*Disclosure: PR samples- I received these polishes free of charge in exchange for photography.*

Release: 1 February 2020

20 polishes + 1 full set exclusive

A collection inspired by areas from fairy tales

Click here to jump to the nonthermals.

Click here to jump to the thermals.

Click here to jump to final collages of all 21 shades together.

Femme Fatale is back with the fourth volume of the beloved Enchanted Fables collection! I’ve been hoping for another installation…but what might the inspiration be? I saw a suggestion a while ago for sidekicks/animal familiars and thought that was logical. So of course Sophie remembers that fairy tales have more than characters…

The choice to move beyond characters is brilliant, so I can only hope for more volumes to come. I know I know I’m so gluttonous…hoping for more mega-collections already, but what else can you expect when it’s from Femme Fatale??

Special note: this collection has a bit of a different setup. With the previous three releases, the regular set consisted solely of duochrome shimmers and shimmery thermals while the exclusive polish contained holographic glitter. In this installation, the regular set has a holo polish, and the full set exclusive is not holographic or glittery. Just wanted to make this clear–don’t want confusion over which is the full set exclusive.

Everything is shown with one coat of glossy top coat, which is recommended as a lot of them dry to a satin/matte finish.

Let’s kick things off with the non-thermals.

Bubbling Mire

From The Little Mermaid (Hans Christian Andersen)

This shade will morph depending on your skin tone, but it is undeniably a mustard. It looks a bit musty in the bottle, but on my warm skin it turns almost golden.

2-3 coats

Burnt Island

From Voyage of the Dawn Treader in The Chronicles of Narnia (C. S. Lewis)

I love this one. Being real here…anything with this sparkly glass-fleck shimmer, I adore. The kind in this polish is outstanding, shifting between silver and blue. The base color is subdued yet unique– a perfect cross between brick and raspberry. If you twisted my arm and forced me to pick favorites, I admit this one is up there. Absolutely flawless formula.

2 coats

Castle Behind Thorns

From Sleeping Beauty (Grimm)

My vampy-loving heart dances. Perfect darkness shot through with copper/red shine. On the first coat you can make out indigo/purple notes in the base, but it will darken considerably on the second coat.

2 coats

Cherry Tree Lane

From Mary Poppins (Pamela Lyndon Travers)

Hot pink base with electric blue shimmer. Neons aren’t my thing, but if you’re a brighter-is-better kind of person, this is probably totally up your alley. PERFECT formula.

2 coats

Elephant’s Graveyard

From The Lion King (Disney)

Adorable lavender base with subtle gold shimmer. This shimmer isn’t the most uniform-looking (looks to be made up of a bunch of different shades/sizes of gold and copper shimmers maybe?), but it lends a lovely warmth to the overall look. I’m a big fan of this kind of grey/purple shade, especially for the cooler months.

2-3 coats

Forbidden Wing

From Beauty and the Beast (Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve/Disney)

Blue/purple is a wonderful color shift. In glass-fleck shimmer, it’s magical. In a dark base and all sparkly? Ugh. Love love love.

2-3 coats

Hundred Acre Wood

From Winnie-the-Pooh (A. A. Milne)

The sparkle and shift in this polish just gets me, deep-in-my-core gets me. The glass-fleck shimmer is so intense and luminous, and it easily shifts between green, blue, and purple. The formula is flawless.

I’ve blurred out the bottom label in my images because this one had its name changed since I took these photos.

2 coats

Land of Toys

From The Adventures of Pinocchio (Carlo Collodi)

I adore the colors of this one. That green/purple shimmer shift is so apparent against the base color.

2 coats

Pearly Foam

From The Little Mermaid (Hans Christian Andersen)

Really cute light pink with turquoise shimmer. I absolutely love this interpretation of the name into polish. The shimmer is more apparent in real life (shimmers are stupid-hard to capture against lighter base colors). Pale pinks don’t do much for my skin unfortunately, but if you can rock an adorable pale pink you’ll like this one.

3 careful coats (I applied a thicker third coat and was extra careful. You may need four to eliminate streaks. Difficult formulas are common and somewhat-unavoidable with white-based shades.)

Tower in the Woods

From Rapunzel (Grimm)

I wasn’t expecting much out of this one from the bottle, but then I put it on and found it to be a fantastic neutral on me! Obviously your mileage may vary, but if you have warm skin like me, I hope you give this one a chance.

2-3 coats

White Witch’s House

From The Chronicles of Narnia (C. S. Lewis)

As a long-time lover of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (both the book and the movie…Tilda Swinton is a tour de force), this was the first to catch my eye when I initially opened the package and saw the names on the boxes. I had to open this one first. When I saw that it was holographic, I assumed it was the set exclusive (as all previous set exclusives have been) and was utterly delighted! Quite fitting for haughty Jadis, no? So I had quite the shock when I learned that this was, in fact, not the set exclusive!

Repeat: this is NOT the full set exclusive!

It is, however, a fantastic interpretation of the castle of the White Witch…a kaleidoscopic array of holographic flake, holo shards, and silver flakes. The formula has great coverage as well.

2 coats (Some larger shards may be an issue. Push them down as much as you can with the brush during application, then poke down any tougher ones with a gentle finger before adding top coat.)

And now for the thermals.

