Color Institute - school's in session

I totally scored a polish haul at Ross the other day.  One of my treasures was a set by The Color Institute - Avant Garde: Cool.  I thought it might be something special, and it didn't disappoint, at all.

The set had a nail buffer, and a topcoat, and three polishes.  The topcoat was nothing special.  Certainly didn't dry as fast as Seche Vite.  I used it to finish all three manis, though, because I knew I would be swatching another one in a minute.

This is Spring Fling, a golden/green shimmer with a slight duochrome.  

 I tried to capture the golden flash, bugger is hard to get on camera.

 

There was still some VNL after 2 coats, and I probably could have brought it to opacity with one more coat, but I wanted to see how it would look with a full-nail stamp.  Obviously, I still need practice with this - I always seem to mess up the nail tips.

I like this, though.  Kinda edgy.

Next in the set was Purple Paradise.  This lilac had a shift to pink and a little to blue.  You can see some of the blue in this pix, on the right side of the nails.  

Again, 2 coats wasn't enough for full opacity, but I wanted to stamp, so I chose a floral pattern.  This wasn't a good choice, though.  It's hard to see that it's actually flowers.  Some of this is my fault, but mostly, it's the plate.

 My fave was Blue Lagoon.  This would not photograph well.  It's actually more emerald green with a shift to blue and turquoise.  One coat gave me opacity, but I used two out of habit.

The black stamping and the topcoat seem to bring out a little more of the emerald for the camera.  This is a stunner in RL, truly.

If you can find this at your Ross, get it!  All of the polish bottles are a little squat, but they apply so nicely, you don't even notice.  Even though the two sheer polishes are thin, they didn't pool or drag in application.  Really nice formula and colors.