Brazilian Polish Swatches - Mixed Brands

Welcome back lovelies, today's post has 3 polishes that are all seperate lonely brands that I only have one of, but that makes em' special right? :)

The first brand is 'Eliana' and the polish is called 'Chrome Attitude', as you can tell from the name it's a metallic chrome polish! I don't think that technically it's a duochrome, though when in the shade and the sun you get two different colours. In the sun it's a gorgeous dark purple with a bright violet shimmer where the light hits it, and in the shade it's a dark  marroon brown with a hint of purple. It had a nice smooth and easy to apply formula, opaque in 3 coats, and I got it for less than a dollar in a sales bin! Don't have many browny shades in my collection, and it was a bargain, so winner!

 

The next polish was actually created by some famous Brazilian designer for a large chain of pharmacies own line, so the brand is actually the name of the pharmacy 'Panvel'. It's a beautiful pinky coral orange with a strong gold shimmer, and is simply called 'Coral' The formula is a little dense but nothing that I can't work with, but even though it's a bit dense it still needed 3 coats, the density also means it streaks a bit if you're not careful. I also have to make sure each coat is fully dry before I apply the next, otherwise it bubbles quite badly, so application time is a bit long, and it's a total no go if you're in a rush. I do really love the colour though, It's a great summer polish when I have the patience for it!

 

This last polish is frankly a bit of a cheat, because it's not actually a Brazilian brand at all and says on the bottle that it was made in Los Angeles. But I'm going on the rule 'I bought it here so I'm counting it' simply because I am totally in love with it and just HAD to show you it. I think this might be my most favourite glitter polish of all time, so how could I not show you it regardless of where it comes from?!!

The brand is 'Cherimoya' which I had never heard of until I came across this, now I'm curious to know where else in the world I can find it, because if they have any more glitter polishes similar to this one, I'm going to NEED THEM ALL.

 

Basically it's a glitter topper in a lightly tinted peachy transparent base, and the reason I love it so bad is that the glitter is not made out of the usual foil, it's actually made from mylar. If you don't know mylar, it's basically a transparent plastic material that comes in different light pastel coloured tints, and the effect of the pastel tint on plastic gives it this totally magical color changing rainbowy irridesence that reminds me of my favourite precious stone in the world, the opal. 

This particular polish is called 'Electric Heaven' which is a pretty suitable name, because everytime I wear it I feel like I have actual heaven on my nails! As it's just a topper in these pictures I have it layered over a base colour, I prefer this mylar glitter when it's layered over a very light base but I have also done more pictures with it layered over a dark colour too. As this glitter is technically transparent, it's also a bit of a bitch to photograph, so I've done a few in different lighting to try and catch all the different colours. The base contains tiny microdots and medium size hexes in a predominantly golden peachy colour, but the glitter ranges from gold to green to orange in the shade, and from blue to pink to violet in the sun, it also has a small spattering of light matte pink stars in it too, not too many though, just enough for you to get one or two on each nail. The consistency is a bit thick and gloopy and needs a good fast drying top coat, but frankly it could have the consistency of porridge (thats oatmeal to you Americans!) and I wouldn't give a crap, I love it so much I would totally make it work anyway!

First the pictures layered over a light base of 'Australis' Sinfully Sweet.

This is the polish in direct sunlight with the sun behind me shining directly onto the nails, you can mostly make out blue tones but to the naked eye there is also violet and pink too.

This time I am facing the sun so it is shining on my face but the nails are backlit by the sun rather than having it shining directly on them. There is the blue tone from before but a lot more gold and peach tones here too.

This is in the shade, but it's still difficult to pick up the pink and aqua green tones you get, like I said, a bitch to photograph! 

In the next pic I have the glitter topper layered over 'Colorama' - Noite Quente, which I swatched for you all in last fridays post.

This pic was taken in direct sun light, on a darker base the blue tones are much darker but you can at least make out a bit of green and peachy tones too. 

In this picture the polish is backlit by the sun, and the gold and peach tones are much stronger. I did also do a pic in the full shade, but it was just the same as this one really.

