Diamond Cosmetics Summer 2009 Collection

EDIT

These are now available on Diamond's site!

Good afternoon, Dear Reader!

I have a new brand (for me) to show to you today, and it really surprised and pleased me. I'll tell you the little story of why: last week, I got an email from someone at Diamond Cosmetics offering me samples of their Summer 2009 Collection to swatch. Since I like to try and to show you lesser-known brands, I figured what the heck, and said sure. Then I went to their site, www.diamondcosmetics.com, and saw that these polishes are $2 each retail. At that price, I was thinking there was no way they'd be that good, but they proved me wrong, wrong, wrong. I really like them.

They're free of toluene, formaldehyde, and DBP (yay!!!), and apply about like Barielle Shades - a thick, somewhat gluey, well-pigmented Big 3 Free polish. That's not a criticism at all, just the easiest and most accurate way to describe the application. Since I've been sticking to 3-Free, I've gotten used to applying them, and thought they went on really well and were very surprisingly well pigmented.

I swatched the six colors in this collection over one coat of Nubar Foundation Base Coat, which is like CND Stickey, but without the staining. The reason I always use a base when swatching is twofold: to protect my nice clean new growth from staining, and also to give the polish I'm swatching a fair representation. Since it will be worn over a base that grips it, it seems only reasonable to swatch over a base that grips it. Five of the six swatches are two coats, with one being three, all photographed under a good halogen light while wet, no top coat except for the one which is my NOTD.

I just checked www.diamondcosmetics.com and saw that they list the colors online by number rather than name, so I'll give you the number for each. I can't find this collection online yet, but I'm going to email the contact there and tell her so - maybe they'll put them up this week. In order to end strong, I'll show them to you in numerical order (the last three are great!).

First, #323 is Passion Pink, a deep, intense pink creme that stops shy of being hot pink.

Second in line is the three-coater, Fiery Coral, #324. It's a strong coral with a hot pink shimmer. The shimmer in the bottle is pretty strong, but much more subtle on the nail.

Next is is Cotton Candy, #325, which is a basic modern pink with a very, very slight shimmer. In the bottle, the shimmer shows up, but no so much on the nail.

Don't Teal My Heart Away, #326, is my NOTD with a coat of Diamont over it, and one coat of this teal creme was almost sufficient for opacity. This one is particularly noteworthy because $0.25 of the sale of each (12.5% of the total price) goes to ovarian cancer research.

#327, Hot Summer Pink, is a really fantastic glittery hot pink. It has a subtle pink flash and lots of silver microglitter in a HOT pink base. I ♥ this one!

We end on a strong note with Oh Tiff!, #328, which is presumably Tiffany & Company inspired. I find the shade slightly more grey than a true Tiffany blue, but that's not a bad thing at all. I really love this color! In the bottle, there's a subtle shimmer than doesn't really show on the nail.

That, Dear Reader, is Diamond Cosmetics' Summer 2009 Collection. I'm really impressed, especially for $2 a pop. You'll likely see more of these from me!

Until next time, love and nail polish to you!