Nude nail polish

On my quest for the perfect nude polish to wear to work, I've come accross some downright duds. I'm looking for something opaque, and not too pink. Unfortunately, a lot of nudes are intended to be used for French manicures, so they're really sheer. A lot of the opaque ones are decidedly pink as they're meant for decidedly Caucasian skin. I have an olive skintone, and I'm not really a pink fan. I thought I'd shove all the the 'nail polish disappointments' into one post to save time. There's ONE good one at the end.

Culprit 1: Australis Nail Colour in Satine.
Now this is the same company (Creative Brands) that owns Mode, so I had high hopes for these. I even liked the squat, tubular bottles.
Streak-free? Check. High shine? Check. Intense colour? Ummm.

This is two coats, so... yeah, not really. Hi, nail line! It has great shine, nice consistency and pretty quick drying time - it's just waaaaay sheer. It'd make a great French, and I wouldn't be averse to trying out sone of their other colours if they have the same smooth formula and finish.

Culprit 2: Cutex Quick 'N Go in Ice Coffee Rush
This polish claims to have '1 stroke, 1 coat application', and to either apply or dry in 45 seconds. Not sure which. The wide, flat brush was remarkably good after I got used to it, and it did dry lightning fast. However, one coat:

Sheeeeer. And not a nice sheer like Satine, this made my nails look stained. So by the time I layered it up to three coats:

IT WENT ORANGE. Not orange the-colour-of-the-fruit, orange. It looked like I'd put fake tan on my nails. Maybe it's just my skin tone, but that did NOT look like the pretty peachy-beige in the bottle.Also, you can still see my nail line. If it wasn't so utterly off-putting, I'd have tried other colours, because the drying time was really amazing.

Culprit 3: Mode Cosmetics in Ooh Baby.
This is a pretty, pale pink which I thought would do for those days when I don't mind being a bit girly. However, I had the exact same problem with this polish as I had with all the others. You have to layer this a LOT to get anything but a sheer, streaky mess. They have a white creme, So Parisian, which has the same application issues. This is three coats, and even though I was really careful, there's still bald patches and visible nail line.

Culprit 4: Revitanail in Barely There.
This I did not buy, thank goodness. Revitanail is expensive. I snitched this off my mother because my nails were splitting and breaking all over the place and it was driving me crazy. Well, this thin, streaky polish drove me just as crazy.

This is THREE coats. I did actually wear this for a while, in an effort to strengthen my nails, but I put a coat of Satine over the top of it to even out the colour before I left the house.

Culprit 5: Orly in Cosmic Kiss

Not technically a nude, but I thought the rainbow glitter might soften the starkness of the white. Yeah, totally not needed. I was really disappointed by this polish, as I've heard a lot of great things about Orly. It was completely sheer, the glitter went on really sparsely, despite the amount present in the bottle, and the glitter really stuck out when it dried. Needed a topcoat, but I couldn't be bothered wasting topcoat on how ergh it was. This is three coats here. I consider three my absolute limit; if a nail polish requires more than three coats in order to look good, I pretty much won't use it.

It's also a giant pain in the butt to remove.

Pleasant surprise: Natio Cosmetics in Brandy
Now, I have walked past Natio stands in chemists and pharmacies many a time, bypassing them entirely. For that I now apologise. This Australian-made, Australian-based company pleasantly surprised me. Resigned to another sheer bit of blah-ness, this $9.95 polish was not only the colour that the bottle delivered (take notes, Cutex) but BECAME OPAQUE. First coat was slightly less sheer than all the others, though quite streaky. Second coat: ahhh!

This stuff dries amazingly fast, as well. This still didn't stop me denting my right thumb and smudging my right index finger. It's not the polish's fault, though, I found out that a little company called The Hub Productions are bringing Christopher Judge and Corin Nemec (or, Teal'c and Jonas from Stargate SG-1 as some of you might know them) to Perth in two weeks. This revelation led me to call my boyfriend and squeak "Teal'c! Jonas! Perth!" over the phone to him a few times til I calmed down and was able to use important words like "in two weeks", "we have to go" and "I'm so stoked right now, this is amazing, I can't believe I didn't hear about this earlier, oops I smudged my wet nail polish."

This post took so long to do, becauseI don't really like swatching nail polish. I'm far too impatient! I will definitely keep it to one polish per post from now on. And yes, I will be blogging about the convention.