Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Vernis Classique by Cherimoya Metallic Purple: Nightmare Polish

I was traveling out of state over the weekend and one of my favorite things to do when I travel is to visit drugstores and see what kinds of different beauty brands they have compared to the ones at home. I went into a Walgreens and spotted a big, well-stocked display of these Cherimoya polishes. I grabbed a few shades including this insane looking purple foil called Metallic Purple.

Have you ever had a cherimoya? It's a scaly, strange looking fruit with huge black seeds and white flesh, but it tastes amazing.


The cherimoya fruit also smells very, very good unlike the Cherimoya nail polish, which smells kinda scary.


Vernis Classique by Cherimoya in Metallic Purple. This is one amazing looking polish, no doubt. It's just so incredibly weird. It's a deep purple metallic, though it looks much more blue toned in my photo than it is in real life. You know how purple gets when you try to photograph it. Anyway, it's like a deeper, better version of Essie Viva La Vespa; the glow of this polish is like nothing I've seen. It really does look like it's lit from within, like there's a little lightbulb behind each nail. It's really strange.

What's stranger about it is that it only looks like that after topcoat. I'm wearing topcoat in those pictures, but before I applied it, the polish had a foil-like finish. Like, sparkly, grainy-looking, shimmery foil-ish finish. Apply topcoat and BAM! Smooth metallic. WEIRD.

Now let me tell you about application. This polish has one of the worst brushes ever. It's wide and fluffy, very thick and with stiff bristles that are cut completely unevenly. It has clumps sticking out here and there, some bristles curled back, some really short and the whole thing is just a mess. The brush is garbage, and it's a shame because the color of this polish is so amazing. It makes a clean application nearly impossible. I did the best I could but still ended up with polish on my skin.

No big deal, I can always clean that up afterwards, right? Wrong, apparently. I got out a little paintbrush and some acetone to clean the polish off my skin, but the second the wet brush touched the excess polish, insanity happened. The pigment in the polish bled out into the acetone in the brush, creating a pool of dark purple acetone that stained my fingers and cuticles worse than the small amount of excess polish on them from the shoddy application. I've never seen any polish behave that way. It just bled everywhere instantly, a purple liquid explosion.

I try to do the best I can to clean it up, but the more polish the brush touches, the worse it gets, so I give up. I decide to just apply my topcoat and hope the stains and excess polish come off the next time I wash my hands. So I get my trusty Seche Vite topcoat and start applying it to my nails. I get halfway through my right hand before I notice that the polish is bleeding pigment into the Seche Vite and turning it purple. The polish was barely even wet, certainly not wet enough to contaminate my topcoat. But there it was... a growing cloud of purple pigment developing in my topcoat bottle. When realized this was happening, I started wiping my topcoat brush on a paper towel in between each nail and was shocked at how much purple was on the brush.

If you think that's strange, listen to this. A day later I tried to change it up a little by adding some glitter topcoat over it, and guess what? The purple bled onto my glitter topcoat brush. Day old dry polish with a coat of Seche Vite and it still bled. I didn't like how it looked so I added a coat of Essie Shine of the Times and it dyed the flakes purple! What the hell??

Seems like every time the polish gets wet, it releases purple dye that spreads everywhere. It probably goes without saying, but removal is an absolute horror show. Purple EVERYWHERE. It reminds me of something I used to do as a kid. Sometimes I'd take the back cap off of my brand new magic markers and take out the little tube that holds the liquid. Know what I'm talking about? All the old Crayola markers used to have this fuzzy, felt-like tube with a plastic coating inside the marker, that's what wets the marker. Well, I used to take those out when they were still brand new and really wet and blow through them to make splatter art. It always made a giant mess on my hands, but it was pretty fun... I can't be the only kid who took their markers apart, right? This polish is just like that mess.

Other than the crazy dye staining issues and the horrible brush, the polish is pretty good. It was completely opaque in one coat and dried really quickly. The texture was on the thick side and it was a little stringy/gooey, but if it had a normal brush in it, it would had been fine. It did have a really weird, strong smell to it, like Silly String. Plastic-y, chemicall-y, all around strange and just like Silly String. I didn't have any chipping issues when I wore it and it looked great until I removed it.

It has a laughably bad brush. It smells like Silly String. It changes from a foil to a glowy, smooth, molten-metal looking metallic when you apply topcoat to it. It bleeds dye into your topcoat and all over everything during removal. Despite all that, I still can't help being in love with it. It's such an incredible color, you have to see it for yourself to believe how amazing it is. My pictures don't do it any justice. It's one of the most frustrating polishes I've ever used but, damn. It looks incredible. And it was only $1.99 at Walgreens.

31 comments:

  1. I love your description of this nailpolish, I couldn't help starting to chuckle! Thanks for the entertainment :-D

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  2. Love the color, but not the mess of an application story that goes with it. For the record, yes I used to do magic marker splatter art, too. As careful as I tried to be, I always got it on my tongue and my mom caught on and would check my mouth to see if I'd been "bad" again, hehe.

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  3. It sounds like an annoying love:)

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  4. Sounds awful, you're not selling it to me even if I did have a Walgreens anywhere near me!

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  6. EEK. That mess sounds terrible! What state is that from? I've never heard of Cherimoya (fruit or brand) before. But the color is gorgeous, ferreals.

