Lilacquer The Diva Plavalaguna

I love duochromes. Loooove them. The Diva Plavalaguna from Lilacquer's Fifth Element collection is my new favorite.

This beauty shifts from a beautiful green to a gorgeous azure blue. I had a really hard time capturing the shift, I think because the shift isn't as dramatic as some, but trust me when I say this polish definitely shows off two different colors.

The formula is top notch. What you see here is two super-easy coats. Dry time was excellent. I should also say that this polish looks smoother in person than it does in these photos. Macro shows off every little flaw, but in person my nails look smooth and metallic.

The Diva Plavalaguna is simply perfection. And now I must order several of the others from the Fifth Element collection. So beautiful!

Lilacquer polishes are available on Etsy here!

Sephora Moody Woman

I fell for Moody Woman the second I saw nailXchange's post about it months ago. It's not available in US Sephora stores - it is available online, but there was nothing else I really wanted from Sephora and the shipping was going to cost more than the polish. Then one of my buddies in Canada offered to grab this for me as part of a swap, and I jumped at the chance. =D

Moody Woman is sort of the more cool toned version of Chanel's Peridot. Rather than shifting between green and gold, Moody Woman shifts between green and blue.

Given that the bottle is so teeny, I expected to hate the teeny little brush, but I actually loved it. Application on Moody Woman was actually pretty fantastic, even with the little brush. Two easy coats, very little cleanup required.

I wanted to love Peridot, but it's entirely too warm for my skintone. Moody Woman is the perfect answer to that problem for me. 

For a metallic, it's also very, very smooth. I was expecting it to show a lot more brush strokes than ended up being the case.

Two very enthusiastic thumbs up from me for Sephora Moody Woman! =D

Hope you all are having a great weekend, and thanks for reading!

Max Factor Fantasy Fire

If you follow nail news at all, I'm sure by now you've heard about Fantasy Fire, Max Factor's dupe of the infamous Clarins 230. Fantasy Fire is only available in the UK, but thankfully I have friends there who volunteered to obtain this awesomeness for me. =)

This is one coat over my previous mani, which was three coats of Verity Deep Violet. Just like Clarins 230, Fantasy Fire is VERY sheer. It comes in a teeny, tiny bottle, so you would never want to try to get it opaque on its own.

What we have here is a sheer purple jelly with the most insanely sparkly multichrome pigment suspended inside. It's primarily a deep red/burgundy, but it flashes to orange and even green. I was lighting challenged the day I took these pictures (the clouds kept obscuring the sun, and I haven't set up a lightbox in my new home yet). I managed to get one shot where you can see the green tinge.

Honestly, I feel like this is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. The shimmer is just breathtaking. And the combination of Fantasy Fire over Deep Violet is just perfection.

I also experimented with taking some shots inside with an OTTLite bulb. While not perfect, I feel like these came out pretty good. At least I feel like I can use this as a stop gap measure until I get a lightbox set up again on days when the sun is in hiding.

*sigh* I just love this. 

Thanks for reading!

Models Own Aqua Violet

Aqua Violet is, as the name implies, a duochrome polish that flashes from Aqua to Violet. It is part of the Models Own Beetlejuice collection.

This is what it mostly looks like on me - metallic aqua. It's a little brighter than this picture appears, but not lots more. The violet part of it is a little more shy than I was expecting, but you can definitely see it in these pictures.

This is three coats, and it needed all three for opacity. The formula leaves a bit to be desired. It's not the worst formula I've ever used, but it was thick and goopy while also being slightly runny and hard to control. o.O 

All in all... Aqua Violet is pretty, but it didn't really rock my world like I thought it would. Next time I wear it, I'll try layering it over black or dark blue and see if that helps. *sigh* I hate it when a giant lemming isn't all that and a bag of chips like your head made it out to be!

Happy Mardi Gras, y'all! =D

Hits Speciallita Unconventional

Hits Speciallita is a Brazilian brand, the company responsible for those insanely awesome Mount Olympus themed holos that have been making their way across the blogosphere. I have a couple of the holos myself, but I haven't worn them yet. My first mani adventure is Unconventional, a violet to red duochrome.

I had a really hard time capturing the darkest color shift. It almost looks like a blackened red until you notice that the darkest shade is actually a deep bluish violet.

