From Powder Perfect- Love Angeline and Aliquid

Hi guys, how are you all? Well, as I mentioned in my last post, Jacinta from the gorgeous Powder Perfect has sent me some nail polishes to review, so let's get to it.

Love! Angeline is a US based indie polish maker and the two lacquers I have been sent to review are from her blogger collaboration;
Stargazing Monster, a blackened purple jelly filled with small holo glitter and a warm mutlicoloured shimmer, created with the help of blogger MrsLochness!, inspired by the colors in the sky at twilight and Let Me Fly, a beautiful teal holo filled with a green-blue shimmer and blue and green iridescent glitters, created with LacquerLoon, in a homage to the delightful colours found in the plumage of peacocks.

First up is Stargazing Monsters. The formula for this was great, I used three thin coats for these swatches and topped it off with a coat of Poshe. I like the way the shimmer gives this polish a nice complexity, so it's not completely reliant on the holo glitter for that special something...

Stargazing Monsters

The polish looks quite black under certain lighting, yet in the sunlight you can really see how this is actually a blackened purple base. The shimmer is strong regardless of lighting which I really like, and the holo glitter really gives it a lovely sparkle too.

Up next is let Me Fly. I must say I found the formula on this one to be a little bit harder to work with. There is a lot of glitter and so on in the polish, so it gets quite thick on the brush by the time you're up to the third nail.
I only needed two coats here and again topped it off with Poshe for a nice glassy smooth finish. I didn't really see the holo effect with this one, but the shimmer and the lovely colours of the glitter makes this a really beautiful polish to look at, regardless.

Let Me Fly

The second lot of polish Jacinta sent me are by Aliquid Lacquer, from their Silmarillion collection, based on the writings of the same title by Tolkien.
 
This is Hidden City, a stunning forest green holographic polish finished with shimmery gold flakes. 
The formula is great, two easy coats and oh wow, what a colour... I love this one. I topped it with Poshe and didn't experience any dulling of the linear holo effect either.

Hidden City

I really like this polish, and I don't own any greens quite like this. The formula was a breeze to work with, not at all temperamental the way some holographic polishes can be and, even though it's a dark colour, there was still a lovely holo flame on the nail without any dulling of the green. And in the shade the golden flakes give the polish a lovely depth that keeps it interesting.

Finally we have Day Shall Come Again, a rusty burgundy with a strong gold to bronzey-green shift. 
Again the formula was excellent. I used three thin coats for these swatches and one coat of Poshe. This is a really interesting colour, quite delicate with a fabulous shifting property that is almost strong enough to call a duochrome.

Day Shall Come Again

Both Love! Angeline and Aliquid Lacquer are available through Powder Perfect here in Australia, along with some other fantastic polish brands.

Powder Perfect also make their own stunning polishes, and they have a grogeous Xmas range out at the moment that you really should check out... I have Merry Xmas ya Filthy Animals and it's soooo lush :) 
Powder Perfect's customer service and range is lovely and it was a pleasure to review these polishes for Jacinta, plus there's plenty on their site to keep any polish lover happy, including nail vinyls and fab nail polish-based resin jewelry.

I hope you enjoyed these reviews and, as you know, I always give an honest appraisal of the polishes, whether I buy them myself or if they are sent to me for review.

Anyway, I have some more gorgeous new polishes I just have to swatch, so until next time
~love and polish for all~

Em xox

A quick post today featuring Powder Perfect's "Elation"

Well, I just couldn't leave well enough alone and ended up changing my polish again today, because why the hell not.
I also attempted to make a light box so I could take nice photos inside as it's winter here and the weather is pretty gloomy. It looks right, but i doesn't do what I was hoping it would. So I ended up going out and taking pictures of my hand in the rain again, most likely cementing the neighbour's view that I'm a crazy lady along the way.

Pictured; failure

I honestly have no idea why the damn thing doesn't do what it's supposed to, after all, it's a pretty basic concept. But it really doesn't help with my picture taking, at all. I suspect I'm just really crap at crafty stuff.
I also decided to attempt a little stamping along with my basic manicure, and again it didn't quite work out how I pictured it in my head. But it's still better than the bloody light box ;)

Powder Perfect's "Elation"

Thankfully Jacinta, from Powder Perfect, is a lot better at this home made business than I am and she's created yet another stunning, keep-your-eyes-on-the-road, OMG sparkles! microglitter polish.


