En Couleur @ Cal

Dive Deeper by Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure worn over What’s With the Cat-titude? by OPI

To everyone who’s still reading this blog, thanks for sticking around despite the dearth of recent posts. After finals and graduation, we at En Couleur have had little time for updates due to celebrating our freedom from the yoke of oppression. Now that things have settled down a bit, I’d like to inaugurate this summer’s posts with this sheerly sparkling, cornflower blue mani. Dive Deeper on its own is so sheer that you’d be painting to the point of frustration—I’m guessing four coats for opacity, at least. Layer it with What’s With the Cat-titude underneath to cut that down to one coat, and brighten the blue tone. For best results, wear with a bikini and hit the beach! It may not be the most traditional beach color, but doesn’t that color remind you of waves gently glittering under the sun?

Scrangie by Rescue Beauty Lounge

To me, Scrangie is more than a magic bottle of purple-blue duochrome perfection—it is also a story. It is a story of yearning and loss, of redemption and extraordinary kindness. For months I had longed for a RBL polish, but I could never justify taking the plunge. Throughout that time, Scrangie dominated my wish list. I loved everything about it: the interplay of the red-toned purple base and the cerulean shimmer, the backstory (how it was created by the famous blogger of the same name), and the fact that it was inspired by iridescent beetles’ wings.

Scrangie is incredibly hard to find, since it’s been sold out for a while. Though RBL is bringing it back, the new batch will take 5-6 months to produce. So how did this beauty end up in my well-manicured hands? The answer is my friend and fellow polish connoisseur JS, who takes the art of gift-giving to a whole new level.

As for the polish itself, in person it was just as beautiful as I had imagined. This is two coats, and I probably could have used three. The brush is a bit small, but it applies flawlessly.  Scrangie definitely ranks among my favorite polishes ever; I just pray that my bottle never runs out.

Green by LA Colors

This green shimmer had a foil-like quality to it, judging from how reflective it was. Probably my least favorite of the bunch, it should have been either more green or more blue, instead of this weird in-between hue. Still, the vibrancy of this hue will appeal to some, and you could think of it as a freebie since the entire set is so cheap.

Magenta glass-flecked jelly by LA Colors

This is a pretty color, even if a little boring. It’s great for summertime, but so is every other bright pink out there. It has the same finish as the purple color from this set, but the purple one gets the edge due to its blue duochrome. The jelly base of this magenta polish is also more translucent, which makes VPL a bigger problem. This is not a terrible polish, but while you could do a lot worse, you could also certainly do better.

Black shimmer by LA Colors

This unnamed black shimmer came in a set of four, and it’s by far the most interesting of the bunch. Though the packaging describes them as metallics, the actual finishes vary from shimmers to glass-flecked jellies. The dense silver microglitter complements the black base well, lightening it to a gunmetal gray rather than jet black. It applies very smoothly and is opaque in two coats. The entire pack costs $3, which wouldn’t be an unreasonable price to pay for this shade alone.