Max Factor Fantasy Fire

Why, hello! Welcome to my blog :-)

WARNING: seriously picture-heavy post (but it IS fantasy fire...)

Today I have a polish for you that truly needs no introduction (although I'm a tad verbose, so there'll be one anyway). The reason for my choice: a friend of mine at my local Clinique counter spotted it in my basket whilst I was in Boots the other day and told me I HAD to wear it next time I go in store so she can see what it's like on the nail. Her face when she saw the bottle was FULL Gollum! I wish I could have got a photo to put on this post, but I'm sure she'd have killed me for that ;-)

A crude artist's impression of my friend's face - with surprisingly little artistic licence!
(with thanks to Google and www.prettypurplepolish.com for the best bottle shot I could find)

I wanted to show my friend the polish in its best light, and spent a lot of time googling different undies to figure out which would be best, but in the end, I decided to take some inspiration from Liesl Gutierrez on the PAA FB group and swatched it alone in all it's glory. As we all know by now, this is a very sheer polish, and so I eventually decided to experiment with how many layers it would take to get full opacity. The magic number? Six (in most lights). A lot of people will be absolutely aghast that I 'wasted' that much of this tiny bottle of polish, but I can replace it any time because I honestly have it coming out of my ears here; clearly there aren't any polishaholics in my area!

This polish has so many different sides to it that I took about FIFTY (50) pictures of my nails before eventually narrowing them down to the following (so please don't be offended that there are six)! All of the swatches below were photographed WITHOUT a top coat - this polish is unbelievably glossy!

Enjoy :-)

Ooooo

Ahhh

(Slightly blurred) close up!

Multichrome goodness: enlarge to see the green!

The full spectrum under fluorescent lighting (sorry
for the quality - had to be quick whilst the Dr was gone)!

This is what six layers of FF looks like in natural light - BLUE!

I've had this polish in my collection for some months now (used once before), and if I'm honest, I don't love it as much as I'd like to - it's just not the same on the nail as it is in the bottle. That said, I'm happy to keep experimenting with different undies until I find the perfect combo.

What's your fav undie for this polish? Let me know in the comments!


[EDIT: Bonus nail art!] 

I wasn't going to show you this, or even do this(!) but I sat down last night to remove the mani and started playing around with my new Models Own nail art pens. I originally planned to try drawing a snowflake because I am just dying with jealousy with all these beautiful winter manis out there right now, but I ended up getting side-tracked and this is what I came up with:

Close-up: I did art!

Matte and multichrome!

I'm so pleased with how this came out. I was originally just going to draw the bow outline, but it actually looks better filled in and the silver had to be layered up a lot to get to that opacity. Also, isn't the matte Fantasy Fire pretty :D It truly lost nothing of the multichrome and I think I may actually prefer it matte! Finally: this mani was about a week old (WITHOUT a top coat!) - and check out the tip wear! In fact, I made the tip wear worse because I tend to chip off the polish on my tips if any flakes off, and I chipped off  LOTS. I'm pretty sure that this mani would have been indestructible with a top coat!

I realise that this post is both LONG and FULL of pics, but I hope you enjoyed it and will stick around to see what I come up with next :) Needless to say, my posts aren't normally this long!

Thanks for stopping by and 'til next time!

- Skye x