After a rather miserable trip to the dentist this afternoon which involved him accidentally hitting a nerve, making my entire tongue numb and then dropping one of his instruments into my mouth I decided to reward myself with some nail polish shopping.
As Hobart (Tasmania) has very little in the way of designer polish (no China Glaze anywhere) or it costs way way too much ($22 for a bottle of O.P.I) I roamed the Chemists in search of obscure and cheap brands. I ended up with nine bottles in all from five separate brands.
First up are 3 bottle of Savvy polish, from what I can gather it is a Chinese company which imports into Australia through Priceline chemists. The colours are from left to right Azure Martini, Grapetini and Dark Cherry.
Next there are 2 bottles of Smooch polish, a brand I can find no information on. I do really like the bottles though, especially the lace tips. The colours are Gothic Moment and Deep Beige. The blue on the right was picked out by my partner and as an added perk it was 97cents. It is called Sky’s the Limit.
The final 3 polishes are (from left to right) Date in the Moonlight by Essence, Sunshine by Rimmel and Cool Couture by Maybelline.
I have never used any of these brands with the exception of Essence which I fell in love with a little bit in Europe.
Ok so on with the swatches. I have 4 for you tonight, I would have done more but the light in my house come night is pretty awful and I ran out of daylight really quickly.
Deep Beige is fortunately nothing like Beige (I hate beige) instead I would describe it as a milk chocolate brown with warm undertones. In fact it was so delicious looking I was craving food despite my numb face.
It was a beautiful creme formula that was smooth and completely covered my nail bed in two coats. Considering I initially only bought it for nail art I’d say this polish was a pleasant surprise.
The second Smooch Polish Gothic Moment was the polar opposite of Dark Beige.
I bought this colour because I love space and to me the silver micro glitter suspended in the pure black base looked a lot like the night sky. However because it was so loaded with glitter the polish was extremely thick and difficult to manage. It took a long time to put on and made a giant mess when I tried to clean up my nails.
It also dried very rough but I couldn’t decide whether I liked it or not so I left it free from a top coat.
I don’t think I will be using it very often but the colour is really beautiful. I am quite torn.
Next up is Sky’s the Limit.
I really love the colour of this polish. When I was much younger I owned a set of quite expensive colour pencils, my favourite colour was Kingfisher Blue and this polish is nearly exactly the same shade.
It is a medium blue creme with a hint of green. 2 coats here.
I may have become slightly distracted half way through capturing this polish and started shooting bokeh out my window…
Anyway definitely a lovely colour and one I am sure to use again.
Finally I swatched Dark Cherry. You can’t see it in any of the pictures but with one layer this polish was the exact shade of venous blood (trust me on this I am a nurse). It is going to be great for horror themed manicures like blood drip or blood splatter.
I was surprised to find that this was a jelly and quite translucent with one coat but it evened out well with 2, I applied a 3rd for luck and ended up with an extraordinarily dark red polish.
Sorry about the mess around my cuticles, I was getting really lazy towards the end.
Well that is it. I have work tomorrow and another trip to the dentist but hopefully I will have another polish to show you.
Until next time,
A
Gothic looks like it has the same finish as the OPI liquid sand polishes. I love it!
You’re so right! I can’t believe I didn’t notice that