Revlon Royal aka Massive Photography Failure

Tonight's polish is simply put, amazing. Revlon Royal has been sitting in my stash for ages-- I picked it up when the Top Speed line was first released and the polish blogging community was raving about it. Since I love blue polishes, I couldn't bear to pass it up. However, once I bought I left it sitting and languishing in a drawer.

I have varying things about the formula on Royal-- for some it was easy to use and for others, a nightmare. Luckily, my bottle had an excellent formula. Royal is a deep cobalt blue polish with a jelly formula. You know those cobalt blue tiles you can find for your house? That's what Royal looks like. It's stunning. After swatching this I decided I had to wear it as a full manicure and I can't stop staring at my nails. Royal goes on smoothly and you don't need to use thick coats. Despite the jelly finish, Royal is a exceedingly well pigmented and goes on almost opaque in one coat. However, there is some visible nail line and I ended up using three coats to give me the look I wanted. With the jelly finish the polish is a bit translucent and so it makes the polish glow.

Revlon Top Speed polishes are supposed to be dry within 60 seconds-- I didn't time how long it took for this to dry, but it did seem to dry relatively quickly. My only issue was a little bit of bubbling-- though this doesn't seem to be a problem with a top coat.

Artificial light with flash:

Artificial light:

These pictures are definitely the most color accurate-- Royal is a deep cobalt blue. The color is very rich and I love how juicy it looks.

Natural light - shade:

Natural light - sun:

Ugh, I think these pictures are terrible! They don't accurately capture the color (except for the ones in artificial light)-- it looks too light and almost blurple, while in reality Royal is most definitely blue with no purple . Also, I couldn't figure out how to eliminate the visible nail line from them. I guess I need to try again, but maybe with some underwear to get rid of the VNL. If anyone has any suggestions for how best to photograph, let me know!

Here are some pictures that I took with my iPhone that are better in terms of accurately  portraying what it looks like on the nail. Sorry for the wear and tear-- I'd already been wearing this for a day and my nails take a beating at work.

I think Royal has shot its way up to the top of my favorite blue polishes. You are not going to find a better, more amazing blue polish.