This is probably as close as I'll ever get to wearing one of those neon highlighter shades that everyone loves for summer. The combination of a bright yellow green with a base appropriately whitened to pastel stipulations produces a color that looks like it should glow in the dark. At least, on me. It freaked my camera right out, which is why there are only three photos in this review.
Application was both better and worse than I expected. I noticed when reading reviews for Spring Buds that many polish enthusiasts reported great experiences with the formula, achieving smooth, streak-free coverage in only two coats. That wasn't how it went with me. On the other hand, for a pastel with lots of yellow in it, the formula wasn't nearly as problematic as I expected. The consistency of Spring Buds is fluid, creamy and smooth. It isn't difficult to work with as long as you use thinner coats, don't overstroke your application and wait a little bit between coats. Though fairly well pigmented, it was very streaky over my ridged nails, even after the second coat. It self-levels to a point, though, and the third coat, a bit thicker than the first two, pretty much evened things out. What uneven areas were left were completely smoothed with topcoat. Huzzah, Seche Vite! Cleanup was easy and straightforward. Spring Buds dries naturally in good time to a smooth, glossy finish.
Photos show three coats of Spring Buds over treatment and basecoat with a topcoat of Seche Vite. The first is the closest I could get to a normal look with my camera, which flouresced the color beyond redemption, as you will see.
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| Deborah Lippmann Spring Buds |
This is what my camera did with the rest of my takes:
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| Deborah Lippmann Spring Buds |
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| Deborah Lippmann Spring Buds |
These photos remind me of the time I tried to photograph swatches of Butter London's Bossy Boots, except these turned out much better, believe it or not, which is why Bossy Boots never made it to the blog. I desaturated the color in these pics much as I dared (too much, actually), but don't know if it's not my skin tone as much as the camera that makes this pastel look like a neon.
Heaven help me if I ever get my hands on some real neons!
love,
Liz
You know, I'd had a casual thought about sending you one of my pink neons this summer... ;) What an enigmatic shade this is! I've been sitting here trying to figure it out, haha. I totally know what you mean about a polish with a white base that is pastel, but brilliant and almost luminous, but not neon... a complex quality to grasp through images and words.
ReplyDeleteAh yes, expectation and then reality :P It's usually the dry time that gets me- I notice most people aren't bothered by it, while I'm over here dinging things left and right, haha. It's gotten better, but busy hands will be busy. But number of coats will get me too; like, what manner of magician are you to have done this in one coat?? It's just one of the many reasons I appreciate your reviews <3
Dry time is much less dangerous with a quick-dry topcoat. Do you not use one? I wouldn't be able to blog without it. Besides speeding up the drying process overall, it surface dries in a skinny minute thus offering real protection from dings and smears. I get up from topcoating and go right to the computer to type without a problem, though I try to be careful about it and not get a nail caught under a key or something like that. By the time I'm through writing the first part of a post, it's set pretty well -- enough to wash my hands without a problem and apply oil, which I believe helps to further cure the manicure. I let that soak in a little bit then wash my hands again to remove excess oil, then take my photos.
DeleteLuminous is a good word for a polish like this one! In person, it's less yellow and a bit more dusky than you'd ever think from my photos of it. But still! Fuzzy was like, oh now that is very strange, and recoiled a bit in her chair as if she might catch something from it. *lol*
One coat? Shoot honey, it took three coats and a layer of topcoat to get this polish on nicely. But I'll tell you, I did come across a review of it where the individual applied it in one coat. And in her photos it looked just as good as any other Spring Buds manicure that I saw while reading reviews! I wish I had more of a knack with problematic polish formulas. It's taken me a couple of years to really learn to be patient with them and not try to glob them on all at once.
I think I'll have to get a better camera if I want to feature a true neon on this blog. I don't have a one in my collection, although some, like a couple of the polishes from Superficially Colorful, have been close. And now Mentality and KBShimmer have neon collections either currently available (Mentality's) or will be soon (KBShimmer's). I don't know if I'm lively enough to pull off a dedicated neon polish! Maybe a pink.... ;)
How could I forget Girly Bits? Yet another collection of neons releasing the 19th of this month!
DeleteI just spent 20 minutes typing an extensive and thoughtful essay response to this, all about polish dry time and oils and how much I lurv Fuzzy, and Google just erased it all when it prompted me to re-select my account for commenting purposes and now I feel an absurd urge to cry or have a little temper tantrum :*( But I was just wrestling with my Google account before this (and it was incredibly and inexplicably frustrating) so I guess I've been primed for a toddler-like explosion. Blklakfjkhfkdldkcjkr.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I'll recharge and repeat it all later, but in an abridged summary: I do indeed use a quick-dry topcoat, and when I said was talking about magical one-coaters I was actually very vaguely referring to any number of magical one-coater reviews that I myself cannot duplicate, haha. Gosh, now I just feel exhausted! :P