As excited as I am to wear pastels and brights for spring, sometimes I just have to mix things up with a darker polish. I guess it's my version of a palette cleanser. Orly Fowl Play is from their Fall 2011 Birds of Feather Collection, but I didn't get it until last year. I meant to wear it during Fall, then Winter, but never got around to it until now. I'm sure everyone has seen this one by now, but I'm not that concerned. I'm a big sucker for puns, so its name makes me smile.
Just a little heads up... These are not the best pics. I'm fully aware of this. Us baby bloggers learn a lot by trial and error. I'm not ashamed to show my failures. What you see in the photos is not tipwear. It's shrinkage from my Seche Vite, which happened pretty much immediately. I tried to add another coat of polish to cover my bare tips and a layer of random top coat that wasn't fast dry. This only made the shrinkage line uneven and my polish look thick. The shrinkage didn't really bother me in the first place, but I wanted for the polish to look its best for this post. Fail. It looked even worse. Let's just call this a learning experience...
Fowl Play is a dark plummy jelly base with a quite a bit of yummy goodness mixed. I don't normally post this many photos, but I was trying to capture what it looks like in different lighting and from various angles. It has reddish/copper flakies that shift to orange, yellow, then green. I like that you don't have to hold your hand at extreme angles to see the shift. It also has really pretty blue glitter that sparkles in every light. In the shade, it looks like there's some silver microglitter thrown in, too.
 |
| Rainbows! |
I originally used three thin coats of Fowl Play to reach opacity and depth. Due to the aforementioned shrinkage debacle, these photos show an additional thin coat, which didn't affect how the polish itself looked. It applied easily. The flakies lie flat on the nail and didn't interfere with application. The formula was slightly thick, which was fine with me. I just waited an extra minute between coats. I don't think I can blame the shrinkage completely on the polish or the Seche Vite. I didn't do the best job of wrapping my tips, thanks to my new shorter nail length. Hello, polish all over my fingertips! Removal and clean-up were easy, but be careful or you'll end up with sparkles everywhere (like I did).
 |
| Sunlight |
 |
| Sunlight |
Argh! Shrinkage! Hmm, that's what the title of this post should have been... I read that some people didn't understand the hype surrounding this polish and that it could only be appreciated in the sunlight. I disagree. The sunlight certainly makes it sparkle and shimmer, but it's overwhelming for me. Even though I live in Florida, I'm not currently spending a lot of time outdoors. I wouldn't wear a polish that I didn't think looked good in indoor or low lighting, since that's where I normally am. I think Fowl Play is beautiful and complex. (I'm also a sucker for compliments on my polish from my bar guests and co-workers. Holos and other sunlight loving polishes are reserved for my days off, because it's pointless to wear them in dim lighting where no one, myself included, can see them in their full glory.) I wore this mani for three days, including a Friday night at work, without a single chip. Tipwear? Who knows. My shrinkage line didn't seem to change at all. ;)
 |
| Shade |
 |
| Shade |
Fowl Play is supposedly a dupe, or very close to one, of OPI Merry Midnight. I don't have the OPI, so I'm not sure. From swatches that I've seen online, they seem to be very similar, but not dupes. Fowl Play, however, was affordable and easy for me to find. From what I can tell, it's still widely available. Go check it out for yourself! (Or go on eBay and pine over a $23+ bottle of Merry Midnight. I can't say I haven't done that myself...) Hope everyone has a beautiful Sunday. :)
XOXO,
Riotbettyx
Pretty polish!
ReplyDelete