Hey y’all! Today’s blog post is for the April Polished Gamers Box which is themed after the game series Elder Scrolls. While this is not a series I have much experience with, the makers really brought their A game (no pun intended I promise) this month! I have 2 beautiful polishes from Alter Ego Body Care Products and Swamp Gloss to share with you all. The April PGB goes on sale April 15th. As always, links and sale details will be at the end of this post.
The Polished Gamers Box aka PGB is a monthly collaboration between handmade indie brands. Each month has a different theme and themes are always related to video games. Items available range from nail polish to wax melts to stamping plates and even jewelry!
Live Swatch Video
Alter Ego Body Care Products – Warrior
Inspiration: Warrior in the Elder Scrolls Game
Description: antique bronze with a rose/purple shift and gold shimmer
Price: $10.50 for 17ml Cap: None
Warrior had a great formula. It felt just slightly on the thicker side of normal but I didn’t have any application issues. It’s very color shifty and honestly hard to pinpoint what color it is versus what color the shimmer is. I’d say the base is almost taupey in color with a reddish to purple color shift plus a slightly larger gold shimmer on top of all of that.
It has good coverage in 2 coats so shorter nails should be good in 2. The third coat does deepen the color and adds more shiftiness. Nothing in here will be difficult to remove and I didn’t experience any staining.
This has a really unique look to it that I loved! It vaguely reminded me of like an indie version to China Glaze’s Sin-derella. It’s more complex than that polish so they’re just vaguely similar.
Alter Ego Body Care Products
17ml, 5 free, Vegan & Cruelty Free
Website | Instagram | Facebook | Facebook Group
Swamp Gloss – Dragonborn
Inspiration: Dragonborn of Skyrim
Description: A violet jelly with purple/orange/green flakies and matte hexes.
Price: $13 for 15ml Cap: 300 bottles
Dragonborn had a great jelly formula. The base is surprisingly thin (in a good way) for a polish that has so many flakies and glitters in. They all spread out evenly and easily without needing to do anything special. The base color leans just slightly blurple at times but I would say it’s very much a purple.
I found this built up nicely in 3 coats. The third coat deepens the color to what you see in the bottle. You could get away with 2 coats if you don’t mind obvious VNL. In 3 coats you will have to search for VNL as the glitters larger distract from it. 1 coat of the Swamp Gloss qdtc (*gifted) smoothed this out nicely.
Disclaimer: I didn’t experience any staining with this polish while swatching. I had it on for about a day on my swatch hand. However, I wore this on my dominant hand for a few days (without base coat) and it stained my hard gel overlay but not my exposed natural nails. I am guessing the reason behind that is that my hard gel was pretty scuffed up from a 100/180 grit file and my exposed natural nails weren’t. So if your nails are very prone to staining with purples, I would make sure to wear base coat.
Swamp Gloss
15ml, 10 Free, Vegan & Cruelty free
Website | Instagram | Facebook | Facebook Group
Sale Info
The Polished Gamers Box opens for orders on the 15th of each month at 2PM Eastern time on the website, PolishedGamersBox.com. There will be a ton more items than what I have shown available. All items are capped so be sure to get there when the shop opens! All PGB items are sold on preorder and will ship in around 4 weeks after the sale period.
Polished Gamers Box
Website | Instagram | Facebook | Facebook Group
Shipping within the US has a flat rate of $4. International shipping is available and priced at checkout. Multiple orders in the same name will have shipping overages will get refunded.