Etude House- gradient nail trio

The full name of this nail polish is actually Etude House Juicy Cocktail Graduation Nails, but that seemed like too long of a name to

include in my title. The name also doesn’t really make sense, but oh well 🙂 I was over at my friend’s house, and loved the gradient and golden shimmer on her nails. She told me that her aunt got the set for her in Hong Kong, and let me use it as well. The nail polish set comes with three shades, which you are supposed to use in a specific order for the desired gradient effect.
The nail polish themselves are smaller in size than your typical drugstore nail polishes. After browsing on Amazon, I found that the average price of one set is around $3-10 dollars. The relatively large price window was very surprising to me!

I also came across a review from Youtube beauty guru FromHeadToToe, who had the same set but in different shades. I have attached her picture here because it explains a lot better.
Straightforward enough, you start with the translucent polish all over your nail. You can choose to use more than one coat, I used two coats for mine and I will attach a picture of my own nails down below.

After it dries, you apply the second polish, which has glitter to half of your nail – from the tip to the middle, not the base. From there, the third polish is applied which has bigger glitter particles, giving it a beautiful gradient!
There are also instructions on the back as well (written in Korean but with straightforward pictures).
Unfortunately, I was only able to wear my nails for one day as I had to work the next day. I work part-time at a coffee shop, where we are not allowed to wear nail polish due to health reasons. This is both good and bad. The good is that I have saved a lot of my money by not buying copious amounts of nail polish.

The bad part, of course, is that I love painted nails and that I miss being able to paint them whenever I want! I apologize for the blurry picture, I was in a hurry to work and quickly snapped this picture. I was having a hard time removing the glitter off my nails. I have yet to find an easy way to remove glitter, if anyone has a solution PLEASE let me know! I know you can wrap your fingers in foil and let it soak but I don’t have the patience to cut up the foil, soak my nails, etc etc etc.
A better, less blurry picture of my nail. I showed this picture to my best friend and she thought my finger was swollen. No, my nail naturally looks like that,I don’t have “lady-like”  long, slender, and beautiful fingers :(.

Anyways, since I didn’t get to wear this for as long as I hoped (3+ days at least!), I wasn’t able to test how long lasting it was. One thing that I really liked about the nail polish was that it gave my nails a good healthy and natural shine. My nails also looked thicker and healthier with this on, kinda like gel nails but that might have been the top coat I used from my friend. I am hoping to try this polish out again in the upcoming months so I will post an updated review to this current post when I do!

I also found this awesome compilation online of all their various sets! I used the one in the middle, first one on the left. I really like peachy and pink sets in the first row! What about you?

Pros:

• Love the shade and idea of this!
• Don’t have to waste time finding three separate nail polishes that will blend well together
• Gives your nail a healthy shine
• Many beautiful colours to choose from

Cons:

• Small nail polish set
• Glitter was hard to remove (But then again, all glitter polish is difficult to remove)
• Can’t buy this in Western drug stores or Sephora, best bet is online or in Asia

Update: I wore this nail polish for four days again the week after writing this draft. Most of the polish had chipped off, except for the glittery tips. I noticed that my nails began to chip the second day. After going swimming on the third day, more than half the polish had chipped 🙁 But overall, not too bad! I also didn’t wear a top coat, which probably would have helped!

That’s it to this review! Happy painting everyone!
-Carmen