Starlight and Sparkles Holo and Shimmer Goodness

Today I have polishes from Starlight and Sparkles, an indie brand that had somehow not made it onto my radar until Issa, the artist who makes the polishes, asked if I'd like to review some of her colors. It didn't take much research for me to decide that yes, yes I would. When the box arrived, I saw that she'd generously sent quite a lot of samples, and when I swatched them, I found I was taking even more photos than usual, so I'm going to showcase only four of the polishes today and save the others for later.

Let's start with Blaze Crystal, a light cinnamon holographic shimmer. This is not a finicky holo; I used a regular OPI basecoat under it, experienced no dragging or bald spots, and only needed two coats for full coverage. In indirect light, the holo is fairly shy.





In direct indoor light, the holo starts to show its colors (the shot below was taken in my dining room with no special lighting):



In the sun, the rainbows really started to pop off Blaze Crystal.





Cocoa Crystal is a brown holo shimmer. Like Blaze Crystal, it was well behaved over regular topcoat and only needed two coats for full opacity. To see if topcoat would dull the holo, I used OPI topcoat on my ring finger over Cocoa Crystal. I'm happy to say the holo was not deterred by the topcoat at all.





The two previous photos were taken in my lightbox; below shows Cocoa Crystal in normal direct indoor light:



And these next two are Cocoa Crystal outside in the sunshine:





Okay, just a couple more sunshine shots:





Hot Chocolate is a brown shimmer. Because it's not a holo, I skipped basecoat and just applied two coats of color.





I don't usually take regular shimmers out in the sun for photos, but I didn't want Hot Chocolate to feel left out, so here it is getting some fresh air and showing off a few pops of gold and orange:



Hot Chocolate made a great base color for Starlight, a holographic topcoat. I put on just one coat of Starlight over Hot Chocolate and got plenty of gorgeous rainbow action in the sunshine (I left one nail un-topcoated so you can compare the before and after).









For comparison purposes, I took Hot Chocolate off my accent nail and put on two coats of Cocoa Crystal. I think Hot Chocolate plus Starlight was more holo, probably because it's a darker brown.



I was curious to see how Starlight would work over lighter bases, so I pulled out a variety of spring pastels and topped them with one coat of Starlight. Top to bottom below, in the lightbox: Essie Find Me an Oasis, Essie Cocktails & Coconuts, Essie Resort Fling, and Studio M Endless.



In the sunshine, the holo effect of Starlight wasn't quite as strong over the lighter colors as it had been over the dark brown, but it was still mighty pretty. And this is only one coat of Starlight—I was conserving because I only had the mini bottle and wanted to try it over more colors.





I want to try Starlight over all the colors, but settled for just doing four more in this swatching session. Top to bottom below, in the lightbox: Catrice I'm Not a Greenager, Essie Under the Twilight, China Glaze Creative Fantasy, and Essie Recessionista, all with one coat of Starlight on top.



In regular room light, quite a lot of rainbows showed up:





In the sun, oh my goodness Starlight was gorgeous! Just look:







I think it's probably pretty clear by now that I was really favorably impressed with these Starlight and Sparkles polishes. They're nicely pigmented, as evidenced by my needing no more than two coats of any of them, and getting really good color payoff from only one of the holo topcoat. I'm so entranced by Starlight that I just bought a full size bottle so I don't have to worry about running out.

These polishes are available from the Starlight and Sparkles etsy shop. Issa sells both mini and full size bottles. A mini of Starlight is $4.50 and the full size is $10, which I think is a great value for that much rainbow goodness. Blaze Crystal and Cocoa Crystal are $4.75 and $11, and Hot Chocolate is $3 and $7.
You can follow the brand on Facebook, too, and see lots of swatches of these and other colors.

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.