Lacquer Lundi

This week I have a series of MOOD polishes from Claire's.  There are five polishes in the line up and I will be featuring four of them (the pink one did not float my boat, so I passed on it).  These polishes are interesting because they are thermochromic; that is, they change colour with changing temperature.  Each polish displays two different shades, one colour when warm and another colour when cold.  It's a neat concept and I have to say that watching the colour change occur is freaky cool!

All the polishes behaved the same way, from application to coverage to wear, so I will deal with these particulars all together.  The consistency of these polishes is rather viscous and this causes the first coat to go on streaky.  A fairly thick second coat evened most of this out, but I still had to go back and touch up a few bald spots.  The polish dries fast, but it is very matte and not a pretty matte.  It's more of a dull, yucky matte (I have left the polish matte in the right photo in the first pair of pictures below for comparison) so I added a shiny top coat to remedy this.  My biggest complaint with these polishes is the craptastic wear.  Not only did each polish almost instantly have tip wear (you can see evidence of this in many of the photos), but each and every one of these puppies chipped on me after approximately 22 hours (to put it in perspective, I very, very rarely have chipping issues with my other polishes).  And, when I say chipped, I'm not talking about a small, inconsequential nick - I mean big honking flakes fell off the edges of my nails.  I was mortified to be seen with such a horribly chippy manicure.

On a brighter note, the colours are quite fetching and the colour changes are super cool.  My colleagues, students and family were mesmerized by the thermochromism and kept begging me to "make them hot" and "make them cold."  The neatest look was when I was comfortably warm so that my nail beds were one colour and the tips of my nails were another.  Instant funky French manicure!

Check 'em out below.   In each set of photos, the "cold colour" is on the left and the "warm colour" is on the right.

On to the pretties:

Claire's MOOD - Daring/Innocent
- purchased at Claire's for $4.31 CDN

Claire's MOOD - Calm/Wild
- purchased at Claire's for $4.31 CDN

Claire's MOOD - Happy/Earthy
- purchased at Claire's for $4.31 CDN

Claire's MOOD - Peaceful/Confident
- purchased at Claire's for $4.31 CDN

Note that the day I purchased these bottles, they were on sale, buy one, get one half off.  Claire's often has this promotion, so if you want these polishes, wait for a sale.