Sparkled Beauty

Don't know if you'd be surprised by this, but I haven't owned a single Illamasqua nail polish. When this Illamasqua Nail Varnish Duo showed up at the Sparkled Beauty HQ (i.e. my apartment lol), I was over the moon.

I have heard Illamasqua nail polishes are highly pigmented and wear very well. This duo, on top of that, is perfect for the holiday season. The colours look shockingly beautiful in the box, and show up just as good on the nails.

This is a beautiful start of the relationship between me and Illamasqua nail polish.

The first shade, Glitterari, described as a raspberry glittery shade, is much more than just that. It is everything I want right now - dark vampy colour, multi coloured and multi sized glitters with a semi matte finish.

The brush is wide enough to cover your nails with three strokes, and if you load enough nail polish on the brush, you only need one coat. I did two coats here for good measure.

All nails were without a top coat except the ring finger. As you can see, the polish did not dry glossy. It felt a little gritty too, but it did not bother me, as the top coat fixed that right up.

Close up to show you the glitters in their various sizes and colours. You can see red, pink and holographic glitters in small, round, hexa, even some random bar shapes.

And the raspberry/ dark red base colour, this is the kind of red I can wear. With the built-in glitters, saving me the extra work to glitterize the colour like I often do, I am sold.

Forgive my not so good cleanup job. I swear it did not look this bad IRL, but the camera shows what my eyes miss. I'm not normally this sloppy with application either, but I was a little impatient to swatch the duo.

Viridian, unlike Glitterari, is from Illamasqua's regular line. This peacock green has been raved about on nail blogs for a while now. And I can say now I know why.

It applied like a dream, was so pigmented that I only used one coat. I did not use a top coat on top, didn't think it was necessary.

Not advertised as a duochrome, and I'm not saying it is, but this type of colour gives you different shades of green/ teal depending on the angles. And it glows from the inside, comes to life under flash or direct sun light. Beautiful!

See the glow I just mentioned here, both on the nails and in the bottle. Another winner shade.

Illamasqua picked two perfect colours to make this holiday duo. For someone who hasn't owned any polish from the brand, I'm more than happy to have them. But for big collectors out there who already have Viridian, they would be in a dilemma when they want Glitterari.

The duo is Limited Edition, retails for CAD32 at  Sephora. Single nail polish shades are CAD17, not a big saving for the duo, but like I said, the colours are worth it.