Nail mail, nail mail, guess who got nail mail! Me! How exciting!! Haha. I’ve been planning a polish exchange with Inés @ Càrritx i roses for what seems like ages (and in reality was over a year). The idea was that I would send her polishes from Canada that she couldn’t get, and she would send me polishes from Spain that I couldn’t get here. I won’t say what our polish number was supposed to be, but I will say that my lovely exchange partner went ABOVE AND BEYOND WHAT WE AGREED ON. Hahah. But oh man, did I appreciate it!
She also sent me a ton of snacks and sweets, but I have to admit that I have eaten them all already so you can only see those on the instagram pics I took when the package arrived… Oops!!
You can see her post with what I sent her here (Her pictures are stunning! Much better than my boring ones are), and then you can come back and see quick swatch-stick swatches of these gorgeous shades she sent me. 🙂
Kitch Me If You Can is a gorgeous rose pink hex glitter topper with a bunch of holo microglitters scattered throughout. I think this will look stunning over a white base, possibly with a matte top coat? I’ll have to play around! 🙂 Catrice is one of those brands I’ve heard about and seen on other people’s blogs, but that I have never seen for sale in Canada. So this was an exciting one for me to unwrap!
One thing I had to get used to when I first started getting polish from overseas was that there’s this weird (to me) tendancy to number polishes rather than naming them. I mean, I guess it’s easier for the company when they don’t have to come up with a cheesy/clever name. But still, it’s sounds so boring saying “Ohhh, I just got DP Glitter number 505! It’s lovely!” You know? Anyway, 505 is this perfect pink/brown/silver metallic with holo microglitters scattered throughout. And I will certainly be getting a lot of wear out of this one, let me tell you!
507 is a silver (with a hint of gold in the right light) microglitter base with some small black hex glitters scattered throughout, and it is lovely. It reminds me a lot of OPI Wonderous Star, and I’m going to have to swatch them side-by-side to see if it’s a dupe. Even if it is a dupe I’m sure it’ll get a lot of wear, if only because I love holding that little square bottle for pictures! Hahah. Also, I put this on a friend the other day and she said it wore without chipping for about 3 days before it peeled off as one large piece. Easy removal? Awesome! And 3 days is good wear in my opinion. 🙂
Textured polish! Woohoo! We all know I have a problem when it comes to textured polish, so I was ecstatic when I pulled this bottle out of the package. 635 is a snazzy periwinkle blue with amazing coverage. This is two coats, but if I had to run out of the house this could passably be slapped on with one coat. That’s my kind of polish!
And a neutral! My love of neutrals is in competition only to textured polishes, so Kiko has my number. I would describe 319 as a taupe grey, and the shade kind of reminds me of elephants… Is that weird??
This is a polish you have to see in real life to get the full effect… Sophisticated Gold is a gorgeous gold and pink duochrome with just a hint of shimmer. I plan to pair this with Manhattan 006 (below) at some point in the future, because I think they’ll play off of each other really well. My only concern is that this is a fairly thin polish (pictured here is 3 coats, and there would still be some VNL if this was swatched on my real nails) so it might need some undies.
And now the crown jewels of my nail mail (in my opinion)… The Manhattan polishes! This one is from the Bonnie Strange collection (I have no clue who that is) and I was surprised at how it came out on the swatch stick versus how it looked in the bottle. As you can see in the background, in the bottle the gold particles in 006 look almost overpowering compared to the purple base, but when you actually apply it the gold glitters are nicely scattered throughout. I’m not complaining (because it’s still a stunning polish), but it was a bit unexpected.
10C is definitely going to need some undies the next time I use it, but that’s okay! This polish is a nifty almost full-coverage glitter with different sizes of hex glitter in pink, purple and dark purple, and the base is actually slightly tinted pink rather than being clear (which is hard to tell in this picture, sorry!). This is a really unique polish for me, so I’m excited to see what kind of art I can do with it. 🙂
And now my absolute favourite from the bunch 71S! Saving the best for last, right? 😉 I have nothing like this in my collection, and I love love love it. It’s a minty green creme base with a bunch of different coloured glitters (green, gold, red, purple…) scattered throughout. It reminds me of all the indie polishes I have yet to get my greedy little hands on! Ahh, lovely!!
And those are the polishes! Gorgeous, right?? Ahhh. So many brands I’d never heard of. This was an awesome experience, and I totally look forward to doing it again at some point in the future. Like I said before, be sure to check out my lovely exchange partners’ blog @ Càrritx i roses, and let me know what you think! Do you have a favourite from this bunch? Ideas about what I could use certain colours for? Leave me a comment! 🙂
Thanks for visiting!! xx