Hey look!  A swatch post!  I realize that these have been few and far between lately.  I won’t make any excuses.  I honestly find these somewhat boring to put together.

I love looking at them once they’re finished, and I love adding to my list of polish ratings, but the process of getting them up here has been longer for each post than I would have hoped.

Anyway, I’m working on some technological solutions that should make it easier for me to keep up with the bread-and-butter swatching & rating.  We’ll see what happens…

Today’s color – Deborah Lippmann Cleopatra in New York – was one that really caught my eye when it first came out at the end of last year.  I love the completely un-traditional feel it has.

I think it’s gritty and quite masculine looking (from a nail polish point of view), which I love as a man who wears this kind of stuff.  Girly stuff is great too, but it helps to see some color combos that are so outside of the traditional box.

At the same time, the sparkly glints that jump off of the chunky gold aggregate that floats in the black jelly binder maintain a pretty, subtle feminine feel.

Application remarks are down below.

 

 

 

 

 

Application Review

The brush and bottle are standard Deborah Lippmann, performing at the high end of the spectrum.

The formula was a bit under my typical DL par, which I mainly attribute to a bit less than perfect coverage after two coats.  If you look closely at the swatch photos, you’ll see a bit of sheerness remaining around the edges in some places.

This sheerness is something I would prefer not to have after two coats.  The reasoning here is that glitter polish is already a PITA to take off, and I’d rather not have to add a third layer of ‘tough-to-remove’ if I don’t have to.

The other issue I found was that it was at times a bit difficult to get the glitter applied evenly.  There were a few glops here and there that required special attention to properly spread.

This is an issue I’ve seen with some of the amateur glitter mixes, and not something I usually notice with the Lippmanns.  Fortunately, this issue was not as pronounced as I’ve seen with the amateur bottlings.

Overall, Cleopatra in New York is another exceptional offering from Deborah Lippmann.