I will fully admit when I saw the theme ‘Red Carpet’ won for the November Polish Pickup, I was disappointed. I had wanted SciFi/Fantasy to win and didn’t think anything *that* good would come out with a Red Carpet theme. I don’t know why I doubted the makers involved in PPU because between November is looking like another amazing month! I don’t have some of the prices and caps on a few polishes, so I will update this post once I get that information! As always links will be at the end of this post!
In case you are new, Polish Pickup is a monthly collaboration of indie polish and other handmade product makers based on a chosen theme. There’s a new theme with new products each month from dozens of makers. Items are available the first Friday – Monday of each month for pre-order at PolishPickup.com. All items are shipped together, for one low flat rate price of $3 (U.S. orders). Canadian shipping starts at $6 USD on the main site and international shipping is also available from the sister site.
Disclaimer: I was sent these products as PR in exchange for photographs and an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own. My photos were taken indoors with daylight bulbs, outdoors with natural light using a peel off base coat plus both matte and glossy top coats.
Color Spectrum Polish – Halle Did Her Berry Best
Inspiration: Halle Berry at the 2020 Oscars
Description: A gorgeous velvety red with gold shimmers, green holo and gold to red shifting flakies
Price: $12 for 13ml Cap: 75 US / 5 UK
Halle Did Her Berry Best is the perfect shade of red for this time of year! It’s a true Christmas/Santa red in my opinion. It applied perfectly. I don’t tend to gravitate towards reds very often but I didn’t want to take this one off. It applied very evenly and had great coverage on the first coat. My photos show it in 2 coats. I didn’t have any staining with this but it is very pigmented. I recommend 2 layers of base coat on natural nails that are prone to staining.
Note #1: I could have sworn I had more photos of this polish but all I am finding on my sd card are these photos. Which sucks because I wore this for a few days after swatching it and throughly enjoyed it! Really bummed I don’t have more photos to share.
Color Spectrum Polish
13ml, 7 Free, Vegan & Cruelty free
Website | Etsy | Instagram | Facebook | Facebook Group
Heather’s Hues – Beauty Is Transient
Inspiration: the exquisite iridescent mermaid gown worn by Aishwarya Rai Bachchan at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival
Description: a pale beige crelly packed with iridescent copper-gold-green-blue-turquoise shimmer and a kiss of copper holo.
Price: $12.50 for 15ml Cap: US 150 / UK 15
Beauty Is Transient is a very shifty shimmer polish! Great formula with no application issues. I was seeing a green/teal/blue shift on the nail. It looks amazing in every type of lighting. I had this one all day and found myself staring at my nails constantly. I even did some nail art for it (post coming soon!) The shimmer in this reminded me of Scorpius by Heather’s Hues (I own 2 bottles of it). I asked Heather about it and it’s not the same shimmer. This is a bit more opaque than Scorpius so VNL is only visible if you really look for it. I really liked the sheer delicate look this gave in 2 coats but for full opacity, my photos show it in 3 coats.
Heather’s Hues
15ml, 5 free, Vegan & Cruelty Free
Website | Instagram | Facebook | Facebook Group
Leesha’s Lacquer – Smooth Like VELVET
Inspiration: The amazing Billy Porter’s velvet suit dress
Description: a matte black base with silver and black mini bar flakies, shimmer and a touch of mini holographic bar glitters
Price: $12 for 15ml Cap: 250 US / 10 UK
Smooth Like VELVET Remember in my last Leesha’s Lacquer blog post I was raving about mini bar glitters? I’m still loving them and this polish is packed with them! This applied smoothly and I didn’t have any issues with it drying too quickly (some mattes dry very fast) to get an even application. The flakies and glitters will give off a *very* slight texture in places when dried. While I am not usually a matte lover, this was really cool! The matte base doesn’t completely kill the holographic glitters like a matte top coat will so the two together is a cool effect. I will say I liked it better with a glossy top coat though. My photos show it in 3 coats. The photos with my thumbs show it in 1 coat over a black creme.
Note #2: My bottle had some streaks of black pigment in it. So I ended up needed a 4th coat on my middle nail to cover them. You can kind of tell that that nail is darker than the others. Alicia will fixing this issue with the bottles that are sent to PPU!
Leesha’s Lacquer
5 free, vegan & cruelty free
website | Etsy | Instagram | Facebook | Facebook Group
Psst.. You can use my code NicoleLovesNails25 on the Leesha’s Lacquer site to save 25%!
