Wearing the "wrong" eye makeup for your eye color (or: just try to stop me from wearing cobalt blue)

There are a ton of guides to coordinating your eye makeup with your eye color out there, and this has been a staple of makeup advice for as long as I can remember. Several cosmetics companies also sell eyeshadow palettes or sets designed around eye color. The usual idea is that you should wear colors that complement your eye color, or at least contrast with it, in order to intensify it. That often means coppery shades for blue eyes, for example, or purples for brown eyes.

But what if you don't necessarily want to enhance what you have? Makeup is good both for enhancing and transforming. For instance, I can make my eyes look more blue by wearing copper, but I can make them look less blue by wearing really bright blue, which is also pretty cool. Bold cobalt eyeliner is one way to get this effect. When I use it, my eye color looks a little more blue-green or maybe aqua than it's usual ordinary greyish-blue (compare with this, for example).

Cobalt blue eyeliner

Royal and navy blue nail polish swatches and comparisons (picture heavy post)

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Left to right (in natural light): Ma = Maybelline Color Show Denim Dash, CG = CoverGirl Outlast Out of the Blue, SH = Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Pacific Blue, ES = Essie Butler Please, SC = Sinful Colors Endless Blue, CG = China Glaze ManHunt, RR = Revlon Top Speed Royal, ZI = Zoya Ibiza, SH = Sally Hansen Insta-Dry Co-bolt Blue, ORN = Orly Royal Navy, ZS = Zoya Song, OSC = Orly Stone Cold, SH = Sally Hansen Insta-Dry Freeze! (and pretty brooch just because it's blue and sparkly)

Remember when I posted about a (near) dupe for Essie Butler Please, Sally Hansen Pacific Blue, which is even better? Well, I recently picked up Sinful Colors Endless Blue, which I would also put in the near dupe category - and it's even better than the other two!

This inspired me to do a mega-comparison of blues. I have so many blue nail polishes, you guys. So fucking many. Almost as many as I have greens or teals or purples. I didn't swatch all my blues here - I decided to limit this to just the ones in the royal-to-navy range. I hope this will be useful for some people in deciding if a blue you have is actually almost the same as something you are lusting after. None of the ones I had were dupes, other than the three mentioned above, though some are sort of similar. I'm not going to review each polish in detail; I'll let the swatches speak for themselves. Feel free to ask questions about any of them in the comments.

Oh, the other reason I did this? Because swatching nail polish is so fucking soothing and fun. It's like making a craft with the lowest skill level possible and lots of pretty colors. You can get the wheels at bunch of different places for cheap, like these ones from Amazon (I've also found them at Sally Beauty and on ebay). I also really like arranging things by color - which means that on my wheel, I kind of find it annoying that the order isn't exactly right. The CG and RR toward the middle should be switched, and so should the ORN and ZS on the right side, right!?

On to the swatches!

Project Swatch finds another, BETTER dupe for Essie Butler Please and Nails Inc. Baker Street for $2

I showed you that Sally Hansen's Pacific Blue is close enough to Essie's Butler Please. But Project Swatch found a Sinful Colors polish that is even better and even cheaper. It's glossy! I want it. Why are all the stores that sell Sinful Colors in this town so inconvenient for me to get to?

Your Claws: Near dupe for Essie Butler Please (but better)

In my ridiculous collection of nail polish, I have more blues than almost any other color (in close competition are purples and teals). I kept seeing swatches of Essie's Butler Please from last fall, and I decided I needed it. It was my first Essie. But I was disappointed. It's really thin and streaky. I put it on one hand and was so annoyed that I just took it off. Blah.

But then I noticed that I already have something almost identical! Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Pacific Blue. You can see in the swatches below that it is very close in color, though Butler Please is just slightly darker. And the formula of Pacific Blue is a MILLION times better, and I don't think I'm exaggerating. You can pretty much get away with one coat of the Sally Hansen, and it will be completely opaque. For the Essie, you need to use 3-4 coats minimum, and even then it can be a little uneven and somehow lumpy. The Sally Hansen blue levels itself much better, and you get a perfectly smooth surface. Also, the Sally Hansen polish dries to a shinier finish. The Essie just looks dull. Can I emphasize any more how much fucking better Pacific Blue is?

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Pacific Blue (left) and Essie Butler Please (right)
in natural light.

I just got the perfect 90s blue nail polish.

It’s Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in “Freeze!”. It’s a new one, and I got it at CVS for $4.99. I can’t find it for sale online anywhere, nor can I find swatches yet! I will update with a photo soon. But trust me. This is exactly what I coveted when I was 15 years old. Bright and glittery and primary. Drool.