Literary Lacquers: Wrinkle in Time Collection - Swatches and Review

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Tonight I have a great 8-polish collection from Literary Lacquers called the Wrinkle in Time Collection.

Literary Lacquers

Wrinkle in Time Collection

Eight full size holographic polishes, $10 individually or the full collection at a discount for $75 at the Literary Lacquers site here.

Swatches and review after the jump...



First I'll give you my thoughts and then let you see what the maker had to say about the inspiration behind each one.

Megatron A medium purple linear holo with purple and silver holo sparkle added. Formula was smooth and easy - no issues. I used 2 coats with no top coat for the photos.

Megatron is inspired by the nickname of Meg Murry, our awkward but lovable square-peg of a heroine. Meg’s struggle in the book is one of learning to embrace her idiosyncrasies, to see her faults and differences as strengths. Ultimately, it is her stubbornness, rudeness and tendency to be headstrong (along with her limitless capacity for love) that saves the day and rescues both her father and her little brother from IT, the evil disembodied brain that is the villain of this story. She ultimately triumphs over IT not through eloquent pleas or persuasive rhetoric, but through the sheer power of a love too great for words.

"She knew! Love. That was what she had that IT did not have. She had Mrs. Whatsit's love, and her father's, and her mother's, and the real Charles Wallace's love, and the twins', and Aunt Beast's. And she had her love for them. But how could she use it? What was she meant to do? If she could give love to IT perhaps it would shrivel up and die, for she was sure that IT could not withstand love. But she, in all her weakness and foolishness and baseness and nothingness, was incapable of loving IT. Perhaps it was not too much to ask of her, but she could not do it. But she could love Charles Wallace. She could stand there and she could love Charles Wallace."

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Strong Steady Hand A sparkling orange-leaning coral holo loaded with lots of holo micro-glitter and shimmer. No issues with this formula to report either. Two coats and one coat of top coat to smooth out the glitters.

Strong Steady Hand is Calvin O’Keefe’s polish. In A Wrinkle in Time, Calvin is mentioned over and over as being strong and having a steady hand for Meg, taking her hand over and over again to reassure her and give her strength. Unlike the Murry misfits, Calvin is a popular basketball player at school, but he doesn’t value that popularity, says that it’s for “all the most unimportant reasons” and yearns for true connection. He finds that connection with the Murry’s, especially in Meg and he finds that he’s falling in love with her.

"Well, you know what, you've got dream-boat eyes," Calvin said. "Listen, you go right on wearing your glasses. I don't think I want anybody else to see what gorgeous eyes you have." Meg smiled with pleasure. She could feel herself blushing and she wondered if the blush would be visible in the moonlight. "Okay, hold it, you two," came a voice out of the shadows. Charles Wallace stepped into the moonlight. "I wasn't spying on you," he said quickly, "and I hate to break things up, but this is it, kids, this is it!" His voice quivered with excitement. "This is what?" Calvin asked. "We're going." "Going? Where?" Meg reached out and instinctively grabbed for Calvin's hand. "I don't know exactly," Charles Wallace said. "But I think it's to find Father."

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Tesseract A pearly white linear holo polish. No issues with formula or application. I've used 3 coats with no top coat for the photos. Full opacity may take 4 coats or you could use one coat over a white base.

A tesseract is the method by which the characters travel through time and space in an instant, the Mrs. Ws try to explain it to the children thus:

"Mrs. Who took a portion of her white robe in her hands and held it tight. "You see," Mrs. Whatsit said, "if a very small insect were to move from the section of skirt in Mrs. Who's right hand to that in her left, it would be quite a long walk for him if he had to walk straight across." Swiftly Mrs. Who brought her hands, still holding the skirt, together. "Now, you see," Mrs. Whatsit said, "he would be there, without that long trip. That is how we travel." Charles Wallace accepted the explanation serenely. Even Calvin did not seem perturbed. "Oh, dear," Meg sighed. " I guess I am a moron. I just don't get it." "That is because you think of space only in three dimensions," Mrs. Whatsit told her. "We travel in the fifth dimension. This is something you can understand, Meg. Don't be afraid to try."

