CrowsToes Finnnally, IT’S HOODIE TIME!! and a quick comparison

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I have a love-hate relationship with subscription/collaboration boxes.  On one hand, lots of makers use them to try out ingredients they only have a limited quantity of, or try making something splashy far outside their typical comfort zone, and the results can be stunning.  On the other hand, I've never yet come across one of these boxes that I just had to have more than one or two of the polishes, so I end up scrounging for the special one in the secondary market later.

indoor, bright CF lighting
When the man suggested "blue with orange stars" (i <3 my colorblind color maven) for polish, I was reminded of this epic lemming hanging out with the untrieds.  CrowsToes Finnnally, IT’S HOODIE TIME!! was from the September 2014 a box, indied, and quickly became a fan fave, ending up on several best-of-the-year lists, then going for crazy money on the secondary market.  It's a gorgeously dusty navy blue jelly packed with orange metallic glitters in several sizes, inspired by Lauri's fave Syracuse hoodie.  It was nice at 2 coats and perfect in 3, and of course required a thicker topcoat to smooth things out.  Glitter spread just perfectly, with no clumping up or dragging after placement.  I'm swoonily grateful to the polish sister than answered my search by providing me a brand new bottle at retail price (SQUEEEEEEE!!!!!), and even happier that Hoodie Time totally lived up to expectations.


Now, in the meantime of being disappointed in my search, I'd bought several other polishes in the hopes that I could get close enough.  From left to right in both the bottle shots and the swatch sticks, CrowsToes The Terminal Engagement, Picture Polish Big Bang, CT Hoodie Time, and Aliquid Lacquer Mercy, Mastery, Mystery.

incandescent lighting
Straight up, only Hoodie Time has a jelly finish, all others are opaque polishes.  Big Bang is blue with a violet tinge, lacking the dusty, greyed aspect of the other 3, so it's not at all a contender.  Terminal Engagement has a similarly greyed base color, with a lovely coppery shimmer, but no glitters/flakes/chunks of sparkle.  From the bottle shot, MMM is far too light, but it does dry a good bit darker, and its scattering of chrome flakies flash a similar orange sparkle, making it the closest in "feel" though there are obviously no dupes at all here.

fluorescent lighting
Rating:  4 out of 5 stars, this is a fantastic color.  The jelly is nicely squishy, only very even edgewear showed up after a few days, and for as rich as it is, this is no surprise-black polish.  Unfortunately, with the madness of the aftermath of snowpocalypse, I was stuck going in and out of work late, shoveling bunches of snow, breaking a couple of nails... long story short is that the bottle shot really is the only pic I got of my lemming.  Sigh.

Where to buy:  blog sales or ebay are pretty much the only hope, but best of luck!!  EDIT 9/2016:  This is now being sold in CrowsToes' store as "Orangeblooded"!

~Michelle

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