Orly's Mysterious Curse: My new favorite polish

Hello!!

Last night I had the chance to try on Orly's Mysterious Curse for the first time. It was just released recently as a part of a 4-polish collection that's based on the movie Dark Shadows. When I saw this polish in the bottle, my heart gave a little flutter, but I've been disappointed before--not this time. I couldn't stop staring at my fingers last night.

EDIT: I went to Ulta today and did a side-by-side to verify that this is a dupe of Orly's Royal Velvet. They are the same, so either one is beautiful. I personally think the 'Mysterious Curse' name fits it better, since the deep blue shows through more than the purple. :)

This is a duochrome...and oh, what a duochrome it is. I've been in love with duochromes for about 20 years since I first bought KhakiZing, even though I didn't know they were called 'duochromes' until recently. And this is by far my favorite of all the ones I've seen. It alternates between deep purple (think Zoya Yasmeen) and deep blue (think Zoya Ibiza). The colors are deep and rich, and have a flashy shimmer to them. They can appear full purple, full blue, or part both--but the blue tends to dominate more. There are not words enough to describe how beautiful this polish is, so let me save a few thousand of them with these pictures...I've posted a lot of them, because I want to try to capture the full range and the way the colors play at the edges of the nail:

Thank goodness I have one good hand with no broken nails, lol.

I just can't stare at this enough. I think the name is perfect for it--it does have a mysterious gothy vampirey feel to it (which makes sense because I believe the main character in the movie is a vampire), and it feels like a deep, foggy halloween night, the kind in the movies where you aren't sure what will appear at any moment. I think this will make a gorgeous background color for halloween nail art, but it's not just for halloween--it's stunning any day of the year.

One word of warning. I don't know if it's just a mismatch with my base coat, but the first coat of this went on for me very patchy. But the second coat went on beautifully, and it ended up looking like velvet, without too much hassle.

I hope you enjoy the pics, and I hope they help you decide if this polish is for you. I think I'm going to buy myself a back-up bottle...hee hee hee...

M.