Lacquer Slacker Liz: Smitten Polish 131 Angstrom

Friday, January 2, 2015

Smitten Polish 131 Angstrom

131 Angstrom was released by indie polish maker Smitten Polish as part of the wonderful Fall 2014 collection. It's another of creator Noelie's fabulous microglitters, this time in a medium-dark nicely-saturated blue-green. Many reviewers and Noelie herself describe it as teal and I suppose that's entirely appropriate but the color reminds me of nothing so much as a profoundly saturated version of the classic blue-green crayon from Crayola. It has a transparent blue-green suspension base absolutely packed with the tiniest, finest holographic blue-green microglitters you can imagine. Dramatically vibrant and alive with sparkle, this is is a deep-water Caribbean blue for your nails.

Application was awesome, as I've learned to expect from Noelie's microglitters. The consistency is quite fluid but not the least bit runny. It has a smooth, easy, self-leveling glide over the nail and is easily manipulated with Smitten's round flexible brush. Although dense with microglitters, you don't really even notice them unless you're pushing the polish onto the nail. Even then, they barely register. Coverage is provided by the components, which are so abundant that this is nearly a one-coater. Two coats provides the closest representation of bottle color. Cleanup is easy and straightforward with only the very lightest bit of staining to the skin left behind, which is great for such an intense blue-green polish. 131 Angstrom dries naturally in very good time to a slightly textured, flat finish that loves a generous dose of topcoat to look its best.

Photos show two coats of 131 Angstrom over Seche Rebuild treatment and Pretty Serious All Your Base basecoat with a surface-smoothing layer of Nail Pattern Boldness Glitter Food followed by a topcoat of Seche Vite.

Smitten Polish 131 Angstrom

How gorgeous and showy is this cyanic shade, eh? Reminds me of curacao, mmm. Blue Hawaiians, ahoy! It's a tad greener in person than my photos show and greener still under incandescent light, where it glows with flying sparks of intense Christmas green when the light hits the holo microglitters just right. But I'd definitely call it a shade of cyan blue in most lights.

Now perhaps you are wondering, as I did, what is the deal with this name, 131 Angstrom? Gosh I love Wikipedia. An angstrom, or ångström, is a unit of length equal to about one ten-billionth of a meter or 0.1 nanometer. It is named for Swedish physicist Anders Jonas Ångström (1814-1874), one of the founders of spectroscopy, the study of the interaction between matter and radiated energy. It is used to express, among other things, wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. 131 angstrom is a specific wavelength channel used to image solar flare activity, typically rendering the image in a teal color.