Nail Venturous Humble Bee over Rescue Beauty Lounge Mismas

Let's start with a picture of the finished mani :)

Nail Venturous Humble Bee over Rescue Beauty Lounge Mismas

Rescue Beauty Lounge Mismas is a fabulous polish, a true violet-purple which applies beautifully in just one coat. Here it is on it's own, but it's the devil itself to get a colour-accurate photograph. When I photographed in natural light, it came out royal blue! The first two pics below are shot in natural light and I've manipulated the colour balance to make them as realistic as I can. The second two pics are shot near a window, but with an incandescent lamp off to one side. I think these are closer to the true colour, maybe a bit reddish - but please don't use my pictures as accurate colour swatches if you are thinking of buying Mismas!

Rescue Beauty Lounge Mismas

This is one coat of Mismas, with a coat of Seche Vite.

Then I added a very light coat of Nail Venturous Humble Bee. Humble Bee is a mixture of tiny neon yellow and black matt glitters with a sprinkle of medium sized black hexes. This glitter is on the dense side - in fact it's a glitter you can achieve full coverage with very easily, but I was aiming for a rather different effect here. Very light brushing was needed; I wiped most of the polish off the brush onto the neck of the bottle for each nail before I applied it. Even with this very light coat, Humble Bee is still hungry and I needed two coats of Gelous and a coat of Seche Vite to get this glassy smooth.

Nail Venturous Humble Bee over Rescue Beauty Lounge Mismas

These pictures were taken in natural light - my camera seems able to handle the purple in Mismas a lot better in combination with the yellow glitter!

Now I'm going to put on my colour geek hat on and talk about why I chose this base for Humble Bee and why I think the colours work together well. I actually got a real life compliment on this mani today from a stranger - that's a rare thing in my part of the world! If you look up swatches for Humble Bee on Google, most of the results show it used alone as a full coverage glitter or over black, with a few examples over neon yellow or green. Although I have worn it like this, I think it has a lot more potential!

I'm interested in colour and colour relationships in some other contexts besides my nails - textile arts and botanical illustration - so I always think a bit about colour theory a bit when I'm putting a layered mani together.  Colormatters is a great site that explains the basics of colour theory, and a Colour Wheel is a really useful tool for testing combinations. I keep one on my desk and refer to it for colour combining in all sorts of situations! For this mani, I wanted something that really makes Humble Bee pop, and answer to that using colour theory is to use the complementary colour of the yellow - the complementary colour is the one directly opposite on the colour wheel; in the case of yellow that is violet - hence my choice of Mismas. If we're going to get really nerdy, then the yellow of Humble Bee leans a bit towards green, so to get a true complementary (ie direct opposite on the colour wheel) you need to take a slightly warmer (reddish) violet.

Here's another mani I did with Humble Bee last year, again over a violet (Revlon Facets of Fuchsia). This was a layering attempt to create a similar effect to one of more unattainable lemmings, Alta Costura Vernis Electric Eyes imfeelingnail-venturous post and pictures of this lovely polish

Nail Venturous Humble Bee over Revlon Facets of Fuchsia

With this combination you lose some of the complexity of Humble Bee, because the black glitters just blend into the base of Facets of Fuchsia, but I still really enjoyed the combination of violet and yellow against the black base!

I purchased Nail Venturous Humble Bee from Ninja Polish - it's now rebranded as Ninjapolish Humble Bee Floam and is in a different shaped bottle, but the polish is the same. My Rescue Beauty Lounge Mismas came in a swap, but you can buy it direct from the maker RBL Mismas. Revlon Facets of Fuchsia is available at Boots and other drugstores around the world - I believe the colour was renamed 'Scandalous' in some countries a little while ago.

Thank you for reading!