Enchanted Polish Hey Jude

Everybody that gets into the madness of polish hoarding eventually comes across that impossible-to-find bottle that you'd jump off the cliff for: your lemming.  After seeing some amazing blogger swatches of this one, my vibrant-green-loving heart was snared.

Hey Jude is a whole bunch of colors, but most prominently, a rich green.  Internet opinions were about 50/50 as to whether this needed black undies like some duochromes do, so I went without to test the color and wear on its own - all pics here are 3 coats.

indoor CF lighting

The computer desk where i most typically paint my nails is in a smallish room with a single CFL bulb in the fixture overhead and behind my back - bright enough to see where I'm going, but certainly not full sunlight.  In this lighting, I was immediately disappointed with my hard-won lemming.  It went on smoothly and self-leveled almost instantly so that even the first coat covered evenly, but it was the subtle soft silver-grey on my pinkie in the above pic, not the electric emerald in the bottle (this is actually why I kept going to the 3rd coat, hoping the color would finally make an appearance).  As soon as I turned around to head off to clean up, though, POW, there's the color I had been expecting, and I had to stop dead in my tracks to ogle.

still indoors, same light, different place in the same room.  srsly.

WWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW.  In direct, bright light, Hey Jude turned into every shade of green from deep emerald to yellowish moss, all with subtle holo sparkles, and occasionally shading to charcoal at the edges (as in, the dark color on my index and middle fingers there isn't just shadow).

indoor office fluorescents + indirect sunlight from a nearby window

In most regular lighting indoors, this is a nice medium green with a very interesting pale silvery pink shimmer to the center of my nails, more subtle than most duochromes, but the amount of different shades of green mixing with that pink was perfectly fine with me.

same office fluorescents, after sunset (so, without any natural indirect light from the side)

But then I was driving around one afternoon and had to pull over pronto when amazed by how strong the duochrome actually was.

some days, it's hard for a polish fiend to keep her eyes on the road.

Yep, that shades right on into a rich royal purple, with just a little bit of teal in-between.

indoor lighting at a sharp angle

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.  Just as gorgeous as I'd hoped, and easy to work with.

Where to buy: ah, the major problem of EP.  It's pretty much only available from their store, or at preposterous markup on ebay, and the former sells out literally within seconds of any monthly restock.  Sign up for their email newsletter if you want to leap into the fray.

~Michelle