I'm not a big nail polish person. Some people are totally into it, some people create amazing pieces of nail art and post gorgeous pics of it on their blogs. I'm the person who always thinks, "Oh yeah, nail polish," and smears some on fifteen minutes before I have to run out the door and always ends up leaving chunks of it half-dried on my backpack and shoelaces. I currently own six kinds of nail polish:
1. Maybelline Express Finish in Racy Red - probably my favorite formula, actually does dry in 50 seconds which comes in handy for a confused slob like myself. The color is a fantastic bright 50's red. I also used to have this in a darker burgundy, but I guess I lost it :(
2. Sally Hansen Diamond Strength in Black Diamonds - I don't know what I was thinking when I bought this or where I got it; I vaguely remember finding it on deep discount and buying it, even though I am pretty loyal to Maybelline. This is a charcoal with silver sparkles that is really cool. It's thinner and doesn't dry as fast as Maybelline, but I usually find this in my purse and put on a coat while I'm on the Max anyway.
3. Sally Girl - This one doesn't have a name, but it's purple and blue glitter in clear polish. It's a tiny little jar from Sally Beauty Supply that I got for probably 99 cents. It's not me at all, to be honest, and I think I bought it a few years ago and wore it once or twice. All of the above polishes were bought around 2011-2012, as far as I can remember.
4. & 5. Maybelline Color Show Brocades Emerald Elegance and Crushed Crimson - I found both of these last Christmas at The Dollar Tree, so that was awesome. These are glitter polishes that go on really thick and don't flake glitter everywhere. They have a combo of large and small chunks of glitter, and the polish is colored as well. The green is a little harder to pull off than the red, and I did not give myself an X-Mas manicure with these.
6. Maybelline Color Show Bold Gold - This is the polish that turned out to be my signature, for some reason. I just love it! I bought it after the Racy Red, because I was surprised by the quality. Granted, the Express Finish is made specifically to be fast-drying, but Color Show dries pretty rapidly as well, and is fairly long-lasting for cheap drugstore polish. So I picked this up for $4 a couple years ago on a whim, and I wear it off and on, and then it seems to be gone or drying up and I decide, "I really like this polish, I think I'll get more." So I go to Target, my one-stop show for cheapo cosmetics, and they have a clearance going on and their nail polish sections are depleted, but they don't appear to carry Bold Gold. So I go to Rite-Aid, the store I originally scored this nail polish at, and again, plenty of Maybelline, no Bold Gold. So I look to other brands, and even at Sephora, and I notice that not only is gold nail polish kind of hard to find, flat metallics are practically non-existent! Formula X does have a line of matte metallics that are nice, but the closest color was Ambition, which was gold the way Captain Kirk's uniform is gold, which is not a color I want on my nails. All the other gold metallics were shiny and textured.
As I searched for Bold Gold, I realized how much I really liked it. It had been an impulse purchase. I remember thinking, "Gold nail polish? That's totally disco, and no one I know wears it." It ended up being a flat, subtly shiny, cool gold that I loved, but didn't think much of and wore only occasionally. Using it up was bittersweet; I have never used up a nail polish before, as I generally move around a lot and lose them. Just having the stability to be able to use up a whole nail polish is an amazing feeling, and it's so strange to think I haven't had that in my life to this point. On the other hand, I really want my Bold Gold!
So obviously my next stop was the Internet. To my surprise, this line is still listed on Maybelline's web site. I had long ago peeled off the label on my jar, but Bold Gold is part of a line called "The Holographics," purportedly featuring "color-morphing metallic pearls." This line has four ratings on Maybelline.com, with an average of 2 stars. That's not a reflection on the quality of the polish, but rather the fact that the marketing is absolute BS. I haven't tried the other colors in the line, so maybe some of them do "shift from shade to shade depending on the angle," but Bold Gold sure doesn't. It doesn't do a damn thing except sit there and look fabulous, and it is exactly one color: Bold Gold. Some people don't like the thickness, or the almost matte sheen of this polish, but I love it. I found it for $4.50 on Amazon and bought a couple more bottles, along with some base and top coat and a couple more Color Show polishes that I'll show off here when they arrive.
Now I just need to stop biting my nails!