Unfortunately this was just one of those polishes where there is not a photo in the world that will do it even a bit of justice. It has to be seen to be believed! If you have access to this brand go now and buy this immediately, I promise you will not be disappointed, and if you are I will let you slap me in the face, I am that confident that anyone would love this just as much as I do. If you do find it, let me know if there are more similar!!

I have only 2 brands left to show you which are the two I was most excited about buying, I only managed to find a few of one brand so I will show you those tomorrow, and I managed to buy quite a few of the last brand, some of which are frankly spectacular, so the final brand will span out over 2 or 3 days next week. I really did save the best til last so make sure you tune in! 

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!

Brazilian Polish Swatches - Cora Part 2

Hey there!

This is day 2 of my stash of Brazilian 'Cora' polishes and I seriously heart this particular collection!
The collection is called 'Via Lactea' (Milky Way) and is divided into 3 parts, or collections within a collection if you like, 'Raio Do Sol' (Sun Ray), 'Luar' (Lunar), and a third collection that is something to do with stars, though I don't remember the name exactly because I didn't buy any. Basically the starry collection was just holographic glitter in a clear base, one gold, one silver etc, and let's be honest, I have plenty of those already!

I have three of the Raio Do Sol and one from the Luar collection, but only because it's the only one from the Luar collection that I could find, otherwise I might have had more!

So let's start with the Luar collection, this is called 'Gallileu' (I think I might be insulting if I translated that actually!) and is a decently tinted bright magenta jelly, filled with silver glass fleck glitter. I have bought a lot of pink polishes while I have been here, some I am still yet to show you, but in my defense, I did mention some months ago that even though I like pink it's a colour somewhat lacking in my collection for some reason! The excessive purchasing of pink polish this season could also be due to the fact that I died my hair bright magenta pink at the beginning of this summer, and I guess I just had to have matching polishes!

Now for the Raio Do Sol collection and these are my favourites because the colours are just too amazing!

This first polish I LOVE despite thinking I wouldn't, and it's a lime green jelly densely packed with bright yellow gold glass fleck glitter called 'Colossal'. In the end this was too sheer to wear on it's own (at least for my personal taste) and I had to layer this over white like yesterdays crellies, but it came out exactly the same colour just without the visible nail line.This particular one my sister in law Deborah bought for me (I got the rest) and I honestly thought I would really hate it, because of all the colours in the spectrum I dislike lime green the most, but with this bright yellow glass fleck it was just too awesome to not love!

These next 2 polishes are my absolute favourites, they are soooooo beautiful, first I'm gonna show you second place and as usual save the best til last!
This is 'Radius' and is a gorgeous bright blue jelly with extra fine gold and green glitter giving it that lovely green glow. Technically the glitter is not glass fleck, but it is so fine that as it layers up with each coat into little groups it gives the impression of glass flecks. I took a second photo of this polish in the shade as in direct sun is was difficult to make out the glitter effect properly, and in the shade it is more teal blue and just beautiful!

Lastly my favourite, and this is a stunning dark antique rose with the same ultra fine gold glitter as the blue polish, giving that fake glass fleck appearance, and this is called 'UV'. If you have followed this blog for a while you will have seen me mention several times that my favourite colour combination in the whole world is pink and gold, especially antique rose with gold, so this polish is just the top of the top of the top for me! Consider that antique rose and gold is also actually very difficult to find in a polish, and you will understand when I say that I nearly screamed the shop down when I found this!!!

 

I apologise for the polsh application looking a bit sheer in places, I'm pretty annoyed by it actually as it's all just camera trickery, I always check my polish in full sun to make sure it's fully opaque before I take the pictures, and I promise you that to the naked eye it was flawless! Then when I looked at the photos after I had taken it off the camera had picked it up as quite light in places, mostly on the index and little fingers, I was so annoyed!