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Who Which Whatsit A lime green linear holo with green shimmer. The formula and application on this one was great - no issues. I used 3 thin coats with no top coat for the photos.

The three Mrs. Ws, Mrs. Who, Mrs. Which, and Mrs. Whatsit are the mysterious women who find the Murry children and Calvin on Earth and lead them on their adventure to rescue the missing Mr. Murry from the evil Dark Thing. On Earth they appear to be old women, tramps and vagrants, but on the gorgeous green planet of Uriel they reveal themselves to be stars and angels, warriors of the light combating the Dark Thing, the evil that threatens the entire Universe.

"Now, don't be frightened, loves," Mrs. Whatsit said. Her plump little body began to shimmer, to quiver, to shift. The wild colors of her clothes became muted, whitened. The pudding-bag shape stretched, lengthened, merged. And suddenly before the children was a creature more beautiful than any Meg had even imagined, and the beauty lay in far more than the outward description. Outwardly Mrs. Whatsit was surely no longer a Mrs. Whatsit. She was a marble white body with powerful flanks, something like a horse but at the same time completely unlike a horse, for from the magnificently modeled back sprang a nobly formed torso, arms, and a head resembling a man's, but a man with a perfection of dignity and virtue, an exaltation of joy such as Meg had never before seen. No, she thought, it's not like a Greek centaur. Not in the least. From the shoulders slowly a pair of wings unfolded, wings made of rainbows, of light upon water, of poetry."

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Happy Medium A bright mustard-leaning yellow linear holo with yellow microflakes. Formula and application were smooth and easy - no issues. I used 3 light coats with no top coat for the photos.

The Happy Medium lives on a planet where everything has been evened out to a medium gray, but she herself is a different kind of "medium,”. And she is indeed happy, though it seems she gets to be that way through pretending unhappy things don't exist Her cheerfulness is not that of a person who looks at the world straight-on and still finds cause to be optimistic, but of some who maintains a positive mood by sticking her fingers in her ears and singing "la la la" when anything upsetting comes up. She uses her crystal ball to show the children more about the evil that they are up against. The Happy Medium's power to show the kids the shadow of the Black Thing over Earth strengthens their will to fight. She also offers another kind of lesson, to Meg at least, that maintaining a happy medium, or a Happy Medium, at the cost of self-enforced ignorance is not a worthwhile goal.

"Watch!" the Medium told them. The Darkness seemed to seethe and writhe. Was this meant to comfort them? Suddenly there was a great burst of light through the Darkness. The light spread out and where it touched the Darkness the Darkness disappeared. The light spread until the patch of Dark Thing had vanished, and there was only a gentle shining, and through the shining came the stars, clear and pure. Then, slowly, the shining dwindled until it, too, was gone, and there was nothing but stars and starlight. No shadows. No fear. Only the stars and the clear darkness of space, quite different from the fearful darkness of the Thing. "You see!" the Medium cried, smiling happily. "It can be overcome? It is being overcome all the time!"

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Camazotz A black linear holo with a strong blue arc and a lavender/purple flash. Perfect formula and application. I've used 2 coats with no top coat for the photos.

Camazotz is the planet that has been swallowed up completely by the Dark Thing. Mr. Murry is being held captive there by IT, the evil disembodied brain that controls everything on Camazotz. Free will is an illusion on Camazotz: anyone who deviates from the norm is considered a mistake, and either forcibly brought back into conformity or destroyed. It's utopia...or hell, depending on your perspective. As Meg discovers when she’s fighting off the control of IT, like and equal are not the same thing at all. Here’s the children’s creepy first look at the people of Camazotz:

