Zoya Sailor and Nail Pattern Boldness Le Big Party

Le Big Party by indie polish maker Nail Pattern Boldness is an explosion of tiny matte hex and square glitters in six colors in a clear suspension base. There's red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. Oh, Rain-BOW! *lol* I got this polish about six months ago from Llarowe, tried it once, got scared and haven't used it since. Since then I've grown into my polish enthusiasm a bit more so I thought it was time to try it again.

I think I was less scared than just plain freaked out -- I was expecting it to look like the macro shot I saw on the Llarowe listing and here were these teensy tiny little glitters swarming densely over my nails... there were so many of them, and they just kept coming at me... or something like that. Ha! Plus it was back before I knew how to remove glitter polishes using the foil method and removing Le Big Party was a horrifying reality check. You better believe I was on google stat after that to find out how to get les glitters off les nails.

Now, of course, I know what I'm getting into with a polish like this. That doesn't mean that removing Le Big Party will be a big party. I'm sure I'll have little brightly colored matte glitters lodged in my cuticles for a few manicures after this, but that's ok!

Le Big Party is densely packed enough with glitters to be opaque on its own. Special Girl Nails has some AWESOME photos of it this way, which you can see here. But you know me and layering. I guess subconsciously I've been waiting for a polish to layer it over because the minute I got Zoya Sailor I was like, aha! Le Big Party time!

Zoya Sailor was recently released as part of their fall 2013 collection, and is a well-pigmented deep navy blue creme. How well-pigmented is it? For those with better application skills than I, one coat to complete opacity. Shalom! Lovely formula, dense and fluid. I kinda made a bit of a mess during application, swiped a couple of cuticles, had trouble getting clean lines on the sides, but this is a forgiving polish and with the help of my trusty Seche Vite it turned out splendidly in the end.

Photos show two coats of Sailor over treatment and basecoat plus a topcoat of Seche Vite.

Zoya Sailor -- sorry for the blurry pic, it was the only bottle pic that turned out well enough to include -- I wanted to show that the polish dries darker than the bottle color...

Zoya Sailor

Zoya Sailor

Zoya Sailor

Zoya Sailor... dark, but not black!

Zoya Sailor

Zoya Sailor

Zoya Sailor

Zoya Sailor

Zoya Sailor

Zoya Sailor

Zoya Sailor

And here we go with one coat of Le Big Party over my Sailor manicure above plus two coats of Gelous and a coat of Seche Vite (Le Big Party dries to a topcoat hungry, somewhat gritty finish).

Nail Pattern Boldness Le Big Party over Zoya Sailor

Nail Pattern Boldness Le Big Party over Zoya Sailor

Nail Pattern Boldness Le Big Party over Zoya Sailor

Nail Pattern Boldness Le Big Party over Zoya Sailor

Nail Pattern Boldness Le Big Party over Zoya Sailor

Nail Pattern Boldness Le Big Party over Zoya Sailor

Nail Pattern Boldness Le Big Party over Zoya Sailor

Nail Pattern Boldness Le Big Party over Zoya Sailor

Nail Pattern Boldness Le Big Party over Zoya Sailor

Nail Pattern Boldness Le Big Party over Zoya Sailor

Nail Pattern Boldness Le Big Party over Zoya Sailor

Nail Pattern Boldness Le Big Party over Zoya Sailor

Nail Pattern Boldness Le Big Party over Zoya Sailor

Nail Pattern Boldness Le Big Party over Zoya Sailor

Nail Pattern Boldness Le Big Party over Zoya Sailor

Big fun! Mimi over at Makeup Withdrawal described Le Big Party as "essence of circus clown" in her post about it, here. Ha, perfect! I wish I could have gotten a good macro shot in the bottle of this polish but my camera was having none of such strenuous focusing under the halogens. I really love this now, it applies so nicely and the glitter spread is fantabulous. The suspension base is beautifully formulated -- no glitter sinking in Le Big Party, none, even though I haven't touched it for six months except to place it in my polish rack. 

If you look carefully you can see that a few nails are showing a bit of tip shrinkage, which I attribute to having used two coats of Gelous under my Seche Vite. It's just a tiny bit, though, and definitely not enough that I would sacrifice that color-enhancing "glitter under glass" look the next time I use Le Big Party. Because, oh yes, there will be a next time.

Eleanor, this would be so CUTE on your wiggly mitts! One coat and you're done, how 'bout it?

love,
Aunt Liz