Picture Polish "Lollipop"

Hello ladies! Today I have a really amazing shade to share with you - it's one of the latest collaboration shades from Picture Polish - "Lollipop".  This polish is so much prettier IRL than these swatches can capture but I've done my best!

Picture Polish Lollipop - day light lamp

My camera flat out refused to capture this colour properly.  The dodgy cameraphone picture below is much closer to how it really looks, but the best description is that this is the perfect Cadbury's purple.  I'm not sure if this is a UK thing, but Cadbury's purple (from the Dairy Milk chocolate bar wrapper) is instantly recognisable and hands-down my favourite colour of all time.  It's so recognisable in fact that Cadbury tried to trademark Pantone 2865c

This is a purple jelly base packed with small hex glitters and tiny round glitter pieces, both in the same royal purple but with a hint of blue for an extra pop. The first coat was really sparse but it was perfectly opaque in two. I'm wearing it here with a new base coat in fact - Leighton Denny Undercover Base Coat - and a generous coating of Essie Good to Go.  The finish was nice and smooth.

Picture Polish Lollipop - artificial light

I loved this polish and the wear time was surprisingly decent for a glitter.  It was a real pain to remove though, even with the foil method, so it's a definite candidate for PVA basecoat next time - and there will be many next times with this fabulous polish.

Picture Polish Lollipop - day light lamp

I highly recommend this, it's fantastic. I picked mine up from Rainbow Connection for £10.75.

Picture Polish Lollipop - day light lamp

Sparkly Zoya's: Final Comparison

Hello Ladies! One final post of this sparkly Zoya blogathon...I just wanted to give some quick comparison bottleshots.  I was originally concerned that Peyton, Blaze and Aurora might be fairly similar before I bought them, but as you can see from the photo below they couldn't be more different.

From L-R : Zoya Peyton, Blaze and Aurora

You can also clearly see from this shot see that the holo glitter in Aurora is much more concentrated that in the other shades, and its utterly mesmerizing on the nail.  It ranks amongst my sparkliest polishes of all (second only to the Smitten Polish 'Magic Words' collection polishes...post to come on these).  So imagine my surprise to see this fantastic comparison post by More Nail Polish comparing OPI DS polishes, Zoya's, Ozotic's and Dance Legend, showing that the Dance Legend WOW Prism polish packs in more glitter than all of them....I strongly predict there will be some DL polishes entering the stash in the near future.

Jen at The PolishAholic (one of my absolute fave bloggers) did a wonderful comparison post of Holiday polishes from several major brands, including the Zoya Ornate collection.  Check it out at this link.

One of the comparisons made on the More Nail Polish post is between Zoya Blaze and Picture Polish Monroe.  On her post these look very similar.  I have both of these so took a quick couple of comparison shots and I think they are quite different.  I think Monroe was re-released with a new formula, and I wonder whether this is why mine is so dissimilar to Blaze....

Left - PP Monroe, Right - Zoya Blaze

As you can see here, in my bottles the PP is a darker shade of red, more of a burgundy, and the Zoya is more pink leaning towards raspberry.  Both are fabulous, and not dupes.  So yes, if you like sparkly red polishes I think it's justifiable to have both.  Then again I think it's justifiable to spend more on nail polish than food, so what do I know?

Finally, I was interested in finding comparisons to Dream with Picture Polish Cosmos (which I don't own, but was considering) and found this great post from the Polished Cricket. In her post she suggests that these are quite similar, but that Dream is better and from her pics I agree.  Definitely no need for both methinks.

Until next time :)

Picture Polish Illusionist

Hello Ladies!  Well it's a little late, but here's the final instalment from the Picture Polish LE multi-chrome set - the fabulous "Illusionist". (previous posts on its collection mates: Aurora, Borealis, Gravity, Altered State, Solar Flare).  To think I almost didn't buy this one! I thought it would be too similar to Aurora but for me, its different enough to justify having them both.  I've put some comparisons in this post, in a similar vein to the ones I did for Borealis and Altered State.  But first, here's some pure swatch porn...

Picture Polish "Illusionist" - artificial light

Illusionist is a Teal Green-Purple-Magneta multi-chrome polish with silver scatterchrome particles.  This is a similar colour shift range to Aurora (see below), the dominant colour is a lovely teal green and under shallow angles this shifts to purple, and magenta at large angles.  The scatterchrome particles give this a gorgeous silvery shimmer, and 'dusty' look.

Picture Polish "Illusionist" - artificial light

Pictured here I'm wearing a couple of coats on top of a single coat of black 'undies' with NE base coat and HK girl topcoat to sandwich it all together.  As with the other polishes in this collection, the formula is as smooth as melted butter. Its very sheer, so you definitely need undies with this, but you don't need to use black....I had a major lemming for this beauty ever since I saw these swatches from Emma at Imagination in Colour where she layered this over paler colours to great effect.  I'll definitely be trying this next.

