Saturday, January 2, 2010

StrangeBeautiful Volume 1 - Colds

One of my very best friends gifted me with Volume 1 of the StrangeBeautiful sets for my B-Day. Lucky me!

This brand of polish is heaven*** for a creme lover. Good even formula (the majority only needed 2 coats), interesting colors, glossy finish, and B3F. My major complaint? Dry time wasn't ideal. It wasn't terrible, but it's not one of the brand's strengths. (Some of you may dislike the fact that these polishes are neither named nor numbered.)

Overall impression? B+. IMO if you're going to charge 10 bucks a pop and force people to buy 8 at a time, you'd better have a perfect formula on your hands. They're not quite there. Plus the long, floppy brush means you have to be pretty talented at NP application to not have a mess on your hands. I suppose I'd be a wee bit ticked if I had actually paid for this set.

Since there's 8 colors, I'm breaking this up into 2 posts of 4 colors each: Hots and Colds.

COLDS FIRST

Pink

(2 coats)

This is the bluest pink I have ever seen. It's slightly muted so it doesn't scream PIIIIINNNNKKK. I like it. I would wear it. Great, smooth formula on this one.

Purple

(2 coats)

OK, I'm sure we can all think of a better name for this color but I'm going for simplicity here. This is the purple one! Deal w/ it. This wasn't nearly as pigmented as the pink one and depending on how thickly you apply your polish, you might need 3 coats. (It's not totally even on my index.) On the other hand, dry time for this one is much better than for Pink.

Teal

(2 coats)

This one is quite green (my preference w/r/t the green-blue combo colors) and you could almost do it in 1 heavy coat. Almost. Dry time is poor. I had to use Orly Smudge Fixer on the middle finger.

Blue

(I had to really muck around on photoshop to get this to be more color accurate. 2 coats)

A fabulous muted, dark blue. Note to warm toned folks, this one's a keeper! Blues frequently make me look yellow. No problems here. This one will look good on everybody IMO. Dry time acceptable. Formula is nice and even; polish dries really glossy for a creme.

Either Pink or Blue is my favorite of the colds.

***I haven't actually worn any nail polish for any real length of time since mid November. I'm trying to grow the yellow out of my nails (so I can wear nudes without shame at work). I cannot comment too much on wear for this brand. However, I left Pink on for a little while and noticed that there was a good amount of tip wear (no top coat!) on my middle and index finger when I was finished writing a few long emails. Be warned.***