LeChat Perfect Match Rosemantic Review

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Hello Loves!  I don't think I've mentioned it here, but I recently joined the admin team in a facebook group dedicated to LeChat Perfect Match called LeChat Perfect Match Swatches.  One of my fellow admins was given a gift of the new Limited Edition LeChat Perfect Match Rosemantic from LeChat and passed it along to me to review.  Rosemantic is the first LeChat Perfect Match of it's kind.  Not only is it a thermal polish, but it is also scented.  But that's not all!  This is the first LeChat Perfect Match Mood to come with a matching Dare to Wear Lacquer that is also a mood polish!

Let's start with the Gel Polish and then touch on the Dare to Wear lacquer.  Rosemantic is a pink to red thermal cream.  It offers full coverage in the cold phase in two coats but needed three to be completely opaque in the warm phase.  With that said, my coats are super thin so you might be able to get away with two.

As I mentioned previously, it is scented!  Rosemantic smells like, you guessed it, roses.  The fragrance is quite strong and lasted for the duration of my manicure.  I'll touch more on that in a minute.  I completely forgot to get a shot of the warm phase on it's own so I don't have a collage of the phases for this one, but here are the cold and transition shots.

There's an interesting thing about the Rosemantic Gel Polish.  It is a different color in the warm phase depending upon how you cure it.  When cured in an LED lamp, it is the pink featured on the bottle and in my swatch above.  As a user in the LeChat Perfect Match group discovered, it is a completely different color when cured with a CFL UV lamp.  When cured in the CFL UV lamp, the warm phase takes on a very peachy tone.  In the photo below, I cured the first (left) swatch in my Thermal Spa CFL UV lamp and the second (right) swatch in my Harmony 18G LED lamp.  Note that the left swatch is not pink toward the edge.  It is picking up the reflection from the pink swatch beside it.

At first, I expected this to be the result of the longer cure times and predicted that Rosemantic would fade to the peachy color with wear.  I was wrong (proof I'm not perfect lol).  When cured in LED, it stays true to the pink color you see here.  The change also only seems to impact the warm phase as the cold (red) is a match regardless of how you cure it.  The red might be a tad peachier when cured in the CFL UV lamp, but I can't really tell a difference with my eyes.

Let's talk about the Dare to Wear lacquer version really quick.  I wore it on my toes for a while and found the color to be true.  Application was smooth and coverage was nice with two coats.  I have no clue if the fragrance stuck around since I'm not exactly flexible enough to sniff my toe nail polish, but I do know that it stayed around on a swatch stick for quite a while.  I'm also not going to show you a picture of my toes, so how about a swatch stick picture?

You might notice that the color of the warm phase on the lacquer looks different than the color of the warm phase for the gel polish (both CFL UV and LED versions).  You're right.  It is different.  I put together this cute little grid that shows the Lacquer, CFL UV cured gel and LED cured gel side by side.  As you can see, the cold phase is pretty much a dead on match, but there are definite variations in the warm phase.  The polish seems a bit more purple, the CFL UV is peachy and the LED is pink.

Ok, now that you've seen the variations, are you ready for my thoughts?

• The lacquer doesn't match perfectly, but I'm totally ok with that since I rarely match my toes to my hands anyway.  Plus, unless you touch your toes a lot, I don't think they are different enough that anyone would notice.  I found it to be very shifty and definitely lives up to the thermal shifts we expect from the LeChat Mood gels.
• The scent is a bit strong for me.  Or maybe it's that I'm not a huge fan of rose fragrances.  Either way, my hands are near my nose a lot as a smoker and I found it to be stronger than I prefer.  This is after just one layer of top coat.  I did end up stamping over it and adding two more layers of top coat over the stamping (pics in a moment).  After the third layer of top coat, the scent was barely noticeable.  So if you aren't a fan of rose fragrances, don't let that deter you on this one.  A couple of layers of top coat will mute it enough that you won't notice unless you pick your nose.  ;)
• As long as you cure the gel polish in an LED lamp, the color stays true as a pink to red thermal.  If you cure in a CFL UV lamp, the color stays true as a peach to red thermal.  It doesn't change during wear that I could tell.  While some people might consider this a flaw in the color, I kind of like it.  Its like having two different gel polishes in the same bottle.
• If you wear enhancements, I should warn you that the enhancement (acrylic or gel) will absorb the fragrance.  I noticed it was super strong while I was filing off the color and could still smell roses after I applied a different gel polish.
• Finally, I only got 8 days of wear on my natural nails (right hand).  I don't know if the gel polish itself failed or if I was extra hard on my nails during school that week, but on the 8th day it peeled off of two nails in sheets.  I could speculate as to the cause, but I won't since I don't really know for sure.  ;)  I do know that my left hand was flawless at 12 days when I decided to change it, but my left hand is the one with gel extensions on two nails and gel overlays on the other three.

Ready to see Rosemantic with stamping?  I admit, I wasn't very creative with this one.  It is the color of roses.  It smells like roses.  You know I had to stamp it with roses.  lol  The stamping polish is Mundo de Unas black and the stamp is SE02B from the Pueen Encore Collection.  I adore the Encore collection for the endless possibilities!  Since I forgot to photograph all of the phases without the stamping, I have all three stamped phases to show you.  We'll start with warm and end with cold. 

