Heather's Hues Spruce It Up

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After loving Heather's Hues first foray into thermal + Clarins 230 type shimmer, I had to snap up the tonal green version when a restock rolled around, and it currently being thermal weather and my currently having thermal-length nails, AND needing a good green for St Patrick's day...

Heather's Hues Spruce It Up
indoor, bright CF lighting
Like her blue-purple sister Ethereal, Spruce it Up is a tri-thermal with 3 different color shifts depending on temperature, liberally dusted with "unicorn pee" shimmer.  The major difference in the look of these two polishes is that instead of Ethereal's obvious color changes, Spruce it Up is a tonal thermal, shifting more subtly between different tints of green.

Heather's Hues Spruce It Up
window-filtered bright sunlight
In it's darkest state, Spruce it UP is a deep pine evergreen.  Tonal thermals tend to make very nice transitions without any weird or off colors in between, and this is no exception.

Heather's Hues Spruce It Up
outdoor, bright sunlight
As Spruce warms up a bit, it becomes a bright kelly green with a nice contrast to the darker forest tips.

Heather's Hues Spruce It Up
outdoor, bright sunlight
And then when fully warm, becomes a vibrant lime green that stops just short of being neon.

Heather's Hues Spruce It Up
window-filtered direct sunlight
For a simple but festive holiday mani, I've added a few little clovers from the excellent HeHe 052 plate (a collection of individual leaves of many different types, all petitely sized so you can cluster them as you like), using metallic gold.

Heather's Hues Spruce It Up
indoor, CF lighting
Rating:  4 out of 5 stars.  I had zero issues with the formula, and of course green is my jam, though I prefer the darker 2 shades on tap here.  The green base color nicely showed off the warmer shimmer tones of red, copper, and bronze, but mostly masked the green shift at angles.  As with a couple other 230 thermals I've tried, though, there's something about thermal pigments that tend to obscure this notoriously delicate shimmer.  Though the base was sheer enough to need 3 coats for opacity, I felt the shimmer was more obvious in the bottle than on the nail.

Where to buy:  this was limited and appears to be sold out on the Heather's Hues site at this moment, so look in destashes & blog sales or cross your fingers for a 2.0. 

~Michelle

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