Models Own Beetlejuice Collection for Spring/Summer 2012 Swatches and Review

The Models Own Spring Beetlejuice collection is here! The colors are all duochromes like the previous Beetlejuice collection, but this time they're summer colors and they actually made the polishes look like the promo pictures (or perhaps the other way around):

Spring/Summer 2012 Beetlejuice Collection promo picture from Models Own

Models Own Copper Pot

Models Own Copper Pot, four coats. This one starts out as an orangey metallic copper with slight green highlights. Change the angle and it shifts colors entirely to a more neutral bronze with brassy gold highlights. Change the angle more and you get bright green on top of yellow gold. I don't see a whole lot of two-colors-at-once style duochrome effect, but it does change from one color to another pretty quickly.

Models Own Indian Ocean

Models Own Indian Ocean, four coats. This is a sheer baby blue base with glass fleck shimmer that shifts from purple and pink to orange and yellow. There's also some little flecks of gold throughout the polish that are visible even when only the pink side of the duochrome is visible. The yellow flash is shy on camera, but it's very obvious in real life, especially in sunlight. This is a really soft color but it doesn't lack intensity. Love it. Totally worth the four coats.


Models Own Indian Ocean, three coats. The only flaw with this color is that it is sheer. Here's how it looks with three coats. Pretty good, but still a little bit too much visible nail line.

Models Own Indian Ocean, two coats over baby blue creme. I tried layering it over a blue creme similar to the base color of the polish and it looked all right, but I much prefer it by itself, even with some visible nail line.

Models Own Tropical Sun

Models Own Tropical Sun, four coats. This color shifts between a warm gold/yellow/orange to a cooler pink/coral/soft orange. The finish is a gold-based metallic shimmer and it has some awesome silver microglitter scattered throughout. This is another surprisingly soft and light color, but it's not as dramatic of a duochrome as Indian Ocean is. Still, it does change colors and the microglitter is a nice touch.

The formula on these was workable but not perfect. The texture was nicer than the previous set of Beetlejuice colors. A little thinner, a little easier flowing, not as drippy. The colors are all pretty sheer, I did four coats of each and that seemed perfect. If you are going to do multiple coats instead of layering to achieve opacity, you must take your time, do thin coats and wait at least two minutes in between each or you'll experience bubbling and an extended dry time. I know I say that a lot, but I have a tendency to rush my coats and when I do slow down and do thinner coats I always get a better result. Dry time is pretty slow, but not extreme. Just don't forget the quick dry.

Overall, I think this trio of colors is gorgeous and perfectly summery. They're not as intense/as extreme of a duochrome finish as I normally prefer, but they're still fantastic and I don't regret buying them at all. I also like how they're not drastically different from the promo image like the last ones were. Probably why I'm happy with these instead of being disappointed like I was with the last ones. Only real problem with these is that they're sheer, but I don't mind doing an extra coat if the color is cool enough.

I ordered mine from the Models Own website, but, sadly, shipping to the States is £12.95 (about $20.60 USD) no matter how much you order.

Picture Polish Opulence Collection 2012 - Mask-a-rade, Monroe and Peacock

Picture Polish has just added three more shades to their lineup: Mask-a-rade (a multichrome rainbow glitter), Monroe (a vampy wine with tiny holographic sparkles), and Peacock (a green glitter in a purple jelly base). I think these are three of the coolest colors I've seen from Picture Polish so far, so I took way too many pictures of them.

Picture Polish Mask-a-rade

Picture Polish Mask-a-rade, one coat over black creme.

Picture Polish Mask-a-rade, two coats over black creme. This is a multichrome rainbow glitter in a clear base, so it really needs to be applied over an opaque base color to show up. It's very much like the Ozotic Elytra glitters, if you've ever used those. In fact, Mask-a-rade looks like all three Elytra colors mixed together in one bottle. Same kind of bright, shiny, color-changing glitter, same clear base, same texture, everything. This polish is amazing. It has every color in the rainbow in it and each glitter particle shifts colors with only the slightest change in angle or lighting. The only downside is that it would take four or more coats to be opaque enough to wear it alone, but that's okay because to me, it looks better layered than alone.

Picture Polish Monroe

Picture Polish Monroe, three coats. This one's a dark, vampy wine jelly with some teeny tiny cute little holographic shimmer flecks in it. It's not strongly holographic; the hologram particles are just an accent. The jelly finish helps to not drown out the holographic sparkles, you can see them through the base color so it has more depth than a plain creme with glitter.

Picture Polish Peacock

Picture Polish Peacock, three coats. This is a deep blue-toned purple jelly base with lots and lots of irregular-shaped blue-green glitter. It actually looks surprisingly dark on the nail and it's not as sheer as I thought it would be. It would probably be best layered over a purple (if you felt like layering), because layering over black completely hides the purple color of the base:

Picture Polish Peacock, one coat over black creme.

The formula on these was not great. All of them are thick and don't flow smoothly. If you go really slowly and take your time to do thin, even coats, letting each one dry for a minute or two before adding the next one, they're fine. But if you rush like I do, you'll end up with some weird thick areas and probably some bubbling. They dry very slowly, but drying time is better if you let each coat set for a few minutes.

I think these colors are awesome, but I do think the formula could use some improvement. It's not terrible, but for $13.50 AUD per bottle, I'm surprised at how thick and slow-drying it is compared to other polishes in that price range. That said, these three are my favorite Picture Polish colors so far. Mask-a-rade is stunning. It really is amazing and there aren't many polishes like it; the only ones I know of that are similar are the Ozotic Elytra polishes. Monroe and Peacock are okay, but Mask-a-rade is really the star of this collection.

The Opulence Collection is available now from Picture Polish, and they do ship internationally.

(This was sent for review.)