Wednesday 8 June 2011

W7 - Blue Lagoon pics and with stamp design - Is cheap always rubbish?

Hands up how many of us have seen a polish where you go, oh thats pretty but I bet its not very good, its not a professional brand or its a cheapo brand?  Or you have seen something that is blatantly a copy of a more expensive brand and given it a wide berth?  I'm sure we have all been guilty of a bit of 'polish snobbery', I know I have.  Its a balancing act though, you have to take into account how many coats you need, whether its a good formula to apply, and durability of a polish to vector into whether its good value or not.  

Take for example the Rimmel 60 seconds polishes I have.  I got three as a present (and I will post swatches at some point!).  They are lovely colours, they apply easily and the formula isn't bad.  Rimmel, whilst not a 'salon professional' brand is a well known cosmetics brand and so you would expect reasonable quality and value.  These polishes are £3.69 at Boots chemist, so you would think, ahhh thats not bad value then.  I think that would be a wrong assumption personally.  For your money, you get a bottle that is only 8ml, most 'big name' brands like China Glaze or OPI are 14ml or 15ml, or with Orly you get a whopping 18ml, so not really that cheap then.  Also I was really disappointed with the wear of these polishes.  They had shown tip wear within a day (in fact within a few hours).  The type of wear which you have to repair, so you mani looks old fast.  So, you see what I'm saying, expensive vs cheap, its not as clear cut as just brand name and cost.

IS there a point to this post you may ask, why yes, yes there is!  I was fed up and I went into a local shop and thought, what the hell, I'm buying a polish to cheer me up (as you do!).  I got a bottle of W7 Blue Lagoon.  This polish was £1.99 for 15ml and I have seen it as cheap as £1.48.  The bottle is a blatant copy of OPI, and to be fair I wasn't expecting much.  It is a deep blue/purple in the bottle with sparse glitter, but shows up as a lovely deep blue on the nail.  The glitter doesn't really make much of a difference but it still does give a subtle sparkle here and there when it catches the light.  The formula was easy to apply and went on smooth and needed only 2 coats.  So far so good, what about wear?  Well I had it on for three of days, and it did have some tip wear but nothing too bad, if it was a paler colour I probably wouldn't have even noticed.  I am not saying it is on a par with the big brands, but I was pleasantly surprised at the quality.  If their other colours are the same quality as this one, then I will buy more, in fact I have :) I have a neon orange glitter to try out (boy it is BRIGHT!) and a lovely deep aqua/blue/green/teal sort of colour, and a red glitter and a purple glitter, oh and a silver shatter top coat!

So, enough of my waffle, if anyone ever actually reads it, if you did then thank you, if not, thats OK too :)  Here are the pics, YAY!


 And now pics with a stamp design :) I was really pleased with how it turned out.  I used China Glaze IDK from the OMG collection.


2 comments:

Sarahlouise1986 said...

wow what stamp did you use - i love it!

/Hugs

Blingernails said...

Thank you for your lovely comment :) It was a faux-nad plate (one of those hexagonal shaped ones) and it was numbered M55 if that helps. I'm glad you like it!