Color Club Port-folio

Color Club Port-folio is a lovely medium purple with extremely strong duochrome green flash. This reminds me of an oil slick, or maybe the shell of a beetle. Very cool polish, and not one that's gotten a whole lot of hype, from what I can tell. Remember when duochromes like this were the mythical unicorns of the polish world? Decent application, and this was two coats:

What do you think of Port-folio? Has it caught your eye?

Sally Hansen Lustre Shine - Scarab

After looking high and low, I finally managed to get my hands on some of the Sally Hansen Lustre Shines (it always seems to take forever for these displays to show up in Canada). Today I've got Scarab to show you; this is a lovely blue-green metallic shimmer with a modest duochrome shift. My photos don't quite convey how intensely bright and eye-catching this was in person. It might not be the most unique polish, but there's no need to mess with a good thing, right? 

Did you pick up any of the Sally Hansen Lustre Shines?

Dandy Nails Bathed In Light (...the polish I wish I'd made!)

Today I'm going to show you an amazing polish; in fact, it's probably my favourite lacquer of the past year. This is Bathed In Light by Dandy Nails, and it's the polish I wish I'd made.

Bathed In Light is a glorious mixture of a pale grey/taupe base, golden/pinkish red duochrome flash, and fine holographic shimmer. The overall effect is very ethereal; it's very unique and actually has a lot going on, but is also quite subtle and wearable for any occasion. Behold!

So very, very pretty. And that's yet another reason why I adore indie polish. I can't wait to see what my fellow indie polish makers come up with in 2013!

What do you think of Bathed In Light? If you're as taken with it as I am, I'm pleased to tell you it's currently in stock at the Dandy Nails Etsy store.

Sally Hansen Blue Frosting

Tonight's post will be a quick one- this is Sally Hansen Blue Frosting, a new-ish shade from the Diamond Strength line. Here I've layered one coat over a dark blurple shade (I thiiiink it's Essie No More Film, which is usually my go-to shade for layering). The finish on this reminds me a bit of the Sally Hansen HD polishes, and features a similar type of flakey shimmer (and in this case, some impressive duochromatic range). This shifts from blue, to purple, to teal. I'm very happy with this- it's pretty eye-catching in person. 

I'm intrigued to see Sally Hansen bust out some fun duochrome polishes, especially in the Diamond Strength line which I typically write off as a snooze-fest when browsing the cosmetics section. It's something a bit unexpected, but definitely welcome. What do you think of Sally Hansen Blue Frosting?

SpaRitual - It's Raining Men

I'm going to be away for a few days, but I wanted to leave you with a really quick post. This is SpaRitual It's Raining Men- a gorgeous soft blue/grey with strong gold/pink duochrome/iridescence. Whew, that was a lot of /-ing. Anyways, this is really lovely, and at two coats it was just opaque enough. 

What do you think of SpaRitual It's Raining Men?

Experimental Layering Post

I've been meaning to do this post for ages, as I've accumulated requests for the last month or two. Anyways, finally it's here! 

Top to bottom we have Lynnderella Chocolotta Love over a white base, Ozotic 505 over black (which makes the colour shift look incredible!), Picture Polish Mask-a-rade over black, and Up Colors Beijo na Boca also over black. 

On the thumb you can see Nails Inc Cheyne Walk over black, which doesn't really discernibly change the look of it so much; with one more coat it would look the exact same as it would without any base colour.

I hope these layering swatches were helpful for you! Out of these, I think Ozotic 505 and Picture Polish Mask-a-rade benefit the most from being layered over black- it really brings out the colour shift.

Pirate Polish Swatches: Part 3

Tonight I have Part 3 (check out Part 1 and Part 2 if you missed them) of my Pirate Polish swatches- this will be the last instalment before my lacquers go on sale for the first time this Wednesday! I'll have more details on ordering at the end of the post. On with the show! 

Salt & Pepper is a shredded glitter topcoat in black and white; here you see it layered over Essie Mojito Madness, which is a lovely vivid green. Black and white glitter topcoats have been all the rage lately, but I can see why- it's an incredibly striking effect, and layering possibilities are endless. This is my rendition of the black and white glitter trend! 

This is Walk the Plank, which you've seen before in Part 2 of the Pirate Polish swatches; because I re-did some of my swatches, I've decided to post a couple more pictures of it: 

Walk the Plank is a vivid blue with two kinds of blue glitter (including holographic blue glitter), as well as multicoloured flake glitter.

