Aliquid Lacquer: Angerona

Back in September, I swatched Aliquid Lacquer's Egeria from her When in Rome collection.  Today, I'm happy to bring you another polish from that collection, Angerona!

I decided to don this nail polish back in January because, in addition to its beauty, the milky white base with blue, black, and bronze glitters sort of looked like snow to me.  With all the snow on the ground when I swatched this (we got close to 20" in my corner of the DC area in January, holy crap!), I thought it was pretty fitting.  And then, when I went to the store page to remind myself of the inspiration behind Angerona, I found this:

Angerona was a goddess who helped the Romans endure pain, sorrow and hardship, especially during the dark days of winter. She was also responsible for keeping Rome’s sacred name secret from its enemies.

Aha!  I thought that was pretty cool.  If Angerona helped Rome during the dark days of winter, I bet that Alison was at least sort of aiming to make this polish look a bit snowy.  Well, good job!

Anyway, on to my usual review talk:

Angerona is a crelly base.  It leaned a little closer to jelly in terms of application; it was a bit thin, and I needed three coats to achieve full opacity.  But a true jelly usually needs at least 4 coats, and they're often much streakier than this polish was, so it's definitely a crelly.  Its sheerness is probably more a result of how light the color is than of its formula.

I couldn't get many of the darker glitters onto the nail in each coat, but between three coats I did manage to get a decent coverage!  I was a little more interested in getting those barely-there irridescent blue glitters onto my nails, anyway.  I almost didn't even notice them until the light hit my nail just so during application, and then I was captivated!  The irridescence of the blue glitters is highly reminiscent of snow.  And perhaps, since they're barely visible, they're also reminiscent of the secrecy of Rome's sacred name?

I definitely really like this polish.  Cleanup was much easier than my cuticles make it look - I used my glue base coat so that I wouldn't have to fight with the glitters to get them off later, and that always makes cleaning up my cuticles turn into a gloppy mess.  I did my best for these photos, but man, you don't wanna see my right hand! ;)

This is one of the few polishes that I absolutely love with a matte top coat.  You know how I am - I enjoy matte, especially for the right kind of nail art (remember the tiny chalkboard I made once?) - but for most polishes, I'm usually disappointed with how matte flattens out the color and dims sparkles.  But a matte top coat looks great over Angerona!

This polish is definitely a hit in my book!  It may be basically spring now (well, down here in Maryland, at least!), but the delicate snowy colors of this polish are definitely wearable year-round.

What do you think of this polish?  Do you own any of the When in Rome polishes?  Which is your favorite?  Let me know in the comments!

Aliquid Lacquer: Egeria

Aliquid Lacquer has a really awesome collection of polishes inspired by ancient Roman mythology and tradition called When In Rome.  She releases one new lacquer every month, and each month's lacquer generally has something to do with that month.  For example, July's polish Neptunalia (which I think I really really need) is inspired by the Roman's midsummer tradition of honoring Neptune, which took place on July 23.

Here's the description of Egeria from Aliquid Lacquer's website:

Egeria was a water nymph and patroness of childbirth, wisdom and prophecy. She befriended Rome’s second king, Numa, and advised him on how to set up the religious and legal practices of Rome. When Numa died, Egeria was transformed into a spring, which people would visit to ask for her inspiration.

So that explains why the polish Egeria looks exactly like a beautiful, sparkly pond.  I absolutely love the holographic glitter in this.  And the non-holo pink glitters break up the holo sparkle just enough to prevent you from getting totally lost in the sparkly reflections - just like a lily would do in a real pond!  Egeria actually reminds me a little bit of Monet's Gardens by Emily de Molly - an Australian indie polish that I've been coveting for over a year but always seem to miss out on through EdM's stockists that ship to America.  Owning this polish satisfies my needs of having a pond on my nails. <3

woohoo, holographic glitters!

As far as application goes, Egeria is quite nice.  I had to dab a little bit in order to get an even distribution of glitter across my nails, but the jelly base is thin enough that I didn't end up with any awful globs of polish anywhere.  (Well except for on the inner corner of my pointer finger, but that's because I accidentally got too many glitters stuck there.)  I did end up with a small thin spot near the cuticle on my middle finger, which I didn't notice until I was taking the photos - so be aware of that if you use this polish.  Just make sure that you cover all parts of your nail on every coat and you'll be fine!

so dense with glitter!!!

  
Two coats of Egeria is pretty much opaque, but there was a tiny bit of VNL, so I built up to 3 coats on my pointer and pinkie fingers.  My middle and ring fingers just have 2 coats.  What's really great about the thinness of the jelly base is that 3 coats doesn't look ridiculously thick on my nails.  Sometimes, when I use 3-4 coats of a glitterbomb for opacity or glitter depth, my nails end up looking kind of spherical, but that definitely didn't happen here.

