Fly Me To The Moon - Introducing Moonstone Polish!

The Australian indie polish scene is absolutely EXPLODING right now, which on the one hand is awesome, but on the other hand is turning out to be really rather unfortunate for my wallet. Happily, the lovely lady behind newcomer Moonstone Polish was kind enough to send me some of her lovely goodies to try!

Moonstone Polish is the brainchild of a very enterprising young lady from the Central Coast, Caitlin Vine. The name of the company is apparently a reference to a commonly used ingredient in potions in the Harry Potter universe, since mixing polish is pretty similar to mixing potions. Caitlin sent me three potions polishes to try, and I'm really very impressed by the quality she's producing right from her very first collection.

Radioactive was the one I pulled out of the package to try first, because I'm always going to be a sucker for a good purple. And this is a VERY good purple. It's described by the creator as a "soft" violet, but to be honest there's nothing soft about this polish to my eyes - and I LOVE it. This is going straight in my "makes me feel like Molly from Neuromancer" pile along with my Color Club holographics.

Three coats alone, in my trusty lightbox

Foily, shiny duochrome polishes like this tend to be a little on the thin side, but I found Radioactive worked equally well as three coats alone or two coats over black. The formula is a delight - smooth, self levelling, but not too thin either.

Two coats over black, in the shade outside

Two coats over black, outside in the glorious sunshine

The next polish I tried was Midnight Express, because I am also a sucker for dark vampy jellies. This is an absolute beauty - I honestly can't decide if I like Midnight Express or Radioactive more, they're both just gorgeous. Midnight Express is a deep navy jelly base, with tiny blue and holo silver hex, micro holographic squares, and micro blue/violet iridescent hex. The glitters look just like starlight, glinting through the dark base!

Indoors, in the lightbox

I did Midnight Express as two coats alone, and as you can see, I got great coverage. Literally the only complaint I can think to make about this polish is that it's so shiny and glass-like it's kind of hard to photograph. Which really isn't much of a complaint, actually.

Filtered sunlight

Filtered sunlight

And last we have Jiggery Pokery, a clear based glitter topper full of hexes and diamonds and stars, oh my! Jiggery-pokery is a slang term for...well, shenanigans, more or less, and this chaotic little polish really suits the name. These photos are one dabbed coat over navy.

Maybe being in a mini bottle helped, but I had no problems getting the larger glitters out. I just sat it upside down for a couple of minutes, and it was good to go. I HATE seeing big, beautiful glitters just floating around in the bottle and being unable to get at them, but I had no such problem here.

These three lovelies, as well as five others, will be available from the Moonstone Nail Polish starting from tomorrow, 29th October. You can also keep up with updates from Moonstone Polish by following their Instagram. @moonstonenailpolish.

While we're waffling about how awesome Australian indie polish is, you might remember a little while ago I started a Facebook group to celebrate exactly that, called the Australian Indie Polish Appreciation Society. It's good fun, and if you're a Facebook sort of person I highly recommend you come along and check it out - we welcome Aussie indie lovers from everywhere, and even have a Smugglers Cove to help you get the polishes you want, but can't have posted to you from the creators.

However, if you're NOT a Facebook person but you still want to keep up with the Australian indie polish scene, we have also started releasing a weekly Newsletter, which you can find here. We hope people who don't have the time to wade through all the FB posts but still want to keep up with releases will find it a useful alternative, so let me know what you think!