I love it when you buy a polish that you have no expectations about and when applied, it doesn't just impress you - it completely blows you away.

The Ulta3 range is the "cheapie" polish brand you find in chemists over here in Australia. It's about $2.50 a bottle and you pretty much know it's going to suck but you buy it anyway because it looks promising in the bottle even though you know you're going to be bitterly disappointed. You know the ones I'm talking about right?

Well it seems like this brand might have picked up its act since the last time I purchased one of their polishes. This is Lollypop Lilac and it's a light purple foil! Its smooth two coater, dries pretty much straight away and makes one helluva stamping polish. As far as I can see, this polish just hit it out of the ball park.
I think I might go track down some more of these to see if I just got lucky or if this is a truly awesome discovery for polish addicts everywhere.

Your thoughts? Winner or loser? Do you have a polish brand where you are like this? Have you given it another go and been surprised? Or maybe you just had your suspicions confirmed that it really is a crap brand?

That's it from me today.

Be awesome to each other.

Ok, so this post has been a long time coming. I was lucky enough to get my hands on the whole Burlesque collection due to one particularly awesome girl in the States - I'm looking at you Jess! - and the local PR firm for OPI in Australia.

Jess managed to find me all but The Show Must Go On, which just happened to be one of the ones OPIs PR team sent (Thanks Lisa!).

So I am the ridiculously smug of all 12 of these bad boys and I am absolutely stoked (that's excited for all you non Aussies!) that the whole collection is so amazing. I've mentioned before that this is the only collection I have come across of it's size where there is not a single dud in the collection and I still stand by that. Without further ado, here are the first half of the collection - The Non Glitter But Still Oh So Awesome Ones!

Ali's Big Break 

Ali's Big Break is an cool toned red that is extremely hard to photograph. I included the bottle shot so you could see the light golden flakes in the bottle. They are really packed in there. An amazing polish in person. It translates well from the bottle to the nail and is a real winner as far as I am concerned.

Let Me Entertain You

You guys know that colours like this one are a pita to photograph, and this one is no exception. The colour swatch at the bottom is probably the most colour accurate although still a bit lighter then it is in real life.

I ADORE this polish. Let Me Entertain You is a dark magenta with a strong glass fleck. It has a almost foil like shimmer to it which flashes a few different colours, I can definitely see gold, and hot pink and maybe a flash of blurple? 

Rising Star

Rising Star is an orangy almost copper gold. Very warm toned. A very rich shade that has a metallic foil like finish combined sparkly glass flecks which makes for a really smooth and impressive finish. This polish is highly pigmented and was almost good to go in one coat, but I did two anyway.

Take The Stage

 This polish is stunning! A reddish copper that has a metallic-glass fleck combo Rising Star has going on. The best thing about this polish is that it is not a frost! It is a really glowy polish and kind of makes your nails look like smouldering embers.

Teasy Does It

This is another polish I had massive issues photographing. I want my good camera back!!! It looks brown with orange glitter here. It's not! I swear! I took this photo in the late afternoon, which as it would seem, was stupid. This one is a rich dark purple-brown base with a red/ gold glass fleck which sets of this crazy duochrome like effect. A stunning polish. The colour swatch at the bottom was taken when I first got the polishes and is much truer to the real colour. If you wanted to compare this polish, I would say Nubar Chocolate Truffles is the closest I have to it.

I can't find my recent swatches of The Show Must Go On, which I have done previously, but honestly my swatches from a while ago just do not do this polish justice, you should check out Scrangies pics, they are pretty spot on. Is TSMGO a dupe for Bad Fairy? No. You can check out my pics and thoughts on TSMGO from a couple weeks back here. 

Ok that's it from me today.

Be awesome to each other.