Tuesday 9 July 2013

Spa Ritual Nail Lacquer

Today I have two Spa Rituals colours to show you; a lovely green called Emerald City, emerald is the pantone colour of the year, and Out Loud one of the gorgeous new glitters from their Summer 2013 Collection - Laugh. 

Despite having seen Spa Ritual around before they are a brand I have never tried so I was keen to see what their polishes were like, first up a quick bottle shot of today's colours.


Spa Rituals describe themselves as a vegan luxury spa lifestyle brand:

Dedicated to the spa tradition, SpaRitual is committed to creating eco-friendly products and packaging perfectly crafted for the enlightened consumer. We use Vegan ingredients from around the world, including many specially sourced and selected plant essences that are wild crafted OR organic. The formulations are naturally coloured and free of synthetic dyes. SpaRitual is constantly monitoring sustainability issues and strives to be on the cutting edge of environmental awareness. Enlighten yourself. Be a SpaRitualist. Because we all deserve to live the good life.


Sounds good so far, and the bottles do have a lovely luxury feel to them. The larger bottle (15ml) is a very generous size and I love the rubberised caps, they make the bottle tops lovely and comfortable to hold and give really good grip. It's not something I've seen many polish brands do but I'm all in favour of it, it does add a little luxurious edge to the bottle while you're painting your nails. Even the smaller (5ml) mini bottle feel quite generous and substantial compared to other brands mini sizes, they feature the same rubberised cap.

Now, on to the actual polish, first up Emerald City.

I really like the colour of this polish, although I would say it seems more like a teal to me than emerald as the name suggests, nonetheless it's beautiful colour and super shiny, these pictures are without top coat and they still have a brilliant shine that you don't always get from polish alone.


Application wise the polish is lovely, very smooth and easy to apply. Although the polish is listed as a cream I would say it almost veers towards gelly texture as you do need three good coats to get full opacity with no visible nail line, the polish build up to an opaque finish beautifully.
 
The bonus of this slightly more sheer finish is that it looks like it might work well for a jelly sandwich manicure which is unusual from a darker shade so I am looking forward to trying that out in the future.
 

Next up Out Loud, this one is a real stunner, it's a dark blue base crammed full of green and blue and colour shifting hex glitter, even in the bottle it looks fantastic, I couldn't wait to try this one!


The base of the polish is quite sheer so you do need 3 good coats of polish to get it totally opaque on it's own however this really adds to the multi-dimensional look of the polish as you can see the glitter at different depths when all the coats have been applied. 

As with Emerald City this polish applies really well and it has the added bonus of you not having to fish around to pick up glitter from inside the bottle which can be a real issue with some glitter polishes.



Under bright light you can really see the glitter pieces sparkling and they seem to take on an almost holographic look changing from deep green and blue through brighter blue shades and even a bronze, so pretty and sparkly!

I decided to try Out Loud as a glitter topper over another polish (I used a dark green colour) to see how it fared that way too and I was not disappointed, although you don't get the same multi-dimensional effect as you do from using several layers the polish still looks fantastic and really adds some shimmer and glitter to the plain polish underneath.

Both polishes, and a whole lot more, are available from www.sparitual.co.uk prices start at £9.75 for 15ml and £5.50 for 5ml minis. They also have a selection of colours in their Sale where you could definitely pick up a bargain, some of the large 15ml sizes are only£5.00! 
 
 
 
*These polishes were sent for review.


5 comments:

  1. Ooh really love Out Loud! it's beautiful x

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  2. Thank you so much for the pics, I've been thinking of buying this one for a while but couldn't find any swatches!

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  3. I'm not sure how you got 'Out Loud' opaque enough in three coats, though the other reviewers have also managed it in three! I started off applying coats but it seemed totally inadequate and I eventually dabbed on two further coats. What I mean is I put the brush from the polish onto the nail and just moved the blob slightly to widen it. If I swept the blob over the nail like I would with an ordinary polish I just couldn't reach the kind of density required. This however has made it feel very thick. I haven't used polish like this before so I was wondering if there is some other way of applying thick enough coats?

    And one more question, what polish did you layer it over? It looks really nice:)

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    1. What you describe is pretty much how I apply glitters, I tend to blob and spread rather than paint them on, it seems to give a more even spread of glitter and make them go on thicker. I think if I had painted it on like a normal polish it would have taken more coats but using the blob on some polish and spread it about tecnique it seems to go on a bit more opaque. To be honest though I generally apply glitters over a base colour (that's what I would do in future with this polish) because it is a bit more forgiving when it comes to making it look patchy.

      I think it was Barry M Watermelon from the Gelly Hi Shine collection I layered the one coat over, I don't know why I didn't say that in the post!

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