It seems too early for a Halloween polish, but it appears that Sally Hansen’s new Pumpkin Spice is just that.  Maybe it’s more of a general fall polish?  But with “pumpkin” in the name, and orange glitter in the bottle, it makes me think of fake cobwebs and white plastic vampire teeth.

Pumpkin Spice is part of the new Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear display, which doesn’t have any particular seasonal or Halloween theme, so it may just be a general fall collection polish.  But it’s a dark, murky base with orange glitter so there’s no getting around the Halloween associations that it brings up (at least for me).  It’s very thin, so I only plan to use it as a layering polish.

I started out with Essie’s Super Bossa Nova as a base – it’s a very bright fuchsia with lighter pink shimmery pieces, from the Summer 2011 Brazilliant Collection.  I already reviewed it with the rest of the Brazilliant colors here, but I wanted to revisit it before the summer is over.  Super Bossa Nova is  a fun pink, and it has a nice formula.  It took only two coats for this picture.

After wearing Super Bossa Nova to work, I decided to see how much Pumpkin Spice would change the bright pink, so I added two coats of Pumpkin Spice.  The base of Pumpkin Spice is a dark grey or sheer black – in fact, it reminded me of a Halloween version of Dior’s Rock Coat, which I really like!  It’s a little bit like Ick-A-Body from last year’s China Glaze Halloween polishes, but the base is more sheer, and the glitter is much more sparse.  This makes it a great layering polish, that came out much more interesting and subtle than I thought it would. I love how it turned Super Bossa Nova into a moody burgundy with orange glints.  The glitter pieces aren’t as sparkly as some, which I also like – I can actually see myself wearing this to work as a second day top coat, without feeling funny.   I think it works a lot like the Rock Coat-you can put it over a wide range of polish colors to get different looks, and change the base color.

Also, I have to mention the great texture – although it looks to be full of glitter pieces, Pumpkin Spice dried really smoothly.  It was so nice and smooth after two coats that I didn’t even need to add another layer of top coat on top-the glitters all laid flat and didn’t feel gritty or bumpy.  This makes it even better; it’s perfect for quickly touching up an older manicure when you don’t have time to re-do, and you don’t even need another layer of topcoat once you’re done.

I’m already wondering what other colors to try Pumpkin Spice over – I like how it totally changed the look of Super Bossa Nova.  This polish costs around $3 at drugstores, so it’s cheap and should be easy to find right now.  I picked mine up at Walgreens.