Friday, March 8, 2013

Ciaté Nail Polishes

Ciaté nail polishes came into my life as the result of this impulse purchase made in January. Buying 20 bottles of a brand of polish I've never tried out probably wasn't one of my brighter ideas but thankfully it’s working out.

While Ciaté isn't the smoothest applying-polish I've ever tried out, it does go on fairly easy (it’s certainly better than Essie). The blue shade (Power Dressing) I'm wearing in the photo on the right took three-four coats, which is reasonable, though not remarkable, for a dark shade.

So far I've tried out five of the colours in the set and been quite pleased with the results. The glossy colours are rich and glossy while the shimmery and sparkly ones bring just the right amount of bling to my nails without being blinding. And while I'm not crazy about all of the colours in my set, the vast majority of them are colours that I do, and will, wear.

All of the bottles in my set are mini-sized, which I love because that means they come with shorter, easier-to-control brushes.  I'm not sure if the full-size versions of these polishes use these brushes but hopefully they do (I don’t understand why mini-brushes aren't the norm).

Someone else that is quite different about these polishes is that their formula makes them very “peel-able,” meaning it’s fairly easy to peel the dried polish off of your nails and skin. Being able to peel it off the latter is great for me because I have a bad habit of getting polish on the skin that surrounds my nails (I hate seeing any kind of gap). While this polish may not go on as smoothly as a butter London polish, the clean-up is much quicker than with that or any other brand of polish.

Being able to easily peel it off the nail though is one of those good-and-bad things. It’s good because it means I can remove 90% of the polish without nail polish remover. But it’s bad because I think this peel-ability factor is why this polish is somewhat prone to chipping.

That's Cupcake Queen on the bottom left
Chipping on fingers that is because when it comes to lasting on toes, this product is amazing. Now, toes always outlast hands but in my case, I was wearing Cupcake Queen on my beach vacation where if I wasn't barefoot or in sandals, I had flippers on. It was a very active and exposed couple of weeks for my toes but despite that, the first toe chips didn't appear until day 11.

Unfortunately on my fingers, the first chips usually appeared 48-72 hours after I'd applied the polish (though Power Dressing has lasted me five days without any real chips). While I've found that small chips can be easily filled, they need to be attended to quickly because the peel-able nature of this product results in small chips quickly turning until big ones.

This polish’s chip rate (yes, I made that term up) is easily its biggest downside. Thankfully, like I said above, removing this polish is pretty quick and easy.

I haven’t yet tried out the “nail caviar” options that came in my set. Maybe that’s a project for next weekend?

Will I buy this product again: While I think I'm probably good for Ciaté polish for the next couple of years, I would buy this brand, and even another set, again in the distant future.

Should you buy this product: If you see a colour you like, go for it! The same thing goes for any sets. At under $60, I think my Mini Mani Month set set was a great deal. I grabbed my set from The Bay, where you can also pick up single bottles for I think about $15, but Ciaté also sells its products online.




No comments:

Post a Comment