Fair Maiden's Rainbow Brights Neon Collection

*pic heavy post*

Seems I've been on a bit of a blogging hiatus, only posting here and there each week.  I am updating my manis frequently on Instagram, so be sure to check me out there if you want to know what I currently have on my nails.  ;-)  I am not exactly in a position to catch up on all of my past manis here on my blog, so if you saw something you liked on my IG (@dancerspolishedlife) and don't see a blog post but you want to see more shots or know what products I used, please let me know!

Today on my blog I have the Rainbow Brights collex from Fair Maiden Polish to show you!  I don't have swatches but I have some watermarble goodness for you, so read on for more pics and info!

Fair Maiden Polish neon watermarble nail art

Before I go on about this mani, I want to take a minute to talk about customer service.  There are so many indie businesses out there (polish and otherwise) that know what it means to provide good service to their customers.  Not only from a service recovery standpoint, but even from start to finish, transactions and shipping.  I purchased this collection from Fair Maiden Polish on Jun 11th, received a shipping notice on June 12th, and although I paid shipping and picked the cheapest option, my package arrived on June 15th!  Wonderfully quick processing.

I was on vacation so I didn't actually get to enjoy my lovelies until I returned.  I tore through my box (among the three other nail mail boxes that arrived during vacation as well!) and discovered that I had two Glory of the Galaxy (holo topcoat) bottles and no Reach for the Sky (that beautiful blurple).  Well, sad face for me, but I reached out to Fair Maiden and received a response from Adrienne SEVEN MINUTES LATER!  Talk about service!  She offered to ship the missing bottle asap and also told me to keep the extra.  I'm a customer for life now.  Fantastic business ethics; these are the companies I want to keep buying from.

Fair Maiden Polish The Rainbow Brights neon collection

All products purchased by me.  Nothing to disclose.

Back to the polish!  The Rainbow Brights collection is comprised of eight glorious neon cream polishes and two special effects toppers.  I chose not to swatch each individual polish just yet (you can believe I will!) and instead went with a watermarble nail art design using all eight colors.  I had heard that this Fair Maiden Polish collection worked very well with watermarbling.  I won't say that is untrue, but I will tell you that I had a bit of trouble getting the polishes to spread as easily as I would have hoped.  In fact, I had to swish the cup around after the first two drops to make the polish spread.  If you are just starting out with watermarbling, this collection may not be for you; however, if you are looking for a wonderful spread of neon cream polishes for everyday wear, I strongly urge you to check these out!

I began with two coats of OPI Alpine Snow over a coat of Essie Grow Stronger and a coat of OPI Nail Envy.  Why two coats of white?  Because I couldn't seem to apply my first coat very smoothly and I didn't want it to show through the watermarble.  So two it was.  I taped off my fingers and applied liquid latex to just the open spots around my cuticles.  This was much nicer than coating my entire finger with liquid latex.

Two coats of OPI Alpine Snow

I have a video (a very rough video as I don't own a tripod yet) of me watermarbling these polishes, but until I can figure out how to delve it in my blog (thinking I may need to upload it to YouTube first), I'll just explain what I did.  The thing I noticed while practicing designs with this polish was that the colors blended into each other rather than having that stark line of contrast.  Some of you may refer to that as "muddiness."  It works here because I made a rainbow bullseye (ROY G BIV for the win!), but I can see how it could be frustrating if using very different colors back to back.  I found that since the polishes spread a little slower than I was used to with In The Name Of Polish (read my blog post here) and pipedreampolish (read my blog posts here and here), it had more of an opportunity to blend together, rather than if the polish fully dispersed before I dropped the next color in.  I'll have to take a better video so you can see it, as it is much easier to see than me trying to explain it...

I also noticed the polish dried a little quicker, so making my design was just a tad more challenging.  But as long as I worked quickly, I was good.  I made a petal design (my first!) and dunked each finger separately.  I'll have to figure out that design a little more to be able to dip more than one finger at a time.  I really loved how my ring finger turned out on my Cindy hand!  Before I remembered to snap a pic of this one without the topper first, I used Always Look For The Rainbow on my pinky finger.  Yeah, I definitely expected the glitter to be a bit more sparse, hehe.  Soooo not the case.  I didn't want to risk covering up too much of these gorgeous colors, so I tried to "dry brush" the rest of my nails as best I could.

Oh Cindy... why can't you be more like Marsha?  (...I should probably start calling her Jan...)

And I still ended up with a lot of glitter!  Always Look For The Rainbow is jam-packed with holo microglitter and color shifting shimmer, and also has a smattering of gold hex glitters too.  It is a lovely topper, probably one I'll use over a single color to jazz it up, but I was sad that I covered up so much of the watermarble.  It also resembled a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper just a bit too closely for my liking.  :-p

Fair Maiden Polish Always Look For the Rainbow glitter topper

So moving on to my other hand.  I find it easiest with watermarbles to complete one hand then work on the other.  While this idea typically works well, my middle finger had its own agenda.  That ninja jumped right in the cup when I was lifting out my ring finger.  *grumble grumble a few choice words grumble*  Okay, remove that mess with a qtip soaked with Zoya Remove+, base coat 1, base coat 2, one thick coat of OPI Alpine Snow, and let's try again.

I know I said rainbow... I didn't mean literally, Middle Finger.

Even after I lifted my middle finger out of the cup, I dinged it, which sent me into a quiet fit of obscenities (the boys were both upstairs sleeping by this time... I had to keep quiet!).  At least I had the other topper to use!  But again, you can see how the colors fade into each other very nicely.  It truly is a gorgeous array of colors in this collection!

Watermarble using Fair Maiden Polish Rainbow Brights neon collection

Glory of the Galaxy is a holo topper with color shifting shimmers, although I saw more of the shimmer than the holo effect, even in the sun.  I have included some sun shots at the end of this post.  I used one coat of Glory of the Galaxy and again brushed most of the polish against the side of the bottle so I wouldn't cloud the watermarble underneath.  I topped everything with a coat of KBShimmer Clearly On Top topcoat.

Fair Maiden Polish Glory of the Galaxy holo topper

Watermarble using FM Rainbow Brights collection, topped with Glory of the Galaxy

As you can see from the macro below, Glory of the Galaxy has amazing blue shimmers that are more apparent in certain light.  You can also see a weak bit of holo effect, although it's a pretty awesome polish to top a watermarble with.  It gives it a little something extra.

Macro of FM Glory of the Galaxy over the Rainbow Brights collection

Always Look For the Rainbow has more of a dominant pink shimmer throughout.  I love these shimmery undertones in a polish.  They have caught my eye on more than one occasion.  I'd love to see more indies come out with multicolored shimmers in their polish!

Macro of FM Always Look For the Rainbow over the Rainbow Brights collection

I call this my Sunset Nail...  ;-)

And as promised, sun shots!  I can assure you my car was in park, not moving, not even started at the point I was snapping pictures.  I'm sure my coworkers were giving me funny looks, though, at me happily snapping away with my camera in my car in the work parking lot.  Yep, I'm one of those!  Hey, when you have ample sunlight, you just have to go for it!  (sorry for the huge shadow in these pics...)

Direct Sunlight

Direct Sunlight

Are you sick of neons yet?  I love neons so much that this is not the last one you will see for a while.... not by a long shot.