Pop Beauty Nail Glam Duo

My most recent jaunt to the county to the south of me (to get my 2nd dose of COVID-19 vaccine—yay!) didn't yield any new displays to share but did lead to me discovering a mystery in a cosmetics bin on the clearance shelves at Walgreens: Pop Beauty Nail Glam polish, which I'd never seen at Walgreens before. I thought this brand was long gone, having not seen it anywhere in years. I bought a bunch when Ulta carried them back in 2011. Those were full size 15ml rectangular bottles; these are 8ml half size in square bottles. Despite being in the clearance bin, they rang up at full price: $6. There were only two colors in the bin: ZZZ Pink and Black Cherry.

 

ZZZ Pink is a medium pink with pearly shimmer.

 

This was plenty opaque in two coats. Unfortunately the shimmer pretty much disappeared on the nail, leaving just pink. Which maybe is why they named it ZZZ Pink ... it's so uninteresting it puts me to sleep. Yes, pink polish is classic, and looks pretty. No problem if that's your thing. It's not my thing anymore. Yet I still buy it to satisfy the collector in me, so I guess I'm encouraging brands to keep pumping out the pinks and reds and skintones. They're going to do that anyway, though ... always have.

 

In direct light, the shimmer was ever so slightly visible.

 

To add a pop of interest to ZZZ Pink, I added funky French tips with Black Cherry, which we'll take a closer look at shortly. Yes, my lines could be smoother, and I might as well have used a cheap black creme for this, but it is more interesting to look at.

 

I had high hopes for Black Cherry, which has lots of small deep pink glitter in a black base.

 

Two coats of Black Cherry plus topcoat (to smooth out the glitter) later, I was let down. The glitter disappears into the base on the nail, which makes having to add topcoat to deal with the texture frustrating. (I don't think it's supposed to be a textured polish.)

 

Okay at this angle I can see the tiniest hints of glitter showing on some of my nails. I can also see the uneven texture despite already having added one layer of topcoat.

 

Getting up close in direct light does let the the glitter shine through more. In daily life, I am not this close to my own nails very often, much less letting anyone else get that close (especially in COVID times).

 

I did try putting a black creme base on and trying to do a thin coat of Black Cherry to see if that would help. It was hard to tell. Maybe a tiny bit, but I still needed bright direct light to see the glitter.

 

 

So yeah, I'm underwhelmed by these two. I do like square bottles for how space efficient they are to store, and the formula of these has good opacity (too good in the case of Black Cherry). I see that more shades are available direct from Pop Beauty, but as there are no swatches, it's hard to know if things like the blue glitter or the purple shimmer are worth getting.