Lacquer Slacker Liz: ILNP Gaia

Thursday, December 18, 2014

ILNP Gaia

Like Neon Rosebud, Gaia is a brand new release from indie polish maker I Love Nail Polish (ILNP), part of their latest line of Ultra Chrome Flakies, polishes featuring multichromatic metallic flakes in a transparent suspension base. Gaia's have a vibrant green to blue color shift with a gorgeous green/aqua/electric blue/royal blue/near violet spectrum of colors, almost all of which appear on the nail simultaneously in indirect light and shade. In direct light, the predominant color is a bright Christmas green, with royal blue and near violet creeping in at oblique angles. The flakies are highly reflective and produce a sparkling dappled effect as they abut and overlay each other on the nail.

Application was great. Gaia has a fluid, smooth, full-bodied consistency with an even flow over the nail and a nice random distribution of flakes. I chose to layer this one to opacity as I did for Neon Rosebud, but it can also be layered over another polish for a different look. After seeing Leisl of Leisl Loves Pretty Things feature a multichromatic flakie polish from indie polish maker GlitterDaze, I'd recommend considering a metallic as an alternative to black when selecting base polishes for these Ultra Chrome Flakies. For my Gaia manicure, I used three coats for coverage instead of four as I did for Neon Rosebud yesterday so that you could see the difference. You'll notice a little less opacity, but not much and it's really not a noticeable difference in person. Gaia seemed to have more large-sized flakes that Neon Rosebud did, but I could be making that up. In any case, the flakes are perfectly smooth once on the nail and present no application problems other than sheerness on wrapped tips and a slight loss of crispness at the edges of the polish. I did cleanup as it was needed during application as the best time to try and remove stray flakes is when the polish is wet. Gaia dries naturally in very good time to a smooth shiny finish.

Photos show three coats of Gaia over Seche Rebuild treatment and Pretty Serious All Your Base basecoat with a topcoat of Seche Vite to ensure drying of all the layers. Please pardon the flaky skin on my nail environs, they're overdue for a nice long salt scrub.