Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Create & Ornate Swatches

After I put up my domestic display post earlier this week, my friend Julie aka turtlechick said she was looking forward to seeing my swatches of the Xtreme Wear glitters, which is all the encouragement I needed to pull them forward in my posting queue.

There are eight limited edition polishes in the Create & Ornate collection (subtitled: Royal Statements), four glitters and four matte cremes (the display also has a nail art pen and two stripers, none of which are new or LE as far as I can tell). Glitters on top: Family Jewels, Mind Your Manors, Court Jest, Rogue Red. Mattes below: Blue Blood, Chain Mail, Royal Shyness, Wax Poetic.



Blue Blood is a navy blue matte creme. I used two coats for my swatch (no topcoat, of course). This dried a little darker than it looks in the bottle but it wasn't so dark it looked black even in lower light levels. This applied pretty nicely; I didn't get a completely smooth surface but blame most of that on my nails themselves (I don't do heavy duty ridge filling basecoat for swatching sessions in the interests of getting through more colors to share here). The finish was nicely matte when it dried; I did not test what effect hand lotion and wear would have on it, though.





I topped Blue Blood with Family Jewels, which has silver and blue glitter shreds in a clear base. I am very happy to report that this clear base is well behaved, in contrast to the goop-tacular base in Beach Ball from the summer Xtreme Wear collection that I used in my 4th of July mani. I used two coats of Family Jewels plus clear topcoat.





Chain Mail black Definitely skippable if you have a black creme and a matte topcoat, and I'm guessing most of you reading do. This was also two coats.



Mind Your Manors has green, blue, and copper shreds; I put two coats of it plus clear topcoat on Chain Mail.





Royal Shyness is a medium green matte creme (and another two coater).



Court Jest (not Jester, just Jest) has green and blue shredded glitter. I did two coats of this and skipped the clear topcoat to see how jagged the shredded glitters were without the extra layer. Answer: not too bad.





Wax Poetic is a red matte creme. I used two coats of this one as well. It seemed to dry a little less matte than the others, but perhaps it just needed more time to fully dry.



Rogue Red has red and silvery pink glitter shreds. I did two coats, no topcoat, for this as well.



Shredded/shard glitter is not my favorite, but these are well behaved specimens, with the glitter not needing extensive coaxing to come out of the bottle or lay fairly flat on the nail. The matte cremes are pretty good, too, though I feel using regular cremes with a matte topcoat is more durable (though a bit more time consuming) than a matte polish with no topcoat. This whole collection has a winter holiday feel to it; I could see doing a fun Christmas mani alternating the red and green mattes with swoops of the glitters to make a funky French look.