Picture Polish "Illusionist" - artificial light

Here is a comparison to Aurora...as you can see the colour range is identical, its the finish that is different.  Aurora has a densely glittered finish and is packed with multichrome glitter particles.  This intensifies the colour shift (see below, upper right).  The silvery finish of Illusionist, from the scatterchrome particles, is a more subtle muted effect but really sophisticated.  Its basically identical to the relationship between Borealis and Altered State(comparison on Borealis page).

Picture Polish "Illusionist" vs. "Aurora" - artificial light

I picked up my bottle of Illusionist from the lovely Sally at Sally Magpies (link in the suppliers page) for £13.50.  I highly recommend it, especially if you missed out on Aurora. 

I did notice that the new Dance Legend Galaxy series look a lot like the PP Limited Edition series! So there might be an option out there if you missed out on these.  The link above is to a blog that's in Russian, heaven knows what it says, but I'm guessing its something along the lines of 'bloody hell look at these stonkingly awesome polishes'....if anyone has any of these I'd love to hear what you think of them!

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....

 

 

Ozotic 617

Hello ladies! I have a fabulous polish to share with you today...the enigmatically titled '617' by the Ozotic. 

Ozotic 617  - artificial light

617 is a sky blue scattered holo polish that is jam packed with sparkle.  This reminds me of sparkling tropical oceans and bright sunny sky. It's stunningly gorgeous, and one of those eye catching polishes that you just can't stop staring at.  Too often I find polishes give you that 'wow' factor only when you first put them on, after that you stop noticing them....well not with this one!  I'm wearing my customary two coats here, with NE base and SV top.  This polish was pretty glossy all on its own, so the SV was just to extend weartime.  Formula was smooth like melted chocolate and the brush is excellent.  It's nicely opaque in one coat, but I use two more out of habit than anything.  No complaints on the quality front.

Ozotic 617 - artificial light

Sadly Ozotic seem to have disappeared as a brand.  Certainly the word on the blogosphere is that the 500 and 600 series are not completely gone due to lack of raw ingredients.  Australian brand Picture Polish were 'representing' the Ozotic brand, and announced recently that they will no longer be doing so to concentrate their efforts on the Picture Polish brand.  On their FB page PP say that PP and Ozotic are owned by the same company, and Ozotic is no longer listed on their website.  This news makes me a very sad nail junkie.  Ozotic made, hands down, some of the most mindboggling polishes I've ever seen.  I only own 4, because I thought they were too spendy.  Now I'm kicking myself for not stocking up while I could.  Sigh.

There are still some places out there selling off the last of their Ozotic stock, and there's always EBay.  Also, Picture Polish have announced that they will be re-releasing some of the 600 series under the PP brand, with new names.  See this post at More Nail Polish for details.

Ozotic 617

I apologise if I've just given you a lemming for a HTF polish.  It's not intentional, it's just a sign of how much of a time delay there is in me taking pictures and actually writing blog posts....Halloween releases get blogged in January and apparently now brands go out of business before I get round to telling you about them....oops!

Picture Polish Altered State

Hello ladies! Today I have the final instalment in the Limited Edition Picture Polish collection - "Altered State" (see collection-mates : Aurora, Borealis, Illusionist, Solar Flare, Gravity).  Please excuse the nasty cut on my index finger.  It's not pretty and it stings like a beyotch when rubbed with acetone I can tell you...anyway onto the swatches...

Picture Polish Altered State - artificial light

Altered State is remarkably similar to Gravity -  it's a Purple-Blue-Magenta multi-chrome (whereas Gravity is Blue-Purple-Magenta) with the 'scatter chrome' finish.  The shade of the blue is different, the blue of altered state is more of a denim/royal blue, and the blue of  Gravity is slightly more green leaning to come out as more of a teal blue in the sunshine.  But in essence, these polishes are very similar and just have the order of the multi-chrome effect reversed.  In each case, in most lighting conditions, the polish will appear to be the dominant colour.  So Gravity looks blue most of the time, and Altered State looks purple most of the time.

Picture Polish Altered State - artificial light - the dominant colour is purple

In these pictures I'm wearing my usual two coats of colour atop black undies ('Just Black' by No.7) and NE base, finished with HK girl topcoat.  Like all the Limited Edition shades the formula is great.  It's a sheer polish, so you will definitely need some type of base colour if you don't want to wait for 20 coats to dry...

Picture Polish Altered State - artificial light

This is a very pretty polish, and if I hadn't seen the other polishes in this range I'd think this was amazing. But as it stands, this is my least favourite of the bunch.  In order of awesomeness I'd rank these (best to last) Aurora, Solar Flare, Borealis, Gravity, Illusionist, Altered State.

