My short little nails demanded flashy sparkles, but I'm thinking while growing them out I might pass on swatching/trying new polishes lest my annoyance with shorties taint my opinions. I pulled an old fave out of the vault, and used it with a new magnet.
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| indoor, CF lighting |
Sinful Colors released Polar Opposites back in 2012, the first time magnetic polish was cool, and I'm super glad to be back on that train. It's an almost gunmetal silver with a subtle scattering of electric blue sparks unmagnetized, and it's easily opaque in 1-2 coats (no base undies needed, as typical for the older magnetics but less common of late). It was sold with a starburst-design magnet that works really well with this polish, but is a bit too big for tiny nails, so I tried out my flower magnet pen.
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| indoor, CF lighting |
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| indoor, bright CF lighting |
This handy little magnetic pen is available at a bunch of nail supply stores for typically about $2. One end has a straight row of tiny magnets that can create a parallel line "cat scratch" effect, while the opposite end has 5 small spherical magnets that create a flower or starburst design.
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| indoor, bright CF lighting |
The design in the polish above was what I got holding the 5-petaled end directly onto the bottle. I'm utterly fascinated by the interference pattern generated here, with zones of blue sparks and solid bars of silver created by each sphere. Hey, wait a sec...
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| indoor, CF lighting |
BAM. A deep space starfield, dusted with a silver meteor streak is instantly revealed when the bottle is magnetized with my standard neodymium bar. Surprise, the flower magnet and the starburst magnet that came with Polar Opposites are both repelling magnets rather than attracting ones. Clearly, I need to play with manis where the same polish gets different magnetic treatments...
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| outdoor, afternoon sunlight |
I loved the electric blue sparks bursting out of the silver background the first time I wore this (back when it came out, before I started photographing or blogging polish), and I liked the tiny version a whole lot, too.
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| outdoor, afternoon sunlight |
One thing I didn't notice at all until this go-around is that the sparkles are duochromatic, shifting to royal purple in angled light. The above pic shows this only subtly, but I think it'd be quite striking if more of the sparks were visible, as when using a bar magnet, or if a broad zone of repulsion was part of the design as when using a ring magnet.
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| indoor, bright CF lighting |
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars, both the first time and now. This is gorgeous, super reactive, and easy to work with. Bonus: it wore like iron, without edgewear or chipping after 3+ days despite a pretty heavy 2nd coat to get that flower magnet to really work. The flower magnet pen is just nowhere near as strong as my bar or ring magnets, and it's a little finicky about placement (one side is definitely stronger than the other, which isn't at all easy to figure out with a 5-way symmetrical object). I'm wondering if I could make something more consistent and stronger by purchasing neodymium spheres...
Where to buy: Sinful's magnetics were LE so it's long sold out, but I have seen this one occasionally resurface on ebay. Alternately, Masura makes one called Galaxy Collisions that appears to be very similar if this is a look you just gotta have (and I'd buy the heck out of that Masura if I didn't have this one!).
~Michelle
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