Ciate Cupcake Queen Comparisons

So I decided to combine posts and do my Ciate swatches and comparisons at the same time. 

Ulta is currently having a 2 for 1 sale on Zoya, and you can use the $5 off coupon towards the purchase. Sweet deal, I bought the Mod Matte collection.  It may be slightly obvious that I'm going through a hot pink trend...the Sally Hansen and Sinful Colors are bottles that I don't have in my polish drawer, so I kind of forgot about them until today. Oops!

If you haven't heard of Diamond Cosmetics,  you're in for some excitement because this company is AMAZING. Beautiful colors and wonderful formulas for just $2.50. I used to be a brand snob, but I mended my ways after buying 10 or so of these babies. It's a small company, but the costumer service is stellar. I cannot recommend them enough. I've yet to wear any of these as a full manicure, as I ordered them in the summer and my summer wardrobe did not have anything close to these hues. On to the comparisons!

Indoors with natural light

Indoors with more direct sunlight.

Please excuse the smidgen of Strictly Legal on my ring finger! I found it hard to tell the difference between these. Sally Hansen's Hot! Frost is a shimmer, although my camera didn't pick up on it very well. It is also hard to see the blue iridescence in Cupcake Queen. I would like to note that formula-wise these are all dramatically different. Cupcake Queen is swatched at 1 coat on my peely horrible index nail. Sinful Colors, I believe is at 4 and still has a VNL, this polish is VERY sheer. Zoya's Lolly is a matte with a topcoat and like most mattes, needs 2-3 coats to even out streakiness.

Indoors, cool light.

Indoors, warmer light

Indoors direct sunlight.

All of these come alive in the light (Cherry Tobacco, you gorgeous thing). The purple hues of Strictly Legal are more obvious out of the bottle to me. I had to label Joust and Decadence because they look exactly the same in bottle. Weird how strikingly different they are on the nail. To me, the closest match to Ciate was Joust. Here's a better comparison of the two next to each other in the same light:

Still pretty different though. I cannot wait to wear all of these gorgeous fall shades once Vegas decides to stop being so insufferably hot.