I applied 3 coats of all of these polishes and that was enough for full opacity (apart from the green which was layered over white, and the rest were opaque at least to the naked eye!) and the formula was just perfect with a nice smooth finish.
There was a dark emerald green of this Raio Do Sol collection too which I didn't buy in favor of the others, and I'm really starting to regret that decision now as I don't think I'll have the opportunity to go back to the city and buy it before we leave Brazil in a couple of weeks! GAH! I should have just stook to the essential rule - BUY ALL THE POLISH!

In the next couple of days I'm gonna show you a few more brands that I have one or two of, and to finish the swatcathon I'm going to show you the two top brands that I was most excited about purchasing when I first found out I was coming to Brazil! When the final swatches are up I will be announcing the details and prizes of my Brazilian polish giveaway (which shoud be around Thursday or Friday of next week) So stick with me ladies as it's just gonna get better and better!

Brazilian Polish Swatches - Cora

Greetings lovely ladies! I welcome you to the second week of my Brazilian polish swatchathon and there are still many more to go! 

Today's brand is 'Cora' and I have 4 polishes to show you today and another 4 tomorrow, though it has to be said I am a very lucky girl as I actually only purchased one of today's myself and the rest of them were given to me as a gift from my sister in law Deborah! Needless to say that I will love her forever! 

In today's polishes I have 2 neons crellies, a holographic glitter (which is the one I bought of course, nothing ever changes!) and a crackle polish!

Let's do the neons first,  I have 2 crellies from the 'Sampa' collection, the name being an abbreviation of 'Sao Paulo' and the names of the polishes are untranslatable as they actually refer to the names of urban areas within the city of Sao Paulo! I love that my Brazilian polishes are sharing a bit of Brazilian culture with me too!

The first polish is 'Ibirapuera' and is a weird mix of apple and lime green. As the polish is a crelly I tested it for opacity before doing a full swatch, and I discovered that it is very sheer and after 5 coats was no closer to being opaque. As I hate VNL and hate wasting polish with 20 layers just to cover it even more, I layered this and the next polish over a white base, and 2 coats was all they needed with a base, just to get nice even coverage.

Now I have to apologise, this image is not a true representation of the actual colour of this polish, my camera picked it up much lighter and mintier then it really is, but I thought hey no problem, I can do a colour balance in photoshop to get it right. Actually no, turns out this is the weirdest shade of green ever, and despite fannying around with various colour adjustments in photoshop for over 2 hours, and getting my computer nerd designer husband working on it too(!) I just could not get the colour to match what's in the bottle. I even went on line and searched a trillion colour charts to get the exact right shade of green and found nothing that even came close! It's like this shade of green never existed until this polish came out! The image is the closest I could possibly get it, but imagine it's a bit darker with a hint more lime, it's like a weird acidic cross of lime and apple green. I know it sounds like it shouldn't be that hard a colour to find, but my husband, 2 hours on photoshop and a further hour searching colour charts beg to differ! I couldn't even try to get the colour darker because it just ruined the neon affect, so it's just going to have to be one of those polishes where you think you know what colour it is, but will never truly know until you've got it on your nails! I even checked other Brazilian girls swatches of this polish, and non of them had managed to get the exact colour spot on either! GAH!

Anyway, it was a MAJOR stress and I need to get over it already, so let's move on! 

The next neon crelly, also layered over a white base, is a lovely royal blue and this is named after the Sao Paulo neighborhood of 'Garoa'. Thankfully, even though my camera also picked this colour up much lighter than it really is, it was very easy to colour adjust in photoshop and get it exactly right! When I managed to get the colour of this polish right in just one click I was like 'Phew! Thank fuck for that!'

This next polish is the one I purchsed, and you know I chose it because it's another holo glitter! The collection was simply called 'Holographic' and the polish name is 'Eclipse', its a dark purple jelly with quite fine silver holo glitter. This is another polish that gave me grief when it came to the pics though, I couldn't get the holo effect to show up very well at all, I tried everything and took over 200 photos just trying! Even my usual 'professionally taken blurred images' (lol!) couldn't pick up the colours, and that usually works every time! I don't know if it's because the glitter is so fine, but my camera already hates holographic glitter anyway so I was fighting a loosing battle! This is one of those occasions in which you're just gonna have to trust me when I say 'it's so much sparklier in real life!' You should believe me though, you know what that holo glitter can do!

