Deborah Lippmann True Blood "Forsaken" Duo

Today I have both polishes from the Deborah Lippmann "Forsaken" Duo, the "Sookie Sookie" set of Fairy Dust and Human Nature...

As a True Blood fan, I was so excited to see these at the DL counter! I picked up one set for myself, plus another for my birthday giveaway. This is a great duo to represent Sookie (or, "Sssssookeh!") herself. Human Nature is simple, lovely, and unadorned, and Fairy Dust is at once subtle yet vibrant, a soft base with a fiery shimmer inside.

Got a few more pics than usual in this post, so please click "read more" to come see!

Deborah Lippmann Fairy Dust is a soft, milky white that packs an intensely fiery shimmer. That orange/coral shimmer is easily evident and surprisingly strong, even from the first coat of this pale, semi-sheer polish. I literally said, "Wow!" and blinked a couple of times, just taking it in. And then I gave myself a crick in the neck and a stiff wrist from bending over my camera for ages, just begging that amazing shimmer to show itself on camera.

Please to enjoy this badly lit and awkwardly blue picture, which I'm only including because it's the closest I came to just how gorgeous Fairy Dust's shimmer really is on its own...

This is three generous coats of Fairy Dust. Despite starting off looking a bit streaky on the first, thinner coat, Fairy Dust's formula has a good consistency that let me go thicker with the next two without it running or pooling. It actually looked great after that second coat, even with quite a bit of VNL, but since I wanted to minimize that a little (strictly personal taste), I went for the third. Fairy Dust has a delicate, ethereal appeal that I think you'd lose if you layered it over another white polish, so I didn't even try it. Given how soft and shimmery it is, I think a little VNL with this one looks just fine.

The second polish in this duo is Human Nature, one of the loveliest and deceptively simplest polishes I've worn in a while.

Deborah Lippmann Human Nature is a pale putty, mushroom, taupe, beige, hint-of-greige neutral with a beautiful creme finish. I'm wearing three coats here, and while it gave me just a little bit of cuticle pulling on the second coat, the overall formula is typically DL wonderful. It's a beautiful "nude" for my skin tone without even flirting with mannequin, I think because of the rich, earthy undertones, and I'm willing to bet that those same undertones would also help Human Nature look great on someone with darker and/or more olive skin than mine.

I usually tend towards more "greige" in my neutrals, but it feels like I've been searching for ages for a simple, pretty beige that doesn't lean either too yellow or too pink. Human Nature is juuuust right.

Of course I had to try layering these two, and it most definitely amped up the shimmer for the camera!

I'm not sure the combination suits my skin tone as well, but I think it would be very pretty on someone with darker skin than mine. This is just one coat of Fairy Dust over Human Nature, though. I think a second would have been just the thing to even out the undertones that read a bit "pasty" on me, but then the beige underneath would be more "undies" than layering...and Human Nature is just too gorgeous for me to want to cover it completely. I have other polishes I can use for undies that aren't Deborah Lippmann.

All in all, I'm thrilled with this duo! Human Nature is the beautiful beige I've been looking for, and I just can't say enough about Fairy Dust's intriguing contrast of milky white and dazzling shimmer. I've said it before, but it bears repeating. Deborah Lippmann is a wizard.