Mystic Glacier, out of a stash of over a thousand polishes at this point, is still a knockout. It's so special that
I wore it for my last big birthday. I've done
comparisons with what I had closest 2 years ago, and there just wasn't anything truly like it. I've seen it go for crazy money at auction. And with the market flush with "unicorn pee" polishes in the past year, surely
somebody has come up with a near-dupe? Well, let's find out.
That's a whole lotta sky blue, and there were of course plenty of other things here that weren't close enough to be included. To make this a bit more wieldy, I've broken this series into 3 more parts. My original 2017 Part 1 is linked above, this is Part 2,
Part 3 is here, and
Part 4 is here.
For this round of comparisons, I'm showing Mystic Glacier against other jelly-based polishes that have the "real" red-to-green shifting shimmer in Clarins 230 - these are the ones closest to MG in composition/finish. In all photos below, the polishes are in the same order they're shown in the below photo:
- index finger = Darling Diva Indrick
- middle finger = Ninja Polish Mystic Glacier (NB: my watermark is always on this one)
- ring finger = Starlight Polish Phoenix Kyanite (NB: for a small upcharge, the maker mixed this bottle with the original quantity of shimmer as was in a custom named "Autumn Air")
- pinky finger = Lacquester La Licorne Bleu
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| indoor, bright CF lighting |
For this comparison, I've prepped my nails like I do for my usual manicure, with a light rub of alcohol on clean, bare nails to remove any lingering oils, then a single layer of my HG basecoat, NailTek Foundation 2, a ridge filling, slightly milky base that dries matte. It smooths the surface of my nail (I don't have deep ridges), softens up the stark contrast between my fingertip and free edge ever so slightly, and helps finicky things like jellies go on much smoother than over the bare nail alone. In other words, this is a full prep and not just a quick swatch over bare nail, which I think is critical for showing the real look of a polish we're going to be splitting hairs over.
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| indoor, bright CF lighting - one coat |
At one coat, all 4 polishes are sheer to varying degrees of evenness. Indrick and Mystic Glacier dry a little more matte, Phoenix Kyanite and La Licorne Bleu a little more shiny. Indrick is more turquoise, LLB more cobalt. Though PK appears closest here, none of the base colors are identical in saturation or hue.
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| indoor, bright CF lighting - two coats |
At 2 coats, the much more saturated blues of PK & LLB are about opaque enough to wear, while MG & Indrick absolutely need at least another layer. Indrick's holo sparkle becomes noticeable here, so it's definitely not a true dupe of MG, though it is closer in depth at this moment.
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| indoor, CF lighting - two coats |
With a slight tilt to my nails, the other major difference starts to show up at two coats - MG is significantly more shifty than anything else, easily showing emerald green on one side of my nail's curve and ruby red on the other, while the others mostly show solely the red spark.
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| indoor, bright CF lighting - three coats |
The third coat has PK & LLB fully opaque, Indrick 90% opaque, and MG maybe 80%, though all look more sheer on camera - the shimmer particles fill the eye more IRL, but the camera sees past them to the base color below. I've worn MG at either 3 or 4 coats before, but I didn't want to keep going and have the last 2 polishes appear darker than you'd wear them, so I stopped here at 3 coats.
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| indoor, CF lighting - three coats |
Again, MG shows far more color shift than any of the others, though at this intensity/opacity all do flash just a hint of green at the edges.
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| indoor, bright CF lighting - three coats plus topcoat |
Though these are jellies, topcoat is truly necessary to show off this shimmer to its best advantage. When topcoat is added, all are flawlessly smooth and even - their jelly formulas have given me zero grief. PK & LLB's more shiny formula results in a more glassy finish, while the relative sheerness of Indrick & MG allow a little more fire to sparkle out of the base color.
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| indoor, bright CF lighting |
And again, that angled light to show off the shimmer's shift is the telling point. Nothing is as gloriously on fire as Mystic Glacier. Indrick is the next most shifty, but is more turquoise. Phoenix Kyanite and La Licorne Bleu are sparkly and beautiful in their own right, but simply are too saturated of a blue color to act as a dupe for MG.
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| outdoor, shady daylight |
I've added a few more photos of this comparison in natural lighting situations - I find this looks worlds different than the compact fluorescent lighting of my indoor photos. First off, shady daylight (above), which highlights the differences in base tint of the jelly formulas, since the shimmers aren't glinting as they do in bright light (and
still MG's amazing shift is apparent!) - none of these are exactly the same color blue.
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| outdoor, bright direct sunlight |
Bright sunlight is of course where this shimmer catches fire, and I'm convinced there's a touch more of it overall in Mystic Glacier. There's been much talk over particle size as another contributing factor to the look of this type of shimmer, and I feel that MG's is a touch finer/smaller than the others, but I'm unwilling to swear to that without a microscope (we do science here, people).
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| outdoor, bright direct sunlight |
All 4 polishes do hit that shift to gold at the same angle (above), and then nicely on over to emerald (below). When the gold and green takes over the base color, all 4 look more similar than at any other time.
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| outdoor, bright direct sunlight |
No dupes so far, but I love all of these polishes.
Where to buy: for this round, unfortunately most of them are just as unavailable as the OG here. Indrick was a 2016 group custom, one and done. La Licorne Bleu was a 2018 group custom, also one and done. Phoenix Kyanite, though, is still pleasantly in stock at
Starlight & Sparkles webstore, and if you want it with this quantity of shimmer you'll need to request it be mixed like Autumn Air and be prepared for a reasonable upcharge.
~Michelle
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