piCture pOlish Ornate (Collaboration Shade)

| awr-neyt |
"elaborately or sumptuously adorned, often excessively" - Dictionary.com

ello lovelies!
It's been a long time since I've done a proper blog post, no thanks to increased responsibilies at work on top of an already demanding job scope. This post, however, has rekindled the spark to appreciate and share nail polishes, so more should follow very soon.

I'm beyond ecstatic about the polish in this post!
As a reward as one of the selected winners in last year's Blog/ Insta Fest, I had the privilege of working with piCture pOlish for a collaboration shade. Click here to revisit my post for Blog/ Insta Fest 2014.

piCture pOlish is an Australian boutique nail polish brand founded by 2 Australian girls that produces fast forward colours, unique finishes and durable-wear polishes. Their polishes are now 5-Free, and are formulated and made in Australia. They ship internationally, and are also available through various stockists around the world. More details at the end of this post.

The Inspiration
The name and inspiration of my collaboration shade is Ornate. As far as I can remember, I am drawn to the color purple, and sumptious, intricate embellishments and motifs. Ornate designs, art and objects are found in cultures all over the world, throughout the eras, often exuding wealth and status.

The Polish

I'm thrilled that piCture pOlish has encapsulated my idea in a bottle.
Ornate's base shade exudes the richness of plush plum taffeta. It is richly adorned with gold hex glitter, small bronze glitter, and playful sparks of small neon pink matte glitter. To top it off, it is enhanced with gold shimmer and a dash of scattered holo particles.
It took 2 coats to achieve full opacity on the nails:
The swatch above is without topcoat. Despite being dense with glitter and particles, the application is smooth with no glitter-fishing required. The base shade is not a jelly finish, hence the glitter tends to get overpowered by the plum shade. But it's a trade-off for no visible nail line in fewer coats.

It dries slightly textured, with a satin finish.

Here, with 1 thick coat of Essence Gel-Look topcoat:
Under (harsh) white lighting, the tint is slightly different and leans toward purple:

Here's a macro shot for a closer look at all the good stuff condensed into this polish:
Another mood shot:
Due to the amount of glitter, the polish removal process is longer.

In case some are curious about a comparison with some of piCture pOlish's existing shades, I laid the closest ones from my stash side by side:
All the polishes above are shown with 2 coats each, without topcoat. Ornate sits right in the middle of burgundy and purple.

Parting Shot
In keeping with the theme of the inspiration, I had to indulge in nail art.
The mani shown here was achieved with some gold nail studs, metal foil, flat-back crystals, free-hand painting (after nail stamping failed me) and nail polish remover(?).

The negative space seen is achieved by removing the top half of the polish with polish remover. Because it is glitter-heavy, the glitter does not come off easily, leaving a trail of it behind, an effect which I fancy.

Most of the free-hand design (done with Rica's Gold Digger one-coater gold polish) is overlayed by gold studs to cover the cringe-worthy uneven lines.
Along with Ornate, piCture pOlish is also releasing other new collaboration shades (my wallet shudders). Check them out on piCture pOlish's website or social media:
♥ Store - http://www.picturepolish.com.au
♥ International Stockists - http://www.picturepolish.com.au/network
♥ Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/picturepolish
♥ Instagram - http://www.instagram.com/picturepolish

I hope you enjoy this post as much as I have developing it with the wonderful team at piCture pOlish, and that it'll find its way to your stash one day.

'Til the next post, I bid you adieu and a well-polished week ahead!

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

To Leave a Comment: I've noted that OnSugar's Comment feature has caused a few readers frustration by not accepting their input. While OnSugar works on rectifying it, I did a trial and error and found that comments don't get red-taped if you enter your information in the "Name" field without any space, ie. "ALacqueredAffair" instead of "A Lacquered Affair". I hope this works. As much as I want to, OnSugar doesn't allow the disabling of Captcha.

Disclaimer: The product was sent for the purpose of this blog post. However, all opinions expressed are my own, and will always be.