Five Finger Friday Mint Greens

Hello Lab Partners! Allison here with Five Finger Friday!


As I was working on my polish stash spreadsheet last week, I realized I have a lot of mint green polishes. I didn’t realize I owned that many! So it was time to get swatching. Below are two photos of the five I selected to swatch: Sinful Colors Mint Apple, Barielle Sweet Adiction , RGB Minty, No Miss Melbourne Mint, and OPI Mermaid’s Tears.

With Flash. From Left to Right: Sinful Colors Mint Apple, Barielle Sweet Adiction , RGB Minty, No Miss Melbourne Mint, and OPI Mermaid’s Tears

Artificial Light, No Flash.

I had used three of these colors before; however, this was my first time trying RGB Minty and Barielle Sweet Addiction. For each color, I used two coats of polish. Please excuse the extra balm on the skin around my nails. My cuticles were feeling really dry, so after swatching, I left them to marinate in moisture. Here are the results:

Indoor, with flash. Thumb: Mermaid's Tears, Index finger: No Miss Melbourne Mint, Middle Finger: RGB Minty, Ring Finger: Barielle Sweet Addiction, Pinkie: Sinful Colors Mint Apple

Another view, to get a better shot of the thumb with Mermaid's Tears.

Conclusions:

OPI Mermaid's Tears: A little streaky on the first coat, but great in two. When I've had this one on before, it wore nicely--no chips for probably 6 days. This color is closest to Sinful Colors Mint Apple (on the pinkie), but a little more muted. My friend called it "Vespa Green," (the original Vespa green--almost seafoam), and that's a perfect description. It actually has the very slightest gray undertone, which you can see better in the photo of the bottle than you can on the nails. If you can't see the subtle gray, don't worry--I have a freakish sensitivity to undertones. It's like a superpower--I need to get a cape and call myself "Super Undertone Girl." I wouldn't be able to see the gray, either, if I didn't have other mint greens right there to compare with. This is why I love side-by-side swatching!

No Miss Melbourne Mint: No Miss is a lesser-known brand. I find it at Whole Foods Market, but you can also purchase it on-line. No Miss is a Florida-based company, which names its polishes after Florida cities. Because I live in Florida, this naming system intrigues me. As you can see from the photo, it's not really minty at all. It has quite a bit of silver/gray to it.  It's a frost, and although it's supposed to be a "one-coat" polish, it took two coats for opacity. I have to give it props, though; I hadn't worn this color in over two years, and it still applied beautifully.

RGB Minty:  Oh, RGB, how do I love thee? As with the other RGBs I've tried, this one was opaque in one smooth, streak-free coat. I applied a second coat for good measure, but it wasn't needed. This mint is by far the brightest of the lot and also the truest mint. Remember those super-hero undertone powers of mine? Well, here they are again--this polish has the tiniest bit of blue undertone. Nothing I would have seen had it not been next to other mint green polishes, so please don't think that this polish leans toward aqua. It is most definitely a true mint green.

Barielle Sweet Addiction: An interesting phenomenon occurred with this one: it applied darker than it looks in the bottle. If you look at the bottles, Sweet Addiction is not much darker than the polish next to it, Sinful Colors Mint Apple. On the nail, however, the polish isn't mint at all. I'd call it jade. It's a lovely color, just not what I expected. It was opaque in one coat but needed an additional coat for streak-free coverage.

Sinful Colors Mint Apple: For polish that I purchased on sale for 99 cents, Sinful Colors is great. This one took two coats for opacity. It's an interesting mint, with tiny white flecks, which don't make the polish at all grainy during wear; however, the polish. is a tad grainy during removal and, consequently,  a bit difficult to remove. Don't worry--it's not so difficult that you need to use the foil method to remove it, but it was more difficult to remove than the other colors I've shown you.

In a few days,  I'm going to show you a manicure using one of these mint greens: Sinful Colors Mint Apple. And it will come with a basic tutorial, suitable for even the most novice of our lab partners. Until then, sending you lab love!
--Allison

The Lab is Now Open!

Welcome to The Polish Lab! We started The Polish Lab with the usual goals: to provide info on polishes, supplies, and different types of manicures; to alert followers to any great polish sales or promos we learn of;  and, yes, to host an occasional giveaway. But we also founded The Polish Lab with another aim. Polish isn’t just about pretty colors and nice nails. It comes with memories attached—some humorous, others poignant. Polish can help us celebrate good times and survive the tough times. And perhaps most importantly, polish can serve as a path to friendships that would never have formed otherwise.  At The Polish Lab, we want our readers to share those experiences with us and with each other.

Although we have no intention of adhering to a rigid schedule—and you won’t see each of the following features each week-- there are several topics you can expect to see from us on a somewhat regular basis:

Mystery Mani Monday: We invent the mani. You guess the polish. (Don’t worry—we’ll give you a hint or two).

Test Tube Tuesday: Frankens and other highly experimental endeavours!

Wish List Wednesday: An exercise in honing your polish lust to a few select shades. Better focus means less money wasted on shades you only kinda-sorta-maybe-a-just-a-little wanted, when you could’ve spent that same money on the polish of your dreams. Besides, it’s fun to see what colors other polish addicts are lusting after!

Tag Team Thursday: Keep in mind, there are two of us running this lab. On Tag Team Tuesdays, we’ll each paint our nails with the same color, then compare notes. Will our data turn out the same? Will we reach the same conclusions?

Five Finger Friday: Five fingers; five colors. Side-by-side swatches of similar colors or five colors from a certain collection. It’s the wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am of polish swatching.

Sparkle Saturday:  On Saturdays, we all need to take our lab coats off and add a  little bling!

Super Supply Sunday: Having great looking nails isn’t just about the polish. We’ll review files, cuticle oils, mani tools, beakers, you name it!

The Holo Grail: A review of what’s hot and what’s not in the world of holographic polishes.

Polish Personals: We ask a question. You give the response. This is when you get to tell us your craziest or saddest or funniest nail polish stories. And we’ll share ours, too. Here’s where the experiment gets really interesting. Scientists have hearts too!

Don’t forget—we won’t do each of these features each week. As all scientists know, it’s important to be flexible!

Whether you’re a nail novice or a polish princess, a lover of a classic colors or a fan of funky polish, a long-taloned lady or a short-nailed man, we invite you to be our lab partners!

And that our blog has officially been born, we need to have a little birthday party, don’t you think? But we’re not asking for gifts. Instead, we’re going to give one lucky reader a gift! So be sure your read our blog later this week for details about our Birth of a Blog Giveaway!

Let the experiment begin!

New Blog Launching Soon!

Hello Followers! We're working out some pre-launch bugs and getting all organized. Stay tuned for our polish blog experiment!

In the meantime, would you please check out this new blog from our friend:  Nail Lacquer Addict . I know she'd appreciate your stopping by!