Viva La Nails recently brought out there range of nail polishes which you can check out here.
I wanted to try a few different ones so that I got an idea of what they were like.
Lovely Garden- Electric Yellow
From what I can tell, neons are going to be quite popular this summer and so I thought Electric Yellow would be a good choice.
I couldn’t quite capture how bright this polish is, it is much more neon than in the picture above and is a great summery yellow.
The application was good although with a slightly thicker brush it was more difficult to apply in thinner coats, luckily the dry time with this polish was pretty quick so it wasn’t much of an issue.
The first coat of the polish dried almost matte which was a nice surprise but unfortunately with every coat, the polish became more shiny, and this polish needed quite a few coats to reach the level of opacity where my nail line didn’t show. This picture was of 4 coats and although you can’t see it in the picture, my nail line was still quite visible at this point. So, if like me, you want full opacity, I recommend using a base of white to reach it.
The removal was easy and surprisingly there was no stainage which I definitely was not expecting with such a bright yellow colour. It did smear onto the skin but this was fixed with a little bit of polish remover and several hand washes.
I also tried out some of the glitter dust, this is basically just small, loose glitter. I have never used loose glitter on a mani before so this did not go well.
Garden of Colour- Snow White
Next up, i chose Snow White, I love a good white nail polish and I find that normally you can gauge the range on their white polish. Sadly, I was quite disappointed with this polish.
First thing that disappointed me was the low quality brush which you can see below.
The brush felt stiff and had several strands sticking out from the bottom of it, the strands would not pull out so i had to cut them before applying the polish. Not the best of starts.
The formula also seemed a bit dodge, it was gloopy and when trying to apply, it dragged and went patchy and lumpy. Also, I got bubbles instantly on every nail, I thought maybe this was my fault but started all over again 3 times and still got the bubbles.
The dry time on this polish was quite slow and even worse because I had to apply slightly thicker coats to stop the draggage.
Once dry, the polish didn’t look too bad, and I had some of the Viva La Nails water decals, so I added these and it made the mani look very pretty, so it wasn’t all bad.
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| You can find these decals here |
I do like this mani quite a bit. The water decals are a bit finickity to apply but not difficult and this is a quick and simple spring mani.
The removal of Snow White was just the same as any other nail polish and with the decals, there was no difference, the decals remove easily and come off just like a polish.
I’m hoping this was just a bad bottle of the polish, based on the other two I’m convinced it was.
Garden Of Lovely- Truth or Dare
Truth or Dare is not normally a polish I would go for but I thought I would try something a little bit different to the normal ones I get and I’m quite glad I did.
This actually turned out to be my favourite of all 3, which i would not have expected in any way, shape or form. Unfortunately, pictures just would not capture how pretty this one turned out.
It looks very much like a flakie when applied with its different sizes of glitter, the larger sizes seems to group in a way that makes it look like a hand cut piece. The glitter placement was pretty good.
Truth or Dare is a coppery/bronzey/brown with pinky undertones and the glitter is bronze with flashes of gold and green in certain lights. I tried to capture this in a bottle shot.
The formula was much better than the other 2, and dry time was very quick, but there was no dragging. the polish went on evenly with no patches or visible brush strokes but it did take 3 coats to be fully opaque, especially around the open edge of my nail, which seemed to be the problem area. It finished smooth, with no raised glitter or bumpiness.
Clean up was easy even in areas where I had flooded the cuticles, although the bits of glitter did hang around. Which leads me onto removal, this was a bit of a pain in the ass, the polish seemed to smear, and even when all the polish was gone, all of the glitter remained on my nails. Even after washing my hands several times, the glitter was everywhere.
Overall, these polishes are ok, they are around the average high street price of nail polishes @ £3.95 but they do have quite a range of colours. they also have Crackle polishes for £3.95 and Soak off Gel Polishes @ the higher price of £6.95.
I much prefer the Lovely Garden bottles and brushes to the Garden of Colour bottles as brushes as they don’t feel as cheap and I would much prefer to have the names of the polishes on the bottles.
Viva La Nails have quite a nice range of decals and glitters available at great prices and don’t forget to check out their Deal of the Day.
:)x
