CrowsToes Hot Headed Red

The last of my Hella Holo Customs exclusives for March 2016!

Hot Headed Red was released last month by North Carolina-based indie polish maker CrowsToes Nail Color as one of three March 2016 custom polishes that Lauri created exclusively for members of the HHC facebook group. This is a red/pink/orange/gold multichromatic polish with a sprinkling of holographic microglitters. Lauri describes it best:

A glowy medium red base that transitions from a magenta, to a red orange, ending in a slightly orange gold, topped off with a delicate veil of holographic sparks.

The fiery sunset colors here are utterly stunning and every movement produces a new transitional aspect. I don't know which I love more, the lustrous rosy ruby with overtones of red violet and flashes of bright pink that is the polish's most prevalent presentation, or the spectacular burnished flame that appears when you angle your nails obliquely toward the light, with its golden highlights and rich vermilion undertones. The gleaming, semi-metallic finish fairly smolders with brilliant shifting colors, its surface scattered with bright infinitesimal prismatic and analogously-colored sparks that add a magical, twinkling touch to the look. 

Application suffered from my having a spectacularly off day in that respect, where one maladroit episode quickly segued into another in a relentless comedy of errors, including but not limited to multiple occasions of acetone spillage, transfers of dust and fibers from inadvertent contact with a variety of materials from tissues to towels and one wet-polish collision after another.

Bungling aside, the consistency of Hot Headed Red is fluid, light and smooth with a medium viscosity and a luxurious, creamy glide over the nail. Self-leveling properties are very good and pigmentation is excellent, with opacity in one coat and full bottle color in two. I added a third to ensure the non-appearance of my nail ridges, which tend to reveal themselves under a semi-metallic finish like this. Cleanup was unexpectedly easy, with a just a skosh of pigment travel and no residual staining to speak of. Hot Headed Red dries naturally in fairly good time to a smooth, slightly satiny finish that is actually very cool -- it gives the tiny holographic sparks at the surface a 3-d presence that really pops and I can totally see wearing it this way, without topcoat. Topcoat adds gloss and creates a gleaming metallic luster. 

Photos show three coats of Hot Headed Red over treatment and basecoat with a slightly bubbly topcoat of Seche Vite. 

CrowsToes Hot Headed Red

CrowsToes Hot Headed Red

CrowsToes Hot Headed Red

CrowsToes Hot Headed Red

CrowsToes Hot Headed Red

CrowsToes Hot Headed Red

CrowsToes Hot Headed Red

CrowsToes Hot Headed Red

CrowsToes Hot Headed Red

CrowsToes Hot Headed Red

CrowsToes Hot Headed Red

CrowsToes Hot Headed Red

I wasn't able to capture a good representative image of the flame/red-orange aspect of this polish, but Ida of Ida Nails It did a fantastic job of doing exactly that in her review, here.

In my opinion, Lauri is the queen of red multichromes. I'd even go so far as to say that a multichrome enthusiast hasn't fully lived until they've done so with Indian Summer on their nails. Hot Headed Red is lighter overall with more pink and much less violet in it than Indian Summer, which is actually more of a deep burgundy-based multichrome as opposed to the ruby of Hot Headed Red, but they are equally breathtaking in their effects. 

Hella Holo Customs is a private facebook group that solicits two polish makers for custom polishes every month, which are then available only to HHC members via a special ordering code posted in the group. If you'd like to join, send an email to hellaholocustoms@gmail.com with “join” in the subject line and your facebook profile name in the message. 

xo,
Liz