Picture Polish Borealis

Hello Ladies! Today's post is something really special - the ultra Limited Edition "Borealis" by Picture Polish.  This post is pure swatch porn, and I apologise in advance if it gives you a lemming you can't scratch.  The latest from PP is that there were only enough materials to make 400 bottles of this and it won't be made again.  Then again, they said there would only be 800 bottles of Aurora and then miraculously found enough material to double that number, so you never know....

This is a very picture heavy post, I went a bit nuts with the camera and then struggled to pick my favourites. 

Borealis by Picture Polish - artificial light

Borealis is the last release in the Limited Edition multi-chrome series that included: Aurora, Illusionist, Gravity, Altered State, Illusionist and Solar Flare.  These polishes are absolutely stonking, quite possibly the most gorgeous collection I've ever seen.  I was so excited to hear that there would be another addition, I sat over my laptop like a crazy woman pressing the refresh button every 2 seconds....quite seriously allowing my husband to witness the level of my polish crazies could be the first step to my divorce...but look how lovely....

 

Borealis by Picture Polish - artificial light

Some bloggers have described Aurora as looking like an amped up version of Illusionist (comparison of these in the Illusionist post).  It does strike me that Borealis is like an amped up version of Altered State so I did a quick comparison.  The finish on both is quite different - Altered State has the silvery scatter-chrome particles giving it a starry finish and a slightly 'dusty' look, and Borealis is packed with conventional colour glitters.  The multichrome shift colour range though is very similar, with Altered State being a paler, slightly more silvered version of the same colours that Borealis shows.

Borealis vs. Altered State

99% of the time Borealis appears to be an electric metallic blue.  This is the colour that pops out when the angle of the nail to the main light source is 'straight on'...

This is the main colour that shows on the nail

At slightly tilted angles, metallic purple pops out of the mix, oh lordy do I love a good purple, and this one's a doozy...

At slightly higher angles to the light, a metallic purple shines through

But my favourite surprise is that at high angles of the nail to the light this polish bursts into the colours of the sunset - magneta, red and gold.  This was hard to get on camera, because I had to position the light source behind my hand.  It's not a colour you see often when its one the nail, but it is totally amazeballs...

At extreme angles all the colours of the sunset appear, stunning

 As with the other shades, the only time there's a chance to see multiple colours on the nail simultaneously is in diffuse natural light.  Under artificial light this polish appears as one of the three main component colours seen above.  This is a crappy camera phone pic, but it's the only one I captured in natural light, and here you can see all the colours together...phwoar....

Picture Polish Borealis  - natural light (shade)

I'm  wearing two coats of Borealis on top of two coats of black 'undies' polish ('Just Black' by No7) with NE base and HK Girl top coat.  Like all the PP LE shades this is a sheer polish that requires another shade underneath to show the colour shift.  I think you'd need 4+ coats to get this opaque on its own, and who wants to use that much up in one mani? not me!  As with all the other shades, formula and application on this shade was perfect.

Picture Polish Borealis  - artificial light

So in the end, how does this stack up against the other shades?  It's certainly very pretty, and a fantastic addition to the collection.  On balance though, I think that Aurora is the better polish.  The paler colour of Aurora allows the multichrome effect to be more obvious all of the time.  The colour palette of Borealis is gorgeous, but for the most part this appears as a nice glittery blue, which is good but not as exciting as the pink/green combo of Aurora.

Picture Polish Borealis  - artificial light

I picked up my bottle of Borealis from the lovely Sally Magpies (link in suppliers page) for £13.50.  At the moment the word is that this polish is sold out and won't be restocked, but given the restocks that the rest of the collection received I think there is still hope.  PP have courted controversy with this collection though, there is a lot of bad feeling out there about the restock of the original shades as some people felt they'd been 'tricked' into thinking they were more exclusive than they turned out to be in reality.  I think this would be a valid argument if the polishes were sold at a higher price than other LE shades. I do wonder though if customer reaction is going to influence future PP releases. Perhaps we will be less likely to see LE shades, and if that means we miss out on collections like this one I think that would be very sad indeed.  So fingers crossed that this collection is a sign of things to come and not the last of a dying breed....