 This last polish is a crackle effect, and I have to say, I haven't played with one of these in a good couple of years, and I forgot how much fun they can be! I know a lot of nail bloggers say that crackle polish was just a fad that everyone got over real fast, clearly I thought I had too if I haven't touched it for so long, but doing this swatch just served to remind me that actually, the effect is kinda frickin cool!

The polish I have is a bright pink shimmer, aptly named 'pink'!

I layered it first over the purple holo glitter thinking that purple and pink would be awesome together, but upon doing it I realised it was a little sheer, and you can't really do a second coat of crackle, you gotta get it right first time! It still looked interesting though so I will you show you the pic anyway, but then I took it off and layered the crackle over white too so you could see the colour better. It crackled much better over a smooth base instead of the glitter too, though you might think it would work the other way round!

Overall I was impressed by the formula of Cora polishes, nice and smooth and easy to apply, no streaking (which I at least expected from the crellies but didn't get any at all! Awesome!) I will be defintely be keeping my eye out for more of these! This is also another brand that I haven't been able to find for sale internationally and shall be included in my giveaway prize back, but I'm not telling you if they will be from todays, tomorrow's or both sets of swatches, you're just gonna have to wait for the surprise!

The Cora polishes I will be showing you tomorrow are from a rather awesome collection and definitely my favourites of the whole bunch!

Brazilian Polish Swatches - Colorama

Welcome back to my Brazilian polish swatchathon, today I have the kind of brand that we all love, the cheap and cheerful drugstore kind! Sure, drugstore brands are certainly not as awesome as our beloved OPI's and China Glazes and what not, but they are definitely not without their uses or their own charm, and at the cheap prices we get them at we can also hold them responsible for assisting us in owning an impressive quantity of polishes! What's not to love!

My drugstore brand of the day is 'Colorama' and I showed you one of these in yesterday's neutrals post. To re-cap what I said about this brand yesterday, the formula is a bit hit and miss, sometimes being quite dense and other times quite runny, but if you've got the patience and skill to work with that, they have a pretty vast selection of basic but interesting colours, and today I'm going to show you another 4 that I have in my possession! Raiding the stashes of other girls that I have got to meet here in Brazil, I have seen more awesome colours from this brand that I want even more than the ones I already have, but unfortunately have not yet come across to purchase, so let it be known that even if you don't love the colours I have today, it would be impossible for you not to find something from this brand that you totally adore! 

First up is 'Noite Quente' (Hot Night) and is a simple purple creme with a super glossy finish.

Next is 'Absinto' (Absynth) and is a luscious minty green with a very subtle lime shimmer.

The last 2 are my favourites and also managed to surprise me, as when I bought them I believed they were just plain cremes, and it wasn't until I wore them and saw them properly in the sun that I realised they both have a shimmer too! When I'm in the shade the shimmer is completely inperceptable, so it's a bit like having 2 finishes in one polish!

This is 'Jeans' and is a gorgeous navy blue with a slighly muted greyish tone to it, and a very subtle silver shimmer which you can only just about make out around the cuticle area.

Lastly this is 'Ametista' (Amethyst - I keep translating the names but I'm sure many of them are quite obvious!) and it's a stunning deep black purple with a silver shimmer.

I guess I have a particular fondness for this last one just because of it's name! Even if you don't know this blog well, you may have deduced from it's title that my name is Jem, which of course refers to precious and semi - precious jewels such as the Amethyst. As a result of my name I have always had a fascination with precious stones and have a collection of rocks from all over the world almost as big as my polish collection! I have opals and sapphires from Australia that I mined myself! Turquoise from Argentina, Citrine from Chile, and some beautiful Amethyst pieces from right here in Brazil, as Amethyst is the most comonly found semi-precious stone mined on this land. I am also a June baby and it is often debated that Amethyst is the birthstone of June (even though many say it is the pearl instead) so what with my new Brazilian family ties, my birth month and my general affinity to beautiful rocks, I couldn't help but love this beautiful Brazilian polish gem!

