Holos from SmittenPolish

I'm continuing the holographic theme from yesterday, since when I do get sun during my swatching time I like to take full advantage. Today I've got 10 holos (well, actually there are 11, but I'll get to that story later) from SmittenPolish which had collected in my "to be swatched" boxes.

The first set of colors I have to share are all part of the A Unicorn Ate My Crayons collection, which debuted this past summer with five holographic shimmers, then a couple more colors were added later as Noelie (the artist behind the SmittenPolish brand) created them. (I am missing one in this lineup: Sunny Side Up, a golden yellow. I did buy it, but due to my disorganization it wasn't with the rest of its buddies when I gathered them up for swatching.) Left to right below: Nimbus, Electric Lime, Enchanted Forest, Blue Footed Booby Dance, Out of the Blue, and Harold's Crayon.



I paired up Nimbus, a very pale grey, with the purple Harold's Crayon as an accent nail. Under indirect light, they looked shimmery with a few rainbow glints showing depending on the viewing angle.





Outside in the sunshine, both Nimbus and Harold's Crayon showed their rainbow sides. The effect was stronger in Harold's Crayon but definitely noticeable in Nimbus as well. I spent quite a bit of time standing in my backyard posing my hand at various angles and enjoying the pretty colors.







I did Skittles swatches with the remaining four colors in this group: Electric Lime (just what it says), Enchanted Forest (blue-leaning deep green), Blue Footed Booby Dance (turquoise blue), and Out of the Blue (bright medium blue). Indoors in indirect light they showed the same shimmer with sparks of rainbows finish as the first two, though I felt like there were more rainbows with these, especially Enchanted Forest.





In the sun—wow! Again, there was much standing and posing and contemplating the colors on my part.





Noelie did another collection of holos for Fall 2013: Zelda's Fall-ly (deep orange red), I Never Drink ... Wine (deep berry red), Cocoa & Cardis (brown), and Bifrost (very deep blue).



Indoors in indirect light:





And oudoors in the sun:







But wait, there's more! The Cocoa & Cardis you see above is from a "bad" batch that accidentally got sent out to several people. I didn't see anything bad about it when I was swatching and wouldn't have thought anything about it except for an email that Noelie sent to customers who'd bought Cocoa & Cardis explaining the mistake and offering a free replacement with the correct shade. I felt a little guilty taking her up on that offer as I like the "wrong" one but more SmittenPolish is better so I did get a new Cocoa & Cardis. I was worried I wouldn't be able to swatch it properly in time to share it with these others, especially since this is what the sky looked like when I had a window to play with my nails over this past weekend:



I got lucky, though; the clouds were moving pretty fast so I just had to stand there waiting for a clear spot between them to take some photos. Here's the correct version of Cocoa & Cardis in the sun; you can see it's a bit lighter and less plum-toned than the "bad" version.





Once I had my sun pictures, I went back inside and took some of Cocoa & Cardis in my lightbox:





I also got a shot in strong direct indoor light; you can see the rainbows do also show up indoors in bright light. (I assume the other colors would be similar; unfortunately I was in such a rush to get all the colors done that day that I didn't take the time to experiment).



Finally, I have a couple comparison shots of "bad" Cocoa & Cardis with the official version. Looking at the bottles side by side, I can see how the darker plummier batch got mixed up with the right ones. If these were from OPI, they'd probably say they were the same color (yes, I am still mad about My Private Jet, though less mad about Not Like the Movies because I got the multichrome version before the less colorful one showed up).



And here they are on the nail; I like them both and hope Noelie releases the "bad" version so more people can get it.



A couple notes on application: these do not need a special base coat; I used my regular Instant Artificials. I did two coats of each color (Nimbus and maybe Blue Footy Booby Dance could have used three), except for correct Cocoa & Cardis which I did one thick coat of since I was nervous about losing the sun.

You can buy SmittenPolish at smittenpolish.com (redirects to Etsy) and follow the brand on the SmittenPolish Facebook page. Right now, three of the A Unicorn Ate My Crayons shades are in stock at $11 a bottle as well as a black holo from the Halloween release that I somehow failed to buy. I believe there wil be another restock in a few weeks, so I wouldn't be surprised if some of the other shades pop back up then; the only one that was limited edition as far as I know was Zelda's Fall-ly. (While I was poking around the SmittenPolish shop, I noticed some of the Berrydrops shades on sale for $5 in the Discontinued section; those are great fun for gradients, like the ones I did in this post.)