes.  There are two sizes of "glitter" in this polish, too- glitter and either micromicromicroglitter or shimmer.

I tried all three over four different polishes plus my bare nail.  For an opaque white, I used Essie Blanc.  For a light blue, I picked Color Club's Take Me to Your Chateau.  For a medium blue, I used a vibrant H&H polish that I won from Nathalie called Blue My Mind.  I selected Orly's La Playa for a dark blue.

Lady Sings the Blues is pretty opaque, so there was little point to layering it over other colors.  Depending on how light of a coat you do, you might be able to brighten up the base just a tad.  But you run the risk of having it look patchy with thin coats.  These glitters look worse the more you mess with them on the nail, so my suggestion is just to put the polish on and hope for the best.

Across the Universe looks like a dark gray or blue over white.  It looks gray over white when on tape, but it looks more blue over white on my nail.  I swear!   Oddly, all the small glitter in this polish looks blue on both my nail and tape, while the hex glitter looks more green.  If you can get an even enough coat over the medium blue, the glitter goes really well with the color and the polish doesn't get too much darker.  Since I couldn't get the one coat I used to layer to go on evenly, I didn't like Across much over the light blue.  Across did look really nice with the dark blue, too, and some of the hex glitter looks blue instead of green.  (Cue the Geto Boys 'cos my mind's playin' tricks on me!)

Nicole... Spotted!'s base tints the bases of the white and light blue polishes, but has no effect on the blue and dark blue.  The glitter/shimmer/whatever looks surprisingly great over all of the polishes.

Lady Sings the Blues is great for those who like opaque dark blues with glitter, a la Essie's Starry Starry Night.  Across the Universe is probably worth it to those who are big Beatles fans, but I am disappointed that it doesn't look as cool on the nail as it does in the bottle.  Nicole... Spotted! was more of a pleasant surprise, plus it was cheaper than the Lippmanns.  No hex glitter, though, if you like that.  I'm still on the fence about it, myself.

I used the pencil tool on a couple of these pics to try and show where I dotted Nicole... Spotted!  Not sure if it worked, though.

Since the above pics didn't turn out well, I redid the swatches on tape.   Dedication, I haz it.  Camera skillz, not so much.  This was taken in front of a simulated sunlight lamp.

I guess people must be used to me wearing crazy things on my nails, because only one person noticed my skittles.   I have a metric ton of more stuff to post, so I may be busy this week.  Hope y'all don't mind!