 

I had to take the photos for this polish on my phone, because my Canon camera absolutely did not want to pick up the color.  The pink glitters showed up all right, but the teal base might as well have been gray for all my camera cared!  Yuck!  I really prefer the photo quality of my camera, but sometimes, sacrificing pixel count and focal length is necessary to show color accuracy.

I've never known much about Roman mythology, except for my highly biased opinion that they stole their ideas from the Greeks.  But the When in Rome collection is educating me on Roman mythology one month at a time, and teaching me that they had a lot of very unique gods, goddesses, spirits, and traditions!

What do you think of this polish?  Who's your favorite Roman mythology character?  Which When in Rome polish is your favorite?  Let me know in the comments!

Part of Two Pleasant Peninsulas by ALiquid Lacquer

I've really been getting in to indie nail polish makers lately, and my most recent indie polish was a gift from my mom.  As I was browsing through ALiquid Lacquer's shop,, I discovered their collection inspired by all things Michigan, called Two Pleasant Peninsulas.

As some of you may know, I'm from Michigan, and I moved to Maryland a little over a year ago.  Even though it's been over a year, I still get totally homesick when I think about my home state, so I loved this collection immediately.  All the polishes in it are really cool and they have great names, but there were three that stuck out to me the most.  Wolverine Loves Spartan is awesome because I went to Michigan State University, and about half of my family are University of Michigan fans.  I'm Heading Strait to Mackinac is special to me because I love visiting Mackinac Island - it's one of the most beautiful, romantic places in Michigan (and for those of you who don't know, the Straits of Mackinac are the waters that separate Michigan's peninsulas, so that's why it's spelled that way).  And finally, I hold Motor City dear because I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit and I absolutely adore the city.  I'm the kind of person who will give you a 20-minute lecture if you make a joke about Detroit being a bad place.

And, conveniently enough, the three polishes with names most dear to me also happened to be my favorite colors in this collection!

Who else was a dear?  My mom!  She ordered these three polishes and had them delivered to my house in Maryland.  So I totally got these awesome polishes without having to break my polish-buying embargo!  Heck yeah!  I've been staring at these colors for days while working on other blog posts, and it's finally time to wear them and review them.  So let's get to it!

Motor City 

 

Sweet baby Jesus, I ADORE this nail polish!  It's a glitterbomb in a black jelly base, and the glitters are sooooo awesome.  The website says that it's inspired by Detroit based on Motown music and the auto industry - the glitters certainly remind me of those things!  The biggest circular glitters remind me of records.

JUST LOOK AT ALL THAT GLITTER.  HRRRNNNNGGGHH.

I just couldn't get enough of this polish!  Glitterbombs always provide a unique application on each nail, so I wasn't surprised about that, but oh my gosh, each nail was so amazing and awesome on its own!

This is the first polish in a while where I've actually REALLY liked having a matte topcoat on it.  I think matte flattens out all polishes, and in this case it makes it look amazing.  It just made me think of space, somehow!

I LOVED the way those two glitters in the center stacked, and then reflected blue in the light.

It was a bit tricky to get the bigger pieces of glitter to apply to my nail, but that's fairly standard for glitters so big.  Three coats looked nice, but you all know as well as I do that I did four coats. 

Wolverine Loves Spartan

Wolverine Loves Spartan reminds me of those giant, fist-sized jawbreakers.  It's a glitterbomb in a white crelly base - that's a creme-y jelly.  Not as thin as a jelly, not as thick as a creme.  The glitters vary in size and shape, and the colors represent Michigan's two biggest universities: blue and yellow for University of Michigan (boooo), and green to go with the white base for Michigan State University (GO GREEEN!).

I put a matte topcoat on my ring finger, and I really like it!  It makes it look even more like a jawbreaker candy.

Three coats yields great opacity and glitter depth.

This is the perfect Game Day polish - I'll definitely be wearing it on the day of MSU vs U of M!

I'm Heading Strait to Mackinac

This is a really, really pretty polish!  It's a creme with a subtle holographic sparkle, which is a simply gorgeous effect. 

It photographs a little bit brighter and bluer than it actually is - it's more of a periwinkle in person.  My camera had some trouble capturing the holo in it, of course.

I put a matte top coat on my ring finger, but it actually muted the holo sparkles a bit too much for my taste.

Two coats is perfect on this one.  One coat was actually really close to perfect, but there were a few small spots that I needed to go over again.

I'm super, super happy with all of these polishes.  I'd love to own the whole collection some day!  What are your favorites from Two Pleasant Peninsulas?