Monday, December 14, 2015

Top Shelf Lacquer Blackberry Margarita

Blackberry Margarita was released by Ohio-based indie polish maker Top Shelf Lacquer as part of the Margarita Time collection in September this year. Described by creator Amy as a navy linear holo, this appears near-black in the bottle but with the first coat you can see the blue in it. The underlying color is along the lines of Oxford blue, a very deep shade that is heavily silvered and lightened by the abundant finely-milled holographic pigment it carries to produce a softly charcoaled look. It reads mostly as medium-dark dusty blueberry sort of color with a fascinatingly ambiguous, in-between nature that makes it difficult to ascribe completely to either blue or grey. The creme/jelly hybrid sort of formula has enough translucence to allow the holo pigment to shimmer gently within, washing the color with a variety of hues -- ultramarine, azure, gunmetal -- that twinkle with hints of greenish gold. In direct light there's a fine linear prismatic display with bright sparkling inner bands of blue and green edged by a trailing corona of sparks in yellow, orange and red that floats over a central blaze of silvered Oxford blue.

 Application was fantastic. The consistency of Blackberry Margarita is fluid, creamy and dense with a velvety glide over the nail and excellent self-leveling properties. It has a beautifully-balanced viscosity for painting -- goes right where you put it and stays there. There's a degree of translucence to the formula that makes the first coat quite sheer for a dark shade. Coverage after two coats is wearable, but I think it's best at three. Cleanup is easy and straightforward, although I didn't do the best job of it today. Blackberry Margarita dries naturally in good time to a smooth shiny finish. Topcoat does not inhibit the holographic effects in any way.

Photos show three coats of Blackberry Margarita over treatment and basecoat with a topcoat of Seche Vite.


Top Shelf Lacquer Blackberry Margarita
Top Shelf Lacquer Blackberry Margarita
Top Shelf Lacquer Blackberry Margarita
Top Shelf Lacquer Blackberry Margarita
Top Shelf Lacquer Blackberry Margarita
Top Shelf Lacquer Blackberry Margarita
Top Shelf Lacquer Blackberry Margarita
Top Shelf Lacquer Blackberry Margarita
Top Shelf Lacquer Blackberry Margarita
Top Shelf Lacquer Blackberry Margarita
Top Shelf Lacquer Blackberry Margarita
Top Shelf Lacquer Blackberry Margarita
Top Shelf Lacquer Blackberry Margarita
Top Shelf Lacquer Blackberry Margarita

 Beautiful! I love the flannel-soft mellowness of this shade with its shifting hues of blue and grey, and it displays a very sweet prismatic flare in the sun. It's a polish you don't have to live up to, if you know what I mean. A comfort polish. Some days I just don't have the resources to sport a bright color.

love,
Liz
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Location: Chapel Hill, NC, USA

4 comments:

  1. AnonymousDecember 14, 2015 at 10:35 PM

    Quite a lovely polish. And I know what you mean about sometimes wanting a comfortable polish to wear! This polish seems to change tonal values a lot depending on lighting, very pretty.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. UnknownDecember 15, 2015 at 6:00 PM

      I love this gentle holo. It's enticing me to explore the other colors from the Margarita Time collection.

      Delete
  2. AnonymousDecember 14, 2015 at 10:46 PM

    Testing, testing (just to see how my 'sign out' flub affected commenting here) . . .
    I think I got back in - just needed to figure out which of my email accounts I needed to use!

    ReplyDelete

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