Chelsea Psycho Green is a dark Zulu-esque green with very subtle nearly invisible bluish green shimmer. I love this color, but honestly, it’s here as a place holder for Zulu since I didn’t own it when I finalized this list back in November. However, that doesn’t belittle the significance of Psycho Green to my personal collection. I received Psycho Green is my very first swap on MUA. My swapping partner knew about my unrequited love for Zulu and decided to send this amazing polish as an extra. Essentially, Psycho Green was my first brush with the amazing kindness of the nail board. For that reason, this is a much loved polish in my collection. Not to mention that Psycho Green definitely helped curb my hunger for Zulu because it’s a good base color dupe even though it differs as far as texture and finish. (See this post for a comparison of Psycho Green versus other green polishes.)

Sadly, Chelsea polishes can’t be purchased online (at least not to my knowledge). You have to hunt these babies down in dusties and beauty supplies. Lack of easy accessibility is it what makes Psycho Green hard-t0-find. I don’t believe it’s been discontinued but then again, I know very little about this mysterious little brand.

As far as application, Chelsea measures up. This is 2 coats very easily applied. The wear, however, leaves something to be desired. I usually get an abnormal amount of tip wear when I sport this polish.

A while back I wrote an article complaining about NARS Zulu and the insistence of the nail polish industry of discontinuing highly sought after colors. I understand that creating ‘limited edition’ nail polish inflates demand and creates profits for nail polish companies, but discontinuing really highly sought after colors doesn’t make any sense from a business stand point. NARS Zulu, for example, has been off the market for over a year and still consistently sells for $70+ on ebay. That’s profit that is going to scalpers when it could be going to the polish companies. It just seems like bad business sense to not re-release those colors.

In any case, I still don’t own Zulu. Whenever I’m near a balcony, I run out on to it à la A Streetcar Named Desire and scream , ” Zuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuluuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!! Zuuuuuuuuuuuuuluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!” A long time ago I bought all the supplies to attempt to franken Zulu. I never did it because frankening Zulu was akin to accepting I would never own it. I’m starting to accept that, so I gave the franken a shot.

Here are some of the greens in my collection.

Unfortunately none of these are exact dupes of Zulu. Check out Blogdorf Goodman for swatches of Anna Sui #915 and Chelsea Psycho Green which are traditionally thought of as Zulu dupes and are, unfortunately, as difficult to find as Zulu. Chelsea Psycho Green, also pictured above, is very close but Zulu is a creme with a jelly finish and Psycho Green has very subtle shimmer visible only in the light, no jelly finish.

I bought Icing Envy and New York Summer Amaranth specifically for the purpose of trying to duplicate Zulu. I’ve seen an Amaranth based Zulu franken before, it was dead on. Amaranth has a jelly quality that is similar to Zulu so it’s a perfect base green for Zulu frankens, just add black. The only problem was that I loved Amaranth so much I didn’t want to use it for a franken. I decided to try it out only with Icing’s Envy (which I also love but happen to have two bottles). I’ll order a second bottle of Amaranth to franken with and post my results later, I promise.

I mixed roughly half a mini bottle of Icing Envy with the rest being 1/4 OPI Black Onyx and 1/4 OPI Top Coat. This is what I ended up with:

And this is Ponchy’s picture of Zulu:

As you can see, I failed, while I like the color I ended up with, my franken looks nothing like Zulu.

Zulu escapes me again.

*sobs quietly*

Special thanks to my love Ponchy for allowing me to use her image in this post. : )