My last Sephora order included the new Nails Inc. color Whitehall, which is probably the least logical color name to give to a polish that is not white in any way. I also picked up Houses of Parliament. (Two days later the set of all 3 colors was available and I wanted to scream. >_<) Anyway I was really looking forward to what I've heard are great polishes and the easiest-to-use wave-creating magnets. I fought with them and this is all I got:
Somehow this photo actually makes them look better (yes, better) than they did in real life. They barely responded to the magnet. It's not like I don't know how to use them - I have LCN and Layla magnetics and do just fine with them. The formula on these was really weird. Not opaque in one coat because they went on so patchily, self-destroying and prone to unpaintable bald patches if you tried to even things out. After a couple fingers I changed tactics and went for one thin coat to be followed by a thicker coat, and then create my design...
That didn't work either! As soon as a second coat hit these it was like it became instantly tacky and non-magnetic. My thumb was a very sorry case, I should have took a photo - only one small stripe down the middle had any magnetic design at all. I did throw a top coat on these which had no effect on the polish design, but realized after two minutes that I was not going to wear this out in public looking like such a sorry mess. I took it off.
As for the magnet caps themselves, they just seem okay to me. They are easy to place over your nails but nothing ground-breaking in my opinion. With my LCN magnets I often rest the end of the magnet on my cuticle in the same way; likewise the Layla cap magnets are very friendly to being used the same way. If anything I'm wondering if I got dud magnets and plan to test them with my other polishes. Or it could be dud polish, as it barely reacts to a magnet being held directly against the bottle, regardless of what brand it's from.
So I'm thinking this polish isn't the greatest. Sad, considering how great magnetics should be. Hopefully it was just a bad first run of it. The other swatches I've seen Online of this Nails Inc. line are really beautiful and that's why I jumped on these colors. I plan to try using these again and if they work any better for me I will post an update.