Pretty & Polished - Tomboyish

Hellow!

Today I'll be showing you Tomboyish, a thermal polish from Pretty & Polished that I bought a little while ago. A lot of people have been excited about this swatch, so you can all rejoice now!

I got this polish together with Popples, which you can see here :) Now, I first must ask you: why have you been so excited about Tomboyish? Is it because it's a thermal polish and those are always cool (or hot lol), or did you have the swatch picture in mind that I showed earlier? (click here) If that last one is the reason, I'm afraid I will have to disappoint you.

Tomboyish looks nice. Pretty colours, and the thermal effect is very visible. BUT: in the description of this polish on the website, it says that it "goes from a creamy teal green when cold to a light blue when warm." Seeing Tomboyish on my nails, I don't really agree with that description: the "teal green" is just green to me, and the "light blue" is a light green. The swatch picture of Tomboyish on the website is totally different from the result I got on my nails when I put it on. On the swatch picture (which you can see below), the colours are gorgeous: a bright blue when warm and a steel dark blue when cold. I got green. And then some more green.

Swatch picture online (source)

Honestly, I don't really dislike this polish, but I just don't really like greens all that much. The thermal effect is cool and the polish was easy to apply, but I feel cheated. I know I should have looked at other swatch pictures on the Internet too, but I fell in love with that one picture of Tomboyish on the Pretty & Polished website and never in a million years did I think it would be TOTALLY colour inaccurate. Like, why would they put up a swatch picture of a polish that is so different from how the polish actually looks? I really don't get it. I don't think that the maker of the swatch picture intentionally altered the colours or anything, but it's just so odd that it differs so much :/

Did they change the formula or the colour somehow? Do I need to forcefully press a polar bear against my nails to reveal the pretty dark blue colour, and heat them up with a flamethrower to get the light blue one? Anyway, it kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I tried to find the blog post by Chalkboard Nails where she swatched Tomboyish, but it looks like she didn't put it up on her blog and only on Tumblr, so I can't read how she got this blue result with the polish.

So I needed to get that off my chest. Tomboyish is nice (especially if you like greens), but it's not how it was advertised.

Anyway, now that I have Tomboyish, I'll show you some (colour accurate) pictures of it. The polish is light green when warm. According to the website, you'll need 2-3 coats for full opacity, but I needed 4 coats and in the warm state, there's still some spots that aren't covered completely (it doesn't show up in pictures though, only if you look really closely in real life). In the dark green state, 2 coats will do fine.

The picture below shows the polish in its warm state. I didn't use top coat in my swatches, so the polish might look a bit gritty: that was mentioned in its description on the website and I don't mind it.

And the polish turns to a darker green when cold. In the pictures below I am not suffering from the side effects of getting drenched in GC-161 and am not turning into a giant pool of water like Alex Mack (did any of you watch that show as a kid too?), but I have just dunked my hand into some cold water and I had to act fast because the polish would turn lighter green again otherwise. Hence all the dripping. In its dark green state, you can see the holographic sparkle more clearly - I love the sparkle!

And a final picture: here, my hands are still wet but the polish is quickly turning into its warm state again (as I'm so hot lol)

Most of the time, this polish was light green, with the darker green only appearing at the tips of my tips. It would make for a pretty cool watermelon design though :)

To be honest, I've actually re-written this blog post about three times. I wrote the first version of it right after swatching the polish - when I was super disappointed with the colours. The second version was written after I had cooled down a bit and could think more straight. I had applied some top coat and that really helped in making me like the polish more: the subtle sparkle was more noticeable, there was a nice shine and the colours seemed nicer somehow. So while I still thought the colour inaccurate swatch picture was bad, I was starting to warm up to Tomboyish (haha get it, warm up, and it's a thermal polish... I suck at jokes) and I was liking the colours more.

And a third version saw the light when I had taken a few more days to think everything through, and to realize that the polish itself is great, it's just the swatch picture on the website that is misleading. I loved the colours of the swatch picture - those are about my favourite colours ever - so the disappointment was really big, but that's partly due to my colour preferences.

I have sent an email to Pretty & Polished about the colours of the swatch picture differing so much from how I received Tomboyish. I wanted to wait to publish this blog post until they have answered - which is why I'm already late with it, sorry! But since they haven't emailed back yet I will update this blog post when they have.

So that were my thoughts about Tomboyish! What do you think of it? All in all, the polish itself is really nice and was easy to use. Did you expect it to look more like the online swatch pictures too?

Thanks for reading!

*UPDATE (August 20th): I haven't gotten a reply yet from Pretty & Polished. It's been two weeks now since I sent them my email. However, it's always possible that my email got lost somewhere, so I have re-sent it today and I'm hoping for a quick response. I'll keep you all updated!*

*UPDATE (September 18th): a few of my emails apparently got lost somewhere, but Pretty & Polished answered after my second email. We've emailed back and forth a bit and they asked me to send a picture of my Tomboyish, after which they said it did look a bit darker than it should. They offered to send me a replacement, so I will write another update here when that one has arrived!*