Virtuous Polish Temperance

Am I the only person who sometimes finds it easier to write a negative review than a positive one? That probably says more about me than anything else, though I generally think of myself as pretty even keel. I suspect it's because when a polish doesn't perform like I hope, it elicits a lot of visceral emotions, especially when I had high hopes. Today I have one such polish to share with you.

I picked up Virtuous Polish Temperance on whim because she was going out of business and I had never tried any of her polishes so I thought, why not? I had seen some gorgeous pictures on IG and Temperance is a deep cobalt blue polish with a matte finish, so basically, it hits all my buttons in one fell swoop. However, the reality was a bit more disappointing. Temperance, as a matte, was extremely thick, to the point of being gloppy. It started to dry the minute it came out of the bottle, and while I could paint it on my nail without it drying too quickly, it was very thick and hard to control. Due to the thickness of the coats, even though it was quick drying over all, the coats didn't dry all the way through before I applied the next one-- leading to air bubbles. Due to the thickness, I did try to apply this carefully, but I did have a some streaks. I ended up using three coats to make it as even as possible, though it still wasn't perfect.

Artificial light (flash):

See those lighter blue spots? Air bubbles. UGH. Actually, it does look kind of cool but definitely not what I was looking for.

I took a photo with my phone to show you what it looked like in a closer to "real life" situation aka not super up close. 

Some of the flaws that you see clearly in my camera photos are less visible here.   

Overall I am hugely bummed out by this polish. I have seen some gorgeous swatches of this color and had very high hopes for it. The reality is that while the color remains absolutely gorgeous, the actual polish is a hot mess. Virtuous Polish is no longer in operation, and given that this is one of the last bottles, it's possible that perhaps this just thickened up over time. I also probably didn't wait long enough in between coats (and shook the bottle several times) which probably lead to the bubbles. That said, this was still a very difficult to work with. I may try adding some thinner to see if that could help, but I'm not sure I'll ever be coming back to this one, unfortunately. I wish this had a better formula because I would wear it all the time-- I love this color! I guess I'll just have to keep searching.