As promised days and days ago, I have the swatches for MAC‘s Biker Blue from the Jeanius Collection. I had mainly wanted to purchase this shade for the sole online swatch that had gorgeous blue and purple glitter encased in a black base. When I actually saw photographed swatches on Temptalia, it’s safe to say that I was very disapppointe at the lack of the purple sparkles that showed up. It was a very dark base with lots of blue sparkles but that seemed to lack depth without the purple. Still in love with the polish and in denial that maybe it would show up for me, I decided to go in store to purchase it for myself. I picked it up in the afternoon as soon as I finished my classes and went straight home to strip any nail polish that I already had on.
In person, the polish looks amazing in the bottle and it did show some purple glitter in odd angles of light. It came out as a very dark base loaded with lots of blue glitter. The first coat was extremely streaky and left many bald spots. A second coat evened out the color a little bit but I could still very much see my visible nail line through it. A final and third coat made everything perfect. The final color is an extremely dark navy blue with bright blue microglitter densely packed together.
Pigmentation: I wasn’t happy by the fact that it took more than 2 coats to be fully opaque. Mostly because if I would want to use this polish for any future manicures that span beyond a single color, my nails would end up with more coats than it could handle and the polish would probably chip quite quickly. But the fact that I usually like to apply 3 coats of most of my polishes, I was satisfactory with the pigmentation.
Price: A price point of $17.00 CAD is up very high in the range with other higher end brands producing polishes. I’ve heard that MAC doesn’t always produce the best quality polishes though I have yet to try one that doesn’t satisfy my basic polish requirements. After tax, Biker Blue came out to be about $20.00 CAD. Unhappy? Yes, very much. For having a reputation of not always having the best polishes, when MAC is comparedto say OPI or China Glaze, I definitely think that its price point should be much lower. Many other brands have better reputuations for constantly producing quality polishes but never quite exceed $10.00 CAD. The price point really was one of the things that made me question whether or not I wanted to keep this polish.
Dry-time: As similar to many other glitter containing polishes, this one took quite awhile to dry. Nowhere near close to the drying time of matte polishes (obviously) but definitely longer than regular jell-based and cream color polishes. The time that it took for all 3 coats to completely dry (ie. no dents occuring when touched) was beyond 30 minutes. I applied this right before I went to bed and gave it at least 30 minutes to dry but still woke up to many sheet dents.
Packaging: I love wide brushes and MAC definitely does not deliver in that area. Nonetheless, it evenly spreads out polish and covers my entire nail with minimal streak lines and color leakage to the side of my cuticles. Besides that fact, I didn’t have any problems with the rest of the packaging (ie. the exterior faces of the bottle and cap).
Color: I absolutely love love love this color! Though I didn’t get much purple as I had hoped, the bright blue glitters hidden inside of the darkened jelly base looks gorgeous and still has quite a bit of depth.
Overall: The polish didn’t quite deliver as I had wanted it to, but whatever I gleaned satisfied me enough to not want to return it. The only major qualm that I had was the fact that it costed $20.00 CAD and wasn’t as comparable to other better quality brands that sell their polishes for less. Besides that fact, I definitely think that if yu have some extra change, this would be a nice color to add to your collection. I don’t have any other similar colors in my collection so I definitely think that I’ll be keeping this one around for awhile.
I hope you guys have enjoyed this review! Below are the pictures of swatches and a grading scheme that I used.
