Vegan Claws

Today I have swatches of the latest Cult Nails collection to show you! The collection is called Let’s Get Nekkid and consists of four nude shades for a wide variety of skin tones as well as a green glittery flakie polish. The nudes are all named after nude beaches. As usual, you can click on any of the photos to see more detail.

I’ll go from lightest to darkest for the nudes, so first up is Mazo. This one works best as a nude on my pale self. It’s a sheer beige base with lots of golden shimmer. The shimmer is the large flake-type shimmer particle. Shown is three coats, but it was already smooth and even at only one coat (this one has the best formula in the collection in my opinion), so the choice of how many coats to use is strictly based on how sheer you want it to be.

Next is Baker, a deeper and more opaque tan beige with orange tones in it and with similar golden shimmer. The formula seemed a little thicker than Mazo but was still fairly smooth and even and could probably be used at one coat for a sheer wash of colour. I used three coats for the photos (it’s more opaque than Mazo, still a relatively sheer polish though, so I used three coats since my nails are a bit stained).

Tulum is a dusty chocolately medium taupe-brown with golden shimmer that doesn’t show up as much as it does in the first two polishes; I’m not sure if that’s just because the base is more opaque or if the particles themselves are different. This one was a little streaky on the first coat, and the formula was a little thin and threatened to run down the brush stem and flood the nail if I wasn’t careful. Adjusting to that, a second thicker coat on top of the first evened out the polish.

I did a comparison to Power Thief from Cult Nails’ previous collection (which I reviewed here), and as you can see, Power Thief (on the left) has more of a reddish-pink undertone and has denser shimmer that shows up more on the nail. The shimmer in Power Thief is silvery and flashes little sparkles of blue and pink in the light.

Cult Nails Power Thief (left) and Tulum (right)

Cult Nails Power Thief (left) and Tulum (right)

The final nude shade is Swanbourne, a very deep neutral brown, again with golden shimmer. Like Tulum, this shade is opaque and the shimmers don’t show up as much as they do in the first two shades. Shown are two coats.

Last but not least we have the green flakie, Toxic Seaweed. This is a blue-toned green jelly with lots of small glitter and flakies that shift from red to yellow to green. This one has the same ingredient issue as Clairvoyant does, so unless they can find a new supplier or substitute for that ingredient, it will be limited edition. So, if you like this one, get it while you can; it’s still available on Cult Nails’ website as of the time I’m publishing this post!

The formula on this one was thinner than I expected, but only because I imagined it would be super-thick and it wasn’t. It applied just fine and this was two coats. I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about this one; I love it at an angle when the flakes are reflecting yellow, but straight on it can have a red-and-green kind of Christmasy look to it that isn’t really my favourite.

Since I usually show the glitter or flakie polish over the others when I review Cult Nails collections, I did it again here although it’s not really as appropriate in this case – Mazo is too light to change its look, Baker just kind of makes the colour more muted by removing the blue tone, over Tulum it becomes sort of a swampy looking thing (kind of interesting, actually) – layering it over Swanbourne makes the most sense! This photo shows one coat of Toxic Seaweed layered over Mazo, Baker, Tulum and Swanbourne (left to right).

My overall impression of this collection is great; I love nudes and these ones have golden shimmer which makes me love them even more! Those with cool, pink-toned skin may not be quite as thrilled with this collection as I am, but I can see Mazo becoming a go-to nude polish for me since it matches my skin tone quite well and looks good at one coat (or at least it would without the stained nails!!) as well as at two or three! Baker is another favourite; I love the golden orangey-peachy tan tone. All of these shades are pretty unique in my collection. I do recommend waiting a couple minutes between coats when applying the darker among these polishes to prevent dragging and bald spots.