Hey, Swatch It! Red Carpet Diamond

Hey y'all!

I told you yesterday that I would have a different kind of Swatch It today, and that's because this is my first-ever swatch of a gel polish on the blog!  Since getting my basic nail qualifications last autumn, I've been experimenting a lot with different enhancement and polishing systems, and I'm finally at a point where I'm ready to start showing and telling a bit more about my experiences on the blog, and hopefully soon on my YouTube channel.  After dipping my toes in the gel polish pool with doing acrygel overlays, I've been slowly collecting a few colors here and there, and this beauty was one of my special treats to myself from our trip to Texas last month - a Red Carpet Manicure Power of the Gem collection from my birth month - Diamond.

Diamond represents the birthstone for the month of April, and at least for RCM, it coincides with the astrological sign of Aries (which actually runs March-April, but who's counting?).  All of the Power of the Gem collection polishes are claimed to be infused with real gems, though I can't really see any evidence of real diamonds in this polish.   It contains a scattered holographic microglitter and some larger hexes that read black to me, but may could possibly be holo as well.

My pictures all show one coat of Diamond on my naked (overlaid) nails.  I have seen swatches showing near-opacity at two coats, but for me it seemed like it would take 3 or 4 to get true opacity. 

Even under my daylight bulbs, it's very hard to capture the holo flash, so I have comparison macros - one in focus, and one gently out of focus - where you can see the colors come alive.

Although it might look a bit silly as-is, I am looking forward to doing some negative space nail art with regular nail polish over these, because I will not be in a hurry to remove the gel. 

So this is my first-ever Red Carpet Manicure gel polish, and I'm not quite sure it's enough to be able to judge the brand.  I will say that I didn't get a smooth finish from this polish and that was kind of a disappointment to me - but that may just be because it's a glitter polish? Either way, my top coat smoothed it all out for the most part so that shouldn't be a going concern for most users.  I think it would be lovely as a sparkly topper for any creme gel and I certainly look forward to using it for other purposes.

Hope you're all having a great weekend, and I'll see ya soon!