Dead Ringer for Fantasy Fire. Shift Happens eh?

It seems a long time ago when I bought Ringer from Darling Diva Polish on etsy. Ringer is much more affordable and in a larger bottle than Fantasy Fire. That is even when you consider shipping it to Australia. I thought I could go the whole hog and get a mini bottle and a large bottle for that shifting goodness.

Then when my bottles arrived there had been another arrival in Australia. Yes, Max Factor had released Fantasy Fire here. Of course I had to secure my own bottle. Ok, maybe I had to get two but I did share!

Looking at Ringer and Fantasy Fire in their bottles they seem to have exactly the same shift at the same time. Sometimes when I look really hard I wonder if the particles in Ringer may be a little larger than Fantasy Fire. The base colour appears similar although Ringer is more sheer in appearance. Maybe there are more particles in Fantasy Fire but using the polish I did not notice any difference on the nail.

For my base colour I tried to choose a similar colour to the base colour of Fantasy Fire. I wanted a simple creme polish but I found that I did not really have one even though I love purple so much. There seems to be an added factor to most of my polishes. I used Satin Seasonal Nail Enamel 1. Two coats were applied but I feel I should have added a third. This is because I think it would have added more depth to the colour and made the polish pop more.

I had exceptional trouble trying to capture Fantasy Fire on camera today. It is swelteringly hot and I wonder if somehow the camera is affected. That seems silly but I could not stop taking pictures and getting good shots the last time I photographed Fantasy Fire for Spring. Fantasy Fire was applied to my index and ring fingers and Ringer graces my middle and little fingers. For an extra comparison but not really captured, I used Girly Bits Shift Happens on my thumb.

It may seem in the above photo that the middle finger may have less pigment but you can not tell any difference in reality. The difference in the picture may be the angle or the like.

Shift Happens seems to change more readily from red to yellow and for longer than Fantasy Fire and Ringer. Essentially, there is not much difference in the Ringer from the handmade batch I had to Fantasy Fire. I would call them dupes. Shift Happens is a great alternative and could be applied to a greater array of colours as it does not have the purple coloured based of Fantasy Fire and Ringer.

I was thrilled when I was able to capture this blue shift that came after the green shift. This seems to be the greatest extreme of the colour shift in these polishes.

All three polishes are beautiful and I feel fortunate in owning all three. Shift Happens ended up being the most difficult for me to buy but it eventually came my way from Llarowe. Personally, if you just want Fantasy Fire and can't buy it at a local shop, I would buy Ringer from Darling Diva. I would hurry because it seems as though this pigment is going to he hard to get if at all. For versatility, I would get Shift Happens. I have one more way I want to try Shift Happens as the colour shift changes nature depending on the base colour.

There you go Melissa. I posted as promised. :)

When Shift Happens over a Tequila Sunrise with a lot of pictures.

When I first tried Girly Bits Shift Happens, I wondered how fiery it would be over orange. For that orange I chose Rimmel Tequila Sunrise. I was pleasantly surprised that two coats of this did not look terrible on me. Admittedly, it is a little bright for my taste but I could not say it looked awful.

Next I applied two coats of Shift Happens. I took a LOT of pictures.

The red part of the colour shift did not appear over orange.

I found orange and gold. At the very extreme I could tease out green.

Not that I could get the green to appear well on the camera...

It did not look in the least bit like fire. Nice but no dice. I had anticipated this and I had already decided that I would stamp over this combination. I dragged out a few choices but I did not have anything that was a flame image. Well, not one that would show the above polish rather than the stamping polish.

I used Konad Black as my stamping polish and you can tell with the shoddy clean up. Why oh why does this polish have to be so hard to clean up? It smears everywhere and it is terrible. The image plate was from Bundle Monster (yet again) and was BM-312.

This manicure looks nothing like fire. Maybe tiger stripes? A colour shifting tiger?

Shift Happens over Purple Velvet

I had a disaster of the nail kind. Nails on both of my hands broke and I had to trim the others off to suit. Thankfully it was my right hand that had the worst damage where I had to cut them down drastically. Now my fingernails are nubbier than ever.

There was a quick removal of my Dragon with an Iridescent Eye manicure and I had to apply a quick manicure before I had to head off to work. What to wear? What would dry in time? I know, I would use Orly Purple Velvet. Matte polishes are always a good choice because they look good and dry quickly.

After a day of wear the polish was looking pretty bad. I really did not feel like removing it and applying something else. There was not the time for that! What to do? Girly Bits Shift Happens was one of my deeply craved polishes and it was sitting in my "to be used" area. Yes, I would add Shift Happens over Purple Velvet and see how it looks. Two coats went on and of course I had multichromatic loveliness. Hmmm but I had a similar loveliness when I used Fantasy Fire earlier this month...

Aha! I know that the Orly Matte polishes stamp reasonably well so I decided to stamp over the top of my manicure and see how well that worked. I think it is wonderful because you are surprised by the design when you get the colour shift. I used an image from Bundle Monster BM-224

When I wore this indoors, I tended to get mainly a red sparkle. Shift Happens did change colour more readily than Fantasy Fire but I do find Fantasy Fire prettier. This is most likely due to the colour I wore underneath Shift Happens. Purple Velvet gives the polish an unusual purple colour that seems almost a dusty colour. And obviously this shift was stronger because I was able to photograph these colours unlike when I attempted to do the same with Fantasy Fire. Being a top coat, Shift Happens would be more versatile. I am interested to see how fiery it would look over an orange base colour.

As you can see from my pictures, I did not clean up well and there is a lot of chipped wear out of my tips. I almost did not take pictures of this because I did not really want to share how lazy/awful I was with this manicure. On the other hand, you can not deny that it is very pretty. I especially like the first picture were you can see all of the colours over the nail. Below is a picture of what it looked like most of the time but much more red. Artificial light seemed to bring out the red play in Shift Happens.