There's a few polish makers experimenting with metallic flakes mixed into colors, and a recent swatch pic of something lovely by Wing Dust made me contemplate a layering experiment. I started with China Glaze Immortal:
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| indoor CF lighting |
Immortal is a medium dark grey with lots of cool-toned shimmer. It's close to opaque in one coat, but needed a touch-up for thin spots here and there. It's a nice formula - this pic has no cleanup done. To top it, I added one thick coat of Wet N Wild Gray's Anatomy, then one of OPI Pure.
Gray's is a known dupe and far cheaper alternative to Deborah Lippmann's Wicked Game. It's a
very sheer oil-slick purple to green duochrome in a silvery base. Plenty of people have layered it over black in their swatches, and you can get more intense color shifts that way, but I really prefer the softer look of what's in the bottle. Immortal was a very close match for undies, so didn't alter the base color much, IMHO.
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| that green shift in the bottle is absolutely echoed on the nail |
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| aaaaand all the way to that deep purple on my index finger |
OPI now has a thing going where they're releasing a new precious metal flake topcoat at each winter holiday collection (we're at 3 now). According to the label, Pure is silver & white gold (not that I could discern 2 different shades of silvery goodness), and was originally as pricey as the previous year's Man With the Golden Gun... but dropped to under $15 after the holiday.
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| oh, that pearlescent flash! |
Pro metal flake tip: don't shake the bottle for any of these. The mixing balls in there will tear through the delicately thin flakes and make them much smaller. The flakes are lightweight enough to stay well suspended in the base, but storing it upside down or inverting for a few minutes prior to using it should be all that you need if the flakes are sinking.
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| outdoor, late afternoon sunlight |
The duochrome is more subtle than some in-your-face flashers, but that does give it an interesting organic look.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars all around. Everything here is a totally solid keeper. This mani was ultimately thick enough that it wore much quicker than I'd like, but I'm on a swatching kick right now anyway, so...
Where to buy: both the China Glaze and OPI polishes here were part of special collections and not in the core line-up, but are easily hunted on ebay or amazon. Wet N Wild is super cheap and readily available at most drug stores.
~Michelle
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