This is one seriously amazingly sexy polish. Here's the lightest shift I was able to capture, a bright, warm red.

Please forgive the bubbles. I couldn't see them at all until I was looking at these pics - macro is a harsh mistress. I'm choosing to blame the bubbles on the brush, which is pretty much the worst brush I've ever encountered. It's large and mop-like, while at the same time being oddly stiff. The brush in this one was also wonky with stray hairs poking out. I trimmed what I could, but yeah... the brush SUCKS.

The formula is a little on the thick side, which I'm pretty sure is exacerbated by the terrible brush. The pigmentation is great though - this is two coats, and I almost could have gotten away with one. It's nice to have a duochrome that doesn't need to be layered over another color - although I suppose layering this one might not be a bad idea given how small it is - only 6ml.

The sad thing (or the happy thing, depending on your point of view) is that even for the problems with the brush and the itsy little bottle, I do not regret buying this polish for a single instant. It's stunning in person, and these pictures absolutely do not do it justice. I'm considering buying a backup of this polish, wonky mop brush and all.

Unconventional is available on Llarowe.

Happy Thursday, folks. Almost the weekend! Thanks for reading. =)

Nubar Indigo Illusion

Okay. I have no idea how to describe this polish, but I'm going to try! Indigo Illusion is another of Nubar's stunning duochromes. I would say that the base color is a pale, murky teal. I was expecting to be slightly more blue, but it has a distinct green tinge on my skintone. It has a shimmer that is sort of a lilac color.

The duochrome in Indigo Illusion shifts to a light purple, which I couldn't seem to capture, then all the way to green and to gold.

This polish was a major challenge to photograph, so I finally settled for just taking a bunch of pictures instead of trying to capture the individual color shifts. 

It really is simply amazing, and I own nothing even remotely like it. I was afraid that it wouldn't work on my skintone, but I truly ended up loving it. The formula was flawless - very easy to control, full coverage in two coats. Total love.

Hope you all are having a lovely Sunday evening. Thank you for reading!

Stargazer 305

Sometimes I love it when I'm wrong about a polish. A lovely friend sent Stargazer 305 to me as a surprise. In the bottle, it just looked like a purple shimmer - a very pretty purple shimmer, of course, but it didn't strike me as anything super amazing. It sat on my desk for a couple of days. Then I had major mani indecision the other night and started swatching polishes on one nail. When I got to Stargazer 305, my eyes almost popped out of my head.

First off, what looked like regular shimmer in the bottle turned out to be this INSANE blue shimmer that almost sits on top of the polish. It reminded me a bit of what oil looks like sitting on top of water (minus the rainbows, of course). I was turning my thumb this way and that admiring the shimmer, and that's when I saw the second surprise this polish had in store.

Oh, hai! We're a duochrome! It shifts from that deep purple to an almost fuchsia shade, and then on to a brighter pink that's almost red. I had a really, really hard time trying to capture the most extreme shift though.

Yeah. So what started out looking like an unassuming dark purple in the bottle turned out to be one of the most complex polishes I've ever owned. I took way too many pictures of the magic that is Stargazer 305, and here are some of the best ones.

Just unbelievable. 

Stargazer is a UK brand. According to their website, they do ship worldwide, but I have no idea what shipping is like. There also seemed to be a fair number of listings for Stargazer polishes on eBay when I had a look. They have some metallics that have really piqued my interest too!

Hope y'all are having a great weekend! Thanks for reading!

Nubar Moon Eclipse

Moon Eclipse is the polish formerly known as Moonshadow. I think Moonshadow was a much better name... but I digress. The polish is beautiful no matter what it's called.

I love me a good multichrome, and Nubar makes some of the best. The base color on Moon Eclipse is a deep, rich, smoky berry that shifts to a chocolatey brown and over into a bronzey type shade. I've heard that you can also get it to shift to a greenish shade, but I didn't have any luck getting that to come out to play.

This is three coats. Two was almost enough, but it was a little sheer at two coats. Three was perfect.

Moon Eclipse is a little watery and had a tendency to pool at my cuticles, but I should have been on the lookout for that since it seems like a lot of my duochromes have that problem. Other than that though, the formula was pretty good.

The sun came out today, so I was able to get some sunshine shots of this beauty too.

So amazingly beautiful. *sigh*

Happy Wednesday, my sweet readers! Hope you all are doing well, and thanks for reading!