Indigo Bananas A Star To Sail By

A Star to Sail By is a polish from Indigo Banana's "Paradise" collection based on a Willy Wonka theme. The name comes from Wonka's quotation of a line from the beautiful and evocative John Masefield poem "Sea Fever". The polish is equal to the task of bearing that name as it captures the lambent glory of starshine on one's fingertips! I had several people compliment me on my nails while I was wearing this which is something of a rarity for me. It is stunning and as usual, my feeble attempts at photography do it no justice. 

Andrea describes A Star To Sail By as "a smooth, flat silver flake (not glitter) based polish that looks like white gold that leans slightly rosy (paler than true rose gold, but pinker than white gold). This polish is a complex mix of multiple gold flakes, pink flakes, pink to gold flakes, microshimmers and holo microshimmer, with the bulk of it being a real silver metal flake". Whew! It certainly has a lot going on! And yet it all mellows out into a soft glow on the fingertips. This is another polish where I keep being distracted by the flashes of light at the ends of my fingers. Beautiful! 

I started out with two coats of OPI My Very First Knockwurst because I wanted a neutral base. I then added three very thin layers of A Star to Sail By. You can see in the following photo that I didn't quite get complete coverage with those 3 coats but it honestly is only apparent in photos. In real life, the polish looks more metallic than glitter-y. 

Application of this polish was quite straightforward - the silver flakes lay flat and spread normally. I used one coat of HK Girl topcoat and a base of CND Stickey. Cleanup was a little more involved than for a "normal" polish. I ended up with flakes clinging to my fingers along the sides of my cuticles after using my polish remover but just used a bit of sugar scrub on my hands and that cleaned them up quite easily. 

I am admittedly a big fan of all of Indigo Bananas polishes but this one is a standout to me. The metallic flakes are incredibly reflective and the delicate rose gold color is very flattering. As I mentioned earlier, several people remarked on how eye-catching my nails looked while I was wearing it and I don't get those sorts of comments very often, let alone from multiple sources. Finally, I received this bottle as a gift from a friend so that does make it a little more special. (please note that its gift status did not affect my impartial reviewing of the polish, just my warm fuzzies while wearing it!)

Indigo Bananas polishes can be purchased on her Etsy page. You can follow her on Facebook and Instagram for updates.