 

 

Ozotic 617

Hello ladies! I have a fabulous polish to share with you today...the enigmatically titled '617' by the Ozotic. 

Ozotic 617  - artificial light

617 is a sky blue scattered holo polish that is jam packed with sparkle.  This reminds me of sparkling tropical oceans and bright sunny sky. It's stunningly gorgeous, and one of those eye catching polishes that you just can't stop staring at.  Too often I find polishes give you that 'wow' factor only when you first put them on, after that you stop noticing them....well not with this one!  I'm wearing my customary two coats here, with NE base and SV top.  This polish was pretty glossy all on its own, so the SV was just to extend weartime.  Formula was smooth like melted chocolate and the brush is excellent.  It's nicely opaque in one coat, but I use two more out of habit than anything.  No complaints on the quality front.

Ozotic 617 - artificial light

Sadly Ozotic seem to have disappeared as a brand.  Certainly the word on the blogosphere is that the 500 and 600 series are not completely gone due to lack of raw ingredients.  Australian brand Picture Polish were 'representing' the Ozotic brand, and announced recently that they will no longer be doing so to concentrate their efforts on the Picture Polish brand.  On their FB page PP say that PP and Ozotic are owned by the same company, and Ozotic is no longer listed on their website.  This news makes me a very sad nail junkie.  Ozotic made, hands down, some of the most mindboggling polishes I've ever seen.  I only own 4, because I thought they were too spendy.  Now I'm kicking myself for not stocking up while I could.  Sigh.

There are still some places out there selling off the last of their Ozotic stock, and there's always EBay.  Also, Picture Polish have announced that they will be re-releasing some of the 600 series under the PP brand, with new names.  See this post at More Nail Polish for details.

Ozotic 617

I apologise if I've just given you a lemming for a HTF polish.  It's not intentional, it's just a sign of how much of a time delay there is in me taking pictures and actually writing blog posts....Halloween releases get blogged in January and apparently now brands go out of business before I get round to telling you about them....oops!

Separation Anxiety - what's wrong with my polish?

Hello ladies! Recently I discovered something very disturbing in my polish stash  - a large number of my polishes looked like this:

What the hell?!

Now, separation is nothing new.  This is something that happens to nail polish, and happens more readily in cheaper, or older polishes.  But what bothered me is - why all at the same time, and why so many?  Could this be something to do with the storage of my polish? (a terrifying thought given how many I have and how much time, love and money I've put into developing my collection - what would be next?).

I store my polishes in an Ikea Helmer (£20, houses up to 700 polishes, oh hells yeah!) that sat inside the wardrobe in my spare room.  Apparently the best way to store polish is upright, in a cool, dry, dark place so this should be ideal right?  Well perhaps not.  After a bit of online research I found that extremes of temperature encourage thickening and separation of polish.  I live in Scotland, so in winter the house gets pretty cold during the day, and the spare room is one of the coldest rooms since the radiator is turned right down all the time anyway.  I still find it hard to believe that the temperature would be extreme enough to cause my polish to separate in such large numbers. 

These same polishes looked fine before winter, so I think that temperature really is the main factor here.  So I have moved the Helmer into my bedroom cupboard, which backs on to the hot water tank cupboard and it warmer by on average 3 degrees (I did an experiment and everything....I'm a scientist I can't help it). 

From my online reading I found that the best remedy is to shake the separated polish 'vigorously' until thoroughly remixed.  There are a lot of bloggers out there saying that shaking your polish will fill it with bubbles that can't be removed.  This is utter nonsense.  Yes you will create bubbles in the short term, but these will gently rise up to the surface over time.  That's science peoples.  So I shook, I shook long and hard, and after nearly 300 polishes I pulled so many muscles in my arms and shoulders that I was in agony for days....

