Meet My New Pals, Paul and Joe

Some weeks back, I mentioned that I'd taken on Apothica (and the related sites SkinCareRx and skinbotanica) as a sponsor and would have more to say about that later, which today I do. When they started their sponsorship, Apothica sent me a gift certificate, which I pretty much immediately turned into nail polish. Today have swatches of a few of the things I got, namely pretties from a new-to-me brand called Paul & Joe (I sure hope that ampersand displays correctly for you; I sometimes see Blogger muck up symbols, and it wouldn't let me use it at all in the title).

I try not to keep boxes because I have so very much clutter, but these boxes are so pretty that I might have to hang on to them.



Inside the box, the bottles are like none other in my stash. They've got pale turquoise blue handles, a curvy shape, and flowers (I think chrysanthemums) molded onto the front of the bottle and the top of the handle. I got three colors from the Summer 2011 collection, all of them glittery: Confetti, Mediterranean, and Venus. They do have non-glittery ones in the line, but you know I have to have my sparklies. (Looking at the Apothica website, the turquoise handles appear to be just on the summer colors; others have the same bottle style with white or pale pink handles and maybe a different flower on the front, and still others are in a different bottle entirely.)







Confetti is small silver, gold, and multi glitter in a clear base. In the interests of full disclosure I tried it on its own to start with. Two coats really made my stained tips look festive (I did manage to get my ring finger back to the same level of yellow as the rest of my nails for the occasion, thanks to a bit of buffing—I know, but that nail tends to get less stress than some of the others so I thought I could risk weakening it some with the buffer).







Since Confetti seemed destined to be layered, I tried it over Orly Wandering Vine. Only one coat of the Paul & Joe over two coats of the Orly. I quite liked the effect. A layer of top coat probably would have made it look even better, but like all the swatches today, I didn't add one.



In the bottle, the big blue glitter in Mediterranean dominates, but on the nail the green jelly base shows up to play, along with the blue and green small glitter pieces. At first glance, I thought the big glitter was hex glitter, a la Deborah Lippmann, but it's actually circles.







With three coats, there was still a hint of visible nail line, which led me to try it layered. I put one coat of it over Milani Cyberspace (the light blue scattered holo from their 3D line) on two fingers and over Borghese Mezzanotte Blue (navy creme) on the other two.









Over the light blue, the big blue glitter really popped out, and I thought it was fun how the green jelly over the light blue made teal. I liked it on the dark blue, too; there all the glitter showed up really well.

Finally we come to Venus, a light blue with mostly silver micro glitter. I used three coats of this one and didn't feel compelled to layer it on anything. It was just soft and pretty all by itself.









I haven't worn any of these for a full mani yet, so I can't say how they wear on me, but they sure are nice to look at. They also have a slight floral perfume scent to them, so they're not bad to smell either, though I don't recommend getting too close before they dry completely, as that just leads to glitter on one's nose (you can guess how I figured that out). They sell for $14.00 per 10 ml bottle (.33 fl. oz.). I'll be hosting a giveaway for an Apothica gift card that the winner could use to get her own pretty bottle of Paul & Joe (with funds leftover); look for details on that coming up before the end of the month.

The polishes shown in this entry were purchased with a gift certificate provided to me for free by Apothica. The content of the entry was not dictated by the provider, and I get to keep the polishes for my own use.