What do you think?  Is LeChat Rosemantic scented mood polish a must have for your collection?  I definitely see it as being a popular color for Valentine's Day.  :)

Also, if you love LeChat, I invite you to join the LeChat Perfect Match Swatches facebook group!  It is a closed group for members only, but we welcome DIYers and Pros alike.  It's all about swatches of LeChat gel polish (Perfect Match and Nobility) and sharing the "LeLove".  :)

~Michelle

*This post use Amazon Affiliate Links.  Purchases through these links generate commissions that help fund this site.  The LeChat Rosemantic that is featured in this post was provided to a friend as a press sample from LeChat.  It was passed along to me as a gift.  Thanks Angela!

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Double Stamping with Mundo de Unas and Pueen Encore

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Hello Loves!  I have a quick mani to show you today, but I simply adore it!  I have tried double stamping a few times and never achieved a manicure I really wanted to show off until now.  :)

For this mani, I started with a simple base of Couture Little Black Dress.  I then stamped with Mundo de Unas Blue using the rose bouquet in the lower left section of Pueen SE01A from the Encore Collection (circled in red below).  After allowing the stamp to dry, I stamped over it again with Mundo de Unas Pastel Blue and the floral pattern in the lower left corner of Pueen SE01B (circled in red below).

In case you missed it, I shared a full review of the Pueen Encore Collection here.

Before I move on and show you another shot of the manicure, I want to take a minute to talk about Mundo de Unas stamping polishes.  Sylvia has recently made the difficult decision to suspend international shipping for her polishes.  This makes me a very sad girl!  I love my Mundo de Unas polishes and reach for them almost every time I stamp.  They are far superior to any other polishes I have tried.  I sincerely hope she reverses this decision in the future.  There are so many colors I desperately need in my collection but didn't have a chance to order.  :(  Anyone live in Mexico and want to be my mule?  I joke, of course.

Ready to see another shot of this double stamped creation?  I apologize for the tip wear.  I didn't get a chance to take pictures of this one until I had been wearing it for a few days, and apparently I didn't cap the edges very well with the top coat over the stamp.

What do you think?  Can a girl ever have too much blue?  I don't think it's possible!

~Michelle

*This post uses Amazon Affiliate links.  Purchases through these links generate commissions that help fund this site.

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Pueen Encore Collection - Swatches and Review (pic heavy)

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Hello Loves!  As you know, I'm a huge fan of Pueen stamping plates.  I have all of their collections, so it was just natural for me to get the new Encore Collection as well.  I left several of the photos in this post as very large files so that you can click on them and expand them to see the detail.  I apologize if the large photos slow down the load time of the post.

Let's start with a mani, shall we?  I started with a base of FingerPaints Gel Polish in Petite Bouquet.  Petite Bouquet is from the Spring collection and is limited edition, but I'm pretty sure my Sally Beauty Supply had them on clearance so if this is a color you like you might still be able to find it.  I then stamped with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Grape Going and a portion of the image from SE01B.

Now onto the review.  The Encore Collection plates are different than any of the plates we have seen so far in that they are etched on both sides.  I really like this feature because it minimizes the space required to store them.  Not to mention the 8 designs compressed to 4 plates weighs half of what it would if they were only etched on one side.

The plates come in this cute accordion style holder.  Nevermind that the bow on mine is upside down, it's not a bad way to store them, I think.  The only down side I can see is that the pockets inside are a much thinner plastic than the vinyl sleeves Pueen has used in the past.

The actual plates come in vinyl sleeves.  This is where I have to question what the designers at Pueen were thinking.  As you can see, the sleeves have knockout style windows to expose the etched portion of the plate.  This is great in theory - it allows the sleeve to remain on the plate to protect your hands from the sharp edges. 

Sadly, theory doesn't always translate to reality.  When I tried to remove the knockout window, I found that it wasn't cut very well and the vinyl started to stretch and rip.

I was able to remove it carefully with scissors with only a little stretching, but then I encountered the next problem.  The plates are protected inside the vinyl cover by a blue film.

I'm not sure how Pueen expected us to remove the film without destroying the vinyl sleeve.  As you can see, even after carefully removing the film, the sleeve is badly stretched.

So, yeah, I'm calling the packaging on this one a fail.  As you may have noticed in the post preview picture, I ended up cutting the sleeves off of all of my plates.  They just aren't practical.  Even if they didn't stretch out of shape, I can see them collecting polish and limiting the direction you can scrape.

The great news is that the plates themselves are fabulous!  The designs are quite nice, though some elements are similar to those in the Buffet collection.  The back sides of the plates are less polished than the front, but it doesn't impact the images at all.  I only found one spot on one plate that gave me touch of trouble, but a second attempt with a different scrape direction cleared it right up.  Want to see closeups of the plates and my test stamps?  These are the photos I left a little large so you can click them to blow them up and see the details better.  The photos speak for themselves, so I'll shut up and let them.  ;)

I just realized that some of the test stamps are upside down.  Sorry about that!  But I think they still show how the images transfer so I'm going to leave them.

What do you think of the Pueen Encore Collection?  Do you need it in your stamping arsenal?

~Michelle

*This post uses Amazon Affiliate links.  Purchases through these links generate commissions that help fund this site.
All items featured in this post were purchased by me.

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