In my first post, I promised this blog would feature some swatches of the budget brands in UK - ones that are notoriously hard to find swatched online. It's time to deliver. I present to you four nail polishes from two cheap brands.
Tiger is a Ikea-wannabe store in St James shopping centre in Edinburgh. They have a lot of small items with Scandinavian sounding names, and they stock some cosmetics as well. I've already given you a tiny sample of a blue nail polish from them in
this post, and now it's time for two more. They each cost £1, and all have the most amazing flat brush, not too wide, and very flexible. They also smell really weird - not like the W7 cheap varnish, but like plastic.
Tiger 04 is a gorgeous saturated berry jelly. It's glossy, it's smooth and opaque in two coats. It goes on very easily, helped by a good thickness and the excellent brush. On the flip side, it doesn't want to dry. Ever. When I wore it for a proper mani, it budged after 2 hours - despite a helping of
Seche Vite.
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| Tiger 04, two coats, no topcoat, in natural daylight. |
I love how it looks on my hands - it's a very flattering shade, and it looks deliciously squishy. Too bad it's also literally squishy for way too long.
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| Tiger 04 |
Tiger 07 is a dusty salmon nude jelly. It's very glossy, and looks so squishy but it takes three coats to become opaque - or nearly so. It's more goopy than 04, and thus harder to apply. Sadly, it also suffers from the same issues as 04 - it just won't dry. The three coats only exacerbate the problem.
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| Tiger 07, three coats, no topcoat. |
It looks very feminine and flattering on my hands, but I think there is still some VNL there, even if it's not really obvious in person.
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| Tiger 07 |
Overall, both colours are gorgeous, and the brush is awesome, but the drying issues mean that you need to have a lot of time to waste to actually be able to use these polishes.
The second set of polishes comes from a brand called Body Collection. I've bought these two for £1 from my local B&M store, and I've never seen them anywhere else. The brush is a typical round one, nothing to write home about, but not problematic either.
Iced Violet is a pink foil with a silver and pink shimmer. It applied well and had a very quick drying time. It's somewhat cooler toned in real life than the pictures show, and very shiny on it's own. It also dries very thin, so a ridge-filling base might come in handy.
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| Body Collection Iced Violet, two coats, no topcoat. |
It's super sparkly in the sun, and while it retains some brush strokes, these are not really visible in real life.
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| Body Collection Iced Violet, two coats, no topcoat. |
Coral is a salmon-pink base with a gorgeous fine golden shimmer throughout. It was also opaque in two coats, and was a bit harder to manoeuvre than Iced Violet. There are some brushstrokes visible, but they are subtle, and invisible in shade.
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| Body Cosmetics Coral, two coats, no topcoat. |
The colour is pleasantly cool and vivid when not facing any light, but the real fireworks start in the sun! The orange-gold shimmer is really beautiful, an changes to cool-ish toned base into a warm peach or coral shade. Make no mistake, this is no 'hidden shimmer' polish - the gold flash is also visible under low light conditions.
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| Body Cosmetics Coral, two coats, no topcoat. |
Overall, the two Body Cosmetics polishes were a good buy - good drying time and an excellent shine. If you have a B&M nearby, go and have a look - I recall seeing some Calvin Klein and W7 bottles there as well!
