I'm so excited to show you swatches of the Dollish Polish Super Mario Bros. Collection as well as The Many Shades of Mr. Grey.
I was lucky enough to snag these babies a few weeks ago from Dolly's Big Cartel store located here. Her polishes are also available for purchase on Llarowe. The Mario Collection is scheduled to be offered on Wed. August 1st, 2012 at 1 p.m. and 7 p.m MST.
Being a Nintendo nerd from wayyy back and a book fanatic, I HAD to have these! So after a long wait, many page refreshes, a potential power outage, and basically mainlining Mtn. Dew in order to stay awake I managed to purchase a full size Mario set, as well as a full size Mr. Grey! What an interesting experience to pop my proverbial "indie cherry"!
On to the pretties! The Super Mario Bros Collection is a set of 8 polishes based on the popular Nintendo Game characters. While The Many Shades of Mr. Grey is inspired by the book "50 Shades of Grey" and it's main character.
Please disregard the haggard shape of my cuticles through the process of these swatches...as repeated acetone baths are not my friends.
Bottle Shots of The Super Mario Bros Collection- courtesy of Dolly's Big Cartel Shop page linked above
First I have for you It's A Me Mario! This polish is a clear base with tiny red and blue hex glitter ,slightly larger blue and red hexes, and silver holographic star glitter. Very pretty in the bottle as well as on the nail. You WILL dig for the stars and they will most likely require something like an orange stick or other tool to press them flat on the nail. Gorgeous over white! This is one coat and some dabbing over FP Papier Mache.
Next up- A Peachy Princess! This is the one I was most excited about! Princess Peach is by far my favorite Mario game character. This polish has different shades and shapes of holographic, matte, and metallic pink glitters in a pink tinted base. A beautiful polish in the bottle, I'm not sure if it was just my bottle but I had a horrific time trying to apply.
Now from what I've read about the whole indie polish scene, sometimes application is "challenging". But those pink square glitters are definitely not easy to get out by any means and I shook mine pretty constantly to keep them from sinking almost immediately. It really is pretty after you get the glitter placed though. This is one coat and dabbing over Essie Play Date.
Dino-Mite Yoshi- Who doesn't love Yoshi?!?! Inspired by the cute little dinosaur that's down to help Mario and Luigi on their quests. This one after the whole swatching process was easily my favorite application-wise. The matte glitters in pastel green, bright green, red, orange & white in a clear base applied beautifully. This is one coat over Sinful Colors Innocent
Go Luigi!- Various sizes of blue and green glitter and holographic stars. Basically a blue/green variation of It's A Me Mario! Same problem as noted above with IAMM. I fished forever to get the stars out and had to press them down after getting them on the nail. I do love how it looks, so in the end it's worth it. This is one coat and some dabbing over Zoya Pippa.
1-up- Also another one I was looking forward to. I did 1-up mushroom nail art a while back and got rave reviews. I love Kelly Green so this polish was definitely for me. Kelly Green matte glitters, white squares, hexes, and bars in a clear base are listed on the Dollish Page as being in this polish but my bottle had no squares to be found. While the end result looks fabulous, I yet again struggled to get the bigger hex accents out of the polish those hexes and bars did not want to come out even with profuse shaking during the course of a 4-finger swatching. 1 Coat and dabbing over WnW On a Trip. Did I mention that I loved the green?
Wicked Wario-Clear-based ultra fine purple matte glitter accented with Yellow, Green, & White glitters. This was another fisher, Wario was not giving up the goodies easily!! I had to shake after every finger, dig for the white squares, mine started sinking as soon as I stopped, and still barely came up out of the bottle, even with swirling . Very veryyy pretty on the nail, but definitely not something I was able to slap on with a quickness. I'm a purple fanatic so I'll still use Wario, just when I have more time not swatching a whole collection obviously. This is one coat and some dabbing over Sally Hansen Lacey Lilac.
Toad-ally Awesome A clear base with Multi-size matte white glitters accented by Blue, Yellow and Red inspired by the cute little Toadstool helper of the Mario Bros. The small whites came out with no problem, but I had to dig around a little bit for the cute blue squares, red and white hexes, and those small gold squares, I gave up on trying to get them out lol. What I found worked best was swirling my brush around and kinda picking the glitter of the wand part of the brush with my orange stick and placing them. Very cute on the nail, could be used on numerous colors. 1 coat and some dabbing over Rimmel Black Satin.
Last but not least, we have The Many Shades of Mr. Grey- a beautiful glitter that once I saw a bottle shot, I was in love. This polish is packed with Grey-hued hex glitters from micro-sized to large size in a clear base. Edgy and gorgeous just like Mr. Grey himself :). This applied beautifully with minimal effort, and I'd daresay you could get opacity or fairly near opaque with 3-4 coats, if you wanted to go that route. This is one coat over Orly Decades of Dysfunction. Going to be a date-night mani for sure hehe!
With the exception of Mr. Grey, Dino-mite Yoshi, and the minimal issues with the Koopa King, if you are going to plan a full mani with the any of the other glitters, I'd suggest setting aside a fair bit of time and make sure to have an orange stick, skewer, tweezers or other tools on hand to help with glitter placement. Drying time was average, and I really didn't notice any residual grittiness but I'd recommend 2 coats of TC for Luigi and Mario, just to make sure your stars stay down.
Overall, I'm happy with my purchase from a collector's standpoint, but not so much from a person who's just hopped on the indie wagon. I was a little disappointed in how many application issues I had with the some of these polishes, and I am by no means a NP n00b. Honestly, some of the problems were probably just me being in a rush, which is the story of my life! I'm still SUPER excited to see what Dolly and the other indie gals have to offer and will hopefully be featuring more of them on this blog in the future! I will definitely be purchasing from her again!
A great learning experience for an "indie newbie". These polishes will make a great conversation piece, and hold a special place for my nerdy 80's-90's kid self, but I highly doubt I'll use them on a consistent basis just based on how much time it took to get them to look the way I wanted them to. Totally worth the purchase though! It made me feel good to support someone I have watched on YouTube for quite some time and used many of her nail art ideas!
The Super Mario Bros. Collection full size 8-polish set retails for $70 plus shipping on the Dollish Polish BigCartel Site and Mr. Grey is priced at $8.75. No word on pricing of the full-set on llarowe or at least none that I have heard.
All products mentioned above were purchased myself.
