Sunday 27 April 2014

Moyra Polish Review - Sand Polish

Some time ago I signed up for the chance to review some of the Moyra brand polishes, and have just received 3 bottles for review, a sand effect, a cream and a pastel.

This is the first of three reviews, firstly looking at the sand polish.   The bottle I was sent was a deep denim blue blue (# 854), which was really nice to see.  I have many textured polishes in my collection, and many blues, but all of them are much more green leaning, or Tiffany type blue.  This one is a true denim colour, and a colour I had looked to purchase in the past, but hadn't been able to find.

Here's what it looks like on:



Having worn the polish for a few days, I can say that it wears reasonably well.  A few chips appeared after the third day of wear, as well as some tip wear on day two.  However, this is comparable to a lot of polishes I own, and given the amount of work my hands were doing during this time frame I thought it had "reeasonable" durability.

The colour is gorgeous and unlike any other texture polish I have.  The texture is definately there, but not so pronounced that your nails are likely to snag on things.  I would say it has a similar texture to Zoya Pixie Dust, being fine sand like particles without any larger additional textural elements such as hex glitters etc.
The finish, not unlike other texture polishes, is matt, though a top coat can be applied to give a smooth and glossy finish.  It had a nice amount of sparkle in the form of ultra fine glitter particles.  These were not over powering or too glitzy, making it a perfect anytime polish.

Brush Size:
The brush was kind of small and narrow, which it needed to be for the size of the bottle, but it was nothing special.  It compares to the small brush you find in Essie polishes, so if you like the thin style of brush, you would like this one.
Here's a comparison:
Brush Size Left to Right: Essie Brush, Moyra Brush
As you can see the Moyra brush is a little bigger than the Essie one, but it's pretty similar.  I think the photo makes it look quite a bit larger, but most of what you see is the texture polish on the brush.  In real life there's not much in it.

Brush Comparison Left to Right: OPI, Moyra
In comparison to an OPI brush, the Myra brush is very thin.  Personally, I prefer the larger brushes, especially for a sand texture, but that is just my personal choice.

Now for the negatives.  The bottle was awful and made application more difficult than it should have been.  This was due to the top of the bottle being incredibly narrow, and therefore everytime you tried to pull out the brush, the polish wanted to drip all over the place.  It took me a while to realise it was the bottle and not the polish that was the problem.  Here are some bottle shots of the Moyra polish compared to some other popular brands to show how narrow it is:
Bottle Tops Left to Right: Moyra, Essie, OPI, China Glaze
You can probably see on the Moyra bottle that the polish is all around the top and there was no way to avoid this with such a narrow opening.  Moreover, if you look at the brush comparison photographs above, you can see the result of the polish being dragged out of the bottle - it's all up the sides of the brush stick.  I was really not impressed with the mess this made, and drips it created whilst trying to apply the polish.

Overall opinion:
The polish is great, has a really nice texture and is opaque in two coats.  It wears reasonably well, though not quite as durable as other texture polishes I own.  The colour was a real bonus for me.  A really beautiful deep denim blue.  Everyone else seems stuck on creating teal or Tiffany blue polishes in the texture range!

So, would I buy another one?  Probably not, unless they changed the bottle.  It was just to painful to be bothered with when there is already so much choice on the market.  For me to buy this as it is currently being packaged, it would have to be a really unique colour.  I'm hoping the cream polishes will fair better with this narrow necked bottle.  We'll see in my next review!