Ulta 3 - Precious

A very yellow gold foil. Easy to paint. I used two coats but it took a while to dry completely. It's a very speckly finish, you can see a paler dotty gold over the top of a richer, orangey base.

Ulta 3 is probably the cheapest polish you can get in Australia and are found in chemists and Big W.

Noticed pretty good wear and tear on this one. That is, it seems to avoid damage!

The good thing about that speckly finish is that it avoids looking streaky. I like it.

Chi Chi - Pussy Galore

Easy to put on and easily a one coat wonder if you are careful, however this polish chipped like crazy from the moment it dried. Even a top coat wasn't much help. !!! so not happy. I wonder if some super strength basecoat or several layers of basecoat would help it. *sigh*

Let it be known there are several good quality foil finish cool gold tones out there and you need not bother with Pussy Galore at all.

Chi Chi... I am disappointed.

Beauty Perfect - 999

This was a bit of a rescue polish. Mum bought a whole stack of these from Sasa (Asian beauty emporium) when she was overseas and when I recently redeveloped my love of polish, I had to revitalise them all with a bit of remover... so there was always going to be a question of how well it was going to go on.

Well this one was a little gluggy but not too bad, but being a frost it was definitely streaky.

What I don't like much about it is the choice of glitter. It's very chunky and that contributed to paint issues. They weren't very sun-catching either so thumbs down on that front.

It did take a while to dry and on my right hand I got some pushed up because I had to do the washing. Careful as I was, I removed my gloves to find humps on my nailbeds.

Christina Fitzgerald "Deborah" and Cosmiss glitter

Deborah is a milky blue with blue iridescence. It was interesting to look at and was in the bargain bin, so unfortunately not in its best condition and stayed tacky for the 3 days I wore it. Collected smudged from things like newsprint as the days wore on. :( Sad times.

Hard to see the iridescence once on the nail, but it was apparent in the bottle.

Because all the edges pushed up from not drying, I decorated the tips with glitter to hide it. I've blogged the glitter before, but just to recap it was a dodgy fake from China that I picked up along with a fake OPI. So the bottle has come from somewhere and I know nothing about Cosmiss.

The glitter is very nice though.

Catherine Arley - 807 - straw gold holographic

In the gift pack I got 2 golds. The other is a warmer, more sunflower yellow. This is the whiter, cooler gold. Application was good and the colour quite opaque. In this picture you can see the one on the left has one coat, and the one on the right has two coats. Can you tell the difference?

In dim light you can't see that it is holographic. But under direct light, wow, just fantastic. This polish didn't disappoint. See the other Catherine Arley post I did for rave reviews on its consistency and colour.

However, I think that the golden colour interrupts the holo visuals. I find it hard to distinguish that it is a holo at all. Comparing the bottle against the toffee coloured CA, you can clearly distinguish the toffee is holo glitter, but the gold looks more like silver glitter.

So sadly I have to report this is not a knockout the way 668 was but I am still pretty pleased with the formulation and how gorgeous it is to paint with.

Many thanks to JJ who sent this over as a gift all the way from USA!!!

** Amendment - I've done this on a nail wheel now and it reminded me of the trouble I had when I was putting it on. It's much more visible on a plain white surface. This gold, suffers the fate of many a frost gold.. It streaks.

L.A Girl Metal - Bronze Medal

I grabbed a few different ones of these at Groove which is an Aussie discounter store. They seem to get a lot of remaindered stock from overseas and among them is Revlon, Maybelline, L.A Girl, NYX... Anyway, these were $5 I think. They look so good in the bottle but I was sadly disappointed upon application. See photo, but what it is is a clear base with foil toned glitter. It is very smooth, very fine. You will see in another photo that there is still heaps of visible nail even after THREE coats. I did another 2 coats the next day and found a better result by not shaking the bottle, swishing to obtain a big glob of polish, then just wiping one side of the brush to drain as much polish off as possible while retaining a nice load of glitter on the other.

It's quite nice on, but hard work to get there. Where other glitter polish you can usually feel the texture, this stuff is very smooth. You would not know just by touch that it was any different to a creme. Unfortunately I got a few dints because the first few coats I was trying to get coverage, so was doing thick coats. Major mistake. Next time I know I'll be doing several thin coats over two days! I haven't used a top coat on any of my pics here.

Missha Crystal nail polish - HKH01 (gold)

I was so excited to go to Sydney as Brisbane has no Missha shop. what heaven. This is the store in the QVB building. There were 3 ranges to choose from but I was most excited by the crystal range. I got four. This one I had an excuse to try the next day because my Sugar Baby had chipped. This one is a heavy bronze gold. It is unfortunately quite textured and even after two top coats feels bumpy. Under dim light it is a semi matte finish. Under direct light you will then see the red, green and blue sparks of the holo glitter. There is otherwise also gold glitter in the darker base colour. I am just not really sold. Its just a bit dull and the glitter is not that Wow even under good light. The brush is one of those flat and rounded broad strokers. The bottle is adorably heart shaped. Some of the bottles even have an airbrushed colour on the lid. Because of the heavy glitter content I found it clumpy on the end of my nails during application. Missha is a Korean brand and retails for around $7.95.