Alessandro Sunday Rose Collection

Product provided for review

Today marks the end of an era, in that I have the last set of review samples making a stop at my house before heading on to Lucy's Stash. Changes in both of our lives led to it making sense for us wind up this arrangement (including I won't be sitting at my desk most every weekday, ready to receive packages). The Alessandro Sunday Rose collection gets this honor; it's a group of five slightly dusty base colors paired with a somewhat subdued gold glitter. Left to right: Happy Coral, Apricot Touch, Tender Rose, Pastel Mint, Sunday Blues, Euphoria Top Coat.



As is my wont, I reached for one of the cool colors, first. Pastel Mint is just what it says, a pastel green. On me, it pulled toward blue-green; I've seen swatches around that look much more green. This is a tricky one; the photos also look more blue on one of my monitors and more green on the other; regardless, it's a pretty and flattering color for my skintone. This has a subtle white/silver shimmer to it that's only visible up close in most lighting conditions. I needed only two coats for my swatch, which I thought was great for a light color like this.



Since it's hard for me to leave well enough alone, a did a dotticure on Pastel Mint with Sunday Rose and Apricot Touch, mattifying it for good measure.



Continuing in the cool color vein, I tried Sunday Blues next. This cornflower blue creme was nearly a one coater, though I used two for my swatch. I topped an accent nail with one coat of Euphoria, adding clear topcoat for shine more than smoothness, as Euphoria laid pretty flat on the nail. Euphoria is pretty dense for a glitter topper; it's got an abudance of tiny gold holo glitter, small and medium gold hexes, and transluscent coppery shards that needed a bit of coaxing to leave the bottle.



Low light photo to show off the holo in the glitter:



I wore the three warm colors together. On my index finger, I freehanded diagonal stripes. My middle finger has two coats of Tender Rose, a pastel pink creme. On my ring finger, two of Happy Coral, a light red orange creme. Rounding out the set, my pinky has two coats of Apricot Touch, a light warm orange creme.



You probably already guessed that I also had to add glitter to this look. Despite gold not really being my thing, I found Euphoria quite interesting.



Here's the warm color mani with Euphoria added to the non-striped digits:



Even though it was clearly labeled as a top coat, Euphoria was so dense with glitter that I had to try it on its own, which I did on one nail, doing a gradient over Pastel Mint on the other fingers (all digits got clear topcoat, too). At three coats, there was just the barest hint of visible nail line with Euphoria.



I liked the mint and gold combination even more when I added matte top coat, which gave it that sea glass effect.



This is nice collection. The topper works with all of the other colors, and the formula was good across the board. I haven't seen these in any store, but they are available on the Alessandro USA website for $6 per 5 ml bottle (three of the shades are also available in the Striplac peel off LED cured formula for $18 an 8 ml bottle). You can follow the brand on Facebook at AlessandroInternationalUSA, on Instagram at @alessandrousa, and on Twitter at @AlessandroIntUS.

The polishes shown in this entry were provided free for review purposes. The content of the entry was not dictated by the provider.

Alessandro Blue Nuit and Polish Revolution F'ing Classy

A while back, Alessandro sent a bottle of polish for me to review in Blue Nuit, a navy blue creme. It's quite pigmented; I used only one coat for these swatches. After I had the color on, I really wished I'd used a base coat so the imperfections in my nail surface would be more camouflaged (I generally don't use base when swatching since when I do have block of time to swatch, I don't want to waste it trying things I already know about, like bases), so I added topcoat to smooth things over (a second coat of Blue Nuit would have done the same, but I wanted you all to see how good coverage was with one coat).





In most lighting conditions, Blue Nuit does look blue—very dark blue, but blue, not black, which I appreciate. In very subdued lighting, it is pretty indistinguishable from black, but in those conditions, there's probably something else going on to distract you from your nails, like a movie or impending sleep.

I don't wear cremes plain very often, so I looked around my swatching boxes for something to jazz up Blue Nuit. I found Polish Revolution F'ing Classy, a mix of small purple, aqua, silver, and holo glitters. Most are hex glitters but there are some small squares scattered in there too. Here's one coat of F'ing Classy over the Alessandro (no added topcoat):



I then added a second coat of F'ing Classy and some topcoat (because at this point I had glitter piled on top of glitter). Saying I liked this would be understating it by quite a lot. I wanted to abandon the rest of my plans for the swatching session and try F'ing Classy over about a billion more colors; maybe someday I'll schedule that in.





I haven't seen Alessandro in any stores around me yet, but they can be purchased from the Alessandro International website for $9.50 per 10 ml bottle.

You can get F'ing Classy and other fun glitters from the Polish Revolution Etsy shop for $10 per 15 ml bottle.

The Alessandro polish shown in this entry was provided free for review purposes. The content of the entry was not dictated by the provider, and I get to keep the polish for my own use. I purchased the Polish Revolution color.

Alessandro Bubble Gum

One of the fun parts of nail polish collecting is swapping with fellow lacquer lovers and getting to try brands I wouldn't otherwise be able to add to my stash. One of those brands I'd gotten a couple bottles of via swap was Alessandro, but now they've launched in the U.S. so it'll be much easier to get them stateside. I received a sample bottle of the line that's now available here. The color I got is Bubble Gum, a bright warm pink creme. Two coats was plenty for opaque coverage, but I could have used a third (or some topcoat) for a smoother look.





I wasn't blown away by the color (I think you all know by now how many pink cremes I already own) but I did quite like the bottle, which is unique in my stash as far as I can recall. The footprint is a space-efficient rectangle but the edges are ever so slightly curved which makes it look a bit more elegant. The cap has a smooth indentation on the front and ribs along the indentations on the sides, so it's much easier to hold than a plain, straight sided plastic cap would be.



There are 99 colors of Alessandro polish available from the Alessandro International U.S. website. They're $9.50 for a 10 ml bottle, and some of them look much more interesting to me than this hot pink creme that I tried. There are also base coats, top coats, hand cremes, and other products for manicures and pedicures.

The polish shown in this entry was provided free for review purposes. The content of the entry was not dictated by the provider, and I get to keep the polish for my own use.