Product Review: Milani Nail Art and Milani Nail Lacquer

My recent trip to the local CVS for a mascara, a few eyeliners, and some nail polish left a bad taste in my mouth, but I did come out of the excursion with a favored new nail polish. So, all went well in the end I guess. You can read about my oh so terrible shopping trip here

Trying to avoid breaking the bank while yet still looking cute, I looked for my favored Wet 'n' Wild and N.Y.C. brand nail polishes, usually available for $1.99. But alas, none to be found. Only Revlon, Cover Girl, and Maybelline filled the isles. Refusing to pay $6 to $10 dollars for a nail polish, I perused the makeup isles until I found something suitable and within budget. Aha! Milani brand nail polishes! They had everything I'm traditionally attracted to: visually appealing packaging/marketing, colors that will work with my pale skin and red hair; and even more important, they were around $4.99 a pop. Not bad;

My first pick was an eggplant colored polish, Milani Nail Art 65 in "Cool Vibe" to be exact. Priced at $4.99, I snapped that one up and picked out one more; Milani Nail Lacquer 91 in "Gold Dust," a soft sparkly golden hue which complimented my fair skin tone quite well.

Milani gets two thumbs up from me right from the start for incorporating shades that will work on red heads; this is an increasing problem for me because cosmetics companies tend to saturate their products with blue and orange hues that can make a porcelain skin tone look sallow, green or blueish, or just too washed out.

But the proof is in the pudding as they say and what looks good in a tiny bottle, doesn't always come out looking so hot when tested.

So, I went home and applied my clear coat and then my first layer of Milani Nail Art in "Cool Vibe." The color had great tone and maintained the eggplant shade. The polish went on with good consistency, not too thick and not too thin; It only took one dab of the brush to get the excess polish off before applying. And the true test of any nail polish? It dried without streaking or bubbling.

Even though the first coat turned out beautifully, I certainly wasn't going to make a firm judgment before completing the second coat. The second coat can often be what makes or breaks a polish since the color of some polishes alters by the second coat. There's nothing worse than spending a half hour painting your nails only to find yourself looking at your hands aghast wondering what possessed you to buy such a god awful shade in the first place. Not so here, the second coat provided a nice rich and deep tone to the eggplant shade. And to my great relief, the second coat did not create that all too frequent and depressing effect of clumping and smudging. This often happens when a polish doesn't dry quickly or the consistency is too thick.

Admittedly, the polish probably could have used a drop of thinner, but I don't consider that a flaw with the polish because I find that all nail polishes benefit from a drop of thinner for every use.

To my great pleasure I discovered a clean and easy to apply polish that has not yet chipped after a full day of work at the computer, not to mention off and on laundry and dish washing. Durability counts for a lot to my mind when buying nail polish.

The second polish I mentioned, the Milani Nail Lacquer 91 in "Gold Dust" has been tested on a friend. The quality and consistency of the first polish holds true with this one as well. The only thing that would need to be watched for, if you are fair complected as I am, is the thickness of each coat so as not to get to much of a brownish tint. The yellow and sparkles do illuminate the shade pretty well so that the brown of the gold doesn't come out too heavy, but you still want to be a bit more careful of the thickness of each coat of the Milani Nail Lacquer in "Gold Dust" than you need to be with the Milani Nail Art in "Cool Vibe."

My only complaint would be the bottle shape - why do cosmetics companies continually make square nail polish bottles when they know that a polish should be rolled in the hands rather than shaken? Ah well, can't have it all.

At $4.99 a bottle, I would strongly recommend Milani nail polishes. You can find Milani cosmetics at most local drugstores.