Claire's Ocean Breeze

Blue skies and butterflies...

I admit, I bought this polish purely out of curiosity. I had never tried a layered polish before, and I wondered how it would come out on the nail. It was also part of the ten-for-ten-dollar polish sale I lucked into a while back at Claire's, so for a dollar I figured I'd give it a try.

Well, it came out blue. I'm not sure why; as a sticker on the top of the cap instructed, I did not shake it, and I tried to be careful to dip the brush all the way down into the bottle to try to pick up some of the layered colors. It still came out blue.

It is, however, a very lovely blue, a color that makes me think of cloudless summer skies. Here it is in the shade:
And in the sunlight:
Although the polish seemed a little thick (I'm guessing maybe it has to be to maintain the layered effect in the bottle instead of all mixing together) it went on very smoothly, dried in a perfectly reasonable amount of time, and was completely opaque in two coats. (The fact that it's flooded onto my cuticles in the pics is entirely the fault of my shaky hands, not any flaw in the polish consistency itself.) The wear is good, as I've found it to be with all of the Claire's polishes I've tried so far - no chipping, smudging, dinging, or tip-wear after two days.

Before I took the pictures, I decided to fancy it up a bit with some pink and white butterfly and flower nail art stickers on the middle finger (which is usually where things go horribly, tragically wrong for me because I'm apparently sticker-challenged and always end up with the darn things stuck firmly somewhere I don't want them, and then ruin my manicure trying to pry them off and re-stick them. That's why I only did one nail on each hand; it turned out pretty well this time and figured I'd best not push my luck!)
I absolutely love this shade of blue! :)

I wonder, though, is there a trick to applying layered polishes that I just don't know? Has anybody else tried them and gotten a multi-colored effect?