Wallis isn't your typical metallic foil. It has a dark swampy green base laced with an abundance of foily golden green shimmers, giving it a tarnished foily speckled look that plays chameleon with the light. At times it is a metallic glowing golden green, at times a blackened olive, at times a patinated brassy sepia. It is above all a beautifully composed combination of reflective and non-reflective elements, light and dark together, working with and against each other. Handsome, lively and complex, this is just an awesome polish.
It's beautifully formulated too, so creamy and easy to control it almost seems like an evolutionarily advanced species of nail polish. For whatever inane reason I chose to apply this polish late at night in dim lighting (never do this!) so my clean up leaves something to be desired.
Photos show three coats (two would have been sufficient I think, but in less than ideal lighting the polish was playing tricks with my eyes so I did three just to be on the safe side) of Wallis over treatment and basecoat with a topcoat of Seche Vite. I took pics in a gamut of lighting situations, from my "lightbox" bathroom, to halogen lighting, flash, outdoors indirect, outdoors direct sun and full shade. My intention was to try and capture as much of the full spectrum of Wallis's considerable range of appearance as I could.
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| Butter London Wallis, indoors indirect natural light -- with somewhat tattered labeling |
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| Butter London Wallis, indoors direct morning sun -- showing great match to bottle color |
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| Butter London Wallis, indoors indirect natural light |
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| Butter London Wallis, indoors indirect natural light |
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| Butter London Wallis, indoors indirect natural light |
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| Butter London Wallis, indoors indirect natural light |
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| Butter London Wallis, indoors indirect natural light |
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| Butter London Wallis, halogen lighting |
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| Butter London Wallis, halogen lighting |
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| Butter London Wallis, halogen lighting |
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| Butter London Wallis, flash |
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| Butter London Wallis, flash |
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| Butter London Wallis, flash |
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| Butter London Wallis, flash |
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| Butter London Wallis, outdoors indirect light |
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| Butter London Wallis, outdoors indirect light |
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| Butter London Wallis, outdoors indirect light |
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| Butter London Wallis, outdoors indirect light |
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| Butter London Wallis, outdoors direct morning sun |
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| Butter London Wallis, outdoors direct morning sun |
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| Butter London Wallis, outdoors direct morning sun |
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| Butter London Wallis, outdoors deep shade |
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| Butter London Wallis, outdoors deep shade |
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| Butter London Wallis, outdoors deep shade |
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| Butter London Wallis, outdoors direct morning sun |
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| Butter London Wallis, outdoors direct morning sun |
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| Butter London Wallis, outdoors direct morning sun |
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| Butter London Wallis, outdoors direct morning sun |
One thing's for sure, these months of swatching and devouring reviews and drooling over online photos have not only informed but most definitely improved and enlarged my polish aesthetic! It is more than a little surreal to me that such a short time ago I was shocked and demoralized by the look of this particular polish on my nails, even though I'd read posts about it and seen swatches online beforehand.
Learn and live, eh? ;->
love,
Aunt Liz
So glad you hung onto this beauty! I adore murky green shades like this. This is so fitting for the season.
ReplyDeleteMe too! Man, I hold on to every polish. I have all these little caches of polishes that I could well go through the rest of my life without trying, a whole series of Milani scattered holos, a dozen Pure Ice polishes, a box full of OPI mauves/pinks/brownish pinks. A bunch of Sinful Colors, a bunch of Sally Hansen. I think I will donate these guys to one of the local women's shelters so they can be used instead of peopling my angsty mind like so many loose ends.... Ahem. Wallis! Just say YES to murky green goodness!
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