Saturday, January 4, 2014

Renaissance Custom Lacquers - Swatches and Review

Hello, everyone! I've got some swatches of some new polishes from Renaissance Custom Lacquers to share with you today. Meghan (of Will Paint Nails for Food) sent them all the way from Canada for me to try out and I'm pleasantly surprised by these. The first 5 polishes are from the Shimmer collection and are part of an open-ended grouping, meaning that Meghan and Laura plan on adding more polishes to this collection at a later date. I think they are some great staple colors with a little extra pizzazz and I'm curious to hear what you all think of them. So let's dig in :) 
Mount Pleasant
Mount Pleasant is a lovely emerald green with green shimmer and is quite striking. It has a great formula and while I've shown 2 coats, it could easily be a 1 coater if you'd like. The shimmer in this does cause some brush strokes to appear in the polish, but if you wait for each coat to dry and find the right balance of polish, the application of this should be great. 
Runnymede
I quite liked Runnymede. It's a red-ish, golden rose shimmer with just the slightly hint of brown undertones and is really unique. It has a duo-chrome shift from the rosy color to more of a brown shimmer. The formula was excellent - shown is 2 coats but this is also one that you can get away with in only 1 coat if you'd like. 
Spadina
Spadina! This one is really fun and very unique. I don't think I have anything in my collection quite like it and I haven't seen many other colors like it floating around the internet either. It's a golden/coppery shimmer with a hint of brown and it's really pretty on. It has a steampunk feel to it and I like that a lot. Again, great formula, and only needed a max of 2 coats. 
St. Clair
Ooh, St Clair! I adore thee! This was one of my favorites and I actually wore this for 3 days in a row (unheard of for me!). It's a lovely blue shimmer with flecks of purple/magenta shimmers. The flecks have a duo-chrome effect and it's quite pretty. My lighting setup wasn't able to capture this effect on my nails, but you can see the color shift on the bottle. Great formula, and max of 2 coats. 
The Danforth
The Danforth is another favorite. It's a regal eggplant purple with gold and pink shimmer. It's a really elegant yet mysterious shade and I feel like I should be at a masked ball in the 1800s with this on. Who doesn't love that? This was 2 coats, with yet another great formula. 
The next two polishes aren't apart of the shimmer collection, but they aren't to be forgotten as they are gorgeous glitters. 

Crystalline
Crystalline pretty much has it all when it comes to a glitter polish. It has tiny blue, lavender, and white glitter with some larger gold hex glitter. To top it all off, the base of this is packed with spectraflair to create an amazing holo look. This is also supposed to have large snowflake glitter in it, but I wasn't able to fish any out. This is 1-2 coats over Zoya's Robyn. 
Evenstar
This was one of my favorites of all the polishes. I was so pleasantly surprised by this one and I couldn't stop staring at it. It has holographic glitter mixed with shades of blue and silver glitter in square, hex and round. I've paired this over St. Clair from above and used 2 coats because I wanted it to be a bit more opaque. I think this one is easily build-able and could be worn on it's own.
Bonus - Cuticle Oil
Meghan included a sample of their new cuticle oil and I'm always eager to try out new options for staving off those pesky hangnails. I used this for about a week straight in the evenings and let it soak in while enjoying the great orange cinnamon scent. There are other scent options (including unscented which is great for those who are sensitive to perfumes) and I really liked this oil. I have the 5ml one and is applied with a nail polish brush so it was very easy to use.
Photo credit to Renaissance Cosmetics
Overall
While these are more basic colors, they are by no means boring. I really like that these are sort of staple colors that have a bit more depth and detail. I think it's really important for an indie brand to have polishes in many colors and many finishes so I appreciate the Renaissance Lacquers is doing that. On the whole, these all have fabulous formulas and at most require 2 coats which is great for those who don't like wasting polish building opacity. I think any of these would be a great addition to anyone's collection. 

You can purchase these polish and more from Renaissancecosmetics.com for $9/bottle and be sure to follow on Facebook and Instagram to keep up with new releases and promotions. 

Happy Polishing :)