These polishes are simple with no fancy finishes, but are still well and truly deserving of a place in my collection, and perfect for a number of nail art applications, and with that awesome drugstore price that I love so much you just can't go wrong! 

I may be back tomorrow with some Valentine's nail art seen as I keep missing the holiday nail art occasions, but as a big storm just showed up here and I don't have an indoor light setting for photos here in Brazil, whether or not I am able to post some nail art tomorrow all depends on if there is any sun in the morning to take some pictures! If not I guess I will have to miss another holiday mani, we shall see!

Even if I miss tomorrow, I will still be back on Monday to show you the rest of my Brazilian polish collection, and there are still many more polishes to go! Yay!

Brazilian Polish Swatches - Neutrals

Today I'm doing a post just about neutral shades, the main reason for this is that a couple of the neutral shades I have are brands that I have no others of, so rather than doing a post for just one polish of one brand, I've stolen a couple of neutrals from other brand collections I have and added them to those couple of singles so I can fluff this post up a bit!

The first brand we already looked at yesterday, and that is Impala, though to be honest, you wouldn't even know it was the same brand, the difference is astounding. I had high expectations of the quality after my experiences with the fabulous polishes I posted yesterday, but instead I was left feeling sorely disappointed, but I'll get to that in a second. This polish is from the 'Disco' collection, which doesn't make much sense to me as I don't see what's disco about a neutral shade, but ah well! It's called 'Filo'  (Mesh - as in the textile) and is an off white creme leaning ever so slightly pink. What I was disappointed about with this polish was the formula. It was really quite dense and very difficult to get thin even coats, it streaked like hell and didn't level out on the nail and had an uneven and lumpy finish, even 3 coats of top coat couldn't smooth that bitch out! You can see here in the picture that along the sides of each nail there are faint shadow lines from the unlevel streaking in the polish. I know that a bit of streaking is to be expected from cremes, but this was just too much. A far cry from the great quality of yesterday's polishes, and it's a shame because this shade suited my skin tone really well.

Moving on from the disappontment to something considerably better, (which is totally wrong considering I am now talking about a cheap and cheerful drugstore brand and not something more high end like Impala!) I have this rather lovely creme in a shade of light tan/brown leaning taupe with a subtle copper shimmer from 'Beauty Color' and this is called 'Sand'. For a cheap little drug store brand it wasn't too bad, unlike the expensive Impala the streaking was minimal, and it's a really lovely colour that looks great with a tan.

This next one is my favourite of all the neutrals and is another cheap drugstore brand 'Colorama'. To be honest I've tried a few from this brand (and I'll be showing some of them in tomorrows post) and it's always been a bit hit and miss, sometimes it's been a bit too dense and streaks similar to the first Impala, other times it's way too watery and completely floods my cuticles if I'm not extremely careful in my application, others have been more or less OK. So yeah, this brand kinda needs to work on at least getting the formula consistent, but what I like about it is that they have quite a vast core collection of some really interesting and pretty shades. The one I am about to show you is called 'Champagne' and it's a very light fleshy pink with a golden shimmer, it's a stunning base for a classic french. The formula on this particular shade is a bit dense, but nothing that a drop of thinner and a good top coat can't sort out, and I can live with that because I love the colour and it really suits me.

Last one for the neutrals post is actually quite dark, it's a weird shade of taupe that I'm not quite sure how to classify, but despite it's darkness it still feels like a neutral shade to me. To be honest I'm not entirely sure that this is a Brazilian brand, it has very vague info on the bottle and doesn't even have a name or number, but my sister in law Deborah gave it to me as a gift, and it was purchased here in Brazil cheaply which leads me to believe it's not an import, as all imported goods are subject to a tax of 100% of the purchase price upon entering the country, making imported polishes very expensive here. Either way, I got it here so I'm counting it! The brand name is 'Doty by Broadway' and as I mentioned earlier does not appear to have a name, it's a charcoal gray yet also slightly brown leaning taupe with a strong violet shimmer, I found it quite unusual and loved it just for that. The formula was pretty decent too.

