Summer may technically be almost coming to an end, but we’ve got a collection from Cuccio that will take care of the transition to Fall very nicely. CUCCIO COLOUR COCKTAIL COLLECTION Swatches
Our fantastic swatcher Emily is back with her take on the Cuccio Colour Cocktails collection:
CUCCIO COLOUR COCKTAIL COLLECTION Swatches
The Cuccio Colour Cocktails collection is made up of eight polishes, six creams, one jelly, and one shimmer. The brushes are plastic but they’re dense enough that it doesn’t matter after the first coat. All of these polishes are on the thinner side so they aren’t opaque on the first coat. The first coat is also pretty uneven because of the brush and the consistency of the polish, but once you get the second coat on most of them are opaque. I paint one hand, and then the other, and then I’ll clean up the first hand before painting a second coat. So there’s only about three minutes between coats. These polishes are pretty (what I call) sticky, meaning that if the first coat isn’t completely dry before you paint the second coat there’s a good chance that the polish around your cuticles will drag. So make sure that the first coat gets a chance to dry fully before painting a second coat. Like I said, for me that was only around three minutes, I keep the first coat pretty average, I don’t do a thick coat but it isn’t super thin either, if you’re working with really thin coats I would say it will take three coats for full opacity.
The wear time for the creams were all mostly the same, as long as you use a decent topcoat they stay on for at least two days with no chipping, and if you wrap the nail at the tip there won’t be any wear at the tip either, like how some polishes can be worn off the tips after a day or two. While wearing these I did normal daily things, I work in a warehouse so my job isn’t easy on my nails nor my polish. I did the dishes wearing some of the colors. I went swimming with two of the creams and that didn’t affect them either. The one shimmer polish had the worst wear time, I’m not sure if I didn’t get the topcoat on well enough, but it chipped the most for me after just one day of wearing it. The jelly polish actually had the best wear time, and it was without topcoat. I wore that one four days before I noticed the first chip and it wasn’t completely the polish’s fault, I picked a little during a movie.
I’ll go through the first six creams first.
White Russian is a white cream, its more of a milky white color, not a bright snow white. It mimics the color or cream in a White Russian cocktail. This was one of the thickest of all the creams, not really super thick but thicker than the others. I found that the colors that were either darker or brighter were thicker than the lighter colors. That might be confusing, but hopefully it’ll get less confusing. I mentioned above how the creams were sticky, this was the first polish that I tried of the collection and it took me two tries to apply the second coat before I realized what the problem is, so make sure your first coat is dry! While it still took two coats to get an even finish, the first coat was almost opaque by itself. The polish isn’t pigmented enough to affect clean up, clean up was pretty easy where with other white polishes the white can get into the creases and cracks of your fingers and can be tough to get completely clean. The pictures are two medium coats with top coat.


Pink Champagne is a very light pink color, the lightest pink in the collection. This is one of the thinner polishes, making it very easy to flood your cuticles if you have too much polish on your brush. But since this is a fairly light color the clean up was really simple. The first coat for this one was very uneven, so I went with a thinner coat for the first coat and then ended up using 3 coats. The last coat was the thinnest coat because there was only one spot that was still a little transparent. This was also one of the least sticky of the polishes. I had no problem doing 3 coats and by the time I did the third coat the second coat wasn’t finished drying so I feared that it would drag that second coat down the nail but it didn’t.



Pink Lady is the darker pink cream in the collection. My only complaint with this polish is that I think it matches its cocktail the least in the collection. I was surprised by how well the other polishes looked so similar to their respective cocktails, but I think that this one was too pink and should have had a little more red in it to match the drink. That doesn’t change how beautiful this and the other polishes are though. This was one of the thicker creams in the collection and just as sticky as White Russian. I had learned by this time to wait longer between coats so application was a lot faster than it was with White Russian. This was opaque in two coats, and I have topcoat on in the pictures.