Cair Paravel

From The Chronicles of Narnia (C. S. Lewis)

Alright fine maybe I’m a bit biased towards the inspiration, but I have to name this one as another favorite. This polish is actually a tri-thermal. I show the two cooler states in the first photo (on the left) below, but that’s about as much difference you’ll see in real life. The warmest state is that lovely purple. I adore all the colors of this one, and that gold shimmer makes it safely wearable on my warm skin. It’s a perfectly classy polish I can wear for any occasion.

3 coats

Candy Cottage

From Hansel & Gretel (Grimm)

What else but a neon for this location? So fun and bright, and that violet shimmer is gorgeous against both warm and cool states.

3-4 coats (Easy and no-fuss application, but I needed a 4th coat to even out all streaks. I think this is pretty common with neon-ish shades.)

Hedge of Hazel

From Little Red Riding Hood (Grimm)

This one is so gorgeous in transition. Unfortunately the full warm state isn’t the most flattering against my skin, but I really like the cool and transition stages. The shimmer in this one is so strong. I think this one will be most beautiful against cooler or darker skin.

3 coats

Neverland

From Peter Pan (J.M. Barrie/Disney)

The colors of this one make me smile…inspiration was absolutely nailed. The turquoise glow is so luminous.

3-4 coats (The formula is easy to work with– the 4th coat is for evenness in the warm state.)

Realm of Monsters

From Moana (Disney)

I’m not a big pink fan, but for this polish I will make an exception. Of course it helps that the pink warm state is paired with a dark purple cold state! Also love the purple shimmer glow. I wore this one out and kept marveling at my hands. It’s really quite elegant. Super smooth formula.

2-3 coats

Room of Straw

From Rumpelstiltskin (Grimm)

Kind of a weird one, but it really grew on me! The shift is somewhat reminiscent of FF’s Trees Talking in Their Sleep, but I think I like this one more. I unfortunately destashed my bottle of Trees so I can’t do a direct comparison. I like that the warm state of this polish is warmer-toned, and the green shimmer is less harsh than the bright teal of Trees. I really like all stages of this polish.

3 coats

Wild Forest

From Snow White (Grimm)

The thermal transition of this one isn’t the most dramatic, but it is lovely. The shimmer (more like microflakes) really stands out.

3 coats

Winter Quarters

From Dumbo (Disney)

This is the other tri-thermal. Again, the two cooler states aren’t the most distinct…but I do show them in the first three images. That green/purple shimmer is so gorgeous against these darker states. The full warm state (the reddish shade in the last two images) requires high heat. I think you would only see it during a hot shower or right when you wake up in the morning and you’re all cozy in bed. To photograph it, I had to run my hand under uncomfortably-hot water. When you’re just out and about, the warm stage will look like the muted grey/faded navy/purple-ish shade (it’s really hard to describe) in the 4th and 5th images.

3 coats

Witch’s Garden

From Rapunzel (Grimm)

This was an unexpected thermal shift! I can’t recall another thermal with a similar shift. Both the warm and cool states are so pretty. The pink/yellow shifting shimmer stands out beautifully against the cold blue state, and the warm state is such a pretty shade of jade green.

3 coats

 

Should you purchase all twenty of the shades above, your special exclusive is:

Bonus: Dragon’s Lair

From any fairy tale featuring a dragon, although the most direct inspiration was Shrek (Dreamworks)

Bad news first: this shade was AWFUL to photograph and edit for color accuracy. It presented the same challenge as FF’s Lionfish. This polish looks correct on my editing monitor and on my phone with the “vibrant” color setting…and COMPLETELY wrong on my phone with the “realistic” color setting. The discrepancy is enough to make me despair for days. I cannot bear to imagine how my photos appear on all the various screens of the world.

So I cannot stress this enough…this polish is a berry purple base with blue shimmer and red iridescent flakes.

This shade is gorgeous. It has a beautiful formula that really allows the flakies to build up and shine through, and that blue shimmer (it shows more purple on some screens…it is BLUE) is so strong.

This is a full set exclusive–only available with purchase of the full set directly from Femme Fatale in the presale on their website, following in the footsteps of Evil Queen, Fairy Godmother, and King Midas.

3 coats

I’m so sorry for those of you that have to pick and choose which ones to purchase…I adore this set.

To help a bit with the decision, here’s both a full hand collage of the whole collection, as well as a macro collage.

Can I bear to name favorites? It does seem slightly ridiculous not to when faced with a collection of this magnitude.

You can’t go wrong with whatever you like, but my personal top picks (in the order they appear in my final collages above) are:

Cair Paravel- for being a beautifully wearable shade and combining a dusty red with a dusty purple

Burnt Island- forever in love with undersaturated reds and glass-fleck shimmer

Realm of Monsters- I loved how elegant and feminine my hands looked in this shade

Tower in the Woods- dark horse favorite but I love unexpected neutrals

Hundred Acre Wood- uncharacteristic of me to choose a green-ish shade…but THAT SHIMMER

Castle Behind Thorns- I always feel stronger wearing a powerful dark shade

Click here to go back up to the nonthermal shades.

Click here to go back up to the thermal shades.

Enchanted Fables releases are always so magical.

Femme Fatale Cosmetics: http://www.femmefatalecosmetics.com.au