Day 18 of Crumpets 31 DC - Oldest Untried

Today's theme is "your oldest untried".  You can't have this as a theme and not expect me to babble about my polish (tee hee).  I have only been a polish hoarder for about 5 months.  I'm such a newbie.  I have a lot of untrieds, but I have no idea which is oldest.  Truth be told, when I started collecting my stash I was just trying to get some nice base colors to stamp on.  My first haul was probably about 10 drugstore polishes.  It is all a blur after that.  Don't even remember what those first 10 were, except for Sinful Colors Social ladder.  I remember that one because it was the first time I had seen a glass flake in a polish, but I have used that one several times.

As usual, I have made up my own interpretation of the theme.  I am going literal.  I used the oldest polish (think released before I even had a hankering after those little glass bottles) that I have not used yet.

This beauty is Orly Satin Illusion.  I had to do a lot of searching to find when this was released and finally found that this was part of the Satin Hues Collection released in....drum roll please...1997!  Let's do the math...that makes it roughly 15-16 yrs old!  This was released the year my son was born (tee hee).  I purchased this just recently from Of Life and Lacquer's blog sale.  By the by, Cynthia has 20% off her blog sale until 1/20/13 after which she will be closing it.  I think she still has a couple of these Satin Hues left.  Check her blog HERE.

Now that I have gone off on a blog sale tangent, let me tell you about this unique polish.  First of all, the bottle is HUGE, .75 fl oz!  I expected that, since this polish was so old, it would be thick.  No, it applied thinly, with the first coat being sheer and the second coat still showing VNL.  Once I had three coats on, it was opaque, but I was confused.  When I swatched on my nail wheel, it looked blue with a golden green shimmer under all the matte goodness.  But on my nails, it looked much greener.  The only thing I could figure is that my nail wheels are a milky white plastic, so I tried again with a white undercoat and two coats of Satin Illusion.  There was the color I so loved on my nail wheel.  Here is a comparison of the two looks.

Two Coats - White Undie

3 Coats - No Undie

The no undie look really shows the lime green shimmer in this polish.  With the undie, this shimmer still shows, just a certain angles...kinda like a duochrome.  That is how I would describe this, a satin duochrome!  I wish I could have captured it better, but you get the idea.  I LOVE this polish!  Now on to the art.

I stamped with Bundle Monster BM-225.  I wanted a sort of gradient on the stamping, so I used SOPI Opening Night, a dark blue shimmer,  and China Glaze First Mate, a navy creme.  See below to see how I placed them to attain the "gradient".

Yes, that is my terribly messy stamping cloth under that plate!  Here is how it looked without a topcoat (thumb only).

 Look at that gorgeous matte/shimmer!  Then, because of the stamping, I added a topcoat.

Okay, now that I have gone on too long, with to many pics, hopefully you have time to check out all the old untrieds.