Paint It Pretty Polish – Get The Party Started
Inspiration: Pink and the dress she wore to the 2018 Grammys
Description: A pink to blue to purple tri thermal with a shifting shimmer, ultra chameleon chrome flakes and crystal chameleon flakes
Price: $12 for 15ml Cap: 90 US / 10 UK
Get The Party Started has a very smooth and even coverage. I find thermals often have thicker formulas but that wasn’t the case for this polish. I found GTPS started changing to the warm state while I was applying it. The flakies give it a ton of depth. I had just a hint of VNL in the warm state but I don’t think it would be as noticeable on natural nails. My photos show it in 3 coats. I think of shorter nails, 2 coats would be fine as I just had a few light spots towards the tips. A note on thermal polishes
Just wanted to add, the shade of purple of this polish is different from the Paint It Pretty Polish Startle from the Halloween trio (reviewed here). The thermal aspects are different and the flakies are different colors as well!
Paint It Pretty
5 free, vegan & cruelty free
Website | Instagram | Facebook | facebook group
Twisting Nether Lacquer – The Best Of Both Worlds
Inspiration: Sandra Bullock at the MTV Awards
Description: a black base with UCC flakes, silver holo flakes and holo sparkle
Price: $12.50 for 15ml Cap: 120 US / 10 UK
The Best Of Both Worlds has a base that’s somewhere between a jelly and a crelly and filled with a variety of flakies. It applies smoothly and didn’t feel textured once dry. The UCC flakies shift between purple, magenta, yellow and green in extreme angles. At my desk I was mostly seeing the magenta and yellow color shifts. The color shift is really gorgeous! I used 3 coats for my photos. This was easy to remove with acetone.
I’m also going to throw this comparison in of the Twisting Nether Lacquer Feline Familiar. This was their September 2020 PPU polish. These both of have black bases with flakies. The Best Of Both Worlds however has more color shifting flakies as well as holographic flakes in it. I have swatches of Feline Familiar on this blog post.
I also did some nail art featuring this polish. Click here or the image below to see more photos
Twisting Nether Lacquer
15ml, 5 Free, Vegan & Cruelty Free
Website | Instagram | Facebook Page | Facebook Group
Zombie Claw Polish – The Meat Dress
Inspiration: Lady Gaga’s infamous Meat Dress
Description: A glow in the dark red loaded with pink-orange-gold-green iridescent flakies, black shreds, holo glitters and shifting rainbow micro shreds.
Price: $13 for 13ml Cap: 200 US / 15 UK
The Meat Dress is a really fun polish! I posted about this on my Instagram story and quite a few people asked me what was on my nails. It has a thin but not watery formula that glides on very smoothly despite the flakies and glitter shreds. I did a slight amount of glitter placement to get the black shreds where I wanted them. The shreds will leave behind some texture so I used a glitter eating top coat paired with my normal glossy top coat to get a perfectly smooth surface. This is sheer enough on the first coat that it can be used as a topper. My photos show it in 3 coats.
Note #3: The GITD pigment in this is charged with UV light. I stuck my hand in my LED/UV gel lamp for 60 seconds to charge this up. I took my dark photo in my basement with my iPhone. I didn’t test for how long it will stay glowing but it does glow. Around 15 minutes passed between charging and finishing up photos and from what I could see at my desk (with the curtains closed and lights off) it was still glowing. I gave this a really good shake in my polish shaker prior to swatching to make sure the GITD pigment and glitter shreds weren’t stuck on the bottom of the bottle.
Zombie Claw Polish
10 Free, Vegan & Cruelty-Free
Website | Instagram | Facebook | Facebook Group
Sale Information
These items will be available on the Polish Pickup website starting November 6th at 11AM Eastern time until Monday November 9th at 11:59PM and on the Polish Pickup sister site November 5th at 4pm BST until November 8th at 4pm BST. Orders to the same name/address are automatically combined and shipping on multiple orders refunded. As of October 2020, there are upgraded shipping options within the US. Details on shipping charges can be found here. Items purchased during the sale period are a pre-order and generally ship 3-4 weeks after the sale period is over.
Both sites will both open for wish listing this Sunday. There are WAY more items available than just what I have shown. For swatches/product photos of pretty much everything available this month, I highly recommend checking out Cosmetic Sanctuary’s blog. I also recommend the Polish Pickup Pack Facebook Group. Between getting early spoilers on releases and voting on future themes, it’s a great group! If you’ve missed previous months polishes the Chat/BST group is great too. Thanks for reading and I’d love to hear what everyone plans on getting in the comment section!
Polish Pickup
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A note on thermals…
I want to add that thermal polishes do have a shelf life (generally at least 6-12 months) on how long they will change colors for. My oldest thermals that still change color are 2 years old. To get the most out of a thermal (all nail polish really) you’ll want to store them in a cool, dark place. I store my thermals with my other nail polish in the Ikea helmers. Once a thermal no longer changes color (aka dies), you can still wear them! The thermals that I own that have died, all stayed in the warm state but it’s not guaranteed to stay in the warm.