Claire's Chromance and When In Chrome

I don't always buy polish at Claire's, but when I do it's eyecatching.  They've recently started clearancing out their old shades (scurry and you might find Splatter Paint for $2 and BTGO) and introducing new shades in more modern-looking bottles.  They're smaller than their old bottles, just 0.33oz instead of the old 0.5oz and I think the price has gone up...but two still really caught my eye.  They're both marked as "Holographic", but they're 100% not.  Why do companies do this?  I don't even care this time, since they're both very shifty multichromes and that's waaay better in my book.  I forget exactly how much these cost, but I think I got both for under $7 total in a BOGO50 sale, so I wanna say maybe $4.50 each?  Well spent, as you'll see.


Chromance has dense blue/purple/yellow multichrome fleck shimmer in a sheer, dark base.

ring over black, others over a sheer nude in all photos

Pretty intense, no?  I'm never completely sure with multichromes just how the shift in the bottle will translate to the nail, but in this case it was so shifty that I knew it would be pretty strong.  You can see it works best over black on my ring nail.  The rest are over a sheer nude franken that I call Tha Undapants, two coats of Chromance on all nails.  It could probably build to opacity on its own in 3-ish coats, but the formula is crazy thick, so it might be awkward.  That's not my only caveat.  It has a weird sharp smell and I got a little shrinkage at the edges.  It happened with two different top coats, so I'm not sure what caused it.  It stamped well in a quick test I did and you'll probably see it over something on here at some point.  The shift is quite strong, so it's worth the minor problems.

The sheerness is more obvious in some lights than others.  On its own, it would be too sheer for my tastes.  It's too sheer for me over Tha Undapants too, but over black it's gorgeous!

I mattified it and the gold end of the shift became more obvious at the extremes.

I'm really impressed by the shift here.

When In Chrome is a green/pink/orange multichrome shimmer in a sheer brown base.

ring over black, others over a sheer nude in all photos

Even better!  Wow!  When In Chrome was the one that initially caught my eye, but I let Chromance go first today so it didn't get overshadowed.  This is two coats, again over black on my ring nail and over a sheer nude on the rest.  The formula's thick, but not nearly as thick as Chromance.  It isn't as sheer as Chromance and I wore a full mani of two coats of it over Tha Undapants before taking these photos.  I had terrible shrinkage with that mani and initially blamed Seche Vite, until my reswatched nails shrank a bit too.  Not sure what that's about, but it wasn't horrible under NYC GCS.  I did a quick stamp test for this one too and it stamps even better than Chromance.  The shift is simply mindblowing, especially for this price range.

When the pink is less visible you can see that the base is an ocher brown.

It's so shifty and shimmery...I'm kinda in love!

I can't even decide if I like it more over the nude or over black.  The coppery orange end of the shift shows up way better over nude, but the green pops more over black.

It looks ok mattified, but looses a lot of its oomph and looks much browner.  You can also see the shrinkage better here than when it's glossy.

Bottom line: I'd recommend both, but with very minor red flags.  I got shrinkage with both.  I'm tempted to blame the top coat, since they shrank over a nude base coat and over black polish.  I wore When In Chrome with Seche Vite and got much more noticeable shrinkage and wrinkling than I did with NYC GCS.  It's not bad enough with GCS to keep me from wanting to wear either again.  They're thick, so I might thin them before wearing again.


Tha Undapants will be getting its own post at some point, complete with recipe.  It's my attempt at a frankendupe of Butter London Nail Foundation.