It seems that if the polish has not been left in a separated state for too long that the paint layer in the bottle will not have become too hard/thick to be recombined with the upper oil layer.  So if you have a separated polish, be kind, give it a shake!  Just don't try to shake your whole collection in the same day...only an idiot would do that....errr...

Shake it like a polaroid picture

So eventually they all ended up like this.  It's been two weeks now and the polishes have not re-separated, so I'm confident that the recombination is (relatively) permanent and not likely to settle back out.  Really I'll have to wait until next spring for the conclusion of this experiment, to see if the polish fares better in winter in it's new home.

Interestingly, by far the worst affected brand was Nails Inc.  This backs up my theory that Nails Inc polishes are cheaper made than other brands (even though they're not cheaper to buy!).

Finally, if you have a polish that is so separated and hard you're ready to bin it - don't! Check out this post from the amazing Scrangie on how to fix even the seemingly unfixable.

Revlon Parfumerie - Autumn Spice

Hello Ladies! This week's nail news - The Revlon 'Parfumerie' collection of scented nail polishes is now available in the UK!  They were released at the end of last month, and are available in Boots and at larger Revlon counters.  Today's post is the one I've been most excited to get - Autumn Spice.  Pictured here I'm wearing two coats atop NE base, and with two coats of HK girl top coat.

Revlon Autumn Spice - artificial light

Autumn Spice is a toasty warm brown foil finish packed with gold and russet toned flecks and a hint of pink.  It's an interesting shade all on its own, so the fact that it's also scented just adds to the fun.  I was really intrigued by the idea of scented polish, these have been around before, and its definitely a gimmick that won't last, but I do love a good nail polish gimmick...

So what's with the smell thing? In the bottle, there is no evidence of any smell other than the usual nail polish smell.  On the nail, when it dries, this polish smelled exactly like a Starbucks Gingerbread Latte.  A sweet, yummy, spicy smell that suits the colour perfectly and made me fancy a coffee the whole damn day.  It smelled just as strongly underneath two layers of topcoat (I used two because the foil finish meant I didn't get quite the gloss I liked with just one coat).  The strength of the smell was about at the level of a scented hand cream - I could smell it faintly all the time, and strongly whenever my hands were near my face.  After a few hours that got annoying.  BUT within 24 hours the smell was very faint, and unrecognisable.  It had a vaguely floral, plasticine smell that wasn't spicy at all.

Revlon Autumn Spice - artificial light

So, the smell is a bit annoying, and doesn't last long at all.  I also had massive tip-wear and small chips within 24 hours, so I think that the wear time and smell time are probably comparable.  The biggest problem I had with this polish was on removal.  The gritty foil took a bit of scrubbing to remove, but the polish stained my nails a gross nicotine brown when I removed it.  It took a lot of scrubbing with a nail brush to sort that one out.

The bottles look cute, and Revlon have gone for a vintage feel that I really like, but the brush is very annoying.  That bulb shaped top isn't easy to grip, but the brush head itself is really thin which makes application fiddly.  The formula was fine, a bit dry like all foils tend to be, but nice and opaque in two coats.  I loved the colour when it was on, it's perfect for Autumn.  Even though the smell element to this polish is a bit of a gimmick the shade is interesting enough all on its own to be worth a look.



Revlon Autumn Spice - artificial light

The polishes retail for £6.49, and Boots has them on 3 for 2 at the moment.  Given that you can get OPI online for that kind of money I'm not overly impressed.  This is a really pretty shade, but the brush was a pain, the smell was a bit annoying (and short lived) and it was icky on removal.  So overall I'm not very impressed.  I have another two of these (Wintergreen and Bordeaux) so I'll reserve judgement until I've tried those too.

Have you tried these? What did you think?