Femme Fatale Dragonscale

Next up on my journey through the oldest untried Femme Fatale polishes in my collection, I took a step back even further to her 2012 Gemstones collection.

indoor, bright CF lighting

The Gemstones collection was a group of shimmery iridescent effects topcoats, too sheer to be worn solo (see the air bubble in the above bottle shot for an idea).  Dragonscale is a peridot green to gold shifter, and I'm showing it over an assortment of base colors to see how that impacted the shifty properties. 

indoor, CF lighting

My index finger is OPI Christmas Gone Plaid, with the idea that it would compliment the head-on peridot and perhaps shade it toward emerald.  Middle & ring fingers are Vapid Brown Chicken Brown Cow, in hopes to amp the warmer brown edge of the shift, assuming it was a duochrome in the vein of Cover Girl Emerald Blaze.  After wearing this, I don't think that's the case after all.  On my pinky, basic black, usually the go-to for making any sheer duochrome really pop.

outdoor, bright daylight

And the difference in the base colors is fairly minimal, surprisingly so!  At most angles and lighting situations, I really couldn't tell the difference between the hunter green and black bases, and the brown base only made the shimmer lean a little more pale gold.

indoor, bright CF lighting

Even at angles (and of course I tried to tilt my fingers in all sorts of directions!) there was just a hint of shift.  Dragonscale doesn't appear to be a true duochrome showing more than one color across the curve of my nails, though it does appear different under various lighting conditions. 

outdoor, bright daylight

So it takes really extreme angles (above) to show even a subtle difference in the base colors used, and I'm wearing just a single medium-thickness coat here... which begs the question: does it stamp?

indoor, bright CF lighting

And that answer is only "sorta."  The macro photo shows the stamped design fairly well, but it was washed out IRL to the point of not being able to discern what the stamping was of.  

Rating:  3 out of 5 stars.  I've come to realize that my problem with effects topcoats is that I don't often wear plain crème polishes, and it just wouldn't really occur to me to paint a half-opaque shimmer over something already shimmery.  This peridot green is rather lovely, and might be a way to extend a worn look or mask one I just wasn't feeling.  

NB:  Femme Fatale released an updated version of this whole collection in 2020, all of which have semi-opaque white bases and are indeed intended to be worn alone.  The names are the same, though the two versions will give very different looks. 

~Michelle