Lacquer Slacker Liz: Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer I Fought For My Soul

Saturday, June 13, 2015

Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer I Fought For My Soul

I Fought For My Soul was released by new-to-me indie polish maker Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer as part of the newest edition of the Once More With Feeling collection in May this year. Originally released in 2013, this collection is based on characters from the acclaimed American television series Buffy The Vampire Slayer. The original collection was so beloved by BEGL fans that creator Julie decided to reformulate some of its polishes and re-release them with three completely new ones for another go round. I Fought For My Soul, based on the character of Spike, is one of the brand new polishes.

I gotta say, this is one hell of a red holographic polish. It's a deep saturated rich cardinal red bearing ultrafine holo pigment accompanied by gunmetal microflake shimmers. It is utterly divine in direct sun, which ignites the base color and components to produce a deeply dimensional, lush, sparkling arterial red with a luxuriant quality reminiscent of silk velvet. Above this floats a slender flame-shaped holographic flair of glowing blue-violet. The polish is dark and saturated enough that it eclipses most of the rainbow colors usually seen in linear holos, but the blue-violet bend is stunning. My camera found it elusive, though, and only picked up a ghostly remnant -- but it's there in person! I Fought For My Soul is deep and vampy in indirect light, with subtle speckling from the gunmetal microflakes and that much-desired lit-from-within quality, radiant and glowing in the center shading to a shadowy carmine at the edges.

Application was delicious. With a fluid, creamy, dense consistency and a beautifully balanced viscosity for painting, I Fought For My Soul was a pleasure to manipulate with BEGL's round flexible brush. This is very likely the most profoundly-pigmented polish I have ever used. Seriously. One coat is almost more than enough. I used two to finesse some lines left wanting after the first coat, but the second did not seem to alter the color at all and was completely unnecessary in terms of opacity. Cleanup was an arduous affair, because... have pigment, will travel! After reading some reviews that included caveats relative to this aspect of the polish, I painted as cleanly as I could. But inevitably there was some minor swipage along with bits and bobs to even up, and wow does that red pigment go everywhere. Into sidewalls, around and under cuticles, across the skin -- you can imagine. For skin, I resorted to acetone-moistened cotton swabs, but for tight areas it took repeated careful swipes of a cautiously dampened cleanup brush. Not a deal breaker by any means, but something to be aware of. I Fought For My Soul dries naturally in good time to a smooth, slightly flat finish that wants a good topcoat to look its best.

Photos show two coats of I Fought For My Soul over treatment and basecoat with a topcoat of Seche Vite.

Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer I Fought For My Soul

As good as I Fought For My Soul looks in the images, photos really don't do it the justice it deserves -- it's even better in person, where you can eyeball the amazing interplay with light. Feels like a million bucks in old money on the nail, too. Definitely a stand-out signature look.

I'm totally blown away!

love,
Liz

5 comments:

Blue Eyed GirlJune 13, 2015 at 12:04 PM
This review is simply amazing. Your photos are stunning, and your words just made my day! Thank you so much for the lovely review. If you're ever interested in blogging for me, I've got a blogger form listed on my FAQ page at my shop! I'd love to have you join the swatcher ranks! :)
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Polished HippyJune 13, 2015 at 8:41 PM
This is one of my favorite BEGLs of all time! So glad you also loved it!
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