So those be my neutrals and I like 75% of them, not too bad I reckon! Join me tomorrow to check out some of the pretty colours I have from Colorama!

Brazilian Polish Swatches - Impala

Hello Lovelies!

It's half past midnight here in Florianopolis and I meant to post this hours ago, but Floripa (as it's called by the locals) is a party island full of hippies, backpackers and dread locked types, and with the local fancy hotel throwing a free pool party with live music, you can guess where I've spent most of the day! But here I am anyway, and better late than never right?! Today's (or rather tonight's!) brand is Impala, and I hadn't seen anything online about this brand before I got here either, but they have some beauties! For those of you that are into that kinda thing, they are also 3 free!

I'm gonna start with a couple of basic polishes that I got because they were on sale, I have purple and green, again! But only because these were the only 2 colours from the collection left on the sale rack! Despite being colours I already have a million versions of, I really wanted them because they are metallic, and I really don't have much metallic polish in my collection!

This first one is 'Meu Estilo' (My Style) and is a gorgeous aqua green.

The next polish is 'ficadica' (which apparently is slang for 'tip' as in: I'll give you a tip on how to use it!)  and it's a really striking dark lilac.

I liked these two polishes, they were a bit sheer and needed 3 coats for full opacity, so I doubt that like other metallic polishes they would be good for stamping, and they are a little streaky, but nothing that bothers me that much. For the price I got them at I'm perfectly happy. The next three polishes I'm about to show you though, those are the real beauties! ;)

I am totally in love with this next polish! It's called 'Charming' from the 'Brilliant Glam' collection and is a very light blue crelly base with tiny blue and silver glitter, small green hexes and tiny blue bar glitter. It doesn't sound like much I know, but just look at it! I have actually worn this polish before I got the chance to swatch it, but it was really really sheer, even with the glitter it took a full 6 coats to get complete opacity! Aint nobody got time for that! So, as the standard polish bottle size in Brazil is only a mere 8ml (meeerrrrrr) I didn't want to waste the time or the polish trying to get the same opacity as before just because I hate visible nail lines, so this time I just did two coats over a white creme base. What I can tell you is that 2 coats over white is waaaaaaaaay prettier than 6 coats on a natural nail! I normally don't like bar glitter either, but I can live with this tiny stuff and it suits the polish nicely.

 As if this polish wasn't gorgeous enough, next up I've got more HOLO'S! And these two are spectacular!

The first spectacular holo is from the 'Celebrations - Prismatic' collection, and is called 'Conquiste Sempre' (Always Conquer) and it sure as hell conquered the shit outta me! The bottles already more than half empty and I'm gonna have to replace this bad boy before I leave Brazil!  It's a cool toned dark gold with very fine non linear holo sparkle. What I like about this holo is that the flare is quite strong, but because it's diffused and not linear it's quite subtle at the same time. I also just adore gold, so I never stood a chance of resisting this one did I!

Yet another spectacular holo to finish with, again with almost half the bottle gone already! This is the 'Army' collection and is called 'Mira 3D' (3D Target) and it's the only one I've seen from this collection, I really really want to see the others! This polish has a charcoal grey jelly base with a strong violet shimmer and is packed with silver holo glitter.

As usual, blurred picture because you see all the holo colours better that way! (It did disguse the violet shimmer though!)

The formula on these last 3 polishes were great, full opacity in 3 coats on the holos, nice smooth, streak free application and good durability. As I mentioned in a previous post all the polish here in Brazil seems to take a bit longer to dry so you really need a quick drying top coat, but it is incredibly hot and humid here, Australia was sub-tropical but here is full blown tropical, so it may just be the climate that causes the long drying time.

 I'd like to buy a million more of these but they are a bit pricier than the average polish here, and seen as both me and my husband are living off savings I was lucky to get away with these 3! Actually, with almost a 40 bottle stash of different brands so far, I'm surprised the hubby hasn't cut me off already! Hahahahaha

Stay tuned tomorrow to see what other awesome brands I convinced him to let me buy! :D