Pretty Serious Swatch and Learn

By -
Pretty Serious Cosmetics has a handful of really interesting collaboration shades (they know how to pick their bloggers!), but the one that was an immediate must have when I saw it was Swatch and Learn.

indoor, CF lighting.  check out that color shift along the bottle
S&L has a very yellow-leaning jelly base that puts it firmly in that "pretty/ugly" camp of unusual shades - the only thing remotely similar in my stash is Orly's It's Not Rocket Science.  Like the Orly polish, this one has a duochromatic microflake shimmer, but this one is so sparkly that it most often looks like a glassfleck.

bright sunlight
The sunlight photo is how S&L appeared most of the time in bright light indoors or out - yellow green and super sparkly, with the shimmer taking on a silvery sparkle.  In lower light, though, the microflakes showed off their chameleon powers.

window-filtered daylight
Oh yessssss - that bottle shot didn't lie, these little flakes shift from pale aqua through emerald and on over to pink and orange.


When viewed dead-on in bright lighting, all the flakes reflected emerald back, totally changing the look of this to a much bluer green than I would have thought possible with the base color.

in the shade, bright daylight.  yes, this is srsly the same polish.
At long angles, though, the flakes shifted all the way to a fiery orange-red that was an amazing contrast to the base color.



The microflake shimmer is easily the most amazing thing about this polish, and I hope that Pretty Serious kicks around the idea of using it in other polishes.

window-filtered daylight
Rating:  a fantastic 5 out of 5 stars.  This is the sort of shifty polish that makes me glance at my hands all day to see how it's changed in different lighting, and it's rather unique in my stash.  The only thing on the con side was that it got weirdly sticky on removal, and that plus the cling power of the little iridescent flakes meant that more acetone than usual had to be applied.

Where to buy:  Pretty Serious maintains a list of stockists, but I generally buy directly from them (they have a US shipping branch).

~Michelle

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Topcoat battle! HK Girl VS Pro-FX quick dry!

By -
Image
I'm sure that every polish geek has a half a handful (or plenty more) topcoats - I myself have my go-to quick dry, a thicker one for chunky or unsmooth finishes, some back-up "lesser" quick drys, and a matte.  Having that many, though, honestly means we're all still looking for MORE! For a couple of years now, my holy grail TC has been HK Girl.  I'd been pretty happy with INM Out the Door for a year or so, but HKG dries much faster to a harder (aka more chip-resistant) finish, so I made that switch around the time we started blogging here.  I've never had the love affair with Seche that plenty do - it seems more stinky to me and I get shrinkage often enough to have never bought more after my first 99 cent mini of it.  I've seen a few blog posts mentioned some behemoth from WalMart, and remembered to pick up a bottle when driven to the commercial den of iniquity by a wild goose chase for multichrome notebooks, which brings us to... Topcoat Battle!!!!
Read more

ILNP Masquerade & Comparison

By -
Image
Every time I Love Nail Polish releases another batch of their multichromes, my wallet is going to take a little hit.  Their formula is always great, but the colors .  OMG, I die with these super shifters.  From the most recent release, my first pick was Masquerade.  Ginormously pic-heavy post in 3...2...1... Masquerade is a very sheer charcoal grey base packed with magically light-bending pigment that goes from a rich magenta-wine color, through a lighter pink, then bronze, on its way to a vibrantly saturated emerald green.  It took 3 coats to get it to visible opacity, of the sort where it can look sheer if you hold your fingernails up to the light.  Though it's most often a metallic to slightly brush-strokey chrome, in the sunlight, a sparkly shimmer peeks out. outdoor, bright sunlight The color range can be soft and muted: ok, "muted" for something like this, anyway.  outdoor, overcast/cloudy day It can be mostly wine: outdoor, overcast daylight
Read more

China Glaze Pearl Jammin' + comparison

By -
Image
For my first new mani of this year, I went straight for one that was on so many people's best of 2016 lists, China Glaze Pearl Jammin'.  This lovely lady sold out super quick, and for a while was going for INSANE prices on ebay, but I found one at normal retail price on Amazon. indoor, bright CF lighting for both Pearl Jammin' is a greyed sky-blue base packed with warm coppery shimmer that's thankfully just as beautifully flashy on the nail as it is in the bottle.  The formula is a little squirrely, the sort that's both slightly too thin and yet dries so fast that it gets gummy if you go over the same area twice.   3 coats are needed for even coverage with the sorta thin/sheer formula, but that's the price to pay for having the shimmer this bright, and all minor irregularities smooth out perfectly with a layer of topcoat.  I stamped my accent nails with the cute dreamcatcher image on BM-407 using Hit the Bottle Copper Haired Girl. Then we promptly had
Read more