Picture Polish Altered State - artificial light

The multichrome effect on Altered State is the weakest of the bunch.  It's almost impossible to catch a glimpse of all the colours on the nail at once.  Your best chance is in natural light, in the shade.  This crappy phone pic shows the best I was able to capture.  Nothing like the wow factor of Aurora, but still a very pretty polish especially with all the sparkly scatterchrome particles which look gorgeous in all types of artificial lighting.



Picture Polish Altered State - natural light

I picked up my bottle of Altered State from Rainbow Connection UK (link in the suppliers list) for £12.50.  It's currently out of stock, but I believe there is a restock due sometime in March so keep your eyes peeled :) 



Picture Polish Ultra Violence

The final instalment in today's Picture Polish blogfest....this is the incredible Collaboration shade "Ultra Violence"...


Welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, well.
To what do I owe the extreme pleasure of this surprising visit?
 

Ultra-Violence is a purple foil glitter with pink sparkly shimmer and adorable pale pink hex glitters.  It's hard to see the link between such a pretty polish and the book-banning ultraviolence of Burgess' novel but hey, if I looks this nice I don't care...


Picture Polish Ultra Violence

As per usual, I've got two coats of colour atop NE base and beneath HK Girl topcoat.  The formula on this one was reasonably easy to apply for something so glittery.  I only noticed afterwards quite how many of the pink hex glitters were sculling about in the bottom of the bottle, so perhaps if I'd given it a good shake I'd have gotten more of them on the nail.  I did manage to get a reasonable number on there and they were a gorgeous addition.  The flashes of pink sparkle really stand out against the purple and make this a really eyecatching shade.

Picture Polish Ultra Violence - artificial light

I'm totally in love with this shade, it has all of my favourite qualities...it's purple, its glittery, and it has cute pink sparkles in (I would vehemently deny loving pink if you asked me to my face, because it's not very rock and roll, but I do in fact love pink sparkly things.  Sometimes I'm such a girl *eye roll*)

Picture Polish Ultra Violence - artificial light

I picked up my bottle from Rainbow Connection UK (link in Suppliers page) for £13.50.  It was totally worth it.  Like the Limited Edition shades this one has gone straight into my top ten favourite polish purchases of 2014...I know the year is young but I predict this one will still be there by the end of the year....highly recommended.


 

Picture Polish Monroe

Continuing the Picture Polish love in....this beauty is "Monroe", a yummy red holo polish from the Australian brand.

Picture Polish Monroe - artificial light

Monroe is a dark claret jelly packed with sparkly holo glitter.  This had a similar formula to Hope and suffered from some unfortunate streaky, clump and drag issues.  With patience to let the first coat dry this can be fixed with a generous second coat.  Here I'm wearing my usual two coats with NE base and HK girl topcoat.

Picture Polish Monroe - artificial light

Monroe is a really classy polish, it's a sensible 'grown up' colour and the holo effect is not too blingy (but is sparkly enough to be fun).  In these swatches is appears quite pink leaning, but in real life it is more red than pink.

Picture Polish Monroe - artificial light

Look how shiny! I was a big fan of this polish, it would be a nice holiday polish come Christmas time but being a classic shade it's one you can wear all year round too (not that I ever pay attention to season when I pick my polish.  If I did I'd have to ignore Spring entirely - pastels? bleurch!)



Picture Polish Monroe

I picked up my bottle of Monroe from Rainbow Connection UK (link in the suppliers page) for £13.50. It's a really cute shade, I'd definitely recommend this one.

Picture Polish Hope

Hello ladies! Today is a festival of Picture Polish swatches...I'm trying to work through my backlog of unblogged swatches.  "Hope" is a dark blue holo polish, and was a Collaboration shade released in 2013:

 

Picture Polish "Hope" - artificial light

Pictured here I'm wearing two coats of Hope atop NE base with HK Girl topcoat to finish.  The formula on this one was really tricky to work with.  It's so densely glittered that there's a lot of 'clump and drag' with this polish and it was hard to even it out.  The best option is to wait until the first coat is really dry before applying the second (and it's definitely a multi-coater as the first coat goes on pretty streaky).

Picture Polish "Hope" - artificial light

Hope is a deep navy jelly with tons of holo glitter and light blue hex glitters.  The hex glitters seem to prefer to stay stuck to the sides and base of the polish bottle (you can see them bunched up below the text on the bottle in the pic above) - I didn't manage to get many at all on the nail despite shaking it quite hard before hand.  You can see one lonely hex glitter on the bottom of my thumb nail here...these give a pretty effect, I'll have to try fishing for more next time.

oooh shiny :)

Hope is a pretty shade, but not nearly as sparkly in real life as I was expecting.  I think this is due to how dark the base shade is.  If you're in the market for a dark blue glittery holo then I'd say look no further than Smitten Polish Klaatu Barada Nikto.  This offering from Picture Polish is a great polish, but overall I was a little underwhelmed by it, especially given the spendy pricetag.  There's a lot of comparisons online with Picture Polish Cosmos, which is also a blue holo, but being a lighter shade of blue I think the sparkle might pop more on that one.



