Chanel – Peridot, Graphite and Quartz

I was all excited when UPS delivered my package. For some reason, last week went by a lot faster than I had realized…and suddently, here it was, Monday and there was a pretty little package waiting for me. From Chanel.

Look at the pretty label shots I did. That’s a HINT of the colors to come.

The rest of the awesome swatched colors are behind the jump! WARNING: The images are big and heavy. Please click the images to blow them up to their original sizes…and see my awful cuticles.

Now I’m going to take Chanel to task here – this color they call peridot is off. Way off. No peridot I’ve seen or worked with (even my higher end designs) have ever had that color effect they have for this color of polish. It’s more of a quartz, to be honest. A beer quartz or a lovely yellow-green lemon quartz. It is such a gorgeous color, though! I love the near color change it goes through in various lighting settings.

However, I’m having some serious flashbacks to Nubar’s Wildlife when I see this color…may have to do do a comparison! Woo hoo!!!

Graphite…Graphite how lovely you were! Definitely just as good and as stunning as Peridot. Now one would think it would be a lumpy glittery mess…and given my luck with some glitter based colors, I was worried I had encountered yet another one that was going to make me stamp my feet in sheer frustration. Luckily, this was not one of them. To me this seems like a clear base that has been densely populated with fine glass flecked in both gold and black. It applies like a dream! I was worried that this would be a rip off of Zoya’s stunning foils they do – look at my swatches of Crystal and Ivanka to see what I’m talking about.

Quartz. Oh quartz. How you are sadly misnamed here. Sadly, Quartz did not shine like Peridot and Graphite. This is how I liken Quartz in this trio of colors: I’m not sure if you’ve ever seen a pretty family with three beautiful girls. All of them are pretty, don’t get me wrong, but there is always one of the three that just isn’t pretty enough and clearly lost out on the good genes. That’s Quartz in this collection. It’s the not-quite-gorgeous-but-still-pretty-sister.

Overall: I love this fall 2011 collection from Chanel. Formulas were good, but Peridot took a smidge longer to dry than the others. It’s worth the wait!

Now just for fun…here is Nubar’s Wildlife…I was completely wrong about how this and Peridot are alike. My bad!