Orly Matte FX Flakie Topcoats

The two Orly Matte FX flakie topcoats that I picked up at Sally Beauty back in August finally made it to the front of my swatching queue (it's an unruly thing, my swatching queue, with newer polishes sometimes pushing out of the way ones that have been waiting a while, and some polishes giving up and slinking off into the Helmers without ever making it to the front). There are two of these Orly Matte FX flakies, simply named Pink Flakie Topcoat and Green Flakie Topcoat after the tint of their milky base colors.



I layered Pink Flakie Topcoat over Orly Purple Velvet. I used two coats of each; I could have stopped at one of the Pink Flakie, but more color is better as far as I'm concerned.



The flakies in here aren't the delicate soap-flake-esque ones like are in Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure or Essie Shine of the Times or Nails Inc. The Donmar, but neither are they the sticky-up shreds like in L'Oreal The Holographic. They're somewhere in between; they behave almost as nicely as the soap-flake ones but have the more irregular shapes of the shredded ones. The flakies in Pink Flakie iridesce (is that a word?) in a variety of colors: pink, yes, but also lilac and blue and green and yellow.



Given that these are Matte FX, they do dry matte, as you can see above. Of course, faced with something matte, I had to see what it looked like shiny, so I added regular topcoat to this first combination, which made the flakies stand out a bit more against the dark base color.



I put Green Flakie Topcoat over Wet 'n' Wild Black Creme (I was lazy and didn't want to go track down any of my black Orlys). Again, I used two coats of the flakie. The colors in this one have more of an analogous scheme than in Pink Flakie; here the flakies show a range from purple through blue, blue green, and green.





Here's Green Flakie with a shiny topcoat added:



I wanted to see how these would look over a base color that wasn't dark, so I put on L'Oreal Berry Jealous (from that Colour Me Pink display that was out this past summer), then layered it with Pink Flakie and Green Flakie, with Green Flakie being the accent color on just my ring finger. You can see the difference in the base tints here, with Green Flakie making the L'Oreal look a touch darker and more cool-toned.



Green Flakie on top, Pink Flakie below:



Left to right—Pink, Green, Pink:



I wasn't sure what to expect from these, never having seen flakies from Orly before (or pre-matted flakies from anyone that I can think of). I ended up liking them. They've got the visual interest of shredded flakies without the downside that usually comes with those, as these laid down nicely without any coaxing needed. If I had to choose one, I'd go with Pink, as it's got more colors in it, but then again, the colors in Green are my colors, so I'm glad I can keep them both.