Long Island is a pretty salmon color. My camera captured more of the orange, but this is more salmon than orange. This is about as thick as the other creams in this collection. It was basically the same constancy as Pink Lady. The only difference was that this polish wasn’t really sticky at all that I noticed. I was pressed for time when I was swatching this one and so I didn’t wait as long as I needed to and thought that it would mess with the second coat but it really didn’t at all. I only did 2 coats for full opacity and both coats went on like butter. The pictures show two coats with top coat.



Mojito is one of my favorites from this collection. Again, my camera doesn’t quite capture the true color of this polish. It’s not as bright as it looks, it is walking the line between being a light lime green color and being a yellow color. If lime yellow was a color this polish would be it. It was as opaque as White Russian was, after two coats it was completely opaque and you could probably get away with one coat – if you can find a way to get the first coat to apply evenly, or you just don’t care about that. The pictures are shown with 2 coats and a top coat.



Blue Hawaiian is my absolute favorite from this collection. It is a beautiful shade of blue, its bright but not neon bright. If you know what Blue’s Clues is, my toddler has started to like it quite a bit and so I now watch Blue’s Clues regularly. This blue is almost the exact color of Blue’s body, not the darker spots, but his base color. It doesn’t grab attention like a neon polish would, but it is such a nice accent color and it just looks clean. This polish wasn’t too sticky that I noticed, I had to redo one nail because I didn’t wait long enough but over all it wasn’t too bad. I did end up needing three thin coats instead of two like normal. It was completely opaque after the third coat and I probably could have gotten away with just two coats. The pictures show three thin coats and top coat. The only issue with this polish is that it does separate pretty quickly. I had these sitting in a box un-moving for about 10 days and when I took them out of the box the rest of the collection was fine but Blue Hawaiian had a lot of separation which is just the pigment separating from the base. So you might want to give it a good roll or shake or however you mix your polishes before using.



Now for the Shimmer Polish
Strawberry Colada is the shimmer polish of the collection. This polish was so hard to apply. It’s more glittery than shimmery, but its like a billion little tiny glitters so it looks like shimmer? It’s hard to explain because it is such a gorgeous polish. During application if you don’t keep it off your cuticles and end up having to go back through for cleanup you will have sparkles all over your cuticles. This wasn’t sticky at all. It went on fairly smoothly. It looks really nice with just one coat, a very soft color. I used three thin coats for opacity. This polish had the worst wear time. I used the same topcoat that I used for the rest of the collection and it just wasn’t wanting to stay on my nail. It chipped faster than all the other polishes. But while it was on it was the prettiest color, especially in the light.



And lastly, we have the jelly.
Bloody Mary is a jelly, the first jelly I have seen from Cuccio Colour but that’s not to say it’s their only one. So a jelly polish is a jelly like translucent polish. No matter how many coats you use you will not get full opacity with a jelly. They are great for layering with designs, or coloring in a stamped design, things like that. I really think this jelly was a little too thick though. Its a good color, but no matter how many times I redid a nail or how many coats I painted I just couldn’t get it completely even. This polish took the longest to dry so if you plan on doing more than one coat you are going to want to wait for quite a while, even if the first coat was thin. I used three coats in the pictures, no top coat. Thing I really like about this polish is that it is super shiny without any help. It just dries that way. This polish had the best dry time out of all of them so I do really like that. This was probably my least favorite polish in the collection though. I usually love jellies but this formula was not for me, even though the color is so pretty.



And Emily treated us to some cocktail inspired nail art, the first with White Russian swirled with a coffee-colored polish, and Strawberry Colada with a cocktail stamp.


These colors are all available from our Nailebrity site, or direct from Cuccio. They’re available in Colour and Veneer. Which are your favorites? What colors will you wear into the Fall? CUCCIO COLOUR COCKTAIL COLLECTION Swatches
CUCCIO COLOUR COCKTAIL COLLECTION Swatches