Indian Summer by Crows Toes

 Hiya NaiLovelies!

Today I have another gorgeous swatch of an indie polish to show you. This is the stunning Indian Summer by Crows Toes which I lucky enough to snap up a bottle of when it was released in mid-November 2013 on the Llarowe website.

The base of this polish is definitely purple and I would therefore describe Indian Summer as almost blurple with a distinct flash of red/magenta which is visible in both artificial and indoor lighting.

 


 


True to form, it is not at all sunny here in the UK so I am unable to see the bronze shift clearly. Unfortunately, the lack of non-cloudy daylight has impacted on my ability to capture the true beauty of this polish on my camera, but I still tried....I think I must have taken about 70+ photos!

In the bottle Indian Summer looks amazingly complex and beautiful.  I am happy to say that this translates really well when the polish is applied to the nails, it is incredibly shifty on the nails!  I have received so many compliments on this polish with people noticing it and gasping as they walk past me and then coming back to to check whether it is red or purple – or both! That’s what I like, a fabulous stop-you-in-your-tracks polish! One of the things I love most about duo-chrome polishes is that it is like getting two or three manicures for the price of one as your nails look a different colour depending on which angle you are looking at them from.

As a side note, this polish looks AMAZING under water – but c’mon who is really all that bothered about that? Lets face it, it’s not exactly practical to walk around with your hands constantly submersed in buckets of water! Besides, that amount of water would no doubt wreak havoc with you nail plates!

As it was impossible to get this to photograph properly in my normal set up, I took a few pictures in another room with artifical light and no flash.




 

The formula for this polish is good, although I found it very streaky on the first coat whichwas not a problem as this was easily rectified with a second coat. I layered three coasts of Indian Summer over red undies using my current Gelish Spicy Fortune manicure as a base in the hopes that the red element to be a little stronger and not drowned out by the purple base of the polish. I’m not so sure my great master plan worked as the polish still looks very purple.  One coat layered over red achieves this aim but as I mentioned before it can be streaky. I made a few mistakes on the second coat on some nails hence making a third coat necessary. This polish dries pretty quickly but you have to make sure you allow sufficient time between coats for the polish to dry otherwise you could end up with drag spots.

Top swatch stick:  Indian Summer by Crows Toes (3 x coats) Bottom swatch stick: Indian Summer over black undies

Indian Summer by Crows Toes over red undies (1 x coat of Indian Summer over 2 x coats of Nails Inc Big Apple Red)

I’m not sure how I feel about the brush which comes with this polish. The brush is the same as the one in Milquetoast which I loved, but for this type of polish which is thinner, I felt I would have had easier and neater application with a wider flatter brush. Personally, I am a massive fan of the OPI Pro-Wide Brush as wider brushes are definitely my preference when it comes to applying any polish to my nails. I found it harder to control where the polish was going so this impacted on precision during application.

I absolutely adore the colour of this polish. It is truly mesmerising and unique in my collection and I prefer the combination of purple and red over the other blue toned duo-chromes which are available.

 Indian Summer - Crows Toes

Topcoat - Seche Vite

Spicy Fortune - Gelish

   

Ciao 4 Now