China Glaze Pearl Jammin' + comparison

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 no sun for days, life/work got crazy hectic the way it does after the holidays, and I never got around to taking outdoor shots of any sort (whoops).

But I did notice that this gorgeously wearable blue-grey & bronze show, for all its capture of everyone's hearts as a clear mainstream fave this past year, was not at all singular in my stash.

L-to-R for both:  SR It's Raining Men, CG PJ, RBL Réveillon, Shleee Strawberry Moon

slightly different angle from above pic, to highlight differences/similarities in the shimmers

I absolutely love SpaRitual's It's Raining Men, and the greyed-blue with bright warm flash is utterly similar between the two. The base is a touch darker and a touch more blue in the SpaRitual, so they're not dupes, but the SR is an easy-to-find core color with a superior formula.

RBL's Réveillon (a major lemming recently caught, but of course remaining untried) is another step darker and more opaque.  The shimmer is more of a pink & purple sparkle with larger particles, so nowhere near dupes, though they have a similar "feel" when worn.

Over on the right, I've added in Shleee Strawberry Moon.  The milky white base is of course nothing like the blue-grey of the others, but the warm bronze-copper shimmer is very much the same.  Shlee's Harvest Moon is much darker and more grey than any of these, and the shimmer is quite different - not worth comparing directly.

2 coats of each on sticks, no topcoat, and Strawberry Moon not here since the color is so different

On the nail, the other major difference is opacity.  Réveillon and Strawberry Moon are good to go in 2 coats, while It's Raining Men and Pearl Jammin' need 3.

2 coats of each, no topcoat, indoor bright CF lighting

For both pics, same order as the bottles above.  Index = It's Raining Men, middle = Pearl Jammin, ring = Réveillon, pinky = Strawberry Moon.  At 2 coats, IRM and PJ are nearly identical, with the difference in color only really showing up at the 3rd coat.

3 coats on the index & middle, still just 2 on the others

Rating:  Pearl Jammin' is indeed a gorgeous color, 4 out of 5 stars, though the formula is only ok.

Where to buy:  snap one up if you like it and find it somewhere, since I expect with all the buzz about it for the price to only climb in the secondary market.  Amazon is the best first shot.

~Michelle