Urban Outfitters Nail Polish Sea Dust Swatch and Review

Welcome to Cheap Polish Tuesday where we explore and discover polishes that are found on sale or regular price for $5 or less! (I should really have that copied and pasted by now but I am still typing it all out. And I am typing this live because I am bad at scheduling posts!) Today I've got another one from Urban Outfitters. Each polish is priced regular at $6 but there is an ongoing promotion where you can buy 2 polishes for $8, which definitely sneaks these polishes into Cheap Polish Tuesday.

So today I've got Urban Outfitters Sea Dust, which is an alleged dupe of Deborah Lippmann's Mermaid's Dream. From the bottle, it looked like a possibility, but when I wore it, I am just unsure. Sea Dust is a shimmer glitter mixture of seafoam green, with blue teal glitters. It has very foil-like tendencies. Formula wise, it applied nicely however the polish was VERY sheer. So sheer you can see where my nail's free edge begins. I'm not really a fan of that. Admittedly, Mermaid's Dream is in my untrieds (sorry!), but from all the swatches I've seen, it looks a whole lot grittier on the finish with a lot more dimension. Anyway, here's Urban Outfitters Sea Dust with three coats, no top coat:







I am not really a fan. I am a little disappointed in how sheer it is, and how flat it falls because there's no real dimension and I think the foil finish is overwhelming. I decided to test it as a topper over OPI Black Onyx. Here's one coat of Urban Outfitters Sea Dust over top of two coats of OPI Black Onyx:





Anyway, maybe I am being too hard on this polish because I was expecting something else. If you wanted a "finer" version of Deborah Lippmann Mermaid's Dream, this might be your winner. I wouldn't call them dupes but I'll do an official comparison soon. Eventually. I tried to find out if Urban Outfitters polishes are 3 Free, but unfortunately I can't find a confirmation.

What do you think of Sea Dust? Do you think it's comparable to Deborah Lippmann Mermaid's Dream?

Urban Outfitters Mystic Swatch

Welcome to Cheap Polish Tuesday where we explore polishes found regular price or on sale for $5 or less! Today we have a sneak peek into the Urban Outfitters polish collection where they are found for a regular price of $6, or Buy 2 for $8. This is up here in Canada, so I would assume it's even less in the states. (Damnit.)

Urban Outfitters Mystic is a blue violet jelly packed with flakies, on par with Essie Shine of the Times. The flakes are the identical strong orange to strong green shift with a rare blue glint. Having a pre-packed flakie jelly is always somewhat patchy on the first coat of application, but the flakies give the slightest amount of texture for a second coat to grab onto, creating a nice even self-levelling second coat. I loved this one. It sings in natural light, but in a light box for photos, it is a bit difficult to capture. Here's Urban Outfitters Mystic in a two coat swatch with no top coat:







And excuse the crappy photo but because I wanted to prove that there is a colour shift:



Check out that strong colour shift. Isn't it somewhat... mystical? Wow that was bad, forgive me. Because this is a flakie, nothing does flakies better than a nice matte top coat to really highlight the flakie shapes and colour. I've used Revlon Matte Top Coat to match with Cheap Polish Tuesday as you can find it between $3-5.







And one more crappy photo to show that shift!....



I promise I'll never do that again... Well, maybe. Apparently you can photograph holographic and flakie polishes under water to show off the different colours but the idea of sticking a small tub of water in my light box sort of terrifies me, but I promise I'll experiment with that idea so I don't have to subject any of you to that again. Yikes. But colour shift is pretty, right? WORTH IT!... Sort of.

One thing that I really dislike about Urban Outfitters is the homophobic views and reputation that it has. It makes me uncomfortable to throw money at a company that is blatantly unsure of where it stands in regards to equal rights so this will probably be my last polish purchase from Urban Outfitters.

Anyway, it appears that Urban Outfitters has joined the ranks of Revlon in duping Deborah Lippmann polishes. I hear Urban Outfitters Mystic is a dupe of Lippmann's Ray of Light, but we'll have to wait and find out on that one.