Illamasqua Viridian

Today I have some swatches of a gorgeous polish, Illamsaqua Viridian. Illamasqua describes it as peacock green, with a metallic finish. I'm totally on board with the "peacock"--I actually thought of the colour, before I even read that, as some sort of awesome love child of a peacock and a beetle (which, I don't even wanna know how those two got together, but I hope those crazy kids make it work). "Metallic" I'm not so sure about. I see it as more of a very deep shimmer with just a little bit of metallic, or even pearl. Not enough to define the finish but enough to make it richly luxurious.

There's also just a teeny hint of duochrome to it, barely noticeable, but it adds yet another dimension. If you look at the corners of the bottle and at the very sides of the nails, you may be able to see that tinge of purple.

I'm wearing two coats here (with a coat of SV on top), but with careful application you could actually get away with just one. It's quite a thick polish but not unmanageably so; it stays where you put it and spreads well and evenly. Plus I'm crazy about the colour! It definitely leans strongly green, but it's also nicely teal-blue as well. And the shade falls somewhere between jewel-toned and vampy, somehow managing to be rich and dark and yet also very colourful. This is one complicated polish!

Illamasqua released Viridian and its duo partner, Scarab (a similarly rich red), in the fall of 2010 as the Art of Darkness collection.