Whatever!
The polish is by China Glaze and it's called Blue Sparrow. I got it on ebay without knowing anything else about it other than it was blue. At the time, I'd just swatched my first blue polish and realized that despite my prior thinking that blue polish was "weird," it really wasn't. Not only wasn't it weird, it was pretty, even fabulously so. I absolutely loved the way it looked on my nails and the way I felt wearing it. So off I went faster than a skinny minute to ebay to bid on all the blue polishes I could find.
So Blue Sparrow arrived during a hail of nail mail, most of which was blue nail polish. It got opened and then packed into a box with a bunch of other new polishes. And there it sat until the day came that I read a post about it on a nail polish blog. I wish I could remember which blog it was, I went looking for it again but I can't find it. Anyway, what that person said about Blue Sparrow was that it went on and dried like a neon polish: thin, gritty and matte. But once a clear topcoat was added it a la ugly duckling turned into an amazing sparkly glass fleck polish.
I went and dug it out for swatching. I've had it on hand for a while now and have finally gotten around to messing with it. It does indeed apply like a neon polish, which is its heritage as one of a China Glaze summer collection of polishes called Ink. Neons are celebrated summer polishes.
What is a neon polish, you may ask. And well you may. Neon polishes are the brightest, most vivid, most fluorescent of colors. If you hold them under a black light, they will glow. They are formulated with a kind of pigment that allows them to do this. That same pigment causes them to dry matte.
And matte is exactly the finish that Blue Sparrow dried to. It really didn't look like much. I applied a coat of Sec 'n Dry, which changed the finish from matte to a kind of rubbery looking satin. So then I turned to the mighty Seche Vite, paragon of topcoats. With a coat of Seche Vite, all the sparkly goodness that I'd read about was revealed and the color amped itself up to a brilliant saturated Pacific blue.
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| what I used, left to right: NailTek II treatment basecoat, China Glaze Blue Sparrow, Orly Sec 'n Dry, Seche Vite dry fast topcoat |
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| China Glaze Blue Sparrow, indirect light |
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| China Glaze Blue Sparrow direct sunlight |
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| ditto |
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| at the window... |
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| China Glaze Blue Sparrow |
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| from whence dost the glass fleck come? from glitter! film at eleven... |
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| China Glaze Blue Sparrow, indoors, indirect light |
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| China Glaze Blue sparrow, outdoors, indirect light -- vive le différence! (that's FRENCH btw) |
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| China Glaze Blue Sparrow in light and shade |
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| China Glaze Blue Sparrow |
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| "the claw," modified version |
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| China Glaze Blue Sparrow vs blue sky... |
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| ditto |
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| China Glaze Blue Sparrow |
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| China Glaze Blue Sparrow |
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| "the claw," modified version (again) |
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| Blue Sparrow is a Chi approved polish |
OMG, what a nice polish! All the sparkle that you see is blue microglitter. It was hidden in the neon pigment and matte finish. So actually Blue Sparrow is NOT a glass fleck, although the microglitter gives it that look. The glitter is the same color as the polish base. In a true glass fleck, the glitter is transparent and often irregular in shape. As you could see from the close up of my thumb nail, the microglitters in Blue Sparrow are square.
No doubt it's a great polish, but I'm not convinced that it's great on me. This blue is not shy, this is the blue of an extrovert. Feels a little strange wearing a nail polish that is more outgoing than I am. *lol* This would be a great blue on YOU, I think!
I'll have to find a true glass fleck polish to show you so that you can see what that's is all about.
love,
Aunt Liz
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