Rescue Beauty Lounge Dead Calm

Confession:  I'm a little weird when it comes to wearing my high-end or hard-to-find polishes.  What I mean is that after I wait months to get them or shell out way too much money for them, I often wait for "the right time" or "a good day" to wear them.  Damone Roberts 1968 was my BIGGEST lemming, and it still took me a good month to wear it!  GOSH Holographic has been sitting in my drawer since February, because I want just one good week of nothing but brilliant sunshine before I pull out that baby.  I don't mean to be so darn weird about it, but I guess I just figure that they're special, and I don't want to wear them if they're not going to get the chance to be fully appreciated (e.g. wearing a holo polish when it's raining for a week straight).  It's stupid, I know.

I FINALLY got over myself and tried out my first Rescue Beauty Lounge polish - Dead Calm.  (Note:  This is not actually my first RBL polish.  That honor goes to the lovely Catherine H, which I'm saving up...for the right time.  Sigh.  But this is the first one I've actually worn.)  I was super excited, because I'd read so much about how fabulous RBL polishes are and admired swatches for so long.  The creator, Ji Baek, is also AWESOME and has an amazing relationship with RBL fans (now known as ReBeLs).  What more could you ask for?

Dead Calm is a deep navy creme.  The name is pretty appropriate - it's just a really calm and serene blue.  It's absolutely gorgeous in the bottle.  I've heard rave reviews of the legendary RBL formula, and I can finally say for myself that they're not kidding.  This stuff applies like buttah!  And in one coat!  One coaters are almost mythical, because you just don't really come across many, but here I managed to find two in a row!  :-)

(click to enlarge)

I'm gonna throw you guys a curve ball here.  I really don't love this.  I feel like someone needs to take my temperature, because Dead Calm has my name written all over it in the bottle, but it was just lacking the magic on the nail for me, mostly for three reasons:

1) The above color is beautiful, but this is only the color you'll see in good bright lighting or sunlight.  Here's how it looks in pretty much every other light:

Most of you are probably scratching your heads wondering what the heck the problem is.  It's not bad, but it's just a bit too dark for me.  It's actually a good few shades darker than the bottle color, which makes me sad, because I just ADORE that bottle color.  I have nothing like it in my stash!  Maybe I should've saved this one for a sunny day?

2)  It's one-coat nature is almost its downfall.  It's SO pigmented.  I know I sound crazy, because it's hard to imagine a complaint about high pigmentation, but DAMN.  Clean-up was almost impossible and took me about 30 minutes, because every time I got near it with acetone, it just bled more of that super-pigmented blue.  Apply this one VERY carefully and you can avoid this, but not knowing this ahead of time made it really frustrating for me.  Removal was just as much of a pain.  I had to remove all of it once and then go back a second time to get all of the blue remnants off my skin.  Dare I say, I might just prefer to remove a glitter than to remove this one again!

3)  It's $18.  I can put up with Reasons 1 and 2 with a cheap or even mid-range polish, but $18??  No thanks.  Luckily I got Dead Calm in a swap with a lovely lady in my area, so I didn't shell out all that money for it, but I'm certainly still cautious to put my recommendation on it.  I want to love this polish so much, but I just don't.

That all being said, Dead Calm has stellar reviews from pretty much everyone else on the planet, so if you're looking for a good deep blue with amazing application and you have $18 to spare, it may be worth checking out for yourself at www.rescuebeauty.com.   

Happy shopping, and I promise to start busting out some of those other polishes for you!  :-)