I *love* this polish!!! I have learned that if my husband shows me a polish in a store, it's going to turn out to be an amazing polish that I love once I put it on my fingernails. In the bottle I never see the full beauty of polishes my husband notices in stores. He has a special eye for them. So, one Saturday we were at a Walgreens drugstore, and my husband brought me two Layla duochrome-looking polishes and then showed me the Layla display. Layla is a brand from Italy that I had only ever seen at Ulta. I definitely have never seen it at any other Walgreens location. The display even had the Layla magnetic polishes. They are not inexpensive like some other drugstore polishes, though, so I narrowed my choice down to one to try Layla's Metal Sense line. My choice was Layla Metal Sense #7, that I think is a duochrome with gold and with a shade of light violet or lavender or purple pink. It's difficult for me to describe that second color. It could be just iridescent but it looks duochrome to me. It's got a metallic finish that is almost chrome-like or mirror-like from afar.
The formula was good, and application was easy. The brush is slightly widened and flattened. The polish dried quickly. Cleanup took some time because I had shimmer everywhere on my fingers. I had to use a cotton-tipped orange stick for cleanup after my usual brush cleanup.
I applied two coats of the polish, and I had visible nail line, but I didn't mind it. The formula seemed to show brush strokes at times, but they don't look bad. Some metallic polishes are just grainy or show brush strokes at times.
I did have a problem, though. One hour after I finished the manicure, I dented a nail so badly that I had to redo that nail the next morning. I think the problem was not with the Layla polish, though, but with my Seche Vite. I had added some Seche Vite Restore thinner to a half-used bottle of Seche Vite, and maybe I added too much of the thinner to the Seche Vite. I have since switched to a new bottle of Seche Vite and put the half-used bottle aside as emergency Seche Vite. I did get some shrinkage caused by quick dry top coats.
The polish wore very well. The only issue I had, and again this may be due to the Seche Vite, is that the polish didn't seem "flexible." I had a nail bend back, and the polish cracked at the bend.
Here are some pictures:
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| Indoors, flash. Day Two. |
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| Indoors, office lighting. Day Two. |
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| Indoors, office lighting. Day Two. |
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| Indoors, office lighting. Day Two. |
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| Sunlight. Day Two. |
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| Indirect sunlight. Day Two. |
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| Sunlight. Day Two. |
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| Sunlight. Day Two. |
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| Sunlight. Day Two. |
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| Sunlight. Day Two. |
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Indoors, bathroom lighting. Day Three.
Shows the pink/purple shade in the bottle. |
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Indoors, bathroom lighting. Day Three.
Slightly different angle shows the gold shade in the bottle and also the pink at the edges. |
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| Indoors, bathroom lighting. Day Three. |
I thought the polish was unique, and I couldn't find blog posts about it online. In fact, I couldn't even find a place to buy it online, not even at the Ulta website. So, I looked online to see if I could find polishes with similar colors. At first my searches came up with Zoya Reece and Happi and Zara and Faye, but the shade of pink in those is different from Metal Sense #7. I also saw pictures of Sally Hansen's Golden Cinnabar which looked similar. Here are some links to posts on other blogs about similar polishes:
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