Review & Swatches: Sally Hansen Pearl Crush Nail Color in Silver Scallop

Purchased by Me 

Of the eight new Sally Hansen Pearl Crush shades that I first showed you HERE, the one I wanted the very most was Silver Scallop. I finally found it at Target recently and I've been playing around with it ever since I purchased it. So let's take a closer look, shall we?

Sally Hansen Pearl Crush Nail Color in Silver Scallop
(retail: $5.49 at Target, 0.4 oz)

Keep reading for my full review, with lots of swatches...

Silver Scallop is a glitter polish that has a very sheer, gray tinted base that's loaded with tons of iridescent shimmer (teeny-tiny flakes of shimmer). What I didn't expect from this polish was that, in addition to large iridescent hexes, there are also some pretty large mylar shards here as well (see circle above). You'l get a better look at the shards in my swatches in a moment. 

Also, the hexes are NOT metallic. They are made of mylar as well. I wasn't 100% sure about that until I picked a few off the brush and cleaned them off with some acetone to inspect them. In case you're curious:

Iridescent mylar hex in the palm of my hand

The same mylar hex in bright light (on a Sephora blush compact)

As you can see, the hexes are definitely made of mylar and not metallic foil. What's interesting about this is that the mylar is not that stiff, unforgiving kind of mylar (like the shards in the Revlon Moon Candy polishes that are super jagged). The hexes in this polish LOOK huge on the nail, but they are surprisingly easy to smooth out. I only needed two coats of my favorite NYC Grand Central Station to make these hexes completely smooth to the touch. Granted, these glitter pieces are not going to appear smooth in my swatches, but you have to trust me when I say that it's very easy to get them smooth to the touch. 

Made in USA

NOTE: Per the instructions above, Sally Hansen directs you to "dab" each coat onto the nail (as opposed to "brushing" the polish onto the nail). This is important to remember when you see the following swatches.

Two coats of Sally Hansen Silver Scallop, no top coat

Well here's the deal. "Dabbing" this polish on can definitely help you get these large glitters and shards onto your nail, but it also causes complete chaos when you're trying to get a clean look with the shimmery (borderline frosty) base color. If you've ever worked with frosts, you know that dabbing them makes them look, well, like crap. The clean, uniform brush strokes that you shoot for when applying frosts get totally destroyed in the dabbing process. PLUS, when I dabbed, I got bubbles. Lots of bubbles:

Here's a better look at the shards that are also in this polish (see arrows below):

For my next experiment, I tried applying a deep purple polish (L'Oreal Extraordinaire Gel-Lacque in All Shine on Me) as my base color, followed by two coats of Silver Scallop:

This time I did my best to BRUSH this polish on to my nail, rather than dab as directed. I wasn't able to get the glitter placed exactly where I wanted it, but you can see that the overall look is much cleaner than that first attempt. 

And here's what the same manicure looked like after two coats of NYC Grand Central Station:

I was hoping that the top coat might make the slight bubbling a little bit less noticeable, and I think it did help conceal it a little bit. I know it's hard to believe looking at these swatches but after two coats of top coat, I could not feel ANY of the glitter when I touched my nails. It was absolutely 100% smooth to the touch, despite how chunky it appears.

So I was getting ready to tell you that I'm just not "feeling" this nail polish, when I decided to keep wearing it for a few more days...just to see if my feelings might change. On day four of this manicure, I noticed something when I was in my car, so I took the picture above. If you look at the nail with the arrow, do you notice that the glitter almost looks like a water droplet manicure? It kind of does, right?? In fact, the longer I wore this manicure, the more it reminded me of Dearnatural62's water droplet manicure she did HERE. And believe it or not, from a distance, these glitter pieces look even more like random water droplets than they appear in this pic.

As for wear-time, dry-time, etc., this polish dries at a normal rate (not super slowly but I would suggest using a quick-dry top coat to speed up the process). I haven't been able to completely rid myself of the bubbling issue, but it was quite warm here in San Diego when I was playing around with this polish, so that MIGHT have something to do with it. Wear-time has been quite good; I went five days with just tip-wear and no chipping when I wore Silver Scallop over the purple L'Oreal polish, but I did have two layers of NYC Grand Central Station on top (which pretty much makes all polishes wear like iron for me). No real issues with removal--this one removed quite easily despite the chunky glitter pieces.

FINAL VERDICT: I think it's fair to say that I have mixed emotions about this polish. Do I love it? No. But do I think it has potential for some fun nail looks? Yes. I think the iridescence is pretty over a darker polish, and if I'm in the mood for large, random pieces of glitter on my nails, well you can't get much larger or more random than this! Plus, I'm sort of loving that you can kind of achieve a water droplet look with this polish, without having to do an actual water droplet manicure. I don't know...I think that if you're a hardcore nail person you'll probably want to play around with one of these polishes, but if you're more of a "let me polish my nails quickly and be done with it" type of person, this line might not be for you. I don't regret my purchase, but I'm not sure if I actually need additional shades. I think I'm good with just the one for now.

Do you own any of the new Sally Hansen Pearl Crush Nail Colors? If so, what do you think of them? I'd love to hear from you!

The products featured in this post were purchased with personal funds. For more information, click here.

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