Collection 2000 Hot Looks : Electric Dream

I almost didn't go through with today's post as it's been nothing but an exercise in frustration! For one thing, my cuticles just don't want to behave at the moment. They laugh in the face of cuticle remover and shrug off the attentions of cuticle creams and oils. I knew I shouldn't have done so much housework this weekend! And then to make matters worse, I chose this colour to wear.

Introducing Electric Dream, from Collection 2000. It's an absolutely gorgeous turquoise/teal creme. And herein lies the problem. See this picture, where it looks blue? It doesn't look like that at all. It's a lot more green in real life. I took about a million pictures on more than one camera, and every time it came out blue. For some reason, the green in this polish just doesn't want to be photographed...so here's something else that will hopefully give you all a better idea.

Imagine this colour in both of my photos here instead of that blue, and you'll be picturing what my nails actually look like! Colour accuracy frustrations aside, here's what I actually thought of the polish itself.

Hot Looks is Collection 2000's fast drying range, and while it's not so fast that I'd attempt a full manicure with it when I only had 15 minutes spare, it's certainly not slow either. It comes with a pretty decent formula that applies nicely (I particularly like the brush on these, it's a nice texture, flat and has a rounded end that makes for nice tidy cuticles) and is opaque in two to three coats - I used two and it looked opaque to the naked eye, but when I took pictures you could still see faint visible nail line. Honestly it would have been fine to leave it but I came over all perfectionist and added a third, which also slightly deepened the colour towards the green end of the spectrum (not that my camera wanted you to see that, grr). It also added a bubble to my middle finger, but really that was my fault for being in a hurry and not being careful, not through any problems with the formula.

Wear was average to good - there was a little tip wear at the end of the day but nothing terrible, and I did have my hands in water quite a lot. I also didn't use any top coat for this polish so you'd expect a slightly shorter wear time than if I'd armoured it up with a layer of the glossy stuff. After two days the tip wear was maybe a little worse but there were no chips at all.

Considering that this polish is a startlingly cheap £1.79 for 8ml (and right now they're 2 for £3 in Superdrug), I think this polish is pretty awesome and certainly rivals a lot of more expensive brands. It goes on nicely, lasts a respectable amount of time, and looks really pretty (the range has all sorts of bright and cheerful colours available). I'd definitely recommend picking a few up to try!