Bee's Knees For Texas

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Well, did my last look count as "light," cuz this one is most definitely dark?  Nah, not so much.  I guess this means by not leaping back to a more demure or desaturated or neutral or pale color, I'm out of my every-other-mani-switch game?  Look, all I know is that deep violet jelly was calling my name...

indoor, bright CF lighting

Bee's Knees often creates lovely polishes for important causes, and For Texas supported a charity relief after the 2021 power crisis.  It's the deep violet sister to Shoggoth from the Lovecraft Country collection, and contains the green-to-blue shifting "UP sister" shimmer pigment.

window-filtered bright daylight

I have this filed with the blue polishes, but the base is a bit of a chameleon - it does hit a deep, cool blue in some light, but is also distinctly purple-leaning in others.

outdoor, bright daylight

In angled lighting, the sparkly shimmer pigment shifts to blue, bringing the whole look more to the blue side of violet.  

indoor, bright CF lighting

While I absolutely love the base color, it was a bit more of a pain than ideal.  It took 3 coats to get to the intensity of color of the bottle, and my macro photos still show some lingering sheer areas.  In the above photo, though, you can see my sadness - sometimes, even despite the sheerness of this polish, the shimmer pigment gets swamped and is barely there.  And it showed edgewear pretty much instantly.  Boo!  

outdoor, shady/overcast daylight

My simple fix to my polish disappointment was a quick stamp in the same shimmery goodness.  This is an old standby fave vine pattern from BP-56 in Sinful Colors Kameleon.

outdoor, shady/overcast daylight

The final result was subtle but lovely, with cool complimentary colors and a stamp that stepped to the background when the shimmer popped out.

indoor, bright CF lighting

Rating:  3 out of 5 stars.  It's an utterly stunning color for a good cause, so full marks for that.  But super fast wear time + 3 coats + occasionally shy shimmer brought that down for me.  Violet polishes of a certain stripe are known to bleed into the topcoat - there's a few infamous linear holos that are incredible in the bottle but show much less flame when worn because of this.  It's entirely possible that this is one of those, and therefore the shimmer would pop more if I used a water-based topcoat, or added a layer of the polish itself over topcoat.  Meh, at that point, I'd rather just top with the same shifty shimmer by itself. 

Where to buy:  haunt blog sales & destashes, because I don't believe this one is coming back.

~Michelle 

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