Picture Polish - Bombshell and Jealousy

I have a couple of Picture Polish shades to show you today.

Bombshell is a rich royal blue shimmer. This was two coats and application was smooth and easy.

Jealousy  - This is one great polish.  The glitter is densely packed, but not so thick that the polish is gluggy.  The colour is amazing and the glitter pieces in it are mixed and varied.  I really love this one.  Two coats.  But it needs a good couple of layers of to coat to make it a little less gritty looking, even though it's not rough.

Look at all the glitter.

And now even closer.   There's hexes of all different sizes, squares and mini bars.

I think the Picture Polishes sometimes get a little overlooked on the Picture Polish website because of all the Ozotics they stock, but certainly there are many Picture Polishes are are worth a close look.

Picture Polish Metallic Mush

I have been eyeing off this Picture Polish shade for a little while, and when they organised the Blog Fest, this was one of the polishes that I went searching for.  I found the blogger swatch over on Sawan's blog where I thought it looked beautiful, so I decided to grab a bottle.

If you have a bottle of Picture Polish, you would know that each colour has it's own saying written above the polish name.  On this one it is "Watch out this maybe magic!".  I know Sawan comments that she didn't quite get it and to tell you the truth, neither did I.

But as I was waiting for this to dry, it suddenly dawned on me what it meant.

The shade a beautiful foil metallic in a very pale mushroom pink.  Ahhh! *light goes on above head* "Metallic Mush", is short for Metallic Mushroom.  And the tag line of "Watch out this maybe magic!", is making a play on the magic mushroom, you know the hallucinogic kind!.  So I get it now, but what I don't get is why it is "maybe" and not "may be".  

Metallic Mush is a beautiful metallic foil, with warm tones, which is what makes it so pretty and different from just a regular silver foil. In the sun (above) it really sparkles, but even in the shade it looks brushed metal.  I still love these bottles, the shape is just perfect for stacking, and they have one of those slightly grippy, rubberised handles that makes them so easy to open.

Of course as soon as I wore it, the alarm went off in my head *dupe alert, dupe alert*, so off I went to my stash to pull out Ulta3 Envy.  My bottle of Envy is a few years old now, and it really needs to be thinned.  Of course I didn't thin it, I just put it on, so I did find it thick and gluggy compared to applying Metallic Mush, which was smooth and shiny to apply.  e

On the nail and in the bottle they are pretty much identical, and it's only because I took a chunk out of the polish on the tip of my ring finger that I can recall which was Envy and which was Metallic Mush.  I was really hoping they would be slightly different.  I still love the colour though, so maybe I will use one bottle for marbling or frankening.

piCture pOlish blog fest - Antique

Here it is, early on  Monday 25 July 2011 in Australia, which is officially piCture pOlish blog fest day.  Over the next 48 hours around the world, I suspect you will be seeing quite a lot of piCture pOlish shades swatched and reviewed. I think this was a genius idea from the girls at piCture pOlish to get their shades swatched and to take over the blogisphere for a day.

I was lucky enough to be selected to showcase one of piCture pOlish's new shades - Antique.  For me, while I was very familiar with the girls from piCture pOlish for my many purchases of Oztoic Pro polishes, I had yet to try any of their private label polish.

So without further babble, here it is.

Antique is a dusty violet base packed with tiny square silver glitter.  In the sun it is amazingly sparkly and in the shade you can really see the density and depth of the glitter.  It applied very nicely and was opaque in two coats.  But being a dense glitter it does require a good layer of top coat to smooth out the grittiness (unless you like that sandpaper feel).  These pics are two coats plus Seche Vite top coat.

In the picture above it still looks kinda gritty with the sun bouncing off at all different angles, although as you can see below, it was silky smooth.

Here is an indoor macro shot of that glitter.

I first saw this polish on piCture pOlishes facebook page where they had a naming competition for this shade and two others. What is cool is that a fellow Aussie blogger Shatter me Claire won with her name of 'Antique' for this polish - Yay for Claire.  Here is the photo they used for the naming competition.

The funny thing is, when I saw this picture on facebook, and then saw this bottle in real life, I was totally surprised because it looked so different to what I thought it would look like.  I was expecting it to be more of a metallic shade rather than a glitter. But I'm a glitter hoe, so glitter is great!   I also saw Jacie's post about 'Jealously' (the green polish) which compared to that above picture, looks like a totally different polish.  Jacie's swatch looks apple green, but above it so much darker and forest like.  I guess that just shows that you can't rely on bottle pics to truly select a shade.

The other thing I noticed was that it might be a dupe for another polish in my stash. Ulta 3 Candied Violet.

So of course I swatched them together straight away.

As you can see, the colours indoors are almost identical, but Antique's glitter is much more dense, which does make it pop just that little bit more in the sun. You can see how much more reflective Antique is compared to Candied Violet below.

At this angle in the sun you can see that Antique is more opaque at two coats and leans a more mauve base, whereas Candied Violet appears more pink.

Ulta 3 Candied Violet costs only $2.25, but you have to be prepared to search your entire city or state by going through the Ulta 3 bins at the chemist if you want to find one.  I haven't seen a bottle for ages. But if you already have a bottle of Candied Violet, then it's a close enough dupe.  Another polish that is a close dupe is Chemistry 133, which Claire did as a comparison.

About these bottles.  I love love the shape, I wish all my nail polish was in these bottles as they would be so perfect for storage. But I do wish that the bottles had a size on them.  I mean how many mls are these?  My guess would be about 12ml, but that really is a guess.  PP gals, I think you should get the size printed on the bottle.  Also, none of these bottles have the ingredients on them, but they do have the website URL printed on them and their website does have a page that lists all the ingredients.

piCture pOlishes are AUD$9.90, which to ladies in other countries may sound quite expensive.  However, in a country where OPI retails for $19.95,  China Glaze for $18.95 and Orly for $16.95 any boutique polish under $10 is still pretty good value.

Will I be purchasing piCuture pOlish brand lacquers in the future? I certainly think so.  The formula and wear on this one was nice, it's just a shame that I got a shade that was dupy to one already in my stash (but I guess that happens when you have ~500 bottles). Now I just need to check everyone else's swatches to see what colours I like.

Picture Polish vending machine

Subscribers to piCture pOlish would have already seen this, but I had to share with others.

How freakin' cool is this. A nail polish vending machine!  It's a first in Australia.

It's located in the Robina town centre on the Gold Coast. Which is a two hour plane ride away for me, but still.  What an awesome idea!!  Ladies overseas, do you have nail polish vending machines where you live?