Elevation Polish Taklamakan Desert

Taklamakan Desert was released earlier this month by Minnesota-based indie polish maker Elevation Polish as part of the new Desert Desserts collection. It's described as a "copper/orange/golden metallic like holographic," and it has a unique look. The copper metallic base has a golden-brown lean as opposed to the pink lean that you often see in coppers, and shares the stage with superabundant silvery holographic pigment. In bright ambient light, the two mix in a lustrous, shifting, pixelated cloud on the nail, looking for all the world like the coat of a strawberry roan horse. The holographic properties of the polish are athletic and responsive, generating a pale violet-tinted silvery blaze enclosing a central lick of molten metallic orange surrounded by infinitesimal prismatic nanosparks. In low light and shade, the polish has a gleaming, reflective metallic golden-coppery look with a pale golden-orange flash that reminds me of flickering firelight. We're heavily overcast and spitting rain here today so I can't say for sure but I expect that direct sun would elicit a full linear flare. 

Application was interesting. The consistency of Taklamakan Desert out of the bottle is fluid and a little sticky with a thick viscosity that I wasn't about to struggle with. I added enough polish thinner for a medium viscosity, which produced a smooth, self-leveling glide over the nail. This polish sets up and begins to dry fairly rapidly and develops some stickiness as it does, so it appreciates a deft hand. Pigmentation is very good, producing evenly opaque coverage in two coats. I added a third to smooth out the planing effect you sometimes get with metallics over ridgy nails, and to see if it would make any other difference in the look, but it didn't. Any brushstrokes disappear as the polish dries. Cleanup is easy and straightforward. Taklamakan Desert dries naturally in very good time to a silky smooth finish. Topcoat does not affect the holographic properties of the polish in any way. 

Photos show three coats of Taklamakan Desert over Pretty Serious Rock On treatment and Pretty Serious All Your Base basecoat with a topcoat of Seche Vite.

Elevation Polish Taklamakan Desert

Elevation Polish Taklamakan Desert

Elevation Polish Taklamakan Desert

Elevation Polish Taklamakan Desert

Elevation Polish Taklamakan Desert

Elevation Polish Taklamakan Desert

Elevation Polish Taklamakan Desert

Elevation Polish Taklamakan Desert

Elevation Polish Taklamakan Desert

Elevation Polish Taklamakan Desert

Elevation Polish Taklamakan Desert

This polish is named for the Taklamakan Desert of northwest China, a shifting sands desert of about 130,000 square miles with approximately 85% of that comprising shifting sand dunes, making it the second largest shifting sands desert in the world after the Sahara.

Map of Taklamakan Desert and Tarim Basin (source)

The dunes of the Taklamakan (source)

Snow in the Taklamakan (source)

Lying in the rain shadow of the Himalayas with a relatively close proximity to frigid Siberian air masses, the Taklamakan has a cold desert climate with brutally cold wintertime temps. Its extreme inland position, virtually in the very heartland of Asia and thousands of kilometres from any open body of water, accounts for the cold character of its nights even during summertime.

The mix of chilly silver with warm golden-copper in this polish captures the nature of this cold desert rather well, as you can see by the photo above. Brilliant!

love,
Liz