NARS Joie De Vivre vs Danmari

Since I have both the cheek palettes released by NARS with the same design and everything, I decided to do a comparison of them. Both the palettes contain one bronzer, one highlighter, and four blushes.
In the Danmari, the colors included are: Hungry Heart Duo II, Casino, Orgasm, Super Orgasm, Desire, & Sin.
In Joie de Vivre, the colors included are: Albatross, Laguna, Gaiety, Orgasm, Luster, & Angelika.
From the packaging, Danmari has the bulkier packaging, where the lid of the box comes off, while Joie de Vivre is a slimmer box with openings on the side for the palette to slide out.

Click image to enlarge
Left to Right: Sin, Desire, Super Orgasm, Orgasm, Casino, & Hungry Heart (it's there, but barely visible)
Left to right: Angelika, Luster, Orgasm, Gaiety, Laguna
In the comparison picture of the palettes, it seems like Angelika and Desire are similar, but not the same. However, they are very similar when swatched. The main difference between Desire & Angelika is that Desire is matte, and Angelika is glittery. Other than that, the colors for both to palettes are quite similar with the exception of Sin & Luster. Sin is a berry-colored blush in the Danmari, and Luster is a peachy-colored blush in Joie de Vivre. I think because Sin is more appropriate for Winter, and Luster is more appropriate for Summer. When I compare the bronzers, I definitely like Laguna better. Although Laguna was kind of patchy, Casino lacked pigmentation from the Danmari palette. From both to palettes, I also noticed that Orgasm felt different in both of the palettes. To me, Orgasm was a lot less smooth in the Danmari than it was in Joie de Vivre. It took a few swipes more for Orgasm from the Danmari to show up for me than it did from Joie de Vivre.

Overall, I feel like both palettes are nice, but if I were to choose, I would choose Joie de Vivre because I feel like it has a better combination than the Danmari because the Danmari included both Orgasm & Super Orgasm, which I felt was totally not needed at all.

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NARS Joie De Vivre Cheek Palette

Swatches & Review
Since this palette is out for cardholders right now, my boyfriend actually purchased this for me before the actual public release date, which is on July 20th. This palette is exclusive to Nordstrom for their anniversary sale & it consists of 6 colors. It has one highlighter: Albatross, one bronzer: Laguna, and four blushes: Gaiety, Orgasm, Luster, and Angelika.

Top: Albatross, Gaiety, Luster
Bottom: Laguna, Orgasm, Angelika

Left to right: Angelika, Luster, Orgasm, Gaiety, Laguna

In daylight.

They all contain 0.12oz of product which is a good size for each pan of them. After swatching, I realized I forgot to swatch Albatross as well.. oops =x. Anyway, I really like the shades in this palette. Although I thought Gaiety and Angelika would be very similar, you can see that Angelika is a lot darker pink than Gaiety is. Although Angelika is supposed to be glittery, it was not too glittery when swatched. One of the blush I had a problem with is Gaiety, which is a matte pink and it came out pretty chalky. Orgasm is a peach with a gold sheen to it. Luster seems peachy on me. Luster was actually one of the shades I was afraid that would not work for me because I heard a lot of people saying how it turned out too orange for them, but Luster is actually my favorite shade from the palette and it is one of the smoothest color from the palette. The bronzer, Laguna was the second color in the palette that was hard for me to work with because it came out patchy.

Overall, I like the colors in this palette more than the Danmari cheek palette last holiday from Sephora, mainly because the Danmari has both Orgasm and Super Orgasm. Although some colors gave me a problem (Gaiety & Laguna), the color is buildable and workable with a bit of effort into it. Luster was the easiest to apply, and Angelika was my second favorite. I also wish that Orgasm was not in this palette because Orgasm is in every single palette or item NARS comes out with. If you are just starting with NARS, this is definitely a good palette to start with because it gives you a variety of colors. What do you think about this palette? Will you buy it/have you already purchased it?

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Spotted at TJ Maxx: OPI

Yesterday, I went into TJ Maxx since I was near one and I spotted some OPI sets. One of them are the OPI mini's from their Nicki Minaj collection that was released earlier this year. The other set was a set that was released last holiday for their Christmas sets, which contains the shade in Designer... De Better! which I have reviewed here last winter. I actually have the lip gloss from that set too, from buying it last year and although I like the nail polish shade a lot, the lip gloss just was not for me since it had a strong scent to it. It made me feel nauseous after wearing it for a while, but if you don't mind the scent, it's not bad at all! Both the sets I saw retails for $7.99 at TJ Maxx.

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Zoya; Arizona

Swatches & Review
Zoya Arizona is from their 2012 summer collection, Beach. There are two parts to their summer collection and Beach is the collection that consists of creme finish colors. Arizona is a light orange color with a creme finish. It is not bright, but it's not milky like how pastels are either. It kind of reminds me of the orange from the tangerine popsicles from Dreyer's fruit bars. For my ring finger, I used China Glaze's Riveting as an accent.

The application of Arizona was smooth. Although the polish was a bit on the thick side, it was not hard to work with it at all. I used two coats in my swatches, but I could have easily gone with one coat for opacity if I used a thicker coat. It did not take the first coat too long to dry before applying the second coat. For China Glaze's Riveting, I only needed two coats even though it was thin.

Overall, I really like both the orange colors. Arizona was actually picked from my boyfriend because he liked the orange creme color and it is not a color I normally would wear and Riveting was perfect for a day out in the sun because it has shimmer to it. The application did not give me any problems and the removal was easy and did not stain my nails. What do you guys think of orange color polishes? We have definitely seen them a lot this year!

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