Not just because it's Illamasqua, which automatically makes it super special in my eyes. It's the route, and the time, it took to get to me that makes it special.
This was sent way back in April by the lovely Alex of Illamasqua. It arrived this week. That's two months it took, thanks to the volcanic ash and, for whatever reason, a brief sojourn in Switzerland. Damn lacquer wanted a nice round the world trip before it got to work. ;-)
But, oh, it was so worth the wait. I couldn't decide which photos I liked, so I've included them all. Prism-palooza!
Illamasqua seem to have tinkered with their formula a little. I thought their previous one was good, but this is utter perfection. Based on this lacquer, I can safely say I have found a lacquer that measures up to Chanel. Perfection.
This isn't designed to go opaque. The above swatch is three coats and you can clearly see my nail line. This is like a CND Effects lacquer in that, although it can be worn by itself, it will transform a lacquer. I have another Illamasqua coming up later this week where I layer this over the top and the difference is startling.
Of course, as soon as I started applying this, I thought that the City Girl 2000 #19 might be a dupe. I have lined them up side by side after the jump.
In all honesty, there are similarities but I wouldn't call the City Girl a dupe. Although they are both sheers with flashes of blue through them, the City Girl has quite chunky sized glitter in it, whereas Prism is glitter free. And the formula on Illamasqua is like a kabillion times better and easier to work with.
What do you guys think? Do you have a preferred lacquer out of the two? And what do you think of Prism? Yay or nay?
