Friday, April 27, 2018

A-England A Midsummer Night's Dream

Hello, I've returned! Charlottesville was beautiful. It's a couple of weeks behind Chapel Hill as far as spring goes, so while the dogwoods are petering out here, they're in full bloom up there and there were loads of white and pink dogwood blossoms everywhere, suspended like lacy clouds in the misty spring green of the landscape. My 79-year-old father and his new wife were married at noon outdoors on a cool, bright, sunny spring day in front of a venerable deciduous magnolia that was covered in big, bursting purpley-mauve blooms with the rolling hills of the Virginia piedmont as a background.

Today's polish is the first of eight holographic creations from British indie polish maker A-England's new collection, Shakespeare's Fairies, released in March and inspired by the fairies of William Shakespeare's popular comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream. The polish I have for you today is the namesake of that play, officially described as a delicate rose hologram with iridescent shimmers.

The base color is a pale, silvery queen pink bearing beaucoup finely-milled, luminous violet shimmers, which read as lavender on the nail and combine with the base color to give the polish a general appearance similar to Pantone's pink lavender, but more desaturated and silvery. It's the sort of misty, lightly-tinted silvery holo that Adina does so beautifully. There's a gentle, mobile golden prismatic flush in ambient light that explodes into a dense, sparkling scattered holographic flare in the sun with a certain dusky quality to it that surprised me.

Application was wonderful. The consistency of A Midsummer Night's Dream is fluid, light and smooth with a medium viscosity and a fluent, creamy, self-leveling slip over the nail that goes on naturally in thin-to-medium coats from A-England's excellent, flexible, paddle-style brush. Pigmentation is very good, delivering evenly opaque coverage in two coats. Cleanup is easy. A Midsummer Night's Dream dries naturally in very good time to a smooth, shiny finish. Topcoat accentuates the presence of the violet shimmers and does not affect the holographic properties of the polish in any way.

Photos show two coats of A Midsummer Night's Dream over treatment and basecoat with a topcoat of Seche Vite.


A-England A Midsummer Night's Dream


A-England A Midsummer Night's Dream


A-England A Midsummer Night's Dream


A-England A Midsummer Night's Dream


A-England A Midsummer Night's Dream


A-England A Midsummer Night's Dream


A-England A Midsummer Night's Dream


A-England A Midsummer Night's Dream


A-England A Midsummer Night's Dream


A-England A Midsummer Night's Dream


A-England A Midsummer Night's Dream

This is a beautiful, supremely elegant polish, smooth and serene on the nail with that gorgeous, misty, dimensional prismatic bloom that makes you want to be constantly flexing your fingers to see it travel up and down the nail. The shimmer effects are particularly prevalent, producing a soft, unambiguous pink-lavender color that's graceful and flattering. Very nice!

love,
Liz

2 comments:

  1. Welcome back!

    What a lovely polish. Very Spring-y.

    I've worn Mustardseed from this collection so far (very lovely and chameleon--ike is it pink, red, coral?), and looking forward to trying the rest, too.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, lasoti! I was very excited to find this collection waiting for me on my return and couldn't wait to start reviewing the polishes. This one is beautiful but feels almost a little too poised for me. My aesthetic is actually kind of rowdy. I'm a little apprehensive about Mustardseed myself as the color seems on the softer side for a coral, almost like a sparkly terra cotta, but you can't really judge how a polish will look from the bottle so we'll see. The two I'm most looking forward to are the really bright ones, Peaseblossom and Puck, but I'm going to work my way through Oberon and Titania and maybe the grey fairies first -- if I can wait that long. Ha!

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