Ellagee Nightspark

Like Heartstone, Nightspark was released this month by Texas-based indie polish maker Ellagee as part of a trio of custom, limited edition polishes for July 2017 created by Laura exclusively for members of the Hella Holo Customs Facebook group. This one is described as "a blurple linear holo with pink shimmer and multicolored iridescent flakes." The base color is a translucent darkish variation of denimy sapphire similar to liberty from the ISCC-NBS Dictionary of Color Names. Swimming within are beaucoup variously-shaped iridescent flakies, sized from tiny particles to relative large shardy flakes, which gleam brightly in rich, metallic jewel-toned hues as light hits them. Abundant finely-milled pink shimmers combine with the base color to give the polish a transparent royal purple glow in ambient light. The holographic properties come to the fore in the sun, creating a dazzling blanket of prismatic sparkle supplemented by brilliant jewel-toned sparks from the flakies.

Application was a deliberate, careful process. The consistency of Nightspark is fluid, full-bodied and somewhat bulky from the components, with a thicker viscosity to which I added polish thinner at the outset. By and large, the flakies go on smoothly and lay flat (I ended up with only one significant stickup), but some of them are quite sizeable, requiring a bit of care to position satisfactorily on the nail, and one or two were so disproportionately large that I quickly brushed them off altogether. Pigmentation is sheer by design, building to wearable opacity in three coats. I did my cleanup as I went along and had no issues. Nightspark dries naturally in good time to a shiny, textured finish, mostly smoothed by topcoat.

Photos show three coats of Nightspark over KBShimmer Fillin' Groovy basecoat with a topcoat of Seche Vite.

Ellagee Nightspark

Ellagee Nightspark

Ellagee Nightspark

Ellagee Nightspark

Ellagee Nightspark

Ellagee Nightspark

Ellagee Nightspark

Ellagee Nightspark

Ellagee Nightspark

Ellagee Nightspark

Ellagee Nightspark

Ellagee Nightspark

Ellagee Nightspark

Ellagee Nightspark

While the base color is an elegant and serene dark blue, the abundance of colorful flakies in concert with the pink shimmers and holographic pigment in this polish give it a certain sense of extravagance and a rich, ornamental quality that is much more complex in person than can be seen in a photo. In ambient light, the effect is kind of like looking at one of Monet's darker water lily paintings, an immersive waterscape of reflectivity and depth within which reside delightful splashes of color, disparate but entirely coherent to the scene.

love,
Liz