Annabel Lee

Way back in April, I ordered a bottle of Annabel Lee by Literary Lacquers. I was really excited by it because I was in a grey phase and I also like Edgar Allen Poe. However, I felt like it wasn’t the best color for the brighter clothes I was wearing in Spring-Summer, so I set it aside for Winter. A few weeks ago I came across it again and I was like OH YEAH GREY GLITTER MANICURE TIME. The first coat seemed a little sheer, but I knew it was a jelly color so I wasn’t worried… But after three coats it was the barest hint of sheer grey still and I was way disappointed. However, since I had good experiences with Literary Lacquers in the past, I figured this was just a bad color but not indicative of the brand. I was prepared to stick it back in my nail polish hoard and not think about it again, like numerous other colors that looked great in the bottle and meh on my fingers.

However, a friend of mine is friends with Amy over at Literary Lacquers and she thought something was not right, so she contacted Amy who agreed that the color should be opaque after three coats, as shown in the Etsy listing. So I got in touch with her and she offered to replace my clearly faulty bottle with a brand new one. She mailed it off promptly and a few days after it I sat down and painted my nails again… so much better! One coat was more opaque than three from the bad bottle, and the above image shows three coats. The color is a beautiful jelly grey with small holographic glitter and even smaller black glitter. It reminds me of black labradorite!

See? It matches!

Annabel Lee wore really well for a few days, until bead show set-up day, where I did things to my hands that hands should not endure. No manicure could survive that, and sure enough, there were huge chips all over the place. I feel like I could have easily gotten 5-7 days of wear in a normal week, though, especially with a good base and top coat (I’m currently having issues on that front as my usual base coat got goopy). Obviously this isn’t the sort of color that you would wear on stage a lot, but for a Gothic belly dancer looking for an alternative to black, this would be a great choice… Especially if you’re doing a ghosty performance. It reminds me of gravestones (appropriate for a color inspired by Poe).

So the point of this is that not only is this a beautiful nail color, but Literary Lacquers is a nice business to work with! It’s always refreshing to work with a company that cares about its customers and is willing to fix problems. I’m sure I would not have received such a prompt response from a big cosmetics company.