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  7. Wow. Just, wow. The colour is really amazing, and from your description, i think it'll be mindblowing in person. Too bad about the brush though. Maybe you got a faulty one?

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  8. I had the same experience with Cherimoya! And was a bummer, because the color was gorgeous. It was a burgundy crackle polish that shattered beautifully. I just couldn't get past the smell. It was an odd, heavy, chemical smell, and unlike regular nail polish, it didn't seem to fade. I returned the polish :/ I'd give Cherimoya another try if the could improve the smell, though.

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  9. Why do I want this polish so much, in spite of your tale of terror?

    I think that I need help. lol

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  10. thats one of the craziest nail polish stories I have ever heard! it is rather beautiful though :)

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  11. I don't know if your story about this polish makes me want to pick up this one or run for the hills. LOL It is such a gorgeous, gorgeous color. Maybe if I see it...

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  12. What a beautiful color, but that application story is a bit scary! I don't think my Walgreens sells this brand.

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  13. That is an amazing color, Scrangie! However it's the exact definition of a HOT MESS.

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  14. Florence, this came from Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

    Cassykins, YES! Thank you, you know exactly what I'm talking about then! And the marker on the tongue, haha, I remember it well!

    Thanks for sharing my horror and amazement, everyone :D I got a bunch of other colors that I haven't tried yet, I have a feeling they won't be anywhere near as scary as this because they're glitters :)

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  15. Another polish that behaves the same way with topcoat is New York Summer Poppies. When it dries on its own, it comes out kinda like a dull foil, but when you apply topcoat it comes out this amazing glowy deep purple. As far as I know, it doesn't have the staining issues that this one does, and it's readily available at Transdesign. Maybe try that one! :o)

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  16. Goose, Poppies... I think I might actually have that one! The name is so familiar. Out of all the New York Summer polishes I have, I think I've only used/swatched maybe four colors!

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  17. Wow!! That's a crazy story! I wonder if the other polishes bleed the same way. This is such a gorgeous purple!!

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  18. This polish is so pretty that I am almost tempted to try and find it. However... all the issues you had scream "nightmare polish!" and make me afraid. I'm torn!

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  19. Oh my god I TOTALLY used to take magic markers apart! Okay, actually, I still do that. It's also fun to slit the felt tube open with an xacto knife and flatten them out. Then you can twirl them in circles and make cool patterns, and also a really big mess.

    And, wow. I have never heard of a nail polish bleeding its color so badly like that. WEIRD.

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  20. That is SO weird! I actually reviewed for them and didn't have that problem with any of the other shades... but they didn't send me this one! LOL Maybe it's just that one? I loved the others! They do have a really strange smell... it smells like an art room to me. A mixture of clay, ceramics and dried acrylic paints...

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  21. That's a big no thanks from me! I polish badly enough as it is.

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  22. great review. i really want to try that fruit. The marker story is great! i never thought to do that. I used to take the felt out then put drops of water on one end to concentrate the color when they were fading. then it would make a big mess on the paper lol. other times i would take white chalk and break it apart and mush it with water to make a paste. then i would take the markers and put water in them and squeeze the color onto the chalk to make colored chalks. LOL. oh the memories!

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  23. Awesome polish. Weird behavior! I used to take out the tubes also. I was an adult when I did it. Never heard of the brand. If I see it I'll skip it. I've heard of the fruit but never saw it in my grocery department.

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  24. That is one of the prettiest purples I've ever seen but I'm so glad I read your story about it because I will avoid this polish like the plague now.

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  25. I've never eaten a cherimoya before. And, actually, I wouldn't have even known it EXISTED unless I read your post! Looks interesting...wonder what other fruit it tastes like!

    As for the polish, I hadn't tried that, either. (I love how you introduce new things to me!) :D

    Wow, that sounds like such a high-maintenance polish if ever there was one. Your swatches are beautiful and clean, so I was beyond shocked that the polish gave you so much trouble. It really speaks to your polishes skills, Scrangie! :D You're the best!

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  26. I have had similar experiences with kleancolor metallic sapphire, it is the same with the change of color with topcoat and I tried different crackles on it and even when it is totally dry the polish turns everything you put on top of it blue :D even after several days and layers. It´s a tad better with seche over, but the crackles still turns blue. I havn´t painted this one on my nails yet, only in swatchwheels, so I will be very careful when I do :D

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  27. Sounds like the weirdest polish ever! But it does look stunning.

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  28. love custard apples aka cherimoya :-)

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  29. I'm glad I searched this review before I made a purchase. I love the detail you went I to about the polish & I'm glad I read it all. I wish you had more pictures of how it bled & what it did with your topcoat. Since you did such a great job making it look amazing if I didn't read your entire blog I would have looked at the pictures and thought wow this is gorgeous polish!

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  30. Damn I thought I was the only one who thought Cherimoya smelled funny. I have an awesome one called Y3K Wedding and it smells like toxic waste. The chemicals aren't very different from most others so maybe the pigments.

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  31. Wow I bought a random Cherimoya nail polish called Y3K Wedding and it smells like toxic waste! They have nice colours but they are so hard to find. I don't think I'll go looking for this one but now I am curious to try the fruit!

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