Avon Nailwear Pro : Violetta Sparkle

Now that the trauma of TMI Thursday has passed, I thought I'd soothe my frayed nerves with glitter.

Enter Violetta Sparkle, from Avon.

Were my nerves soothed by this lovely glittery purple? 

Not in the least. I've spent all day trying to get a good picture of this polish. I've used two different cameras, four different rooms and about a million light sources. Unfortunately the camera that came closest to capturing this colour accurately was my camera phone, so you're going to have to ignore the kinda blurry pictures I'm afraid. But at least the colour's right!

(with flash)

Violetta Sparkle is a Cadbury purple jelly with lots and lots of gold glitter. It goes on quite nicely, no particular problems with application (though the brush is pretty bog standard and I don't especially like the square lid, which makes it less than comfortable to hold, but that's minor really). Like many other jellies it does need three coats to be opaque; I tried to get away with two because the purple was more obvious that way, but it dried patchy and I had to add a third, whereupon the purple became less of a Cadbury/royal purple and turned into a darker, more vampy shade. 

On the nail, it reminds me of a darker version of Orly Oui, or OPI It's My Year. Though in every single one of my shots, it looks darker on the nail than it does in real life. It's so frustrating trying to capture this sort of shade perfectly!

Drying time was okay, not especially fast, but not painfully slow either. It doesn't claim to be quick drying, so that's okay. Wear was a little disappointing, though. It didn't chip after two days, but there was tipwear by the end of the first day. Maybe if I'd wrapped my tips it would have helped, but it still appeared too fast for my liking.

See how it looks in the bottle here? That's how it looks on the nail in real life. The glitter is absolutely gorgeous - just enough to catch the light and twinkle beautifully, but not over the top. In some lights I even caught a green flash amongst the gold, but couldn't see any actual green glitter, so it must be something to do with the way this particular gold reflects at certain angles.

Finally I got an accurate shot of how it looks on the nail! This was picture no. 9364583853652. Or at least, that's what it felt like >.<

Overall, this polish is absolutely stunning. The colour is lovely, the glitter is beautiful. It's definitely one of those polishes that looks better on the nail than you thought it would when it was still in the bottle - I thought it was pretty to start with, but when I painted my nails with it, I kicked myself for not having tried it sooner. The only minus is the tipwear, and I suppose the need to use three coats is less than ideal (but then it's a jelly so I can hardly complain). Considering that Avon often play it safe with rather boring colours, I think they've outdone themselves this time. Let's hope they keep going like this (but also make it a bit longer lasting)!

EDIT: So... I was going to change this mani but first, I filed my nails. I often file them down while wearing a dark polish because it helps you see the shape better and helps protect the nail from being damaged by the file. And after I'd filed them, the polish still looked great (I filed off the tipwear). And since then, no more tipwear has appeared, and it's now 3 days later!! I don't know what the problem was first time round, because now it seems like a really long lasting polish. Go figure!