Thursday 20 February 2014

Brazilian Polish Swatches - Mereje and Big Universo

Today I'm going to show you a couple of different brands which I only have two each of, three of the four polishes I will show you were again given to me as a gift from my lovely sister in law Deborah. (The family may have slated her somewhat for being an 'enabler', but I LOVE enablers! hahahahah)

First I'll start with a brand called 'Big Universo', and this first polish is the one I bought. It's from the collection 'Quantum' and is called 'Kryptium', its a beautiful golden sage green metallic, and though it doesn't say anything on the bottle I think that it's supposed to be a duochrome technically, though there's not really any duochromyness going on. I should probably layer it over black for the effect, but to be honest I love the colour just the way it is, and can get full opacity in 3 coats.


The next polish doesn't appear to be from any particular colection and is called 'Icaro' (Icarus), with the name of a legend from greek mythology you would think it would be from a collection, but unlike the first polish there is no mention of it on the bottle. Anyways, this is a dark metallic mustard yellow, and though probably not a colour I would have thought to buy myself I do quite like it, I certainly don't have anything like it in my collection already so it's a welcome addition!


The formula on Big Universo was not too bad, it was a little bit watery and I had to be careful not to flood my cuticles with polish during application but it had a really smooth finish, and the streaking wasn't too bad for metallic polishes either. What I did like about this brand was the bottle size, a whopping 15.5 ml. That might not be so whopping to most of us when the standard bottle size in the rest of world is between 12 and 15 ml, but here in Brazil the standard size of every other brand I have seen is only 8 ml, so this is almost double the polish the other Brazilian brands offer you, and at about the same price too. Infact I have gotten so used to the smaller size bottles, I had difficulty posing my fingers for the photos over this big beast of a bottle!

This next brand is called 'Mereje Trends' and if my sister in law hadn't bought them for me I wouldn't own this brand at all because I have not seen it for sale anywhere! I have 2 lovely neons anyway from the Brasileirissima (Very Brazilian!) collection and this first one is called 'Rio 40 degrees' (It's actually just the little circle sign for degrees, you can just about make it out in the pic on the purple label , but I couldn't find it on my portuguese keyboard!). It's a neon creme in a slightly orange leaning yellow, and over the last few months I've been developing a bit of a thing for light orange and coral shades, so I'm loving this one. Technically it's supposed to be a shimmer polish too, but it is sooooo damn subtle, that I could only just about make it out by holding my nail one inch from my eye, so forget trying to capture it in a photo!


The last one for today is from the same collection, and is called 'Bahiana Arretada' I cannot translate this name for you unfortunately bcause apparently it's slang from a dialect specific to one region of Brazil, google couldn't translate it, word reference couldn't translate it, and neither could my Brazilian husband so go figure!
Anyways, it's a bright coral red creme polish with a subtle violet shimmer, it's a rather unusual combination and I rather like it! I also have many reds in my collection but not one coral red, so yet another welcome addition!


I liked the formula of this polish, there was virtually no streaking which for cremes is unusual, and they had a really nice glossy finish. I'm wearing 3 coats in the pics which by now seems to be the standard for these Brazilian brands. I would be interested to see what else there is from this brand but I never come across it in the stores, and it's too late now as I'm leaving Brazil shortly! Merrrr :(

At least the next time I come to Brazil it will be for a holiday and not because Australia kicked me out of the country last minute and I had nowhere else to go(!), and that means that next time I will actually have proper spending money and not just minimal savings that I'm attempting to live off! Watch out Brazil, next year it's gonna be a polish spreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!


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