piCture pOlish blog fest - Antique

Here it is, early on  Monday 25 July 2011 in Australia, which is officially piCture pOlish blog fest day.  Over the next 48 hours around the world, I suspect you will be seeing quite a lot of piCture pOlish shades swatched and reviewed. I think this was a genius idea from the girls at piCture pOlish to get their shades swatched and to take over the blogisphere for a day.

I was lucky enough to be selected to showcase one of piCture pOlish's new shades - Antique.  For me, while I was very familiar with the girls from piCture pOlish for my many purchases of Oztoic Pro polishes, I had yet to try any of their private label polish.

So without further babble, here it is.

Antique is a dusty violet base packed with tiny square silver glitter.  In the sun it is amazingly sparkly and in the shade you can really see the density and depth of the glitter.  It applied very nicely and was opaque in two coats.  But being a dense glitter it does require a good layer of top coat to smooth out the grittiness (unless you like that sandpaper feel).  These pics are two coats plus Seche Vite top coat.

In the picture above it still looks kinda gritty with the sun bouncing off at all different angles, although as you can see below, it was silky smooth.

Here is an indoor macro shot of that glitter.

I first saw this polish on piCture pOlishes facebook page where they had a naming competition for this shade and two others. What is cool is that a fellow Aussie blogger Shatter me Claire won with her name of 'Antique' for this polish - Yay for Claire.  Here is the photo they used for the naming competition.

The funny thing is, when I saw this picture on facebook, and then saw this bottle in real life, I was totally surprised because it looked so different to what I thought it would look like.  I was expecting it to be more of a metallic shade rather than a glitter. But I'm a glitter hoe, so glitter is great!   I also saw Jacie's post about 'Jealously' (the green polish) which compared to that above picture, looks like a totally different polish.  Jacie's swatch looks apple green, but above it so much darker and forest like.  I guess that just shows that you can't rely on bottle pics to truly select a shade.

The other thing I noticed was that it might be a dupe for another polish in my stash. Ulta 3 Candied Violet.

So of course I swatched them together straight away.

As you can see, the colours indoors are almost identical, but Antique's glitter is much more dense, which does make it pop just that little bit more in the sun. You can see how much more reflective Antique is compared to Candied Violet below.

At this angle in the sun you can see that Antique is more opaque at two coats and leans a more mauve base, whereas Candied Violet appears more pink.

Ulta 3 Candied Violet costs only $2.25, but you have to be prepared to search your entire city or state by going through the Ulta 3 bins at the chemist if you want to find one.  I haven't seen a bottle for ages. But if you already have a bottle of Candied Violet, then it's a close enough dupe.  Another polish that is a close dupe is Chemistry 133, which Claire did as a comparison.

About these bottles.  I love love the shape, I wish all my nail polish was in these bottles as they would be so perfect for storage. But I do wish that the bottles had a size on them.  I mean how many mls are these?  My guess would be about 12ml, but that really is a guess.  PP gals, I think you should get the size printed on the bottle.  Also, none of these bottles have the ingredients on them, but they do have the website URL printed on them and their website does have a page that lists all the ingredients.

piCture pOlishes are AUD$9.90, which to ladies in other countries may sound quite expensive.  However, in a country where OPI retails for $19.95,  China Glaze for $18.95 and Orly for $16.95 any boutique polish under $10 is still pretty good value.

Will I be purchasing piCuture pOlish brand lacquers in the future? I certainly think so.  The formula and wear on this one was nice, it's just a shame that I got a shade that was dupy to one already in my stash (but I guess that happens when you have ~500 bottles). Now I just need to check everyone else's swatches to see what colours I like.

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Write by: Unknown - Sunday, July 24, 2011