Just after Christmas I received a little package from Honolulu based indie brand - Sparkles by Julie. Julie offered to send me some more of her shades to try out and asked me to select some from her collection. The tree polishes I chose were Coco, Lost in Space and Milky Way.
Coco - I'm a big fan of glitter polishes that have a nicely tinted base so they are opaque on their own, yet still transparent enough to show off all the glitters. So many commercial brand glitters are glitters in a clear base, and while I love a layering polish, I do prefer a polish that can be worn on it's own.
Coco is just what you would expect from a polish with this name. There are gold and copper glitters of various sizes in a brown base with a little bit of brown shimmer (but not too much so as to make it frosty and cover the glitter - I hate that!) There is also holo hexes and fine holo dust. This was two coats of Coco with two coats of top coat to smooth out any bumps.
Lost in Space - this has a few sizes of silver holo glitters as well as aqua blue glitters suspended in a black jelly base. I did two coats of Lost in Space here, and for the photos I should probably have done three, but in real life it looked great. I did put on two layers of top coat to smooth this one out as well, but that's mainly because now I'm really OCD about having a very shiny high gloss finish (that's what trying out soak off gel nails does for you!)
Milky Way - this one is my favourite from this bunch, which is ironic given my comment at the beginning about preferring a full coverage polish to a layering one. This is a really gorgeous combo of glitters which I can't actually tell if they are individual colours, or if they are iridescent duochrome shifting ones (it's probably a combination of both). I layered one coat of Milky Way of Cult Nails Time Traveller. This was the smoothest of the bunch requiring only one layer of Seche Vite for that glassy finish.
I think the labels on these bottles are clever. Generally I prefer a clear label so you can see through to the polish in the bottle, but what Julie has done is print what the polish looks like on the label, which really is the next best thing for me. Therefore every polish has its own custom label.
The formula on all these was very good and there were no signs of any curling glitter (either reflective or otherwise).
Sparkles by Julie are available from her Esty store for $8 for a 15ml (she also has minis).
Polishes provided for review.
