Toma Sea Foam Green to Champagne

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To wrap up thermal-palooza here, I have one last experiment - this thermal is probably about 20 years old.

indoor CF lighting
Apparently, I was sorta ready to be a nail fiend way back in the day before I knew that was a thing at all.  In college, I had a zip-top caboodle-sized makeup bag that ended up being filled with a whole bunch of polish and nothing else - my baby stash of 30 or so bottles.  When I organized and swatched my growing stash a couple of years ago, I kept everything that was still fab or salvageable with thinner, and that included a handful of these "mood changing" polishes from Toma.

direct sunlight
I remember picking these up at a Claire's or one of the other teen accessory places in the mall for a couple bucks each, and I know that the thermal shift still worked when I used it again circa 2005ish, but I'm sad to say this one is officially dead, with no color shift at all in any temperature (hot water, ice water, real life, nuthin').

shady, indirect sunlight
Sea Foam Green to Champagne is now officially neither of those things, though I suppose closer to the latter.  It's currently a warm bronze that might have morphed into a secret duochrome with a shift up to a yellow gold, all with a pretty pink shimmer.

yellow gold:  neither seafoam nor champagne color
indoor, window-filtered sunlight, with sorta duochrome shift
The way back in the day formula doesn't claim to be free of anything, though I don't find mention of formaldehyde in the ultra-tiny fine print ingredient list.  It does say to keep away from heat & children, though, so one has to assume. Thankfully, this experiment also helps put to rest the idea that nail junkies lost anything when manufacturers started ditching some of the more toxic chemicals from typical polish formulas - this works fine, but I've certainly painted with 3- or 5-free polishes that flowed nicer.

direct sunlight
Rating:  3 out of 5 stars in its current state.  It's not as funky fresh as it used to be, but the color remains totally unique in my stash.

Where to buy:  google didn't help me with a definitive answer on this one.  I don't believe Toma is sold in teen mall stores anymore, but all the mentions i could find for it were on UK-based beauty sites.  There's a few Toma polishes on ebay now, but none of them are the "mood changing" variety.  Good luck hunting!

~Michelle

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