For my second holiday party I decided to pull our Rescue Beauty Lounge Black Russian, at the suggestion of my husband (who rarely voices an opinion about my nail polish). I was wearing a red, black and white colorblocked dress and I think he thought that Black Russian was sexy and vampy-- in addition to sort of matching my dress. Which, of course, it is!
The RBL website describes Black Russian as "short, dark and gutsy - layers of ruby red flecks are suspended in this black polish for fathomless depth of color. It's goth, all grown-up and very sophisticated." Hard to argue with that, right? The idea of this polish is sort of similar to Wet n' Wild's Behind Closed Doors (you can see my post here) but Black Russian was created first (though I'm not sure exactly when) and originally sold out and was brought back in a recent vote by the RBL fans-- and you can still find it for sale on the RBL website! Also, the two polishes are both black bases with red glitter, but definitely not dupes! The red glitter is small and round, and fairly subtle in the dark base color. The "black" base is not quite opaque and also not quite pure black either and so you need at least two coats to get full opacity. The polish also dries to a matte gritty finish and so you definitely need a top to make it shiny and smooth. I used the Julep base coat and Essie Good to Go top coat in my original manicure.
Just as a note-- I took these pictures after I had been wearing this for a day and so I put on another coat and use the Julep top coat. As you can see, the top coat did its job and is nice and shiny, and also dried fairly quickly. However, it smelled TERRIBLE! I opened the bottle and my nostrils were invaded by this horrible skuny scent. Yuck!! It's a shame, because the top coat seemed to work fairly well and at least didn't dry with any sort of scent. I don't know if I can get over the smell, though, to use it on a regular basis.
But on to the pictures! Unfortunately, I feel like these picture didn't come out very well and don't do Black Russian any justice, but you can get a feel for what the polish is like.
Artificial light:
Artificial light with flash:
Natural light - shade:
I was a little disappointed the red glitter didn't come through more-- it looks gorgeous in the bottle but is much more difficult to see on the nail, especially in low light. It's there, of course, but in low lights the black base and red glitter sort of blend together to make a dark reddish brown looking color. But it's still a really awesome polish and doesn't really detracted from the coolness-- the red glitter is small and subtle-- delicate while being dark and vampy at the same time! I feel like I was probably expecting something closer to Behind Closed Doors, which isn't the fault of poor Black Russian!
Wow, I know why your husband suggested it; it is awesome! That would be fun for a pedi.
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