Serum No. 5 swatches & review - Pink Peonies, Shrinking Violet, and Poppy Fields

Hey guys! Today I have swatches of three Serum No. 5 polishes to show you. I got these three a few weeks ago along with two of her awesome glow-in-the-dark polishes, and I decided to break them into two different posts because they deserve it!
Serum No. 5 Pink Peonies is a sheer pink base filled with a heavy gold shimmer and white, pink, and holographic hex glitter. This was a little more sheer than I was expecting, so this swatch is four coats (with one coat of Seche Vite). Usually I get grouchy with polishes that take more than three coats, but the Serum No. 5 brushes are really nice (fairly wide and flat) and the formula was very easy to work with, so application was a breeze.

I love how dainty and girly this looks, and the holographic hexes (impossible to capture on camera of course) made it so sparkly in real life!

Serum No. 5 Shrinking Violets is a milky, very light lavender base filled with gold shimmer and purple and blue hex glitter. This one was also more sheer than I thought it would be, so I used four coats for opacity (with one coat of Seche Vite for smoothness), but application was equally as easy as Pink Peonies because the formula was so nice.

This is my surprise favorite of these three polishes. It bothered me at first because some of the larger purple hexes are slightly curled (as you can see in the photos), but with topcoat the polish is totally smooth and you don't notice a lot of the curling, especially in the glitter that's buried under the milky base. I love how delicate and pretty this polish is! It (and Pink Peonies) would both make good layering polishes, too.

Serum No. 5 Poppy Fields is a red jelly with black and gold circle glitter and red circle, hex, and square glitter. Circle glitter! This swatch shows four coats plus a coat of Seche Vite. The application was a little more troublesome than with the other two polishes, I think maybe because it's thinner and the glitter is bigger - I had to work a little harder to get the glitter where I wanted it, but it wasn't too bad.

I really wanted to love this polish, but I just can't. The red base isn't quite enough to build up on its own - with four coats you can still see a little VNL in person - but since it's so red, it's hard to layer it over a color that makes the base look nice while still keeping the glitter visible.

The main thing that made me dislike this polish, though, is the curling glitter. Some of it is reflective curling, but some of it is real curling, and a lot of the glitter seems to be affected by it. The curling was more obvious in person than it is in these pictures.

I tried it over black on my thumb to see if I'd like it more that way. It definitely looks cool! If you like the look of sheer jellies like this and don't mind some curling glitter, you'll love this polish. It just isn't for me!

You can get Serum No. 5 polishes from their website or Etsy store. Every month, they make a charitable donation in an amount equal to 20% of their profits from polishes sold, which I think is so nice!

My picks are Pink Peonies and Shrinking Violet. What do y'all think?

Products in this post were provided for review.