Elevation Polish Volcanic Dust

Volcanic Dust was released by indie polish maker Elevation Polish as part of the Naughty by Nature collection in November 2013. This collection of water-based polish was inspired by natural elements that have the potential to be hazardous, and if you've ever seen footage of a pyroclastic flow you know why Lulu included this phenomenon in the set. I usually think of volcanic dust as grey, but when I went looking for images I came across some amazing sunset photos of volcanic dust in the atmosphere, which left me with no doubt as to Lulu's interpretation.

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Volcanic Dust is a robust darkened red jelly. Depending upon the thickness and number of coats, it can be worn varyingly as a rich dark carmine or a deeper, more vampy firebrick. As a jelly, it has a degree of translucence that gives it depth and a squishy, suspended look on the nail. This is the darkest red I have in my collection, and wearing it now I better understand the polish enthusiast affection for vampy shades. The depth of tone adds a certain intensity to the color -- you wouldn't call it vivid, but it has a similar impact: that wow factor.

Application was scrumptious. My bottle of Volcanic Dust has been sitting for a while and had thickened accordingly, as water-based polishes are known to do, but was still eminently paintable with a rich, fluid, creamy consistency and no hint of any gel-like stickyness. The added body (I've read reviews where the formula was described as thin, obviously not the case here) made for a velvety flow over the nail and a propensity for thicker coats, which is is my modus operandi anyway so I happily obliged. Volcanic Dust has phenomenal self-leveling properties and left a finish as smooth as glass. Pigmentation is also excellent, with opaque coverage reached in two coats. Mine weren't as even as perhaps they would have been had I been a little less liberal with the polish, and it wasn't until I looked at the photos that I noticed some slightly more translucent areas on the nails of my left hand especially. In person, this is undetectable. Actually, I kind of liked this effect, it added a certain of juiciness to the depth of the polish. Cleanup was easy with very little pigment residue left behind for such a highly pigmented red polish. Volcanic Dust dries naturally in very good time to a high gloss finish, which makes topcoating seem redundant until you remember that it's there to protect that glossiness.

Photos show two munificent coats of Volcanic Dust over treatment and basecoat with a topcoat of Seche Vite.

Elevation Polish Volcanic Dust

Elevation Polish Volcanic Dust

Elevation Polish Volcanic Dust

Elevation Polish Volcanic Dust

Elevation Polish Volcanic Dust

Elevation Polish Volcanic Dust

Elevation Polish Volcanic Dust

Elevation Polish Volcanic Dust

Elevation Polish Volcanic Dust

Elevation Polish Volcanic Dust

In the future I think I'll add some polish thinner to Volcanic Dust and challenge myself to apply with thinner coats to take advantage of its attractive jelly qualities, the bouncy squishiness and depth. I'd also like to see the color a little less bricky. You can see by the color variation around my cuticles where my coats weren't perfectly aligned the saturated intensity of the red that's at the fundament of this shade.

Although I have a very general preference for medium tones in nail polish, I love the sleekness of this beautiful deep color. The darker a color is, the more reflective it becomes. In my previous life as an auto detailer, this fact informed every aspect of my approach to detailing the paint on a car. Darker colors are much easier to detail, they're very communicative and will tell you everything about where they've been and what sort of stuff they've been in contact with. Light colors like silver, pale gold and white, on the other hand, won't tell you diddly, and their lack of reflectivity is really hard on the eyes when you're spending hours studying the surface for imperfections. I actually hated detailing the exterior of white cars, it was exhausting and the results were nowhere near as satisfying since there is little to no luster to the shine on white paint.

While luster is a different sort of animal in nail polish than it is in car paint, there's no denying the added luster that a dark polish's reflectivity brings to the nail. It has a rich, opulent, empowering feel, and I like that very much. 

Now I'm off to show this polish to Fuzzy and see if she mentions Cruella de Vil. Bet she does! *lol* 

love,
Liz