SinfulShine Swatches and Comparisons

Some nail bloggers are great at keeping up with press releases from all the brands. I am not, but one from Sinful's PR firm did catch my eye recently (and by recently I mean last month, which shows you how bad I am at keeping up with things in general). The headline said "SinfulColors Introduces SinfulShine", and I thought that was a little odd, because my Walgreens stores have had the display for months; I included a picture of it in my display post at the end of April. At the time, I called the line "Sinful Shine", with a space, but the press release makes it clear it's "SinfulShine", no space. The defining characteristic of this line appears to be the gloss; the press release talks about "GelTech (TM)" which is "a self-curing polymer formula that delivers the same high shine gloss as an acrylic UV cured gel". I guess that's what makes it worth a dollar more than the regular Sinful line; these are priced at $2.99 versus $1.99 for the regular ones. That's still quite affordable compared to a lot of drugstore lines.

Anway, seeing the press release reminded me that I'd bought some colors to try out, and it was about time I actually did that and shared the swatches. I chose four of the thirty-two colors to sample: Wisp, Alfresco, Man Hunt, and Amazonian.



Wisp is a white creme. It's been a long time since I bought a plain white creme. However, my inventory of my go to white creme, Sally Hansen Insta Dri Whirlwind White, is dwindling. When it was discontinued, I stocked up, but my stock won't last forever. Thus I thought I'd check out this SinfulShine white as possible replacement. My first impression of Wisp is that it looks like a strong candidate. I needed only two coats for full coverage and streaks were not an issue as they often are with light shades. I didn't notice it being super shiny, but I have topcoat for that so it's not an issue (swatch does not have topcoat, as per usual, so you can see the polish in its natural state).



I did a side by side comparison of Wisp to Whirlwind White, and it not only held up, I liked it a touch better because it seemed to be a brighter white. Granted, the SinfulShine may yellow in the bottle slightly with age as the Sally Hansen seems to have done. Left to right (each at two coats): Whirlwind White, Wisp, Whirlwind White, Wisp.



One of the reasons Whirlwind White was a staple in my stash is how nicely it worked for stamping, so I tried Wisp in that capacity, too. I used Sally Hansen Insta Dri Fuchsia Flare for my base color (because it dries fast) and stamped with Wisp (using some plate I did not write down and now have no recollection of which one it was). I think it worked pretty well; there are a few places where the image didn't transfer completely, but it's been so long since I did any stamping I bet that's more down to my technique.



The next color I chose was Alfresco, which Sinful's press release called a sky blue. I'd say it's more of a light cornflower blue. It's got a very subtle shimmer in it. Like Wisp, two coats was enough for full coverage.



The shimmer is a little more visible in low light.



I was of course curious to see how Alfresco compared to my beloved Essie Bikini So Teeny from last summer. They are definitely very close relatives, with Alfresco being a bit darker and having finer and more secretive shimmer. Left to right: Essie (3 coats), SinfulShine (2), Essie, SinfulShine.



I also had a couple fairly recently acquired cornflower blues in my swatching boxes that I pulled out to see how they measured up to Alfresco. Left to right below (all two coats): Elle Ship Shape, SinfulShine Alfresco, Sinful Colors Sail La Vie. All of these have a subtle shimmer. There are slight differences between them, but they're close enough that I bet I could wear them all at once and no one would notice my nails didn't quite match.



My next pick from SinfulShine was Man Hunt, a dusty olive drab with silver shimmer. This was also full coverage in two coats, and the shimmer was much more visible than that in Alfresco.



The base color in Man Hunt reminded me of Rescue Beauty Lounge Diddy Mow, so I did a quick comparison even though I knew the shimmer in Man Hunt was too prominent for it to be a dupe (that's okay, Essie Sew Pysched fills that slot). Left to right below: RBL, SinfulShine, RBL, SinfulShine.



The last SinfulShine I have to share today is Amazonia, a dark green flecked shimmer (so yeah, that's three shimmers from this line, each with a different visual texture). I used two coats of this for the swatch.



For the longest time, Sally Hansen Salon Project Runway was my white whale of dark green shimmers (does that even make sense? is Moby Dick only an old person's cultural reference at this point?), so that was my first choice to compare with Amazonia. Left to right below: Sally Hansen (3 coats), SinfulShine (2), Sally Hansen, SinfulShine. Amazonia is a touch darker and more yellow toned and its shimmer is perhaps a bit more coarse, but it might just be close enough to scratch the itch for the super hard to get Project Runway.



On the whole, I liked the SinfulShine colors I tried. I'm not convinced they're glossier than any other polish, though. Perhaps I'll do a wear test on them one of these months, but don't hold your breath waiting.