Picture Polish "Hope"

I picked up Hope from the lovely Sally Magpies (link in Supplier page) for £13.50.

Picture Polish Gravity

Hello ladies! Continuing with the series of Limited Edition Picture Polish shades today I have Gravity to show you (you can see also collection-mates Aurora, Borealis, Gravity, Altered State, Solar Flare and Illusionist)....

Picture Polish Gravity - natural light

Gravity is a blue to purple duochrome with the same holo shard glitters that Solar Flare has.  Like Solar Flare , Gravity has a more subtle duochrome effect than Aurora. In the shade, you can see both of the main colours on the nail at once, but most of the time this polish appears completely one colour of the three: teal blue, royal purple and magenta.

Picture Polish Gravity - artificial light

I'm wearing two coats of Gravity atop a couple coats of 'black undies' ('Just Black' by No7) with NE base and HK Girl top coat.  Like all of the Limited Edition collection polishes, this is a relatively sheer polish that applies smoothly and evenly, formula is fantastic and the brush is easy to use.

Picture Polish Gravity - sun light

This is a gorgeous polish, like its collection mates this is something really special.  Picture Polish is a bit on the spendy side, but for these polishes I'd say they're worth every penny.  With my love of metallic purple polishes Gravity really appeals to me a lot, but being objective I would rank these polishes (first to last) as Aurora, Solar Flare , and Gravity.  That being said, these are some of my favourite polishes in my entire collection, so third place ain't bad.

Picture Polish Gravity - artificial light

I picked up my bottle of Gravity from Rainbow Connection for £12.50 (link in supplier page).  It's currently out of stock, but a restock is due sometime in March...

Next up will be Altered State, the last of the collection that I picked up.  I have no idea why I didn't buy Illusionist at the time, I think I had some mad idea that if I left one behind that was evidence that I'm capable of restraint, which we all know is a lie.  So I'll be eagerly awaiting the restock too....

Picture Polish Aurora

Greetings Ladies!  Allow me to introduce you to one of my favourite polishes of all time....Picture Polish "Aurora"....

Picture Polish Aurora

Aurora is, bar none, the most astonishing multi-chrome polish I have ever seen.  Like its name suggests, this polish is the embodiment of the Northern Lights.  The colour shift is predominantly Emerald - Magenta - Purple but there are hints of blue and gold peeking through.  As if all that wasn't excitement enough this polish is also packed with multichrome glitter that is similar to Ozotic 528 (hardly a big surprise given that Picture Polish is made by the same company as the now-discontinued Ozotic).

Picture Polish Aurora - one bottle, a rainbow of colour

Pictured here I'm wearing a couple of coats of Aurora over a plain black polish ('Just Black' by No.7) to make the colour shift pop.  As usual, there's NE base underneath is all and HK Girl topcoat to finish it off.

Picture Polish Aurora - a chameleon polish

This polish simply has to be seen to be believed.  Sadly this is really limited edition.  Originally it was announced there would only be 800 bottles worldwide and that customers would be limited to purchasing one bottle each.  Nail polish addicts worldwide went absolutely crazy trying to get hold of it and it sold out in tens of minutes.  Then miraculously they announced that a further 1000 bottles were going to be made available.  That's some smart marketing right there...

Picture Polish Aurora - natural light

The best colour shift is seen in natural light, in the shade.  It's then that you see several colours on the nail at once and it's 10x more beautiful than this crappy phone camera picture suggests.  In fact it was so pretty that I actually had to drive with gloves on because the effect was so distracting I was worried I was going to crash my car.  I'm absolutely serious about that.  This here is crash your car nail porn. In artificial light, most of the time this polish appears one colour, but whichever colour it picks is GORGEOUS...sit back and enjoy the show:

Picture Polish Aurora - artificial light

This emerald green shade is the dominant colour, and its a beautiful jewel tone, I'd love a polish that was just this single colour all the time. 

and it's also a lovely royal blue....

and a fabulous magenta/purple....

It's so many colours, and all of them gorgeous. What I loved about this polish were those moments when three or more colours were on the nail at the same time, the combination of the green and the pink is just astonishing. 

I bought my bottle from Sally Magpies (link on supplier's page) for £13.50.  There will apparently be a restock of this shade sometime in March (at Sally's and at Rainbow Connection).  So get your clicking figures at the ready ladies because you're not going to want to miss this. 

I predict that this will be my favourite polish of 2014...

Also check out collection-mates Borealis, Gravity, Altered State, Solar Flare & Illusionist.