Happy Hands Ready for Fall Collection

It's no secret that Happy Hands Nail Polish is one of my favorite indie brands, so I was happy to accept when Kristi, the talent behind the brand, offered to send me her Fall 2012 collection to swatch and review. Ready for Fall is four polishes with autumn/Halloween themes: Z for Zombie, Stuffed, Danse Macbre, and Easy Bake Coven. (I'll show you the backs of the bottles so you can see them better.)



Z for Zombies is a pea soup green base with lime hexes, salmon pink squares, and red shards. I used three coats plus top coat. Some of the coats are thicker than ideal because I was distracted by how perfectly weird this combination is. I love unusual polishes like this.





Z for Zombies is perfectly able to be worn alone, but I did not let that fact stop me from trying some layering with it. I put on Zoya Shawn with an accent nail of Barry M Lime Green, then added one coat of Z for Zombies on top (okay, more like one and half coats on some nails because I wanted more red shards).





I think the lime green makes a great base for Z for Zombies. The olive green of Shivon, not so much, since it's so much darker than the base color of Z for Zombies that it highlights any thin or thick spots in the glitter coat. However, zombies aren't pretty, so maybe Shivon is actually a perfect base for a Halloween mani with Z for Zombies.

Stuffed is a clear base packed with a variety of glitter shapes, sizes, and even textures (matte and shiny) in autumn tones of brown, orange, green, gold, and red with white accents. For my base colors, I chose the brown creme OPI Suzi Loves Cowboys with the rusty red shimmer China Glaze Foxy as an accent. On top of those, I put two coats of Stuffed plus topcoat. Stuffed is a perfect name for this—look at all that glitter with just two coats.





I can make a case for the big white hex glitters in Stuffed (they're mashed potatoes, like at Thanksgiving dinner) but wanted to see about toning them down with a jelly sandwich, so grabbed OPI Y'all Come Back Ya Hear to experiment. Three coats of the OPI, one of Stuffed, then one more of the OPI added up to this, which I quite like:





Danse Macabre is a clear base with mixed sizes and shapes of black glitter plus purple, orange red, and pale green glitter. I used two coats of it plus topcoat over Piggy Polish You Sleigh Me, a deep red shimmer.







Easy Bake Coven is a clear base with black, purple, orange red, and green glitters in a variety of sizes and shapes—some of the green pieces are crescent moons, but I don't seem to have gotten a clear shot of any of those. I used two coats plus topcoat over Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure, a medium purple shimmer.







I think this is a great collection. My favorites are Z for Zombies—so ickily appropriate for Halloween—and Stuffed—I've never seen a Thanksgiving polish before. You can get your favorites at Happy Hands etsy shop for $8 per 15ml bottle. Easy Bake Coven and Z for Zombies were in stock last time I looked; Kristi usually does a restock at 5 p.m. on Saturdays (Eastern U.S. time), so the other two should be back soon. Happy Hands is also going to be available on Harlow & Co. in the near future. If you want to see more swatches before you decide, cilucia did some great ones at Spaz & Squee.

The polishes shown in this entry were provided free for review purposes. The content of the entry was not dictated by the provider, and I get to keep the polishes for my own use.