Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Picture Polish Whimsy

Australian indie polish maker Picture Polish has a special relationship with polish bloggers around the globe, with a lot of mutual respect, support, acknowledgement and affection passing back and forth. Every summer, Picture Polish hosts a worldwide blogfest where they select a number of bloggers and send them three different polishes to feature in nail art manicures that all post on the same day. Then polish enthusiasts everywhere get to vote at the Picture Polish website for the manicure they like best, and the bloggers with the most votes get the opportunity to collaborate with the formulators at Picture Polish to create their very own polish. The bloggers pick the inspiration, the color, the components and the name, and Picture Polish creates the lacquer. The resulting polishes are called Collaboration Shades and are limited editions.

Today I have one of these special Picture Polish Collaboration Shades to show you. It's called Whimsy and it's a collaboration between Picture Polish and Lindsey of Neverland Nail Blog. Lindsey describes it as a "vivid aqua blue with luxe golden micro flakies," and I concur. It is a lovely vivid and saturated bright creamy aqua blue, somewhere between a tiffany blue and a bright sky blue, swimming with tiny golden microshards that give it the appearance of a glass fleck polish. It's a very pure color, no duskiness or tint other than white. If there was ever a Cinderella shade, this is it.

I first saw Whimsy featured in a post by Mimi Manicures at the end of June. Between her photos and enthusiasm for the polish, I fell in love with it on the spot. I added it to my wish list but just couldn't get it out of my head, so I soon after put together an order from Llarowe for a handful of Picture Polish lacquers including Whimsy. Such is the power of the passionate nail polish blogger!

I've since read other posts about Whimsy mention issues with the consistency of the formula, that it was streaky and difficult to work with. I didn't find Whimsy to be particularly problematic, but being a whitened color it does have a tendency to be streaky, especially on majorly ridged nails like mine. I just added coats until I got a look I was happy with. The consistency was smooth and creamy and liquid, not quite as dense as other Picture Polish lacquers I've experienced, but not runny or patchy at all. I painted as carefully as I could but still had a little clean up to do afterwards. You will see the remnants of this in the photos, where the golden shimmers escaped my clean up brush and hied themselves to various vantage points on my nail surrounds. I don't blame them -- Whimsy offers a spectacular view.

Photos show three coats of Whimsy over treatment and basecoat with a topcoat of Seche Vite. There's a bit of perceptible VNL and ridge-related streaking in the photos. It is much less noticeable in person and doesn't prevent me from being impressed with this polish and very happy with the manicure. 

Picture Polish Whimsy

Picture Polish Whimsy

Picture Polish Whimsy

LOVE!

at the window...

Picture Polish Whimsy

Picture Polish Whimsy, with air bubble

Picture Polish Whimsy

Picture Polish Whimsy

Picture Polish Whimsy

Picture Polish Whimsy

Picture Polish Whimsy

Picture Polish Whimsy

Picture Polish Whimsy

Picture Polish Whimsy

Picture Polish Whimsy

Picture Polish Whimsy

Picture Polish Whimsy

Picture Polish Whimsy

Picture Polish Whimsy

Picture Polish Whimsy

Your cousin Lilly would definitely give Whimsy a TDF stamp of approval, don't you think Eleanor? I just love it, so clean and fresh and buoyant... it's simply delicious on the nail! It reminds me of the Bahamas, this color. It's the color of the waters surrounding the cays that you see as you fly over them. It also reminds me of when I was in sixth grade and used to do a lot of coloring with felt tip pens. I had certain color combinations that were precious, that I used only on the coolest parts of a picture. One of those combinations always had a blue like this in it, usually with a lime green and other blues and greens and maybe a purple along with it.

Whimsy is a wonderful name for this polish, it has a sweet light-hearted and fanciful feel to it...

(source)

Yup, kinda like that. 

xoxo,
Aunt Liz


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