Ms Sparkle Ali Baba

The man picked "metallic" for my start point to dig into my mountain of untried polishes this week, and flipping through swatch sticks of silvers, golds, and coppers I was struck by how I'd never used any of the Ms Sparkle polishes I own.

indoor, CF lighting

Ali Baba was part of a 2015 collection themed around the 1001 Nights tales, all of which appear to be sheer duochromes with UC flakies in them.  Most all of the swatches I could find of this polish are over black, and the first coat is so light but even that you could 100% get away with this as a topper that would give you a smattering of gold dust + flakies over your base color.  Wearing it over black, though, emphasizes the duochromatic nature of the shimmer while drowning out the base color, so I'm showing 3 thin coats solo - this built to opacity pretty well, with absolutely minimal texture from the flakies.

indoor, bright CF lighting

Ali Baba by itself sans black or other undies is a rather unusual greenish-gold that shifts over to a more bronze-green before heading finally on over to a warm rosy nude-pink that was rather challenging to catch on camera.  The flakes were always visible, and their rainbow of colors studded throughout the gold gave the impression of a jewel-encrusted tapestry.

as much of that pink shift as I could catch; more prominent than this IRL

To keep that brocade tapestry theme going, I stamped here with an interlocking geometric pattern from XXL-4 using Esmaltes da Kelly Wendy.

outdoor, overcast shady daylight

I love how the flakies peek through the pattern, and the metallic flash this gets in the sun.

outdoor, bright sunlight

Rating:  3 out of 5 stars.  Funny enough, I like how the pics of this mani came out at least 30% more than I liked how it looked while I was wearing it!  The greenish tinge to the gold had me questioning whether this was a good look with my skin tone (and I say that as an inveterate green-loving die hard), and there were a few thin patches here and there that magically didn't show up at all on the camera (huh??  that's backwards!).  The brush is also way wider than I like to work with, though I know plenty of other folks have a strong preference for these bigger paddle-shaped brushes, so YMMV.  Still, it's a lovely color that's actually completely unique in my stash.

Where to buy:  This collection appears to be discontinued from Ms Sparkle's web store, so hunt some destashes if you want to pick this one up.

~Michelle