Daily Lacquer Hotaru Swatch

The long weekend is here which means I will be away on Good Friday as well as Easter Monday so I'd figure I'd leave one of my fave new polishes lingering up on the blog for the holiday! Today I have an indie polish from Daily Lacquer, which is run by Maggie of the Daily Lacquerista in Seattle. (West coast is the best coast, what what!) Anyway, I was introduced to Daily Lacquer from Rainbow Honey via Twitter. I had tweeted to Dee begging for a Sailor Moon collection to be made. While she lamented over wanting to make ALL THE COLLECTIONS! she explained that it wasn't possible and another indie polish maker had already had them in production - enter Daily Lacquer.

It took me a while to get through No Buy February but I bit the bullet a couple of weeks ago and placed an order. Unfortunately I was too late and missed out on the Inner Senshi Collection but I managed to snag Hotaru from the Outer Senshi Collection. Hotaru is based on Sailor Saturn, who was one of my favourite sailor scouts in regards to aesthetic. Daily Lacquer Hotaru itself is a sheer pastel violet jelly base with some definite blue-biased tones, packed with a ton of glitter - I'm talking silver moons, silver stars, purple hearts, black glitter, black shreded irregular shaped glitter, and some slightly blue-pink iridescent larger hex and squares. Daily Lacquer bottles are super cute. The shape of the bottle is very unique, and the bow detailing is adorable. I wondered if it would slip off but it was very sturdy. Maybe they're glued into place? In either case, I didn't want to risk ruining it.



It does take a few coats to build up Hotaru on her own, but the result is very cute and fun with a lot of added depth from the glitter in each layer. Like most polishes with large shaped glitter, you must fish out the moon, star and heart glitter. (I don't think I even got to manage getting a heart glitter! Ah well.) I turn the bottle upside down, give it a bit of a shake and fish away! I did this for my final coat. The formula is very fast drying so multiple thin layers are OK when wearing Hotaru alone. I used Seche Vite top coat on my swatches. Generally I recommended using a thick top coat like Seche Vite when wearing a heavy glitter polish like this because it smooths everything out. Top coatless glitter polishes can tend to look clumpy, unflattering and the glitter may snag on things like hair, stockings, etc.









Sorry for the awkward bottle holding. It was hard to grip, haha! #nailbloggerproblems

I've been loving matte top coats over glitter lately so obviously I had to do it with Hotaru. I used American Apparel Matte Top Coat for these swatches.





Finally, I wanted to see how Hotaru would work with a base colour seeing that the base jelly was so, so sheer on the nail. I applied two coats of OPI Planks A Lot and used my fishing technique to ensure that I would have some of the fun glitter on. I was very surprised to see that the violet blue tone essence of the Hotaru base jelly completely overwhelmed Planks A Lot. You can see a few streaks in my swatch that reveals the warmer Planks A Lot tones but overall, one coat of Hotaru completely changed the colour underneath. Again, I used Seche Vite for top coat.







And just for funsies, here's my Crescent Moon Wand from Kuma Crafts, another Canadian based indie jewelry maker! INDIE LOVE ALL AROUND.



Overall, my first experience with Daily Lacquer was great. Mag loves communicating with fans and fellow polish addicts alike. She's very approachable, very open with updates in her schedule and processes of new collections.

That's all for now and I'll be back on Tuesday! Have a happy Easter everyone!