M Polish Spring 2015 Swatches and Reviews

I am so excited about this post! Today I am all about the Spring 2015 launch of M Polish, an all-spanking new indie brand of stamping polish. I’ve watched this brand from its’ infancy, oooh-ed and aaah-ed over test swatches and was finally fortunate enough to be chosen to swatch several colors from the initial release. Really, it is enough to make a stamping enthusiast downright giddy.

I’d really hoped to have this post done sooner, but first a nail-tastrophe occurred and I had to cut down my nails, so don’t be shocked, but I am in the nub club now! I’d already done a couple of swatch concepts and ended up starting over so all the images in my post would be consistent. Then I got sick again, and that added another couple of days where I did nothing with my nails.

However, yesterday I really had a chance to go to town and I finished up all of my swatching, so lets get right into the review!

First things first, the Spring 2015 M Polish offerings are for stamping and have been formulated specifically to show up great over darker polish. They all have a shimmery finish and several of them has some wonderful color-shifting effects – so if you were expecting run of the mill creme colors, these may be what you have been looking for! All M Polishes are 5-free (free of Toluene, Dibutyl Pthalate, camphor, formaldehyde and formaldehyde resin) and cruelty free. No mystery ingredients, so you can feel better about using these on your nails.

For my review, I was provided with 3 mini bottles: Sweetclover, Bells of Ireland and Snowberry. The mini size (pictured above) is 5mL. It doesn’t sound like much, but when you consider you generally only need a dot or two of polish per stamp, a mini bottle can go a long way. The large bottles are 11mL. The polishes dry at a medium speed, which does mean you can’t be too slow about picking up and stamping your image. All of my stamping was done using my sticky-squishy rectangular stamper from Vivid Lacquer. I tried to stamp over a variety of finishes and colors to give a wide overview of these polishes. Plates used include Cici & Sisi, MoYou London and Born Pretty Store.

Sweetclover, in the bottle, looks buttery-yellow, with a lovely shimmer. In practice, it’s a bit of a color shifter when stamped.

I swatched Sweetclover first by itself so you can see the color, secondly on black and lastly on white:

You can see that over the black, Sweetclover takes on a green tone and it is like that over many dark colors. The yellow only really comes through on lighter colors. Sweetclover shows up over white much better than the other two polishes I swatched. Below are two samples of this color in action in manicures:

Above it is stamped over Zoya Marnie, which is a deep wine colored polish. It is just dark enough that it looks more green-toned.

Here, it is stamped over a significantly lighter color (Spa Ritual – Arroyo) and the yellow tone really comes out! I love that you can get such varied results with one polish!

Snowberry is a shimmery white stamping polish. The shimmer softens up the white so it isn’t so stark and I found it to be very feminine.

Here it is on my swatch sticks:

As you can see, Snowberry does not show up well over white, however because of its’ shimmery quality it could actually work for a subtle tone-on-tone stamping, like for bridal manicures. Here are a couple of sample manis I did using Snowberry :

Above I stamped Snowberry over Zoya – Aurora. As you can see, the coverage is good with a full coverage stamp.

Stamped above over another shimmery polish Tropez – Aqua Pearl. Narrow lines aren’t a problem either!

Lastly, I present Bells of Ireland. To me, this is really the stand-out of the collection. In the bottle, it appears to be a shimmery pastel green with a vibrant inner glow (which proved impossible for me to capture in the bottle). Stamped over darker colors and it vibrantly comes to life!

Below are my Bells of Ireland swatch sticks:

See how it pops on the black swatch? It is incandescent! Sadly, it is only barely visible over white, but it would still work for a subtle look.

Below are the sample manis I did using Bells of Ireland:

Bells of Ireland is really incredible, especially if you are a green lover (like me!) Over those darker colors, it just pops!

Overall, I love the entire collection (including the 3 not reviewed) and will be buying them all because I love the effects of these shimmery colors. While it is a shame that they aren’t as vibrant over light colors as they are dark, I think that the luminescent quality of the colors more than makes up for it. I found the polishes easy to use, but for a beginner to stamping there may be a learning curve involved as you do have to work with some haste. However, if you have ever stamped with the fast drying Essie metallics, you don’t have to work THAT fast.

The only real issue I had is that because these are shimmery polishes, cleanup tended to leave my fingers shimmery until after a scrub and I kept seeing shimmer in my cuticles. I use acetone to cleanup, and that kind of spreads the shimmer around. Not a huge problem, and a quick wash and scrub with a nail brush clears most of it away.

The Spring 2015 M Polish collection will go on sale Tuesday February 17th at 9am EST at www.mpolishes.com. The mini 5mL size will retail for $3.25 and the full size 11mL bottles will retail for $6.50. The collection includes an additional 3 colors not shown here and if you are ready to lay down for the full sets, mini and full size sets will be available as well.

Looking to be one of the first to try out M Polish? Ms. M Polish herself has awesomely donated a full sized bottle of Bells of Ireland for me to giveaway! Check out my instagram for the details – the giveaway will end at 9pm CST on February 16th!

Want to see more swatches of these polishes? Check out the wonderful swatches by these nail bloggers and give them some love:

Mamaheartspolish

Dancer’s Polished Life

The Polished Perspective

Are you into stamping? Do these swatches make you want to stamp? Let me know what you think in the comments!