Cult Nails Divas & Drama collection - photos & swatches

Back in March I preordered the Cult Nails Divas & Drama collection, which consists of four lacquers: Scandalous, a coral/salmon jelly; Enticing, a delicate shell-pink shimmer; Manipulative, a buttery turquoise creme with a silvery micro-glitter/shimmer; and Seduction, a sheer reddish purple jelly with red and blue multichromatic flakes. Seduction is available as a limited edition shade; the rest are listed with the core colors on Cult's website.

Scandalous, Enticing, Seduction, Manipulative

Before I show you these quick swatches - all were swatched over a a quick coat of ridge filler, with no top coat - please understand that my hands/cuticles are dry and, it must be said, kinda gross in these pictures. I Photoshopped away the worst of it (not the polish though, just my own skin) but honestly they are just so dry. Blame the acetone or blame not wearing gloves for the last couple weeks (I refuse!) but anyway, blech and I am SO SORRY. Someone's been very bad about her Lanisoh of late.

Anyway.

Scandalous

I'm wearing Scandalous as a full manicure right now and it's super pretty.

This swatch actually does have topcoat - Cult's Wicked Fast, which I am just now trying for the first time. This is two coats of Scandalous. You can still see some visible nail line, but it's honestly so faint and right now I'm really having a moment for sheers and jellies. This is a fruity, fun, summer candy color although in real life it is slightly pinker (and less orange) than it appears here. Gorgeous formula, which was true for all of these and an improvement over the Cult colors I have tried before.

Enticing

Enticing was the surprise hit of this collection for me.

AIEEEE CUTICLES. Ahem, sorry. Typically these delicate ballerina pinks make my hands look dirty or weird but this is a real beauty. It reminds me of the inside of a seashell, plus there's a subtle shimmer that softens the overall effect (you can see it in the nail on your left). This is three coats. It's sheer-ish, but very buildable. Any streaks that I noticed while I applied it leveled themselves out. It's an impressive formula.

Manipulative

Manipulative is a dusty turquoise opaque cream that has a lot in common with Chanel Nouvelle Vague. NV's shimmer is more of a silvery pearlescent one and Manipulative's is beautiful little micro-glitter or micro-shimmer.

This is two perfect coats. Gorgeous formula, better than NV's hands-down. If you wanted Nouvelle Vague and never got it, save yourself the money and the headache and pick up this instead. NV is maybe the tiniest, tiniest bit more green, but it's worth it for the beautiful formula.

Seduction

Some of you won't be mad for Seduction because it's a flake and you're over flakes, or they're not your cup of tea or whatever. But these are really, really good flakes. They lie nice and flat and just look at the rainbow in that bottle!

I layered Seduction over OPI Louvre Me, Louvre Me Not (a polish I happen to love that never gets any love on MUA or anywhere else that I've ever seen).

This is two layers of LMLMN and one layer of Seduction. For a full manicure I would probably do at least one more layer of Seduction, but here you can see that the colors really do flash and flare nicely. The base of Seduction is a reddish purple, but it's quite sheer so you probably wouldn't want to wear it alone, though of course you could!

Overall, I'm extremely happy I preordered and got this collection for $30. It's currently priced at $40, or you can buy the individual lacquers for $10 each. It's certainly worth $40 but I feel like I got a great deal by preordering. Honestly it's difficult for me to say which of these are my favorite - I'm fascinated by Enticing just because I've tried and rejected so many colors like it. I'm in love with jellies right now, so loving Scandalous is a given, and the formula on Manipulative is to die for. The only negative thing I can say about Seduction is that it does bear a lot of similarities to Nfu-Oh 51, but they're not twins.

Will you be ordering any of these?