17 Fast Finish : Sulk

Today's mani is from Boots 17 : 'Sulk', from its autumn/fall collection 'A Woman Scorned'. 

(Please excuse my cuticles; I'm using the world supply of hand cream and cuticle butter right now but apparently they don't care. Stupid winter >.<)

Sulk is a gorgeous jewel tone green; in the bottle it looks closer to turquoise but once on the nail it dries most definitely green. And shimmery. It's not quite so sparkly in real life as it appears in these pictures, but it's most definitely there.

Application is average. There's nothing special about the brush (it's not bad, it does the job well enough, but I did notice the neck of the bottle is small enough that the brush tends to catch on it and get all splayed out. Not really a big deal but you do have to be careful if you don't want polish everywhere). The consistency is a little thick, not unpleasantly so, but it's gloopy enough that it does make it hard to do thin coats (I like thin coats. Not everybody does, though, so if you're a medium to thick coater, this one will be perfect for you!). Sulk is nicely pigmented; two coats is more than enough and it wears well too, BUT it's very far from the 'fast finish' the bottle promises you. This mani is one coat of nail envy, two of sulk, and after 15 minutes it was still really tacky. Like, 'has it even started to dry yet' tacky. So I added a coat of Orly Sec'N'Dry and that fixed things.

Or so I thought.

Check out the sheet mark on my index finger!! And I didn't go to bed for FOUR HOURS after I painted my nails! The bottle shots were taken straight after painting, and these other two were taken after I woke up the next morning. All I can think is that this nail must have had an extra thick coat of Sulk, and even the Sec'N'Dry couldn't save it from doom. (Though I will say that the mark is less obvious in real life than it seems here).

This polish gets 5 out of 10 overall. It's a gorgeous colour; there aren't too many jewel toned greens out there (at least in drugstore brands) that are properly green; most of them lean a lot more towards teal/turquoise/blue tones than this one does. It's also cheap and cheerful at £2.99. But I didn't enjoy the application much and it took way too long to dry for a so called fast dry polish. If you don't rush it and keep your coats thin, plus use a fast dry topcoat, it'll be fine - just don't reach for this one when you only have 5 minutes to paint your nails!