Picture Polish Borealis

Hello Ladies! Today's post is something really special - the ultra Limited Edition "Borealis" by Picture Polish.  This post is pure swatch porn, and I apologise in advance if it gives you a lemming you can't scratch.  The latest from PP is that there were only enough materials to make 400 bottles of this and it won't be made again.  Then again, they said there would only be 800 bottles of Aurora and then miraculously found enough material to double that number, so you never know....

This is a very picture heavy post, I went a bit nuts with the camera and then struggled to pick my favourites. 

Borealis by Picture Polish - artificial light

Borealis is the last release in the Limited Edition multi-chrome series that included: Aurora, Illusionist, Gravity, Altered State, Illusionist and Solar Flare.  These polishes are absolutely stonking, quite possibly the most gorgeous collection I've ever seen.  I was so excited to hear that there would be another addition, I sat over my laptop like a crazy woman pressing the refresh button every 2 seconds....quite seriously allowing my husband to witness the level of my polish crazies could be the first step to my divorce...but look how lovely....

 

Borealis by Picture Polish - artificial light

Some bloggers have described Aurora as looking like an amped up version of Illusionist (comparison of these in the Illusionist post).  It does strike me that Borealis is like an amped up version of Altered State so I did a quick comparison.  The finish on both is quite different - Altered State has the silvery scatter-chrome particles giving it a starry finish and a slightly 'dusty' look, and Borealis is packed with conventional colour glitters.  The multichrome shift colour range though is very similar, with Altered State being a paler, slightly more silvered version of the same colours that Borealis shows.

Borealis vs. Altered State

99% of the time Borealis appears to be an electric metallic blue.  This is the colour that pops out when the angle of the nail to the main light source is 'straight on'...

This is the main colour that shows on the nail

At slightly tilted angles, metallic purple pops out of the mix, oh lordy do I love a good purple, and this one's a doozy...

At slightly higher angles to the light, a metallic purple shines through

But my favourite surprise is that at high angles of the nail to the light this polish bursts into the colours of the sunset - magneta, red and gold.  This was hard to get on camera, because I had to position the light source behind my hand.  It's not a colour you see often when its one the nail, but it is totally amazeballs...

At extreme angles all the colours of the sunset appear, stunning

 As with the other shades, the only time there's a chance to see multiple colours on the nail simultaneously is in diffuse natural light.  Under artificial light this polish appears as one of the three main component colours seen above.  This is a crappy camera phone pic, but it's the only one I captured in natural light, and here you can see all the colours together...phwoar....

Picture Polish Borealis  - natural light (shade)

I'm  wearing two coats of Borealis on top of two coats of black 'undies' polish ('Just Black' by No7) with NE base and HK Girl top coat.  Like all the PP LE shades this is a sheer polish that requires another shade underneath to show the colour shift.  I think you'd need 4+ coats to get this opaque on its own, and who wants to use that much up in one mani? not me!  As with all the other shades, formula and application on this shade was perfect.

Picture Polish Borealis  - artificial light

So in the end, how does this stack up against the other shades?  It's certainly very pretty, and a fantastic addition to the collection.  On balance though, I think that Aurora is the better polish.  The paler colour of Aurora allows the multichrome effect to be more obvious all of the time.  The colour palette of Borealis is gorgeous, but for the most part this appears as a nice glittery blue, which is good but not as exciting as the pink/green combo of Aurora.

Picture Polish Borealis  - artificial light

I picked up my bottle of Borealis from the lovely Sally Magpies (link in suppliers page) for £13.50.  At the moment the word is that this polish is sold out and won't be restocked, but given the restocks that the rest of the collection received I think there is still hope.  PP have courted controversy with this collection though, there is a lot of bad feeling out there about the restock of the original shades as some people felt they'd been 'tricked' into thinking they were more exclusive than they turned out to be in reality.  I think this would be a valid argument if the polishes were sold at a higher price than other LE shades. I do wonder though if customer reaction is going to influence future PP releases. Perhaps we will be less likely to see LE shades, and if that means we miss out on collections like this one I think that would be very sad indeed.  So fingers crossed that this collection is a sign of things to come and not the last of a dying breed....