Nelly Polish (The World's First Dried Nail Polish) Looe

I'm a bit of a sucker for an new concept when it comes to nail polish, a true marketing man's dream anything new and different I like to try out, so imagine my excitement when I was offered the opportunity to try out The World's First Dried Nail Polish!  Dried nail polish?  What?!  Allow me to explain...
 

With new rules and regulations coming in regarding what can and can't be posted within the UK, and to outside the UK, Indie polish makers have been struggling a bit, the new rules make it pretty much impossible to make and deliver regular nail polish without rather a lot of hoop jumping and in some cases (shipping outwith the UK for example) it's pretty much impossible. 
 

So Hilary of Nelly Polish decided to work out a way around the rules, what she came up with is dehydrated nail polish; all the pigment, glitter and suspension agent to make a lovely bottle of polish but with none of the problems of sending solvents or flammable liquids through the post, sounds like a winning idea to me!
 

Hilary sent me two bottles, Looe and Beeny which are part of The Fungooms Collection.  Today I am going to show you Looe which in dried form in a Nelly Polish Bottle, ready for me to add my own clear varnish (it's the bottle on the left here).

I decide to use a bottle of Stay Perfect top coat by No7 to mix up the polish powder, it's a fast drying top coat so I was hoping that it would mix well and become a fast drying nail polish too...

The mixing stage was really easy, I just poured in some of the clear varnish, gave it a good shake and then topped up with the rest of the bottle of clear varnish and shook again, as simple as that!

Looe ends up a bright grass green sort of shade with large pink glitter and small pink and gold glitter, to me the pink shows more red but regardless it's very pretty.  It's quite an unusual colour combination but it works really well.  It reminds me of flowers in a field.

Application was great, I used it over a base coat of a similar green colour but I'm pretty sure 3 coats would have had it opaque anyway.  I ended up using 3 coats here to achieve the look you see and there is no hint of the base colour showing through.  The polish was surprisingly smooth and easy to apply, I'll admit I was expecting lumps or for it to be thick and clumpy but it wasn't at all, it applied beautifully.  Some of the pictures show slight tip wear but that is all me rather than the polish, I was a bit too keen to get on with other stuff and seem to have managed to wear the tips down a bit. :(

The added bonus of using the quick drying No7 top coat was that the polish did dry really fast too, there's another bonus to choosing your own base polish right there!

I am SO impressed with this polish, as excited as I was about the concept I admit I had my reservations about how well it would work in reality but my scepticism was totally unfounded, it works brilliantly!  Hilary has clearly done her research and the powder to polish concept seems like an ideal way around the issues with shipping polish abroad and a less expensive way to purchase Indie polish for people like me who tend to have quite a lot of clear polish lying around.

The polish can be bought (in it's three forms) on Etsy or the Nelly Polish website.  Sachets (Nelly Mixture!) are £4, dried polish in a bottle to mix yourself (this is how I got Looe) is £5 and a bottle of pre-mixed polish is £6.50 (the pre-mixed polish is for UK delivery only).  Go and check them out!

And come back tomorrow for a closer look at Beeny too!