Lacquer Slacker Liz: Mentality

Showing posts with label Mentality. Show all posts

Monday, May 4, 2015

Polish My Life Blue Pansy and Mentality Panorama

Blue Pansy was released by Brooklyn, NY-based indie polish maker Polish My Life as part of the Fall in Love Garden collection in September 2014. This is a deep navy blue creme. Sounds simple, doesn't it? I'm pretty picky about what constitutes navy blue and I've seen countless deep blues purporting to be navy when they were actually dark ultramarine or royal or a blackened version of one of those two. True navy is near black but has a hair's breath of grey to it and an ever so slight hint of deep green, giving it a reserved formality that is rich, creamy and timeless. That subdued elegance is what makes the color for me, and to my eye Blue Pansy is a perfect, true navy. It's wonderful!

Application was great! At the outset, Blue Pansy gives indications of a creme/jelly hybrid formula, very fluid and light but not runny as long as you avoid overloading the brush, with a bit of translucence to it that can result in streakiness on the first coat, especially if you are in the habit of painting in very thin coats. With the addition of the second and subsequent coats, the texture of the polish on the nail becomes much creamier with more body to it. I had no trouble reaching even opaque coverage in two coats for all my nails but one, which was attacked by dent gremlins and required an additional coat. Self-leveling properties are excellent, and cleanup was fairly straightforward with only a little pigment travel with a tiny bit of residual staining. Blue Pansy dries naturally in good time to a beautiful glossy finish.

Photos show two coats of Blue Pansy over treatment and basecoat with a topcoat of Seche Vite, complete with a few bubbles here and there. You'd think I'd be able to apply a bubble-free topcoat by now but no! It appears to be a life-long learning issue, at least in my case.

Polish My Life Blue Pansy

Panorama was released by indie polish maker Mentality as part of the Crystalchrome collection earlier this month. This series of topper polishes feature new translucent color-shifting ceramic/glass hybrid flakes in a clear suspension base. The flakes alter their appearance depending upon the base they're layered over. Panorama has flakes in a mixture of colors that remind me of the prismatic shades you see in an oil slick. They have an opalescent dimensional glow that is just stunning!

I layered one coat of Panorama over my Blue Pansy manicure. I wish that I'd had a more even touch with this topper, but it was very easy to work with. Component payoff is awesome! A profuse amount of flakes is available per brushful, and if you haven't overloaded your brush like I did they disperse evenly over the nail. I experienced no stickups or undue stacking that wasn't of my own making, and only a few protrusions over the free edge. Cleanup is a snap, no limpet-like behavior from the flakes at all! Panorama dries naturally in very good time to a shiny finish that has a slight pebbly texture from the flakes. A coat of Seche Vite added gloss but did little to smooth the texture. Next time I'll use a coat of Glitter Food before the Vite to get a glassier finish.

Photos show one coat of Panorama over the Blue Pansy manicure above with a topcoat of Seche Vite.

Mentality Panorama over Polish My Life Blue Pansy

Mentality Panorama, macro shot in the bottle

Mentality Panorama over Polish My Life Blue Pansy

Deeply cool! The colors are amazing and seem to respond idiosyncratically to different light sources. These photos were taken around 6pm and the sun was on its way down, sending out those long oblique color-loving rays that seemed to excite extra opalescence from these ceramic/glass flakes. Panorama was absolutely gorgeous under the lights at my gym. I couldn't stop staring at my nails! Fuzzy said the colors reminded her of a flower garden. I think they look like stained glass.

Mentality's Crystalchromes are the most expensive polishes by far that they offer, at $18.50USD per. But anyone familiar with Mentality knows how reasonable their pricing is generally, so the extra cost is fully attributable to the expense of these exclusive flakes. I don't know whether I'll be springing for the others, but I'm really glad that I had the chance to try Panorama.

love,
Liz

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Mentality Hoopla

Hoopla was released by indie polish maker Mentality as part of the Jellychrome line of polishes in February this year. From what I understand, the Jellychromes are jelly-based polishes that contain beaucoup amounts of color-shifting glass fleck shimmers. I featured one of the early Jellychromes, Detonate, here back in November. Now it's time to move on to the newest crop!

