Wednesday, February 3, 2010

China Glaze Light as Air

I swear, these spring collections almost look like the nail polish companies have been reading my mind. Beautiful crème pastels, gorgeous, heavily pigmented purples, and medium greens … so many greens! Perfect, bright, medium greens! This post, however, is not about green. It’s about the incredibly beautiful, densely pigmented, light, greyed-out pastel lilac: Light as Air.

This stuff is perfection in a half-ounce bottle. The pigment is so dense, one could almost get away with one coat; the option of a sheer coat simply does not exist. It’s smooth … so smooth; self-leveling, almost like Illamasqua polishes; and it looks absolutely phenomenal:

China Glaze Light as Air

Two coats of China Glaze Light as Air, on top of Essie Base Coat and under Seche Vite.

It wasn’t until I had actually made the decision to begin this blog that I realized how bad my fingers look. This polish had been on my nails for a few (non-working) days, and these two fingers were the only ones that looked decent enough for me to actually show the world. Hopefully, there will be more fingers in future photos.

I would like to discuss the formula for a moment. Yes, it is thick. Thicker than most polishes, 3-free or otherwise. It has to be, too: in order to get this kind of opacity, a lot of pigment has to be used – a lot of solid, dense pigment. It’s kind of like milk: the more milk solids in it (fat, etc.), the more opaque the milk is. Similarly, the more pigment – especially white or really light pigments, which require more pigments than other to create opacity – in a polish, the thicker and more opaque it becomes. One cannot apply a very thin coat without it looking horrible, patchy, and, quite simply, ugly. So the coats have to be relatively thick. It’s not stringy or hard to get even or anything, it’s just thicker than normal. It’s worth it, though.

On the whole, I am loving this color and loving China Glaze right now. Thank you for reading my mind and making such a perfect color!