Lucky 13 Kind of a Big Teal'c

By -

 There's a super helpful comparisons group on fb that has on more than one occasion reminded me that something previously purchased is going to waste while sitting on Mount Untried...

indoor, CF lighting

Lucky 13's punnily named Kind of a Big Teal'c was from the space-themed PPU of exactly one year ago, and is quite obviously designed for me.  Flakie, somewhere between emerald and oceanic aqua, all yes.

outdoor, late afternoon sunlight

After days of wearing this polish, I still can't 100% settle on what the base color is.  "Teal" is probably the best descriptor, but the iridescent ocean-type flakies in there that shift from bright blue to aqua to purple make the overall look lean anywhere from turquoise to emerald in different lighting. 

outdoor, shady/overcast daylight

Some lighter aqua shades, especially those with warmer-toned pink or reddish shimmer, are particularly bad at the dreaded lobster hands.  Teal'c is saturated and dark enough, though, that this was never a problem for me, even in lighting that made my skin look its palest.  

indoor, bright CF lighting

In addition to being absolutely jam packed with flakies, there's also a light scattering of holo dust in here.  It's not enough to make this look rainbow-y even in very bright sunlight, but there are tiny metallic sparks here and there - it's a contributor to the whole look, but the holo is not the main show.

outdoor, afternoon sunlight

I'm showing 2 coats and topcoat here, which was all that was necessary for visual opacity.  The first coat went on a little sheer, but the 2nd brought my nails to the color saturation of the bottle.  The flakies are dense enough to produce a very subtle "hammered metal" texture even after topcoating, but certainly not enough to be rough, and there were no flakes dangling off the nail edge or otherwise misbehaving. 

outdoor, overcast/shady light + incandescent light

There's an otherworldly purple flash to some of the flakes that calls to mind jellyfish or a coral reef.  It's not always visible, but it's a really pretty complimentary color scheme when it does pop up.

indoor, CF lighting

Rating:  4 out of 5 stars, this color is gorgeous and looks good on me.  It wore just slightly more quickly than ideal, but to be fair I am wearing each polish longer than I used to these days.  This would be a perfect base for some ocean or mermaid-themed nail art!

Where to buy:  since PPU is typically one-and-done, cross your fingers this comes back at this summer's PPU rewind, or else hunt down a bottle in a destash.

~Michelle 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Orly Nail Rescue - review & tutorial

By -
Image
After my peel-off fiasco left me with 2 split nails, I immediately reached for Orly's Nail Rescue kit, which I've used on many occasions to solve these issues. Nail Rescue comes in a box that contains this small bottle of cyanoacrylate glue with an extremely convenient polish brush in the cap and a little jar of acrylic powder - yes, kids, you're going to make yourself a little patch of fake acrylic nail.  Spoiler alert:  this system is utterly genius, and WAY longer lasting than any tea bag patch. As a refresher, this was my problem.  Shown here is the split on my thumb, but in the rest of the pics, I'll be fixing my middle finger on my cinderella hand, which had a split just as bad, but much trickier to photograph without whackadoo contortions.  Fortunately, both of these splits hadn't caught on anything yet, and therefore weren't bent out of place.  In other words, this fix kit works best as soon as you notice a break problem, not after it's got...
Read more

ILNP Masquerade & Comparison

By -
Image
Every time I Love Nail Polish releases another batch of their multichromes, my wallet is going to take a little hit.  Their formula is always great, but the colors .  OMG, I die with these super shifters.  From the most recent release, my first pick was Masquerade.  Ginormously pic-heavy post in 3...2...1... Masquerade is a very sheer charcoal grey base packed with magically light-bending pigment that goes from a rich magenta-wine color, through a lighter pink, then bronze, on its way to a vibrantly saturated emerald green.  It took 3 coats to get it to visible opacity, of the sort where it can look sheer if you hold your fingernails up to the light.  Though it's most often a metallic to slightly brush-strokey chrome, in the sunlight, a sparkly shimmer peeks out. outdoor, bright sunlight The color range can be soft and muted: ok, "muted" for something like this, anyway.  outdoor, overcast/cloudy day It can be mostly wine: outdoor, ...
Read more

China Glaze Pearl Jammin' + comparison

By -
Image
For my first new mani of this year, I went straight for one that was on so many people's best of 2016 lists, China Glaze Pearl Jammin'.  This lovely lady sold out super quick, and for a while was going for INSANE prices on ebay, but I found one at normal retail price on Amazon. indoor, bright CF lighting for both Pearl Jammin' is a greyed sky-blue base packed with warm coppery shimmer that's thankfully just as beautifully flashy on the nail as it is in the bottle.  The formula is a little squirrely, the sort that's both slightly too thin and yet dries so fast that it gets gummy if you go over the same area twice.   3 coats are needed for even coverage with the sorta thin/sheer formula, but that's the price to pay for having the shimmer this bright, and all minor irregularities smooth out perfectly with a layer of topcoat.  I stamped my accent nails with the cute dreamcatcher image on BM-407 using Hit the Bottle Copper Haired Girl. Then we promptly had...
Read more