Pretty Serious Hello World! Collection

I picked up both full nail polish collections in the Pretty Serious Hello World! 50% sale! These have been on my wishlist for a while and when the sale was announced I jumped at the chance to grab all of them. I love to support Australian brands, and I love that Karen, the creator of Pretty Serious, is creating indie polish that is so unique and not just the usual flood of glitterbombs.

I have to say, she has fantastic customer service. In my excitement I checked out with the wrong address on Paypal, and she replied to my email requesting a change of address within minutes! They arrived 2 days later at the correct address - just in time for me to put one on for uni (I do an Architectural Computing degree so I felt BSOD was particularly apt!).

The Hello World! collection is a collection of 6 nail polishes based on everything geeky/technology related. For the non-programmers out there, Hello World! is a common phrase used in programming to test text in programs and other coding scenarios.

So without further ado, here are my swatches and review of the Hello World! collection:

BSOD

BSOD stands for Blue Screen of Death - if you've never seen one, I envy you! It's basically when your computer just has a brain implosion and stops working, deleting that entire assignment you've been working on for the last 4 hours... But I digress. BSOD is a gorgeous, vibrant blue jelly packed with tiny blue glitters. It has amazing depth and in some lights looks like a bright glittery blue, while in other lights looks more like a metallic navy.

This was a bit difficult to apply, as it's a bit gloopy (as jellies are expected to be), and dries very quickly, so if you try to fix up patches in a coat it'll drag horrifically. It was extremely patchy on the first coat, but after 3 it's gorgeously smooth. It could have been opaque in 2 coats but I wanted that extra depth. It dries a bit bumpy and dull, and is weirdly top coat hungry - it was smooth with one coat of SV, but after a couple of hours it went dull again.

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This post is pic-heavy, so click "Read More" to see the rest of the polishes :)

Forbidden Fruit

I think Forbidden Fruit is named after Apple - it's almost white like an iMac, but it's a bit silvery like a Macbook. It's a really soft, almost-white dove grey with a subtle hidden shimmer. The shimmer is more obvious in the bottle than on the nail. Like BSOD, it's a bit gloopy and top coat hungry, but after 3 coats and 2 coats of SV, it was perfectly smooth. 

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White, Forbidden Fruit, White, Forbidden Fruit

Morning Java

Mmmm... Morning java.... Like the coffee? Or rather, that plugin that runs the javascript language on our computers? Either way, this is a beautiful bronze coffee-like colour. It's a golden brown crelly (cream-jelly) packed full of gold glitter, but it didn't have the same application issues as BSOD. This is 3 smooth as butter coats, topped with one coat of SV. I absolutely love this polish, it's such a great colour for autumn (shame it was 30+ degrees today, so definitely not autumn weather anymore!).

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Shade (Note: there is no red tinge to this! That's the reflection of my hair, sorry!)

CGA

I have no idea what a CGA is, but a quick google search revealed this:

Apparently CGA stands for Color Graphics Adapter, and it's a super old type of monitor that is only capable of displaying 2 colours - magenta and cyan. Which just happen to be the 2 colours featuring in this polish! Well done to Kaz for getting such a perfect match!

CGA is a bright magenta polish with cyan shimmer. It was really really difficult to capture that cyan shimmer, but you can see a glimpse of it in the last photo. When I first put this on I thought it was going to be really sheer, but it's opaque in 3 coats. Great formula, great colour, I give this one 10/10.

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Tux

Tux is the name of the Linux penguin mascot. This polish is so pretty in the bottle, it's a blackened teal with purple duochrome shimmer, but that purple didn't translate onto the nail at all :( Nevertheless, the teal/green shimmer is still noticeable in the sun and in direct light. Again, I had a difficult time capturing that shimmer, hence the strange angles. This was a breeze to apply, and it's opaque in only 2 coats.

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VT100

I didn't know what a VT100 was either, but apparently it's like a terminal. It's a black screen with green writing, and is far uglier than this polish. VT100 is a bright apple green with gold shimmer. It's pretty much like Morning Java, but with different colours. The gold shimmer played havoc on my camera and it was just so overwhelmed with the shiny that it couldn't handle it! In real life, this polish is a brighter green, and the gold sparkles like crazy!

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Phew! So in conclusion, my favourites are BSOD, Forbidden Fruit, Morning Java and CGA. I think it's a fantastic collection, and I love that it's translated such geeky things into the most girly thing possible - and with such style and beauty as well! 

I also picked up the In the Night collection, a review of that will be coming soon. And they just announced a Halloween collection! I can't wait to see what Karen comes up with next!

Pretty Serious Cosmetics nail polishes are available directly from their website, polishes are priced at $9.95 with a discount for the full set, flat rate shipping Australia-wide and internationally.