Illamasqua Gamma - WOW

A Male Opinion, hitherto known as MDAMO (the AMO part you can figure out on your own, MD is between he and I **giggle* and I'm not telling what it means! How are ya, sweetie! He reads my blog and looks at polish with me. I know, right? :D ) and I have fallen into a routine. We look at polish because we chat online a lot and I am usually looking at polish and readin' your blogs. I need an LOLcat for that, and he patiently tolerates it and looks at all the linkies I send him. Then he will find other things he likes and send linkies back. Sometimes I just decide or I give him a color family or some options and he chooses. I don't know, we have fun with it. He's chosen the next few polishes, is the moral of my lengthy story.

This one was a joke between us because years ago I would bitch about my color or talk about it and he would point out that they always seemed to be orange. Writing the blog has helped me not get into a rut like I was at that time where every color I chose was a version of the one before it. I'm much more conscious of what it looks like on the blog, of not boring you guys, of making sure that if you're flipping through you have something different to catch your eye and to hopefully encourage you to stay for awhile. So MDAMO chose orange as a joke between us.

Orange, ironically, isn't a great color on me. However, given that my hands are white as the driven snow, I can usually get away with it. Just don't put it near my face! UGH! Terrible. I'm a winter. You know, I can wear the basic 8 Crayolas excepting Orange and yellow. Just not near my face!

Gamma is definitely orange. It's neon orange.

 Yeah, I know. It looks like Tang, doesn't it? This isn't a great picture but it shows the cuticles well and in a terrible awful way, it's the only picture I took of it before it showed wear. I don't know why. My world has been a little upside down lately, that's all I can say about it.
However, you know I like to show you the cuticles because for one, it can be tricky to get really tidy cuticles like that, if you don't believe me, come back for the next post, and also, I think it's an excellent indicator of both the quality of the formula and the quality of the brush, which I never remember to mention. This is an Illamasqua so I expect perfection on both counts and as you can see, I got it. I look at this and it's hard for me to believe I did it. I'm not an expert, I haven't been trained, I just have some practice. You can see I got a little sloppy but it will easily come off the side of your nail once it's dried. A little warm water can work wonders.

Another trick to tidy cuticles, I find, is to put a small drop of polish in the middle of your nail and push it upwards toward the cuticle, allowing the brush to do it's natural thing and fan out, creating that nice shape. You can see I don't have really round nail beds so I have to be a little cautious, but it works well. Then you just brush out any streakies you created in the normal way. This was a tip I picked up watching how-to videos on Rescue Beauty Lounge's website an age ago but it almost always works. I can't take the credit for it.

I have a ton of pictures of this, by the way.

Have I ever shown you an Illamasqua box? I'm sure I must have, but just in case.

On my back porch steps...hm. Need to paint the porch floor.

Illamasqua everything comes in a black box like this. I personally love the minimalist representation of this brand.

The older ones have a plain white sticker on the top that says the color name. These days they have come up with the simple and brilliant idea of coloring the sticker to match the polish which honestly, why hasn't everyone thought of that? Still, if you're a hound like me, you will know or have an idea from the name. I can scarily go through a box of lacquer with someone and usually name them on sight. Frightening, isn't it? I bet some of you can do the same!

I love the shape of these. Square and tall. Monolithic...this is a little washed out. I thought the sunlight would be ideal, but it wasn't. I got more accurate shots in the shade. 

This is closer. It's incredibly bright. And I think it's perfectly names. I would believe something this color would cause The Hulk, wouldn't you?

Bottle to nail comparison. This was...gosh, I don't know now, a week later? Five days? I've lost track. Mental note AGAIN to take notes while I'm wearing it so I give you guys good info. You can see, it's getting rough. I've kind of started taking the before pics, right after I do them, and then the right when it needs to be put out of it's misery pics. I won't tolerate a lot of chipping or mess unless I'm like, two days away from my regular mani anyways. If I had had a manicure in a couple days, I might have tried to save this. It's doable, but a lot of work. Come back tomorrow for the next post to find out what really happened.

Very true to the bottle color, as you see. Oddly, this didn't dry matte, as most neons do. I'm not a huge neon fan. I like them but find I'm pretty meh about them once I get them on. This wasn't that way, I enjoyed wearing this color. As you can see, it didn't dry weird. It stuck to what you saw.

Aside from that one chip and the thumb, this performed beautifully. I have a right hand picture somewhere in here for you, too. I did an amazing amount of filing, refiling, file auditing, what have you with this manicure. That any of it stayed on was miraculous.

Little bit different lighting, little bit different polish. 

The label shot, just for scuzz. Like to show you that. Made in Australia, interesting. Never realized that.

In indirect sunlight on my black pants. Sometimes I give you those blacktop shots? I tried with this because the black tar color of the pavement really shows off the color, but it was so hot. I tried...I nearly burned myself. I'm actually looking forward to winter this year.

Again in indirect sunlight. This is probably the most accurate lighting for this color. So bright and aggressive and very highly pigmented. They didn't scrimp on the pigments.

Grarr....Picasa you nuisance! Makin' my picture all wonky!

It's the last one. You can see the right hand didn't do all that badly, really. My nails were getting too long because of a missed mani and the polish just won't wear as well if your nails are bending all over the place.

 I don't remember how I did this, I apologize. (NOTES, DUMMY! MAKE NOTES!) I believe it's three coats of color because it kind of wanted to be streaky. As you can see, it turned out OK. And bright. Very very bright.

Any thoughts?

Happy Talons!