Illamasqua Nail Varnish in Loella!

Hi there!

I bought this nail polish in the Illamasqua sale in January when it was reduced from £14.50 to just £5! which you may have seen in my Illamasqua Sale Haul! I've never tried an Illamasqua nail polish before so thought this was the perfect opportunity to try one out! 

This isn't going to be the best review, I wouldn't like to say it's a bad review just my honest opinion on the product.

First of all I'll start with the things I like about the nail polish!

The colour! It is the most beautiful barbie pink shade and I absolutely love it! It's really bright and vibrant and really makes a statement! I also really like the bottle.

(Without Flash/With Flash)

Unfortunately that's where the pro's end for me. I found the product itself very watery which made it quite difficult to apply, the first coat applied quite sheer and streaky, which may be down to the brush which I didn't like either, was very thin and didn't fan out to cover your nail, which is the type of applicator I personally prefer so I think that's what made it streaky.

When I started to apply the 2nd coat and the true colour started to show I decided that I would ignore my thoughts of the first coat because I loved the colour so much, however I then noticed when applying, on the bottom of my nail it wasn't applying properly and was leaving like patches on my nails, I fixed it the best I could and when they were dry it wasn't that noticeable so over all I was very pleased because I liked the colour so much I then popped a picture on my instragram.

(1 Coat/2 Coats both no flash)

However I had painted my nails on my lunch at work as I had a blog event in the evening and so wouldn't have time later to paint them. The nails felt completely dry and about 10-15 minutes had passed I picked up a 5 page booklet and it .. I'd say chipped but that's not the correct way to describe it was more of a deep score in my nail, I still don't even know how it happened and when I tried fix it all the nail polish just started to like move around on my finger and became really lumpy! even though I had already previously touched them and they felt completely dry. 

I work in an office so I was basically sitting at my desk typing and everytime i looked at my nails there was a chip (I say chip it was more like just missing nail polish and deep scratches than a chip), some of which were down at the bottom of my nail so couldn't even have been from the keyboard. By the next morning I couldn't believe the state of my nails for a nail polish that cost almost £15 I definitely expected more!

(Less than 24 hours later, however the left hand looked like this after about half an hour!)

Overall I'm glad I didn't pay full price for this nail polish, I love the colour so will continue to use it, but if I'm looking for something to last this won't be one I'm picking up. 

The polish may be easier to work with if you are much better at painting your nails than I am, because if I'm honest I've only started getting into it but for me this was a bit of a miss, which I'm very sad about haha. Perhaps if you have a lot more time on your hands this might also work out better but other than the fact the bottle makes a nice addition to your nail polish collection I would never pay full price for one of these. 

Have you tried any Illamasqua Nail Varnishes? What are your thoughts?

*First 3 sets of pictures were took on my iPhone as I was at work, final picture was took on my blogging camera so apologies for the quality of the other pictures. All of the pictures are unedited to show true representation*