One look at Powder Perfect's anniversary polishes had holo stars in my eyes: each of them is a blinding silver linear holo with a little something extra thrown in (one with holo glitters, two with ultrachrome flakies), so I snapped up both Unobtanium and her sister Microcosm (the flakie polishes). Here's the first of the two:
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| indoor, bright CF lighting |
Unobtainium is a wonderfully opaque silver holo - plenty of silvers are more topcoats to give a holo effect, but this one probably wouldn't work well in that capacity (more on that later). It's packed with the fuchsia to red to gold to green flakies of a similar color shift as in INLP's Brilliance or Nostalgia. At one coat, it was close to opaque:
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| one coat, no clean-up, CF lighting |
And at 2 there was absolutely no VNL.
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| indoor, window-filtered daylight |
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The flakies were devastatingly shifty on top of this lovely silver platter:
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| outdoor, overcast/shady daylight for both pics |
And the holo was just as killer when the sun was out (though for sure that's happening a hell of a lot less this time of year).
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| early morning sunlight |
There were a few questions in the Color 4 Nails fan group about how opaque this one was, and how different from her flakie sister Microcosm, so i have a multi-comparison here for you.
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| Unobtainium on the left, Micrososm on the right |
Both polishes are based on the same gorgeously linear silver holo, but the flakies are definitely different in both. Micrososm's are in a blue-to-purple shifting range, and are a little smaller.
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| Microcosm in the middle, Unobtainium on the left and right |
The end result is that Microcosm's linear holo is much stronger and smoother while Unobtainium's is more chunky, and Unobtainium's flakies are more obviously prominent while Microcosm can look like simply a linear holo with a lot of blue flash.
In order to test out opacity, i also layered one coat of Unobtainium over black to see if it would work as an effects topcoat.
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| for both pics, L to R: Unobtainium over black, Unobtainium, Microcosm, Unobtainium |
In my opinion, while you can see a bit of the black through the layer of Unobtainium, it doesn't help either the holo or the flakes be more prominent.
Rating: a swoony 5 out of 5 stars. The formula was dead perfect and easy to work with, cleanup was minimal, and this is utterly gorgeous in sunlight or shade. It did chip on me a bit by day 3, but that was its only flaw.
Where to buy: Powder Perfect maintains
a list of international stockists; my PP hookup is
Color 4 Nails. Pick these ones up quick if you're interested, since I believe the anniversary trio is LE.
~Michelle
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