Lollipop Posse Lacquer A Flood of Wind and Rain

A mid-hurricane post!

Like Midnight Checkout Queen, A Flood of Wind and Rain was released in April 2016 by Ohio-based indie polish maker Lollipop Posse Lacquer as part of The Wicked Little collection, a series of seven polishes inspired by the rock musical and subsequent film Hedwig and the Angry Inch, especially the songs and images of actors who have portrayed Hedwig on Broadway. A Flood of Wind and Rain gets its name from lyrics of the song "The Origin of Love."

Creator Karen describes this polish as a true blue linear holo packed with silver holographic glitters in several sizes. The color is very like RGB X11 blue, the brightest possible blue that can be reproduced on a computer screen, also known as color wheel blue. It is bold and vivid, as you would expect, and positively glowed as I was applying it in the grey-green hurricane Matthew-tinted light coming through my bathroom skylight with the house moaning eerily as gusts of wind wrapped around it, flinging rain in great sheets against the windows. Even in this dim light, there was plenty of bright prismatic sparkle from the glitters as well as noticeable azure/ultramarine dimensionalizing to the color by the holographic pigment. Surreal! Under incandescent light here in my office, the color takes on a lush cerulean appearance, with a marvelous twinkling effect from the glitters. There's even a vestigial linear flare at oblique angles to the light. I can only imagine how radiant and beautiful it would be in non-hurricane conditions!

Application was awesome. The consistency of A Flood of Wind and Rain is fluid, light and remarkably smooth for a glitter-laden polish, with a thin-to-medium viscosity and a fluent, self-leveling glide over the nail. The glitters go on beautifully and lay flat to the nail without stacking, stickups or protrusions. There's a certain degree of translucence to the jelly base, so coverage is provided in part by the glitters. Even so, wearably opaque coverage can be had in two medium coats, which is great! I used three for this manicure to maximize the bold blue color, and I think the additional coat did deepen it a bit. Strangely enough, this was one of my cleaner manicures in a long time -- I only had a tiny bit of cleanup to do on a couple of fingers with no pigment travel or trace staining that I could see, hooray! A Flood of Wind and Rain dries naturally in very good time to a gently textured finish, easily smoothed by a layer of topcoat, which does not appear to affect the holographic properties at all.

Photos show three coats of A Flood of Wind and Rain over KBShimmer Love You Strong Time treatment and Pretty Serious All Your Base basecoat with a topcoat of Seche Vite. These are somewhat blurry -- apologies, my camera just couldn't focus well in such low light -- but hopefully they give you an idea of what this divine sparkler is like on the nail.

Lollipop Posse Lacquer A Flood of Wind and Rain

Lollipop Posse Lacquer A Flood of Wind and Rain

Lollipop Posse Lacquer A Flood of Wind and Rain

Lollipop Posse Lacquer A Flood of Wind and Rain

Lollipop Posse Lacquer A Flood of Wind and Rain

Lollipop Posse Lacquer A Flood of Wind and Rain

Lollipop Posse Lacquer A Flood of Wind and Rain

Lollipop Posse Lacquer A Flood of Wind and Rain

Lollipop Posse Lacquer A Flood of Wind and Rain

I could have skipped today's post and in light of the photo quality probably should have, but the low barometric pressure accompanying hurricane Matthew has my synapses leaping tall buildings in a single bound and what with the name of this polish being so perfect for the circumstances I just didn't want to!

Chapel Hill is about 180 miles from the coast, so while it's raining heavily with wind gusts around 30mph, it's not likely going to get much worse than that here. The power has gone out once but it came back on right away. Still, John has filled up a dozen gallon bottles with water (we have a well, and when the electricity goes out so does the water) and Fuzzy is on the lookout for thirteen male a capella singers from Richmond College, one the son of an old friend from Staten Island, who somehow found themselves at Bojangles in Chapel Hill in the middle of this hurricane and are on their way over. Oh, and two neighbors from up the road just stopped by with barbecued chicken. Film at eleven.

If you've never experienced a hurricane, it's one of those awesome natural phenomena that is simultaneously thrilling and terrifying. Kind of like when you're swimming in rough ocean surf, diving through huge roaring waves, and all of a sudden you get nailed and find yourself pinned to the sand with many feet of water between you and the surface and you suddenly realize in a very real way that yes, this wave could very well drag you out to sea in a heartbeat... but somehow it doesn't and you come bursting to the surface with all of that water pounding around you only now you're now fully aware of the potential this ocean has to kill you. 

When you see massive treetops flopping back and forth like overcooked broccoli stems and wide, sweeping swaths of water driving horizontally against your window by a gusting wind that rattles the sashes in their frames, you have the same sort of realization. It's a visceral thrill, but frightening too, especially when you can hear trees shriek and crack as they succumb to the wind, and unlike swimming in the surf you don't have a choice about whether you want to go through it. 

But if this hurricane is anything like the others I've experienced, the sky will be clear and as blue as this polish tomorrow and the air will be fresh and clean.

'Til then!

Liz