Orly Sapphire Silk and Angel Eyes

Sapphire Silk was released by Orly as part of the Precious collection for spring 2011. Described by Orly as a deep teal creme, it's a medium-dark to dark slightly greyed-out cerulean or petrol blue. Cerulean is a member of the cyan family of blues, and as such it's a mixture of blue and green and has enough green in it to pull teal green on some, but on me it pulls blue and I just love it. It's not as deep or moody as an atlantic blue, but it has a similar oceanic quality and the touch of grey gives it a rich, creamy look on the nail.

Application was great. The consistency is fluid and smooth, with excellent self-leveling properties. Pigmentation is also excellent. With a steady hand and a generously loaded brush, this could be a one coater, but I prefer to use two thinner coats as I always have lines and cuticle curves to even up after one coat. Sapphire Silk is a fairly forgiving polish in this respect. It doesn't ghost around the edges or pull patches and it cleans up easily without staining. This polish dries naturally in average time to a glossy, jelly-like finish.

Photos show two coats of Sapphire Silk over treatment and basecoat with an extra bubbly topcoat of Seche Vite.

Orly Sapphire Silk

Orly Sapphire Silk

Orly Sapphire Silk

Orly Sapphire Silk

Orly Sapphire Silk

Orly Sapphire Silk

Orly Sapphire Silk

Orly Sapphire Silk

To jazz things up, I decided to layer Orly Angel Eyes over Sapphire Silk. Angel Eyes was released by Orly as part of the Naughty or Nice collection for holiday 2012. It is a true glitter bomb with ultrafine bright capri blue microglitters accented with holographic silver hex glitters in a suspension base. The silver holo hexes light up in green, purple, blue, orange and pink against the darker capri blue glitters. Capri is kind of like a deep brilliant aquamarine blue, another member of the cyan family.

Angel Eyes applies beautifully for a full-on glitter polish. The consistency is fluid and slightly gel like and flows smoothly over the nail with good glitter payoff. I applied two coats over the Sapphire Silk manicure above, finishing with a coat of Gelous followed by a topcoat of Poshe.

Orly Sapphire Silk and Angel Eyes, slightly blurry bottle shot

Orly Angel Eyes over Sapphire Silk

Orly Angel Eyes over Sapphire Silk

Orly Angel Eyes over Sapphire Silk

Orly Angel Eyes over Sapphire Silk

Orly Angel Eyes over Sapphire Silk

Orly Angel Eyes over Sapphire Silk

Orly Angel Eyes over Sapphire Silk

Orly Angel Eyes over Sapphire Silk

Orly Angel Eyes over Sapphire Silk

Angel Eyes can be built to opacity on its own, but it's really nice as a topper over any dark blue base. Jen of The Nail Polish Project has some beautiful swatches of it over OPI Unfor-greta-bly Blue here. You can see what it looks like swatched on its own at A Polish Addict, here.

love,
Liz