"Below them the town was laid out in harsh angular patterns. The houses in the outskirts were all exactly alike, small square boxes painted gray. Each had a small, rectangular plot of lawn in front, with a straight line of dull-looking flowers edging the path to the door. Meg had a feeling that if she could count the flowers there would be exactly the same number for each house. In front of all the houses children were playing. Some were skipping rope, some were bouncing balls. Meg felt vaguely that something was wrong with their play. It seemed exactly like children playing around any housing development at home, and yet there was something different about it. She looked at Calvin, and saw that he, too, was puzzled. "Look!" Charles Wallace said suddenly. "They're skipping and bouncing in rhythm! Everyone's doing it at exactly the same moment." This was so. As the skipping rope hit the pavement, so did the ball. As the rope curved over the head of the jumping child, the child with the ball caught the ball. Down came the ropes. Down came the balls. Over and over again. Up. Down. All in rhythm. All identical. Like the houses. Like the paths. Like the flowers. Then the doors of all the houses opened simultaneously, and out came women like a row of paper dolls. The print of their dresses was different, but they all gave the appearance of being the same. Each woman stood on the steps of her house. Each clapped. Each child with the ball caught the ball. Each child with the skipping rope folded the rope." Swallowed Up in Blue A sky blue linear holo with a strong pink/red shimmer

This polish represents Charles Wallace, the third of our trio of young adventurers. Charles Wallace Murry is a precocious five-year-old boy, the youngest son of the Murrys. He has a command of language far beyond what might be expected of a boy his age, although because he did not begin to speak until he was four, most people think he is stupid. Charles Wallace has a gift of understanding things that fall outside of normal human experience. It is he who first befriends the Mrs. Ws, and he has an uncanny ability to know what others are thinking. He can even understand the wind talking to the trees. Charles has a little too much pride and a desire to know at all costs. It is this that makes him even more vulnerable on Camazotz than Calvin or Meg. As a result, he is taken over by IT . "Look into my eyes. Look deep within them and I will tell you." Charles Wallace looked quickly at Meg and Calvin, then said, as though to himself, "I have to," and focused his clear blue eyes on the red ones of the man in the chair. Meg looked not at the man but at her brother. After a moment it seemed that his eyes were no longer focusing. The pupils grew smaller and smaller, as though he were looking into an intensely bright light, until they seemed to close entirely, until his eyes were nothing but an opaque blue. He slipped his hands out of Meg's and Calvin's and started walking slowly toward the man on the chair. "No!" Meg screamed. "No!" But Charles Wallace continued his slow walk forward, and she knew that he had not heard her."

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Aunt Beast A tarnished silver/taupe linear holo packed with taupe micro-flakes. This one has a golden arc with light blue flash. No issues to report at all. I've used 3 light coats and no top coat.

Aunt Beast is one of the aliens on the planet that the Murrys and Calvin tesser to in order to escape IT and Camazotz. The entire planet is grey and brown, largely colorless, and it turns out that the beings on this planet have no eyes and no mouths. They communicate telepathically and are confused by the humans’ reliance on their visual senses and attachment to words. The theme of communication is key to Aunt Beast's role in the story. It turns out that it's not her lack of mouth that is the main barrier to shooting the breeze with the humans, but her lack of eyes. As Meg realizes first when she tries to explain light, and then when she attempts to conjure Mrs. Whatsit, her very language is shaped by how she sees things, which makes talking to a being that has no conception of sight difficult to say the least. Aunt Beast's lesson for Meg is not, however, of the limitations of blindness, but rather of the limitations of sight. Meg's relationship with Aunt Beast drives home once and for all the message that appearances are deceiving, or at least insufficient; the things that really matter are beyond the reach of sight.

"But she realized now that here on this planet there was no need for color, that the grays and browns merging into each other were not what the beasts knew, and that what she, herself, saw was only the smallest fraction of what the planet was really like. It was she who was limited by her senses, not the blind beasts, for they must have senses of which she could not even dream."

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I was pleased with the formula and application on each of these and had no issues at all except with the settings on my camera. Apparently I changed them in Vegas at CosmoProf to get night shots of the lit up strip and well, I apologize for some of the photos not being as sharp as usual. The color is accurate though.

What do you think? I love to read and get totally inspired by books, characters, settings. A Wrinkle in Time isn't one I've read before so my horizons continue to expand! I loved the collection. Happy Medium and Tesseract aren't great on my skin tone so I apologize for that. My favorites are Who Which Whatsit, Aunt Beast and Camazotz. What are yours?

Eight full size holographic polishes, $10 individually or the full collection at a discount for $75 - available at her Etsy shop here. You can also follow on Facebook here to stay up-to-date on the goings-on over at Literary Lacquers.

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