Pieces of Papaya and Lustre Shine Lava are close. Really close. A sane person definitely does not need both. Lucky for you, I am not a sane person. Hooray! On to the comparison
In the bottle:
Really fucking close. Ridiculously so. Hard Candy has a much rosier tone to it, where the Lustre Shine has a much more orangey, brassy look. Hard Candy's new bottle is really slick and modern looking, whereas the Lustre Shine is a teardrop shaped bottle that feels very retro. Both are completely fine, but I like the plain bottle best. It looks pretty on my shelf!
On the nail:
Hard Candy is completely opaque at 3 coats. It aslo dried surprisinly quickly, which kept me from dragging the layers. I love the fuller, rosy finish with the pale gold and orange foily things going on. It's a very nice, feminine-but-not-boring color. I declare it SFW.
Lustre Shine needs at least 4 coats to be opaque. The formula is pretty "frothy" and a bit of a challenge to control. I never can achieve a nice smooth line at the cuticle with this stuff. The nature of this polish gives me the feel of using an old polish that needs thinning. It dries a bit slower, and as you can see, I dented it while trying to take the pictures. It also has a very orange overcast that can be really hard to wear, plus the pink backflash of color reminds me of pink highlighters. The orange makes it probably-not-SFW.
There is also something....flat about it when compared to Pieces of Papaya. I don't think there is enough foily fantasticalness going on to distract from streaks. I compare Pieces of Papaya to the Orly polishes I have. The amount of shiny bits is perfect to cover up any awkwardness in the polish application.
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| you can see the streaks here. Also...where I gave up on the cleanup. |
Overall, they are both fine. But next time I go looking for a foily polish, I'm gonna grab Hard Candy. The bottle is nicer, the formula is easier to work with, the finish is nicer, and its cheaper!
TL;DR if you like the Lustre Shine line, go to Walmart and buy Hard Candy.
Thanks for this! I've been wanting the lustreshine but I couldn't justify the $9 price tag. Oh and I felt so old reading this; I had to look up the meaning for sfw and tldr!
ReplyDeletehehe, sorry! But yeah, don't bother with the SH. Even if the color was nicer, the grumpy formula isn't worth it.
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