Barielle Blackened Bleu

Blackened Bleu was released in 2009 as part of Barielle's All Lacquered Up collection in collaboration with Michelle Mismas of the fantastic polish blog All Lacquered Up. It is a dark shimmer polish that has a translucent charcoal/black jelly base swimming with abundant bright capri blue shimmers. In low light, Blackened Bleu comes off as almost a dark navy or very blackened teal. Direct bright light summons up an explosion of brilliant sparkling capri blue shimmers across the point of impact, which look especially stunning against the darkened edges of this polish. Kinda like "lit from within 2.0" or something.

Application was not the nightmare I was expecting. On the contrary, Blackened Bleu is an extremely well-behaved polish. It has a liquid but thick, almost oily consistency, glides easily onto the nail and is immediately self-leveling. I experienced neither patch pulling nor bounce back. Opacity, as you'd expect from a polish with a translucent base, is buildable with the first coat being terrifyingly sheer. Coverage totally blooms from coat two onwards. I opted for three coats for maximum opacity, depth and richness of color. Blackened Bleu dries in very good time to a beautiful glossy finish. I added fast dry topcoat only to accelerate the drying process and protect against smudging.

Photos were taken in the kitchen under the halogens and show three coats of Blackened Bleu over treatment and basecoat with a topcoat of Seche Vite.

Barielle Blackened Bleu

Barielle Blackened Bleu

Barielle Blackened Bleu

Barielle Blackened Bleu

Barielle Blackened Bleu

Barielle Blackened Bleu

Barielle Blackened Bleu

Barielle Blackened Bleu

Barielle Blackened Bleu

Barielle Blackened Bleu

Barielle Blackened Bleu

Barielle Blackened Bleu

Barielle Blackened Bleu

As much as I like this polish, I did experience tip pull on several nails. I made sure to carefully wrap my tips with both the polish and topcoat, so I think the tip pull may intrinsic. The jelly base of Blackened Bleu just has that kind of feel to it, that it would shrink as it dries, and being as sheer as it is any shrinkage is going to show. With a dark polish like this, that would exaggerate the inevitable tipwear that naturally occurs with use over time. I'm inclined to call this a dealbreaker. It greatly diminishes the joy of spending time and care on a well-manicured look to see those hateful little light stripes across the tips of your nails in a matter of hours.

Granted, the tip pull is more apparent to me than to someone else looking at my manicure, but really that's beside the point because I don't do my nails for other people, I do them for myself. I'm going to give Blackened Bleu another chance because it's a pretty polish and I don't have many blackened polishes in my collection... yet. But you know I'll be on the look out now!

love,
Aunt Liz