Reprise: Pretty Serious Haddonfield

Happy Halloween! I'm not one for standard holiday celebrations, I like to make my own holidays. But with Halloween being one of the most celebrated holidays in the nail polish world, I wanted to make sure I offered a suitable manicure on this special nail polish day. Thus you get to see (once again) Haddonfield, released by Australian indie polish maker Pretty Serious Cosmetics as part of the Killer Fangirls collection for Halloween 2013. 

The namesake of this polish is, of course, the fictitious Illinois town where the Halloween movie saga takes place, and it came with a special signed artist's card by Leigh Young, who does all of the artwork for Pretty Serious. So cute! It depicts a buxom miss holding a carved pumpkin and a really big carving knife in front of 45 Lampkin Lane, which is the address of Michael Myers, the twisted psychotic killer from the Halloween movies. This photo of the card and polish packaging are from my 22 October 2013 blog post featuring this polish.

Pretty Serious Haddonfield in box with signed artist's card by Leigh Young

Haddonfield is a glitter jelly polish. It has an orange-tinted translucent suspension base bearing holographic bright orange hex glitters, tiny orange hex glitters and black shred glitters. On the nail, it totally looks like bats flying across a sparkly orange sky. Perfect for Halloween!

Application was done on a wing and a prayer. I have no techniques to offer about applying shred glitters other than to use a light touch and hope for the best. On the bright side, these sometimes problematic glitters are only a portion of the components in this polish and they are moderately sized. The consistency of Haddonfield is fluid and smooth but dense with components that like to to tumble as you apply, especially the shreds. Pigmentation is largely accomplished by the glitters and must be built to opacity with multiple layers. I used a generous first coat followed by two thinner coats for this manicure, ending up with only a few shreds protruding from the free edge and one obvious stick up. Pretty Serious polishes come with a round, super flexible brush that fans out beautifully over the nail and makes it easy to gently sweep glitters into place without stacking. Haddonfield's glitter payoff is very good, with a nice random assortment of glitters per brushful. Cleanup is a bear, though, and my goal was to have as little of it to do as possible. Even so I had some minor swipage that freed up some sticky tiny oranges hexes on my skin that I was unable to remove completely, so you may notice some sparkly areas on my nail surrounds. Haddonfield dries naturally in average time to a shiny, slightly textured finish that is easily smoothed by a layer of basecoat followed by a fast-dry topcoat to ensure drying of all the layers.

Photos show three coats of Haddonfield over treatment and basecoat with a smoothing layer of Essie First Base followed by a topcoat of Seche Vite.

Pretty Serious Haddonfield

Pretty Serious Haddonfield

Pretty Serious Haddonfield

Pretty Serious Haddonfield

Pretty Serious Haddonfield

Pretty Serious Haddonfield

Pretty Serious Haddonfield

Pretty Serious Haddonfield

Pretty Serious Haddonfield

Pretty Serious Haddonfield

This is the only glitter polish I have with shreds in it, and I think I'll keep it that way. It's also the only dedicated Halloween polish I have that I wouldn't wear at any other time of the year. That, I'm willing to change 'cause I can't imagine doing a third Halloween manicure with the same polish. So I'll be on the look out for another polish combining orange and black (at least) to add to my stash. 

Wishing you and yours a glorious and safe Halloween!

love,
Liz