Silcare Garden of Colour nail polish review
Firstly let me start by saying that I very rarely consider using 'budget' nail products, and when I have I have always been disappointed. So when I was sent these varnishes to review by www.ukgels.co.uk I was intrigued to say the least.
Let me introduce the brand:
'Garden of Colour' are made by Silcare and are advertised as a professional brand at a costumer price, with all products in this line coming in at £3-£4 pounds. The bottles are a lovely shape and each contain 15ml of product. The lids are a pleasant shape to hold and the brushes are good quality with a nice even 'splay' when applying near the cuticle. The overall appearance of the bottles is very sleek, they look professional and i;d happily have them on display in my salon. If I was going to be really picky I would like the brushes be a little wider, but I am being really fussy here.
Aroma Colour: #139 Strawberry Scented
AVAILABLE HERE
This polish is a lovely, bright red. It has quite a thin consistency but I found that it gave full coverage with 2 coats. I was quite excited to try a scented nail varnish, but in reality it really just smelt of nail polish. So if you're buying this polish JUST because of the strawberry scent you may be disappointed.
Gelook Colour: #134 Mango
This is one of the 'gelook' collection. It is really creamy in texture and applied like a dream. After one coat I was quite happy with the result and after 2 it really did look lovely. It is slightly thicker than standard nail polishes but as a nail tech who is used to applying gel polish this was not problem for me.
Matt Colour: #36 Violet
Matt Colour: #37 Black
Both violet and black are from the matt colour range. Again they were a nice consistancy and gave good coverage after 2 coats. They are sold as 'matt' colours, which I took to mean they wouldn't need a topcoat and would dry to a nice matt finish, however after 20 minutes of thumb twiddling these were still not what I would consider a 'matt' finish. Rather it looked like what it was, nail polish minus the topcoat. I gave up on the matt finish I hoped for and top coated as normal for the bottle grab pictures above. I would buy these polishes for the colour, just not if you're wanting that 'matt' effect, but then with so many matt top coats available on the market, why would you?
Garden of colour 7 day topcoat
All the colours above were top coated using the '7 day top coat' before being photographed. It applied really nicely, was a good medium consistency and floated very nicely over the nail varnish leaving a shiny smooth finish to my manicure. I can't comment on if it does last for 7 days as I needed to remove it straight away.
All in all I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the varnishes for the price you would pay and I would certainly consider stocking these in salon to use during regular manicures or to retail.
Big thanks to Jay at www.ukgels.co.uk for sending me these products to try!