Elation, part of the Euphoria Collection, is a teal jelly microglitter that is very similar in formula to yesterday's polish, Kevin!.
It's really easy to apply and I only needed two thin coats to get full coverage, with no dragging or balding along the way. It dried super fast and, while I guess it could be worn as a textured polish, I think it really comes into its own with several good coats of Seche Vite or similar.
Sure, it requires a fairly generous couple of coats of top coat to get a totally smooth finish, but really, when something looks this good I don't care about using three coats instead of one.

The colour itself is simply gorgous- really rich and complex. There's a few different coloured microglitters in there- although it gets a little hard to know what's what as it's all in a teal jelly base- but from what I could see there's blue, teal, holographic and maybe even a little bit of very pale gold. Whatever the combination, it all comes together on the nail and looks fabulous.

So, it's another win from Powder Perfect and, unlike most of my reviews, this one is still available (the other two polishes in the Euphoria Collection are also stunning and well worth a gander).

And because I figure there's no harm in sharing my total crafty failure, have a look at the pictures my light box managed to create... oh, and these are after I stuffed around with contrast and exposure. Before I tweaked the settings it looked like I had taken the photos in a shadow box, designed specifically to hide any beauty and mask the true colour of anything.
I think they speak for themselves really ;)

I guess I'm going to have to buy one of those ebay cheapie light box kits, even though this should have been ridiculously easy to do myself. At least I only managed to injure one finger with the box cutter whilst making it. That's gotta count for something, right?

Hope everyone is well and go check out Powder Perfect if you're in the market for a new polish, I promise you won't be disappointed.

Em xox

Say hello to Kevin! by Powder Perfect, I just know you're gonna get along

Well I'm finally home and oh my gawd did I come home to a lot of nail mail! So of course I had to share some of them with you.

Twenty eight bottles, the vast majority of which are Australian indie polishes... to be honest I have no idea where to start, it's a little overwhelming.
And then this morning my postie brought a package I have been very keen to get my grubby little hands on, my first ever Powder Perfect polishes. I now have Decorate a Palm Tree, Elation and Kevin! and immediately had to try on Kevin! because it's absolutely, jaw-droppingly stunning.

Powder Perfect's Kevin!

Kevin! is a Xmas release based on the Home Alone movies, hence the name. I also have Decorate a Palm Tree from the same collection which I will swatch over the next week, and I promise that is well worth waiting for... it was really hard to chose between the two, but at the end of the day red won out.

What a great way to beat the winter blues

Kevin! is a bright, true red jelly that is absolutely packed with red microglitter and, from what I could tell in the dim, overcast light, some holographic microglitter also.
But, as full of glitter as it is, this polish applied like a dream. All I needed to achieve full opacity was two thin coats and there were absolutely no issues with the polish at all. Again, like with all glitter dense polishes Kevin! dried a tad gritty, but I just added a couple of coats of Seche Vite and my nails were on point- beautiful, sparkly, red and glossy. Perfect really.

Unfortunately, being winter in Melbourne, it was hard to find enough light to bring out the sparkle in Kevin! And the light dimmed a little further with each moment, hence why some of my photos look as if I am standing in shadow... and I was, the vast, cold and dreary shadow of winter (dramatic, no?).
Here's some more pictures because, really, it's just so pretty I can't help myself.

And here's a couple I took trying to get that glitter to light up (not too successful, I'm sorry to say).

As with so many of the polishes I get a chance to get my hands on, this one isn't available anymore, but Powder Perfect do make custom orders if you've got a case of the lemmings ;)
They also have a range of absolutely stunning polishes that are still well worth a look regardless, with several polishes in the same style as Kevin! including Elation, a gorgeous deep teal microglitter that is to die for (I'll be swatching that any day now).

I hope everyone is doing well and I'm really excited to have so many beautiful polishes to show you over the coming weeks. I've even been asked to review a cuticle oil by the lovely Two Birds lacquer creator, Stacey Meldrum. It's my first ever review where I have been contacted by a polish maker and I'm thrilled that Stacey has asked me to do this- I am definitely hoping to acquire some of her polishes soon.
It's kinda cool that my blog is nice enough to warrant someone approaching me in this way, so I'm feeling pretty chuffed.

Anyway, time to get the kid into bed before Supernatural ;)
Em xox