Pretty Serious Swatch and Learn

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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

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