Fair Maiden Polish: Christmas in July

Hey guys, hope you're having a good week! I'm writing this as I'm about to board a plane to Southern California to visit my family for the holiday weekend – so I am both excited and pressed for time.

Anyway one of my favorite indies, Fair Maiden Polish, has a re-release of their holiday collection this weekend Sunday July 5 at 8 p.m. CT! So let's take a look at these gorgeous polishes shall we?!

*Partial Press Release*

The ladies of Fair Maiden Polish were kind enough to send me the two missing polishes from the collection I hadn't previously purchased, and I reswatched all the polishes so we can have an extra special second look at these awesome polishes.








This is Fair Maiden Polish Kiss Me At Midnight and it is a gorgeous magenta polish that has a bit of duochrome finish. In the bottle, you can see hints of gold, but on the nail I see it shift a bit from a deeper magenta to a brighter magenta. A gorgeous unique effect. Application was great coats for opacity. The formula is on the thicker side, but nothing that is difficult to work with at all.









This is Fair Maiden Polish Sleighbells in the Snow and it is a lovely delicate silvery white base with blue shimmer and a subtle holographic finish. I just love how complex this polish is, the closer you look at it the more you notice how special it is. This polish required three coats for opacity and was on the thicker side. I would wait a minute between coats to avoid dragging or patches, but it wasn't difficult to work with at all. And that payoff is amazing right?!







This is Fair Maiden Polish T'was the Night Before Christmas. This is a gorgeous navy-leaning blurple shimmer polish. When you get up real close, see the macro shot, you can see fine red and violet particles amidst the see of navy. I love how this reminds me of a dark winter sky, already has me longing for cooler weather. Application on this was a breeze, opaque in two thin coats.







This is Fair Maiden Polish Merry Plum Berry & Bright and it just might be my favorite Fair Maiden Polish ever. This is the exact polish which drew me to the brand in the first place. This is a beautiful plum berry polish with the most gorgeous golden inner glow which is just beautiful! In addition to the golden inner glow, it has a gorgeous linear holo finish, which doesn't over power the polish, just gives it that lovely something extra. The formula on this is great, two coats for opacity, it is about a medium viscosity.

Want to know something funny, until I wrote this post I always thought this polish was called Merry Plum & Bright – whoops guess I've had that wrong for awhile. ;-)








This is Fair Maiden Polish Times Square and it is a gorgeous powdery sky blue with a gorgeous linear holo finish and beautiful pink shimmer that is so hard to capture in a photograph. I just love this polish, I know it's originally a New Year's Polish but it reminds me of a spring sky! Formula is opaque in two thin coats.

Once again the Christmas in July polishes are available in limited quantities on Sunday July 5 at 8 p.m. CT at the Fair Maiden website. The polishes all retail for $9 except for Times Square which is $10.

So which polishes are you after?! My favorites are still Merry Plum Berry & Bright and Times Square but I am also crushing pretty hard on Kiss Me at Midnight!

Cherry Blossoms over Fair Maiden Polish Times Square

So this week's prompt in the 52 Week Pick 'n Mix Challenge was pale blue and flowers. I combined the two and I knew just what blue I wanted to use!



I had been looking forward to using Fair Maiden Polish's Times Square again! I only used this during a swatch-a-thon I had on New Year's Eve, and I just knew I had to use it in some nail art. Times Square, which was a part of Fair Madien's New Years Collection, is a gorgeous light blue holo with the most beautiful pink flashes, that my photos hardly do justice to.



I just knew with that pink flash, this polish would be perfect to pair with a floral themed mani! And what better floral to use in a mani, than the beautiful cherry blossom?!? Now I've never really been to DC to see the cherry blossoms bloom, but I've always wanted to and all the photos I have seen of the blossoms just leave me in awe.



Now the above photo isn't the best in quality, but in the shade it shows that pink flash this polish has that for some reason my photos can't quite capture in all it's beauty!



Now to complete the look, I used a real small nail art brush to paint the branches, using Zoya Louise. For the flower buds, I used a larger dotting tool using Essie The Girls Are Out and went back over those dots with a smaller dotting tool using Essie Go Ginza.

I really loved the final result of this look. I like that it was freehand, but not that complicated. And I really loved how the pinks played off the pink flash in this polish. And word on the street is, I heard from a very good source, that Times Square might be released in Fair Maiden's next restock on Saturday. Check their Facebook page for more information on the exact time of the restock.

And don't forget to stop by the other ladies who are partaking in this challenge!


   

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Fair Maiden Polish Review

One of my New Year's Goals was to try out some new-to-me indie polishes and today I get to share with you one of my most recent purchases! These are four polishes from Fair Maiden Polish, a newish company on the indie polish scene which has been getting rave reviews from several bloggers I follow!

I chose a sampling of their polishes from several of their collections.



From left to right: Be Your Own Heroine from the Fair Maiden's premiere collection, Sleigh Bells in the Snow and Merry Plum and Bright from the Baby It's Cold Outside Holiday Collection and Times Square from the New Year's Trio.

So on New Year's Eve I found myself with no plans, and my husband was working an overtime shift as a favor, so I thought it would be the perfect time for a swatch party and Fair Maiden Polishes were the ones I decided to play with!

First just a note about these polishes, they were all fantastic formulas which I had absolutely no problems with. I was very impressed for such a young indie brand. I've shown each polish in the shade and under direct light. So let's get to the individual polishes!







This is Times Square, which is a beautiful light blue linear holographic polish with the most unique pink microflecks, giving the polish even more beauty. My photos did not quite capture the pink/violet flash this polish has, but trust me it is there and it is beautiful. This polish was a bit sheerer than the others, so I used three coats for this opacity. It retails for $10.







This is Merry Plum and Bright, which is on sale for $7 at the moment while supplies last since Kirby at The Mercurial Magpie named this as one of her top 20 polishes of 2014! I can see why this was a favorite, this polish was my favorite of the four I bought. This polish is a gorgeous plum/violet linear holo with the most spectacular gold flashes, making it truly a unique polish in my collection. I used two coats. Normally, this isn't a color I would gravitate toward, but I just loved this polish so much. I'm sure you'll see it on me again at some point in a nail art post!







Next up is Sleigh Bells in the Snow, which was the polish that originally attracted me to Fair Maiden Polish. This is a gorgeous snowy white polish, with these hidden sparkles that you can catch in the light. I tried to capture it, but there is so much to see there! This polish was a little thicker than the others, but was not difficult to work with. This is two coats. Retails for $9.







The final polish is Be Your Own Heroine. This was a gorgeous dark grey linear holo with pink/violet microflakies which gives the polish a lovely violet glow. This was another gorgeous unique polish with a great formula, this is two coats. Retails for $9.



Overall, these polishes are super impressive and I can see myself using them all in the future in nail art! So don't be surprised if you see them in a post again sometime soon.

Now as I type this (last night), they are low on stock and even out of Times Square. But they do schedule restocks and I suggest you follow them on their social media channels (Facebook, Instagram) to keep up to date. I can't wait to see what they have planned for the future, because so far, these polishes are unique and not like other things I've seen out on the indie market!

Have you tried Fair Maiden? Which of these is your favorite?