This month has been THE month for free nail polishes, and it has been amazing. You can get 4 different Mavala colours with Red magazine, 6 different Leighton Denny polishes with Harpers Bazaar magazine, 3 Nails Inc colours with Colgate toothpaste and 6 free Ciate caviar sets with Marie Claire magazine. Now I'm not a huge fan of caviar nails, in fact I've never tried it before - it seems a bit messy and I feel like the beads will fall off instantly - but who can say no to free nail polish!?
Ciate is a brand I wasn't interested in for a long time, until I saw their mini polishes in a store in Melbourne. They are adorable! I wanted to order their Christmas advent calendar but when these came out I thought I'd try these first.
There are 6 colours to choose from, I picked up a pale purple, light blue and a taupe. There is also a pink, peach and red.
If you look closely at the collage photo, you can see I actually made a mistake with the caviar beads... I accidentally switched up the purple and the grey caviar pots. Oops! Anyway you get the point.
The first set is called Starry Night and includes the nail polish Ferris Wheel and the caviar pearls in Frost Yourself. I definitely have a weakness for baby blues and lilac purples. The nail polish is a really lovely light blue, it's quite similar to Barry M's Huckleberry as they are both very pale but still contain a lot of colour, whereas Models Own Blueberry Muffin is much more of a grey baby blue. The formula is much smoother than Huckleberry, but still requires three coats for full opacity. It has a beautiful glossy finish.
For the caviar beads I applied one coat of Ferris Wheel and while that was still wet poured over the beads. It was quite a mess.... but I applied it over the lid of my Glossybox. I brushed off any beads that were sticking out and gently pushed down the remaining beads so it would really stick to my nail. I think it's a really nice colour combo. The beads come in a royal blue and silver.
The second set is called Fairy Dust, this is the one I mixed up... Oops! These caviar beads are supposed to be with Pillow Fight, dark taupe polish. Anyway, I think they look really nice together. The purple polish is called Sugar Plum and the caviar beads are Sweet Dreams. Sugar Plum isn't the most unique colour, it's very similar to Ulta3 Lilac Bloom and Kester Black Lilac, but this formula is a little more sheer than those two cremes. It builds up nicely and I used three coats for the swatch. I applied the beads the same way, so I applied one coat of polish and while that was still wet poured the caviar beads onto it. I lightly pressed down the beads on my nail so they would stick. The beads are light purple, medium purple and very berry toned purples.
The final set is called Purple Rain and it includes the polish Pillow Talk and is supposed to include the caviar pot from the above photo, but I used Ice Queen. I think these colours look beautiful together! This polish had the same consistency as the previous two where it's a little bit more sheer and jelly-like but this only needed 2 coats for full opacity. I love colours like these where sometimes it'll look grey and other times purple! I don't have similar colours like this in my collection as this is much more purple toned than other taupes.
I applied the caviar beads the same way as the previous two. The beads include silver and purple and I think there might be some very pale blues too.
I really like how Marie Claire has included sets instead of just a polish because it makes it a bit more unique, but I'm not sure how many people would be interested in the caviar beads. I spoke to a few people and they all said they like the nail polishes but they'd never use the beads. I think the caviar beads are really pretty, especially Ice Queen, but the chances of me ever using them again are very slim. The other three colours were amazing colours too, but definitely not unique in my collection.
