Takko Lacquer Valentine's 2016 Collection Swatches & Review

Hi there and happy Monday! :) I've got new polishes from Takko Lacquer to show you today! There are four polishes in their Valentine's collection and they will go on sale tonight, so let's take a look!

Press Sample

Salient has a clear base filled with actual silver dust, platinum and silver multi-sized flakies. You can definitely use this as a topper, but I wanted to show you what it looks like built up by itself. This is five coats. You could also use the sponging technique to get it even more opaque. I wanted to show it build up because it's actually Takko Lacquer creator Sheryl's wedding polish, and that's how she's planning on wearing it! Congrats girl!

shade

Sweet Cheeks is a soft pink crème thermal that turns into a nude beige when warm. I don't seek out thermal polishes normally, considering I usually keep my nails relatively short and they don't seem to change color for me very well. This one is lovely though, I adore both shades and for someone with longer nails, or shorter nail beds, it will work great. (I realize now that it would've been helpful to show a picture of the shade when cold, my apologies.) Applies pretty well, a little streaking, but leveled out in three coats.

HUG LIFE is a cobalt blue jelly with pink shimmer, holographic flakies and holo shimmer sparks. Very easy to apply and opaque in two coats, but if you use thin coats you may need one more. This color seems unexpected in a V-Day collection, and I like that!

Mad Love is a mix of metallic gold, matte white and baby pink glitter and golden shimmer. I layered one coat of this over Sweet Cheeks and I love the look! You could also build it up by itself though because it's quite dense, you'd probably only need two or three coats. I love this so much!

You will be able to purchase these on the Takko Lacquer website today, Jan. 25th at 8pm EST! They retail for $12 each. Takkitos have been known to be a little hard to get in the past, they sell out pretty quickly, so be sure to set a reminder for yourself so you can pick these up! They have also set a one per person rule for each shade to be able to help with availability. Let me know what you think about these! My favorite is hands down Mad Love, but they're all great shades!

❤ Kellie

The products mentioned were provided for an honest review.

Pretty & Polished Color Change Nail Lacquers

Today I have some polishes to show you that were sent to me for review from indie polish maker Pretty & Polished. They are unique in that they are color changing lacquers, meaning they change colors according to temperature. A mani using these ends up producing a french tip gradient-like effect because the bed of your nail is warm and the free edge is cooler, depending of course on how long your nails are. Water temperature affects them too, you can actually see the color change when your hands are in water of varying temps which is pretty cool.

Sometimes these types of polishes are marketed as "mood changing" or "thermal" but as far as I know they all use the same type of method to get the color change. There are also color changing polishes that change when exposed to UV light like the sun, but those are different. These are my favorite type of color changing polishes because my nails usually have a pretty nice free edge, meaning the two-tone effect is usually always evident. If your nails are too short they can just stay the "warm" color, which I think kind of negates the purpose.

This first one is called Pretty Chameleon, named for the color changing lizard of course. The cool color is a medium bright magenta pink with bits of sandy type glitter and the cool color is a light strawberry milk with the glitter being more apparent as purple bits. I was thinking that a top coat might mess up the effect (which it does not) so these photos are taken without it, which is why they look bumpy. This is two thick coats with my hand at normal temperature. This is how the polish would look most of the time.

This is the same polish with the picture taken right after I dipped my hand in hot water. It was a cold day so it wanted to change back very fast which is why it's a bit blurry.

And here is the polish after dipping my fingers in cold water. See the water droplet on my pinky?

This next polish is called Cuttlefish, which is a color changing marine fish. This how it looks with my hand at regular body temperature. The warm color is a pale blue almost white cream with blue and green glitters and the cool color is a bright teal aqua with the same glitters. This is three coats. The glitters were a bit tough to place but not terrible.

This is the warm color, the photo is taken after I dipped my nails in hot water. Again it wanted to change color really fast so this is a bit blurred. Who knew it wasn't easy to take photos of waterlogged nails?

And this is the cool color shown after I dunked my nails in cold water, a pretty bright teal ocean blue with peeks of the glitter. I love how this looks!

After I took the photos above, I decided to experiment with a top coat and it really improves the overall look of these, evidenced below. I think the polishes tend to run a bit thick and the glitters were bumpy in them both, so of course top coat would help the look, but I was worried it would affect the color change. It did not. And creator Chels even says so on her website, but of course I didn't do my research before I swatched them haha.

You can buy these and P&P's other color changing polishes on their website for $9.50 for a full size bottle. They also sell them on their Etsy store. What do you think of these two? Have you tried any color change type nail polishes before? 

Products provided for review.