Rimmel Lycra Pro : Oyster Pink

Today's mani is an unusual one for me: I'm not usually a pink polish person (and when I do wear it, it's usually more at the fuchsia end of the spectrum), so you won't be seeing too many posts like this. But never let it be said that I don't enjoy pushing the limits of my comfort zone! Oh, and excuse the somewhat bizarre pictures and lack of cuticle preparation: I didn't plan to take these until the following day, but half way home from work the sun came out! It's been so overcast recently that taking any sort of swatch pictures has been alnost impossible, so I of course screeched to a halt and took swatch pictures right there in my car at the side of the road. Good job too; it poured with rain 5 minutes later and for the rest of the day!

Rimmel Lycra Pro (anyone noticed yet that I have a lot of Rimmel? I have a LOT of it. I love Rimmel, plus it has a display right there in the shop I get all my groceries from. It's just too tempting. I'll be reviewing other things too, I swear!) is the earlier formulation of what is now called Lycra Pro Colour Memory, and shares its 10 day finish claim and awesome mistake-free maxi brush.

The shade I'm wearing today is called Oyster Pink, a shimmery frosted pearly pink that looks kind of salmon colored in the bottle, but lighter on the nail. When I first bought it, I was a little concerned that it would turn out to be a little.. well... grannyish. Is that even a word? When I saw it in the bottle I was reminded of the old fashioned frosty pinks my grandma used to wear, back when nail polish came in pretty much two shades: tarty red and nondescript frosty pinkish-salmonish-beige. I decided to try it anyway, and I'm glad I took the risk.

Shown here are three coats over one layer of base coat. It's pretty sheer; you'd have to use a lot of layers to make it opaque, but then it isn't really supposed to be. To be honest two coats would have been enough, there was very little difference between the second and third (except for me being in a hurry to get finished and leave for work, thereby rushing the 3rd coat and introducing the horrendous bubbles on my middle finger and the strange line on my ring - ignore those, it's my fault, not the polish!).

Drying time was pleasantly short and application was a breeze, I didn't do any clean up at all and yet the result was pretty tidy (especially considering the speed I was working, about a minute per hand!). The frost finish was less pronounced on the nail than in the bottle - sometimes frost can mean obvious brush marks and frosty looking 'smears' where the pearl pigment isn't evenly spread, but here it translated to a nice, even pearlised glow rather than an obvious frost. I'm sure the wide brush helped matters here, only having to swipe twice per nail leads to far fewer brush marks!

Wear was good although I only wore it for one day; I took it off that evening because my red hair dye stained the polish a strange rusty colour!