Formula X NOTD & favorites

First of all, Legend, which looks really awesome on one hand and not quite so much on the other:

Something about this angle gets some of the shiftiness, at least, to show up.

Then I took the other hand, in more or less the same lighting (it looks a bit more sunny but it's still not in direct sunlight) - obviously a different angle, and yes, definitely a bad mani done in the car (but so was the other hand!):

Yike. (I would advise that you not blow this up any further, it's really appalling.) I was really tempted not to post this at all, but it seemed like cheating to post the really good one and hide the really bad one. (Well, yeah, ok, that's what people do all the time, but I try to have a more warts-and-all approach in general.) Anyway, this is a pretty polish, and if it had really looked like that top picture all the time this would have been a definite favorites candidate. And as I believe I said before, I do like it - but not quite that much.

Well, since that was such a mess, the next day we're on to Ignite. This time I did not do the mani in the car and I actually did a much better job, generally, but it still seems to look a bit ragged in the pictures:

It's a really beautiful dark red - you can see that it did pull a bit but as reds go it had pretty good application. Here's the other hand:

It almost has a jelly-like quality to it, though I don't think it is a jelly. (What I had written down before about the formula was that it was pearlescent.) I didn't notice when I took these pictures that I already had a big honking chip on my little finger just above. Still, as reds go, it wore pretty well - I had had it on for nearly 24 hours by the time I took the pictures, and most bright reds I've tried would be toast by that time. (And bear in mind that my nails are just cranky and I never get really good wear on anything much.) Given that this is a really gorgeous red and had at least halfway decent wear and didn't leave little pink marks on every piece of paper I've touched today, I decided that this does merit inclusion in my favorites. I have now patched up the chips - more than one, by this time - and I'm trying to decide whether to just top-coat it and see how it does for a second day, or to put something else on top of it. Knowing me I suspect "something else on top of it" will win, but I will say this - this is one of those polishes that looks better and better the more coats you put on. That's two above and I'm now at three and... surely it wouldn't look better at four, right?

I said there were two favorites and I never said what the other one was, either, but if you've been paying attention you might have guessed that it's Marine.

(Marine has a bit of wear in this picture, too, doesn't it, but I think I had had it on for longer when this was taken.)

And the runner-up is Explosive, just because it's not quite like anything else I've ever seen.

Of course this whole line is discontinued anyway and I'm not sure if they are findable at all or not. I haven't tried to look so far, since I was concentrating on what I already had. A nice even dozen seems like a good place to stop.