Born Pretty Store review

It's always exciting when a brand contacts you to review their products. In this case, the people at Born Pretty Store asked me to test some of their goods.

My picks were one of their holographic polishes, a turquoise blue one, and a Hello Kitty stamping plate. After a hiccup with the first delivery, which was solved very quickly by emailing their excellent customer service team, the products arrived safely last Thursday.

I was very impressed with their holo polish. Linear polishes can be tricky to work with but I had no problems at all with this formula. The holo effect is pretty strong, I'd go as far as saying it's comparable to the Laylas I own. 

The brush was good even though it picked up a little less product than I would have liked for my big nails, but it went on easily. I used three thin coats over a normal base coat for the photos, as it's a little on the sheer side. It's very forgiving and doesn't show minor ridges and imperfections.

 
The photos are all in direct sunlight and without top coat; I tried it with top coat and the holo effect was only ever so slightly dulled. It's probably not even noticeable to most people! 

The only criticism I have is that the bottle is small (6 ml). I don't think it's a massive problem since most collectors hardly ever finish a bottle (please correct me if I'm wrong!), and you can save some product by applying it over a creme of a similar colour, reducing the number of holo coats to just two. I prefer it on its own, and would be happy to buy a replacement.

Now let's move onto the other item. I'd been after a Hello Kitty stamping plate for some time, and while there are some official Sanrio ones, the designs did not exactly fit my needs. I am young at heart, and realise this would not be my everyday plate so I wanted something that my daughters could enjoy too.

The Born Pretty Store QA12 plate has three Hello Kitty faces, a couple of teddy bears, three full nail designs, two bows and a tiny heart and bow. It packs quite a lot and everything is usable, even the tiny strawberry between the K and the T!

I tried stamping on paper first to see how sharp the designs were and I was happy with the results. I have said before I am far from an expert at stamping so maybe my standards are not as high as some other bloggers', but I was more than satisfied. I got all the images onto my stamper in one attempt, except for the all black teddy which took me a couple.

I decided to test them on a super kawaii mani. I like to think I am a "less is more" type of person but this time I went a little over the top, with a couple of gradients and even double stamping on top! I used Essie Blanc, Sinful Colors Sweet Tooth and OPI Dim Sum Plum, plus special Konad polishes in black and white.

The Born Pretty Store sells all sorts of things, not just nail art supplies, and is based in Hong Kong, so deliveries will take a while. They do, however, offer free international shipping on all orders and you can save 10% by using the code from my blog NLPW10 at checkout.