I was compelled to purchase Hoopla after seeing Anne's enthusiastic post about it on Betty's Beauty Bombs, where she declared it to be quite possibly her favorite pink polish ever. If that's not a ringing endorsement, I don't know what is -- if you follow Betty's Beauty Bombs, you know I'm right! Hoopla is a shimmering mirage of a polish with a medium rosy gift-wrap-ribbon pink jelly base loaded with superabundant multichromatic glass fleck shimmers in pale icy blue with color shifts to aqua, violet and red. The first thing you notice about Hoopla is the blue flash along the axis of light, beautifully complementary to the pink base color. The glass flecks are nice and chunky and produce an interesting visual texture as well as a scintillating sparkle when the light strikes them just right, which is nearly all the time. Even in deepest shade, if there is a scintilla of light around, the glass flecks just GLOW. My favorite ways to view polishes like this one is in indirect light or, best of all, backlit, when you can get a good eyeful of shifty goodness.

Application was an adventure. The consistency of Hoopla is gel-like and fluffy with glass flecks. It's the kind of polish that spreads rather than flows onto the nail. It's fairly easy to manipulate with Mentality's flattened, flexible brush, but the effects of the shimmers made it hard for me to see exactly what I was doing. The gel-like nature of the formula combined with the fact that it surface dries very quickly made it a little difficult to apply evenly, at least for me. The brush can get a little gummy and I had lots of glass fleck protrusions over the free edge that weren't easily remedied with a tip wrapping swipe. If you're not like me and are quick and sure with your brushstrokes, you probably won't have these issues. I'd say the pigmentation was excellent (again, hard to tell with the reflectivity of the glass flecks in play), with near-opacity in one coat. I used three coats for this manicure to ensure completely even opaque coverage for the photos. Cleanup took a bit of patience. The glass flecks disperse across skin and cuticle at the touch of acetone, but they are amenable to being rounded up and brushed away, it just takes a little more time. There was no pigment travel or residual staining from the pink base. Hoopla surface dries naturally in lightspeed time, but remains vulnerable underneath for a little while longer. The natural finish is matte with some discernible texture from the glass flecks. I used a coat of Nail Pattern Boldness Glitter Food before topcoating for maximum smoothness.

Photos show three coats of Hoopla over treatment and basecoat, with a surface-smoothing layer of Glitter Food followed by a topcoat of Seche Vite. My camera has oversaturated this pink a bit, so my photos show the color as slightly more intense than it is in person, but the shimmery blue glow and the nuances of pale violet and shading to red along the edges are very like what I'm seeing right now.

Mentality Hoopla

This is perhaps one of the most energetic pinks that I have in my collection, it's just electric! My fingers look like they're tipped with petals from a faerie flower.

Fun polish!

love,
Liz

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Mentality Velle

Velle was released by California-based indie polish maker Mentality as part of Hilary and Danny's line of Tetrachrome polishes earlier this year. I'd been avoiding the Mentality website because I find the sheer variety and vastness of the offerings completely overwhelming, but when I saw some of the Mentality Tetrachrome and Jellychrome polishes swatched by Anne on her wonderful blog Betty's Beauty Bombs, here, I just had to act. Three polishes later, which qualifies as a micro-spree, I was the proud owner of Velle, Agere and Hoopla. Today I will show you Velle because, hey, one more green for the road!

Velle is a multichromatic glass fleck shimmer polish in a black-tinted base with color shifts primarily in the gold/green/blue spectrum and a dramatic scintillating semi-metallic finish. You can see a bit of purple in the bottle as well, and some orange on the nail in certain circumstances, but the predominant color is an olivine green. I don't normally think of this color as a bright, but it certainly is flashy with the shimmery semi-metallic glass fleck finish. The shift to blue is easiest to see at oblique angles in direct and indirect light. In shade, the gold shift kind of combines with the green to produce a really vivid yellow-green, but you can also see the gold alone in bright reflected light. Because these are kind of analogous colors, the shifts are more blended and subtle than I've seen in some multichromes, but the glass fleck formula, I think, is a natural for multichromatic shifters. The nature of the flecks and the way they appear on the nail lend them to this sort of light play and dynamic coloring.

Application was great. The consistency of Velle is fluid, full-bodied and fluffy with glass flecks. It's a thicker polish, but not overly viscous or difficult to work with, with a smooth, self-leveling flow over the nail. Pigmentation is very good with full bottle color and a nice depth reached in two medium coats. Cleanup is a bear, though. Those little glass flecks just go everywhere at the touch of acetone. I tried my best to brush them away, but you'll still see some sparkle to my nail environs in the photos. Velle dries naturally in average time to a smooth, shiny finish.

Photos show two coats of Velle over treatment and basecoat with a topcoat of Seche Vite.

Mentality Velle

I love the dappled visual texture of chunky glass fleck shimmers and the way they appear to float on the nail. Velle is a fabulous demonstration of this, especially (as with most glass fleck shimmers) in the shade where the flecks are thrown into relief against the base. It's just so interesting and delicious to the eye!

love,
Liz