China Glaze Ruby Pumps
Pay attention, Eleanor! As a young nail polish enthusiast, there's at least one red polish that is famous enough for you to commit to memory and that is Ruby Pumps by China Glaze. Anyone who loves polish either owns this polish, wants to own it, doesn't want to own it because it's so damn famous and they don't see what the big deal is, or has heard of it.
And I admit that I was part of the second to last category until just recently. I was putting together an order from Trans Design for some supplies and at the last minute, for whatever reason, threw in Ruby Pumps. A startling event for sure since I am probably the only polish enthusiast who orders from Trans Design and doesn't get polish. There's a reason for this. Oh I've put together polish orders from Trans Design, huge comprehensive polish orders from my wish list that run to hundreds of dollars, orders that I've done screen captures of and filed in a special place in my documents folder so that when I DO place an order for polish I won't forget anything important. But every time I do it, click, I close the window and let them go. You can see my reason for not ordering polish from such an awesome source, right? There are just too many and the prices are too good, where would I stop? How could I draw that line? Better not to start, is what. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
But if I was ever to place an order for one single polish out of hundreds, it just figures it would be Ruby Pumps. Somehow this classic found its way into my Trans Design shopping cart and subsequently arrived here the other day, the lone polish in a box full of acetone, Graham Hands Down Ultra Cosmetic and Nail Pads and styrofoam packing peanuts. WTF? Had I grudgingly succumbed to the hype surrounding this polish? Well, in a word, yes. Ruby Pumps has been on my wish list and off it, on and off, since I've had a wish list. At long last, my curiosity had finally gotten the better of any silly self-conjured disinclination I was harboring (though this certainly speaks more to the character of this polish than it does my own).
So what is it, this Ruby Pumps I speak of? Well it's a venerable polish that's now part of China Glaze's core line but was originally released in 2001 as part of of a limited edition collection of polishes called The Wizard of Ooh Ahz. In response to customer demand, the collection was reformulated and re-released in 2009 and shortly afterward became part of the core line. Ruby Pumps wasn't the only polish from that collection to go viral, but I don't think I'm wrong in saying that it is arguably the most popular, most beloved, most purchased China Glaze polish ever.
Ruby Pumps is a deep well-pigmented crimson red jelly swimming with what for all intents and purposes looks to be red microglitters. I suspect they may well actually be silver, but when the light hits them through that beautiful red jelly base they are RED and they are SPARKLY. In the bottle, Ruby Pumps is an attractive deep red, with only a glow in certain lights to hint at the sparkle-iscious splendor it becomes on the nail. But you see it's potential the moment you begin to apply it.
Formula-wise, Ruby Pumps is quite liquid. It is a jelly, after all, and has a jelly's sheerness and translucence that looks like it would want to run and pool. But it doesn't. It's actually fairly easy to apply as long as you don't swipe your cuticles (as I promptly did). The tiny microglitters are beautifully suspended in this base and flow smoothly and evenly onto the nail without stacking or dragging or overhang. Clean up definitely requires pure acetone, polish remover doesn't cut it with this kind of pigmentation. Interestingly, the microglitters were not a clean up problem for me the way they usually are with polish components of this fineness. They didn't disperse across and stubbornly cling to my nail surrounds but removed cleanly with the unwanted polish and left no trace of themselves behind.
Being a jelly, Ruby Pumps requires multiple coats for opacity. I did two medium-thick coats over treatment and basecoat, but if I had a lighter touch I'd try for three thin coats as better for showcasing the layered microglitters that make this polish such a star. This polish dries naturally to a slightly textured semi-matte finish that loves a nice thick topcoat to make the most of it's potential. I used Seche Vite.
It's about time I got to the photos, no? Sheesh I had no idea I had so many words with which to surround this polish. And yet, I'm not done! Photo caveat: one of the reasons folks like me take so long to come around to Ruby Pumps is that it is one of those polishes that is never done justice by a still photograph. Of all that I've looked at, there is one photo I've seen that I feel comes especially close to representing Ruby Pumps in person. I found it on Lacquerized, a polish blog from The Netherlands that was apparently discontinued by the author in 2011. The photo is from February 2010, and you can see it here. A brilliant pic, taken with a prop of red sequins. I have no red sequined props and my photos are the same sort of two-dimensional representations that you'll see hundreds of if you Google images of Ruby Pumps. All I can say is, this is a polish that is best experienced in three (or more, who knows?) dimensions.
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Those perfectly suspended sparkling microglitters are the beating heart of Ruby Pumps, no? As you can see, even in the shade they light up through the layers of color like a facets on a gemstone. I wish Colette of Simple Little Pleasures would do one her Polish in Motion videos of this one! That would be the only way to come close to truly experiencing this polish without wearing it yourself or seeing it in person on someone else. Eleanor, I promise to wear this one for you at some point in the future. It's a must see!
There are a lot of good polish blog posts featuring Ruby Pumps, as you can imagine. I looked through quite a few before settling down to write this post. If you want to see more of Ruby Pumps, there are two blogs in particular whose posts stood out for me. One is a very recent post by The Nail Polish Project, here, and shows Ruby Pumps as a layer in what Jen calls her "holy trinity of red polishes." The other is an older post from a little over a year ago in what appears to be, sadly, a discontinued polish blog by a guy, Scott Gents. His blog, One Gent's Ten, has an excellent review of Ruby Pumps here.
If red is a classic color for nail polish and Ruby Pumps is a classic red polish, then I submit every nail polish enthusiast needs this one in their collection. Are there dupes? Sure! Even I, slow to red as I am, own some. Dorothy from Picture Polish, for example. Orly's Star Spangled. And there are many more I don't own, from Milani, OPI, Essie and even China Glaze itself. But Ruby Pumps is the Lucy of all red glitter jellies, it's their heritage and they can all trace their lineage back to it. It was the first and, after all these years, is still one of the best.
love,
Aunt Liz
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