It's a "Fader"! RCM "After Party Playful"

Hi again!  I showed my manicure a little a while ago, but in that post, I refrained from posting a review of the gel polish I used on my accent nail.  I wanted some more time to test it out, and I didn't want my review of this gel to get dwarfed by the macro shots and review of my main gel polish color!

Let me give you a quick refresher.  This natural lighting photo has two Red Carpet Manicure polishes--the brown, called "Toast of the Town", and the pink accent, called "After Party Playful".  I'd say the colors are most accurate in this photo, but I do have more photos to see on the link above--and I also reviewed "Toast of the Town" there, too. 

This time, I want to review Red Carpet Manicure "After Party Playful".  As I have noticed with some other lighter creme shades, I felt like this color applied a bit streaky; I needed 4 coats to achieve opacity.  

This color starts out as a nice, mid-tone pink shade--kind of the stereotypical "Barbie pink", but not too bold or flashy.  I actually felt like this color leaned a little cool-toned, too. 

...But wait, why am I talking in the past tense?  Hopefully, you've noticed that the swatch in the photo above looks kind of salmon pink, and not cool pink.  That's because "After Party Playful" started to fade within 3 days of application to a more orange-toned salmon pink, like you see in the photo above.   

 Of course, it didn't fade evenly, either--it looked a streaky mess after 5 + days, and it finally settled into a very yellowish, infected/inflamed flesh-tone type of color.  I'm not sure how else to describe a color like this, honestly.  If I was really reaching and trying to be flattering, maybe I'd liken it to "apricots and cream", but that doesn't attest to the strangeness of this streaky yellow-laced-with-pink shade on my nails.

The best way I could get a photo of this was to paint half of my nail with a few coats of fresh polish to show a side-by-side comparison:

See that streakiness in the left hand photo?  See that yellow shade?  At this point, I could barely believe it was ever pink. And unfortunately, this comparison swatch is the best "fresh" swatch of "After Party Playful" I have as well, considering by time it took me to get good photos of my manicure (which was only about 3 days), it had already faded.

RCM's "After Party Playful" is a pretty shade out of the bottle, but this color is now making me wary of  any lighter pinks!  I've had slight problems so far with some orange, salmon-pink, and light purple gel polishes, but never a pink like this.

The problem is that not all gel polishes have UV stable pigments, so with exposure to different combinations of heat and light, you may notice fading over time.  Luckily every shade varies, even ones by the same brand, so I guess my only choice is to keep swatching on. :)