Mermaid Tears

I dug this lacquer, Polish Me Silly’s Mermaid Tears, out of my stash yesterday in the hopes of using it in service of the final week’s prompt in February’s N.A.I.L. Challenge. The theme was least favourite polish, and seeing as my true least favourites (very few, thankfully) are presently gracing a landfill just outside of town, that left Mermaid Tears, a green-on-green thermal jelly sprinkled with green holographic circle glitter. I’ve had this polish for a little over a year now, and application has never been anything but a pain. The large circle glitter – lots of it, and clearly visible in the bottle – resolutely refuses to come unstuck from the sides of the bottle, no matter how long you leave it upside down, and the chartreuse-to-jade thermal jelly remains stubbornly sheer, withstanding any attempts at opacity. It was a disappointment, and being an online-only indie purchase, a not inexpensive one, which is the only reason it’s been granted a stay of execution this long. I figured I’d give it one more chance to not do its thing for this challenge prompt before sending it off to the big stash in the sky.

Which is of course the moment Mermaid Tears decided to pull itself together and become the polish I always hoped it would be. Don’t you hate it when that happens? It’s like those times my computer whiffs the big one seemingly for me and me only, because the second I show Mr. Finger Candy IT Support, it’s all “Hey, no problems here. Look at me runnin’ all fancy!” and I want to dropkick it across the room.

But I really have no complaints here. A polish I once liked enough to buy is now behaving the way it was always supposed to – huzzah! And I had to chuckle a bit when I looked down at one point and saw TWO large green circles stuck to my brush, because of course. 🙂 And I don’t know what weird confluence of events or conditions led to it finally behaving (although it is still so, so sheer) but I’ll take it! So back to the drawing board on this least favourite thing, because Mermaid Tears actually redeemed itself pretty nicely.

You’re Hot and You’re Cold

In the past I have been hesitant to jump on board the trendy nail polish bandwagon. Textures? Why would I want to wear sandpaper on my nails? Holographics? No big shimmery deal. Colour changers of the UV or thermal variety? Gimmicky.

It goes without saying I was wrong on all those points – busy, you know, making an ASS out of U and ME – particularly on the subject of colour changing polishes, which have quickly become my favourite type of “novelty” lacquer. It’s unreasonably fun to run my hands under hot and cold water just to see what kind of cool, gradient-like effect comes out the other side.

Here I’ve shown two thermals from Polish Me Silly, a favourite indie polish maker, Mermaid Tears, a dark teal-to-celery green jelly, and Grape Intentions, a shimmery pink-to-purple jelly. The cold state is the left-hand photo and the warm state is the photo on the right. These are the first jelly-based thermals I’ve tried, and while the two-tone effect isn’t quite as pronounced as it is with cream-based polishes (particularly on my shorter nails), they still make for beautiful fingernail adornment.