I know I’ve mentioned my affinity for beauty subscription boxes before, so I’m sure you’re not surprised that I subscribed to the Llarowe nail polish subscription box, A Box Indied. (I did cancel a couple other boxes before I subscribed, though; that’s gotta count for something.) 🙂 The polish I chose for today is one I received from the November A Box Indied; it’s called Harvest Hayride from Freak Show Polish. I hadn’t tried this brand before, so that made me extra excited to try this polish.
I’ll describe Harvest Hayride the way it looks on the nail. I’m saying that up front because it looks quite different on the nail than it does in the bottle. It applies as a dark navy blue base with multi-colored glitter. It’s hard to pick out all the different types of glitter in this one, in part because they are difficult to see in the base color. It looks like there are red, purple, and silver (?) shard glitter, silver microglitter, and coppery tan-colored bar glitter. There may be other glitters in there, who knows. This one dries to a matte finish. The darkness of the base color obscures most of the color and shine of the glitter, however, and, in its natural state, it kind of looks like a matte, textured mess. The addition of top coat, however, does bring the glitter out of its shell and really brightens up the look. It turns into a very dark navy with hints of glitter once top coat is added.
As an aside, I’ll say that I’m not someone who spends a lot of time fretting over which base and/or top coat will be perfect for a particular polish. This is just not what I want to spend my time thinking about. However, this is a polish that requires a user who is willing to think about such things. I used one coat of the nails inc. top coat for this polish, and within minutes, literally, the bar glitter was curling up and sticking out from almost all of my nails. If I had used multiple coats of a specialized glitter top coat after applying this polish, perhaps this would not have happened. Now, I’m not someone who would never do this, but the look of the polish on my nails would have to be really spectacular for me to expend energy testing top coats / number of coats of each one to figure out how many it would take to keep the glitter from curling.
On to the photos! I used two coats of Harvest Hayride with a base and top coat for the photos. You will probably notice that the color of the polish in the bottle looks significantly lighter than the color on my nails. That is not an illusion! This one really does apply much darker than the bottle.
What do you think of this one? I actually think the dark navy base with hints of different types of glitter looks interesting on the nail. I think it would have looked better without the silver micro glitter, though. It mostly serves to make the polish texture look far too clumpy to the eye. It’s possible that applying multiple layers of top coat would ameliorate this effect, either somewhat or entirely.
The A Box Indied subscription box can be purchased through Llarowe for $50.00. It is sold on both a subscription basis and on an individual basis, and it is possible to skip a month with the subscription if the polishes just don’t appeal to you. I doubt I’ll wear this one again, so if anyone wants to try this bottle (swatched once), let me know and I’ll send it to you for the cost of shipping. 🙂
Life's Glitz Pageant 