GOSH Holographic Nail Polish: NOTD

I know that this blog is about faces (makeup) and fingers (nail polish), but due to my lowdown on my makeup brushes (Part 1 here and Part 2 will be up tomorrow!) I've been neglecting the fingers side of the blog a little. But now I'm evening the score with this darling of an NOTD: GOSH Holographic!

For those who don't know what GOSH is, it's a drugstore brand found in the UK. (EDITED TO ADD: Thanks to Pixie, I've learned that they're actually a Danish company! Cool! Thanks Pixie!) Superdrug carries it, I believe. And even then, it's pretty expensive - for drugstore that is. But they make some awesome items, particularly their lipsticks, eyeliners and nail polish. At some point I hope to swatch the lipsticks and eyeliners, but I don't think I could ever swatch all their polishes...

Anyway back to the story. Yes, GOSH Holographic. I've heard this touted as a dupe (possibly a better dupe, even) for Chanel Holographic, but I don't own the Chanel, so I can't verify. But this polish was holo awesomeness in a bottle, and even though the holo doesn't look like much on the bottle, on the nail, it is absolutely STUNNING. My friends always exclaim, "Look! Your nails!" whenever I wear this, so you know it's a keeper.






As you can tell, these were pre-cleanup pics, and they were 3 coats. I'm sorry for the ickiness of the pre-cleanup-ness, and for the frazzles on my cuticles. But frazzles and ickiness aside, isn't this a beauty? It's HOLO, BABY, HOLO! I even took two pictures just to show you how holo it can be, since the first picture sucked in showing the holo.

Application on this one isn't bad once you get the hang of it. I read a lot of blogs saying that they had to use 3 or 4 coats, and this was a nightmare to apply as the holographic glitter tended to clump together and become uneven when you apply subsequent coats....Well, that is true, if you don't wait for the polish to completely, and I DO mean completely, as in let's-wait-an-extra-3-mins-to-be-sure kind of completely, dry. Yes, it's a little of a hassle in that sense, because with most polishes you can get away with not waiting for the layers to dry, but with this one, you simply can't - if you put more polish on top of a wet layer, you will get the result of having your holographic glitter clump together, and you'll get too much holo in one spot, and no holo in other spots. And THEN you'll have to use 3 or 4 coats to cover up the uneveness. So, as long as you wait for each sheet to dry, you could probably just 2-3. Of course, I didn't know this, so I painted on top of wet polish, and had to use 3 coats.

Same goes for the basecoat. I've also read a lot of blogs going on about how you simply can't use a basecoat with it, and in this NOTD I've successfully used it with a basecoat - once again, the trick is to wait for the basecoat to completely, completey dry.

The polish in this bottle has a consistency that's more on the watery side, but not enough to irk me. All the GOSH polishes I've had were all of that slightly watery consistency, with the exception of GOSH Rainbow (which I should totally do an NOTD with sometime!) because of the suspended flakies in the polish. The good thing about GOSH polishes that I really like though, is that they dry SUPER fast. Sometimes I even wonder why I bother to use a topcoat with these things, because when I'm done doing my last nail, my first nail is already dry to the touch, albeit a very light and ginger touch. Of course these don't dry as fast as the OPI Suedes, but for non-suede polish, they're pretty much the fastest drying ones I've found so far.

Edited to add: The day after, IT CHIPPED! And I don't mean like tiny, at-the-corners-of-your-nails chipped. This is odd, because the other GOSH polishes I've tried weren't like that. But Pixie tells me it might be because it's a holo polish, and holo polishes in general tend to be chippy. I think she's right :) Thanks again, Pixie!