This next polish is an unusual one; it's something of an Anomaly. I've combined two kinds of colour-shifting pigments, and this was the result.

While Anomaly might not be a conventionally pretty lacquer, I'm rather taken with it. It's fun to play with in different lighting, and the colour shift is quite pronounced. In the sun it looks very sparkly, while in the shade it looks smoother and more like a metallic.

Because Anomaly is a mysterious polish, here's a mysterious swatch of it... very film noir, no?

The Jackal: a mixture of intense neon purple pigment and holographic shimmer. I recommend using a topcoat with this one, as colours with neon pigment tend to dry matte as opposed to glossy.

"And in case you hadn't known... they call me 'The Jackal'."

Finally I have Scimitar to share with you; this is a deep steely charcoal-grey with holographic shimmer.

I was having a hard time capturing the holographic sparkle in this, so this is another shot of a Scimitar prototype- same base colour, but including gunmetal hex glitter which I later omitted (it simply got covered up by the base colour). This should give you an idea of what the base colour looks like, but please ignore the hex glitter you can see in the bottle (and the corresponding lumpiness on the nail).

Before leaving you, I wanted to make a note about another lacquer I posted about recently- remember Pirate's Booty, from my first set of swatches? Well, the bling-y gold glitter in it has curled in the lacquer base. I'm not talking completely folded over "taco" glitter, but there is a definite curve to it (not entirely unusual in large glitter pieces). A thick topcoat like Seche Vite helps immensely in smoothing out the curved glitter, but you'll still feel texture. Here's a picture of me wearing it recently, and while I'm personally not bothered by the texture of the glitter on the nail, I know some people dislike it. If you're thinking about ordering this, it's something to be aware of. 

As mentioned previously, this first round of orders will not be done via Etsy, but will be taken via email, and payment will be made directly with PayPal. This will allow me to calculate shipping costs, work out any kinks, and figure out what lacquers are most popular. Lacquers will be sold in a full sized (15ml) bottle, for $10 each. I'm mostly anticipating orders from friends and acquaintances, as well as the lovely readers of my blog. If you're interested in ordering, I'll begin taking orders this Wednesday, July 11th- please send an email to piratepolish@gmail.com with your order requests at that time.

Lacquers available for purchase (bearing in mind that some of these lacquers are being produced in limited quantities while I'm waiting for more materials to arrive!) include:

Poison Apple
The Buffster
What's Up, Doc?
Anomaly
Salt & Pepper
Radioactive
Matrix Code
Scimitar
Down the Rabbit Hole
The Jackal
Borsch
Walk the Plank
Pirate's Booty (please see my above note about curling glitters)
Buried Treasure (I had been planning on reformulating this one, but because I've received requests for the version shown in my recent swatches, this version is available on request).

Links:

Pirate Polish Swatches
Pirate Polish Swatches Part 2

Pirate Polish on Facebook

Ozotic 505 + Picture Polish Mask-a-rade = Multichrome Madness!

Combining two of the most multichromatic polishes known to humankind? Yep, you're gonna see that here.

Let's start with Ozotic 505, on it's own (3 coats): 

As you can probably tell, Ozotic 505 is a very sheer polish, and next time I'll definitely be layering it over black so the multichrome shows up more dramatically. Even despite that, this is pretty amazing! It blows me away how chameleon-like this is. It's even more jaw-dropping in person.

So, having applied this, I decided to indulge myself and layer Picture Polish's Mask-a-rade overtop for twice the multichrome madness. This was the result of two coats of Mask-a-rade overtop of Ozotic 505:

And because I've seen Kas at the Varnished Valkyrie use this technique to great effect, here is an underwater photo to convey the full multichromatic range this has!

Pretty amazing, right? This ended up being a few too many coats of lacquer for my liking, but I'm really happy I tried combining these two because it resulted in a multichromatic extravaganza.

I purchased Ozotic 505 from Llarowe, and Picture Polish Mask-a-rade from Harlow and Co, but both websites carry both of these lines. Harlow and Co. ships from Canada, so that's something to keep in mind if you're Canadian- shipping is quite cheap, and very quick. I've been very happy with my experience ordering from both websites in the past. 

What do you think of my Ozotic 505 and Picture Polish Mask-a-rade combination? Do you have any awesome duochrome/multichrome combinations you'd like to share?