Great Lakes Lacquer In Brightness

In Brightness was released in November 2017 by Michigan-based indie polish maker Great Lakes Lacquer as part of the Holiday 2017 collection, a limited edition series of four lacquers based on the 1845 short story "The Little Match Girl" by Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen.

And she quickly struck the whole bundle of matches, for she wished to keep her grandmother with her. And the matches burned with such a glow that it became brighter than daylight. Grandmother had never been so grand and beautiful. She took the little girl in her arms, and both of them flew in brightness and joy above the earth, very, very high, and up there was neither cold, nor hunger, nor fear--they were with God.

Described as a "soft purple linear holo with shifts of blue, pink, bronze, orange and green," the base color is a gentle, semi-translucent shade along the lines of the web color medium purple or deep lavender. It's absolutely packed with multichromatic microflake shimmers, which read mostly as azure, turquoise and magenta but also shift to flame, bronze and, finally, green at oblique angles. This polish is as shifty as any multichrome you can think of, and those tiny flakes also emit a twinkly sparkle as light travels over them. In direct light, the look is blanketed with fine, scattered prismatic sparkle in every rainbow color.

Application was lovely. The consistency of In Brightness is fluid and full-bodied with a medium-to-slightly-thicker viscosity and an even, smooth, self-leveling glide over the nail. Pigmentation is sheerish on the first coat but will build to wearable opacity with the second using medium coats. I added a third for the photos. Cleanup is straightforward. In Brightness dries naturally in very good time to a smooth, shiny finish. Topcoat accentuates the presence and shifts of the shimmers.

Photos show three coats of In Brightness over treatment and basecoat with a topcoat of Seche Vite.

Great Lakes Lacquer In Brightness

Great Lakes Lacquer In Brightness

Great Lakes Lacquer In Brightness

Great Lakes Lacquer In Brightness

Great Lakes Lacquer In Brightness

Great Lakes Lacquer In Brightness

Great Lakes Lacquer In Brightness

Great Lakes Lacquer In Brightness

Great Lakes Lacquer In Brightness

You can't really tell it from the photos, but the shifts in this polish are incredibly dynamic -- there's a new look with every move of your fingers, and the magenta shift plays much more prominently than it shows here. I love that the shimmers sparkle as well. Not only does it fit in beautifully with the story, I think, but the way that those microflakes light up gives you contrasting sparks in any given field of color, like magenta sparks in a field of purple or turquoise and azure sparks in a field of magenta. Nice!

love,
Liz