My love for liquid sand nail polish

Am I late to jump on this bandwagon? Maybe I am, but that doesn’t change the fact that I simply adore textured ‘liquid sand’ nail polish. There is just something about the gritty, glittery goodness that dries to a matte finish that stole my heart at first swatch when I tried it. These are my favorite brands and shades that I own.

All of the shades I will be showing you chucked into a bowl. There is a mixture of budgetproof to high end colors and more readily available and more difficult to get a hold of brands. Especially depending on where you are located, these may or may not be easy to find. These polishes range from €1.69 a piece to €14.25 and I tried to select some of my more special colors and effects.

I think the first brand that did texture nail polish is OPI. Not the cheapest brand of course, but they are quite on trend and my more special colors are from this high end brand. All polishes you’ll see were also limited editions, so your only chance to still find these is to try Ebay.

OPI Liquid Sands The Impossible (Mariah Carey Collection)
OPI Liquid Sand Vesper (Bond Girl Collection)
OPI Liquid Sands Jinx (Bond Girl Collection)

The first three liquid sand polishes I would like to show you are from the Mariah Carey collection and Bond Girl collection. These are the three more unique shades I own. The Impossilbe is more special because apart from the liquid sand effect it has stars and more chunky glitter particles suspended in its formula. The stars are a bit of a pain to try and get out of the bottle, but if you leave the bottle standing upside down for a bit, you will be able to get them to transfer onto your nails.

I believe the Bond Girl collection was very popular at the time. Especially Jinx was a shade everyone raved about. It is an orange/ coral shade with gold glitter which dries to this semi-matte finish. Vesper is actually my favorite here, but I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. To some people it looks like tar. Personally I love the deep dark purple with black, satin matte glitter.

The Mariah Carey got to release a Christmas collection. And apart from regular shades, there were also liquid sand ones. In The Netherlands these were only available as minis, but in other areas they were also available as full size products. I wished we had the latter, as now I’m stuck with three shades that are very similar, but still these are very pretty combined with the liquid sand effect.

OPI Silent Stars go by (Mariah Carey Liquid Sand mini)
OPI Baby Please Come Home (Mariah Carey Liquid Sand mini)
OPI Make Him Mine (Mariah Carey Liquid Sand mini)

My favorite here is Make Him Mine: the dusty rosy pink shade was what sold me on this trio. Silent Stars Go By is my second favorite as it is a light mauvy taupe shade and I am a sucker for all things taupe. Finally, there is the deeper smokey lilac shade of Baby Please Come Home, which is pretty, but one I would not have owned if I would have had to buy it on its own.

On to some budget picks! Catrice released a line of Luxury Lacquers last year which went by quite quietly in beauty land. This line has now become a permanent part of the range, but none of the shades and not all of the finishes of the Luxury Lacquers limited edition release were made permanent. But the three textured polishes that I bought from that LE are still some of my favorites.

Catrice Luxury Lacquers Sand Sation Tropicoral
Catrice Luxury Lacquers Sand Sation Sandhopper
Catrice Luxury LacquersSand Sation 100perSand Real

Tropicoral is a very pretty pinky coral that is great for spring. Soft, sea green is not a shade I would think of making into a textured nail polish, but Catrice did. Sandhopper reminds me of grassy fields and again it is bright enough so that it is more appropriate for the warmer months. The real winner here is of course 100perSand Real. This silvery white shade works so wonderful in this textured finish as it is almost as if you’re wearing crushed crystals on your nails.

The English drugstore brands of course couldn’t stay behind. Barry M is one of my favorite all time nail polish brands and they did not disappoint in their color selection. I didn’t know Models Own even did textured nail polish until I was at Superdrug and found this really nice vampy green shade.

Barry M Nail Paint Textured Nail Paint Kingsland Road
Barry M Textured Nail Paint Countess
Models Own Absinthe

Again these are all more special finishes. Kingsland Road was a shade which I didn’t think I’d love as much as I do. One problem with liquid sand nail polish it that it can chip very easily, but this one lasts a long time. It also is the only polish here that is void of glitter. I think the matte texture combined with the soft pink makes for a very interesting nail polish.

Countess and Absinthe are a lot darker and vampier. Countess is a deep burgundy/ plum shade with golden shimmer. I love wearing this around Christmas time as it really goes nicely with the festive season. Absinthe is a deep emerald green shade with lighter green glittery specks. Especially Absinthe looks completely different in the bottle to what it looks like on the nail. I think it is a nice touch that the lid of the bottle is covered in a velvety material.

Finally we end this post with the ultimate budgetproof variety. At only €1.69, these Essence polishes are not exactly the prettiest shades here and also the textured effect is not as nice as with some of the other once, but these colors are still unique enough that I couldn’t keep them from you.

Essence Sparkle Sand Effect Here’s My Number
Essence Color & Go Sparkle Sand Effect Hello Rosy

A dark gritty grey with multicolored sparkle is of course a great idea using this textured effect. It is most definitely one of my more unique shades that I own. Hello Rosy is a pink with red glitter. Again nothing too standard, but with that also a shade I wouldn’t wear very often. I also feel that the textured finish isn’t as strong or noticeable as with some of the other polishes I showed you today and with that it gets bonus point for the color, but the actual wearability of it is minimal.

Am I the only one still into textured nail polish? What is your favorite nail polish trend?