Nail Varnish Competition: Runners Up Part I

So a big congratulations to the runners up, and everyone else who entered the competition. From the runners up, 10 of our favourites were sent off to our suppliers to try and match.

The three winners were then picked as the best representations of the image supplied and the finished product.

I thought I would give you all a break down of the 7 that weren't picked, and the reasons why as well as swatches of the Nail Varnish that were sent back...
Today: Yvonne Whelan's Kryptonite

I loved this idea, and I so longed for it to work! The description given to us was:

"Imagine a matte emerald green nail colour! A colour that was used by the Ancient Egyptians to show wealth and extravagence. Ancient Egyptions obtained their emeralds from The Cleopatra mines, a region in the eastern part of upper Egypt. A jewel widely sought after and a colour eye catching with intensity. It would have gold and white UV properties running through it, so it would glow in the dark and would resemble Supermans Kryptonite!"

In our discussions the supplier, Product Development team and I discussed the possibility of a matte green lacquer that would have gold and white UV properties. Now, this can be done but apparently it leaves a very streaky texture to the Nail Varnish as well as having a chalky finish, but we were determined to try.

So this was the final result....


Conclusions from us? It's difficult to achieve a matt varnish with gold and silver! Gold and silvers are naturally shimmer-based colours and so inevitably mix with the matt green creating a shimmer finish. However, I like the silver undertone to the green [for an idea click on the above image and, ignoring my cuticles, look at the bottom little finger nail...] it's interesting and unique. In different lights it flashes between a silver leaning green and a gold leaning green.

What we briefed in to the supplier was a streaky finish [something the supplier was very surprised about - most people don't want streaky varnish!!] to mimic Yvonne's provided image as much as possible, and whilst this looked effective in the bottle to begin with, the heavier UV pigments that were put in slowly sank to the bottom to look a bit like this...

We tried the UV properties in UV lighting and whilst there was definitely a small amount of glow-in-the-dark going on, [sorry, no photos could capture this!] it wasn't really enough to justify the way that the Nail Varnish started to split.

Side note: It kind of reminds me of that Black Adder episode where Percy discovers green [click here if you don't know what I'm talking about...]

So all in all, an interesting colour but not close enough to the picture, or the description that Yvonne had put forward. Thanks anyway Yvonne, and if you are reading this and would like this [used!] Nail Varnish then get in touch with us at info@illamasqua.com.

We also have a spare bottle so if you are looking at this and thinking, yep - that's my kinda green, leave a comment below and we will pick someone at random to win the Nail Varnish!

Keep an eye out for future posts on some of the other runner ups...