Happy Monday everyone,

it has been a couple of days since my last post, I was super busy but have some time to get back to blogging now. Today I want to review 5 polishes from KIKO which I bought back in 2015 (can you believe it?!) Somehow I never got around to showing them to you.

Here it is, the KIKO real glare polish collection.

In this post:

• introduction to the KIKO real glare collection
• overview of the polishes (5 out of 6)
• swatches of the polishes I bought
• conclusion: what I think

Like I said, back in 2015 KIKO came out with this sand textured polish collection called real glare. It came with 6 colors, sadly I was only able to snatch 5 of them.

01 Energetic Peach
02 Progressive Red
03 Adrenaline Ocean Green
04 Keen Cobalt Blue
05 Alternative Grey Taupe
06 Exciting Dark Brown

Please don’t be confused about the different editing style of the pictures, the bottle shots were taken back then when I bought them and the swatches were taken recently.

Like I said before, all of the polishes have a sand texture, meaning the finish is gritty and uneven. I know a bunch of people who don’t like this type of finish, I on the other hand like it if the application is still easy.

Starting of with 01 Energetic Peach, a peachy color with small gold glitter in it. The sand finish is very dominant, which I like.

 

As you can see in my wannabe macro shot(^^) the gold glitter gives a nice touch to it, but there are also purple, orange and kind of blue shifting glitter in it as well.

 

Next up is 02 Progressive Red, a bright red polish that caught my attention immediately. This one also has gold glitter in it, which matches perfectly I think. The sand texture is less dominant though.

 

 

My favorite of this collection would have to be 03 Adrenaline Ocean Green. A very pretty turquoise polish with (I think) silver glitter in it. It is the perfect ocean color and reminds me a lot of a mix between Essence’s 03 Aquatix Bay and 06 Under water love from their 2014 Aquatix LE. I love these kinds of ocean colors, especially for summer. The sand finish is more dominant again with this one.

 

 

As the name of the polish indicates, 04 Keen Cobalt Blue is a bright cobalt blue polish. The glitter and sand finish are not as dominant here. It is probably the one polish with the least amount of glitter and finish. I love the color but am pretty disappointed with the lack of sand finish.

 

 

The 5th polish Alternative Grey Taupe is the one I wasn’t able to get. They were sold out in the store and they only had the tester bottle. I asked if they would sell it so I could review the whole collection but the sales girls at the KIKO store were pretty rude and disrespectful telling me they won’t give it to me, also not sell it to me either.

Last but not least is 06 Exciting Dark Brown, a very pretty dark grey (rather than brown) polish with lots of different colored glitter in it. The mix of glitter makes this polish really unique, even though they sadly don’t really show off when the polish is applied. This is a typical case of “mostly pretty in the bottle”.

 

Following I took some new pictures of the bottles and swatches.

 

 

 

 

 

conclusion: what I think

As I mentioned a few times, my favorite sand polishes were the ones from p2. Sadly they do not sell them anymore. This collection from KIKO was a nice try since it has one of my favorite sand polishes, but they are kind of difficult to apply. It is easy to get bumps and unevenness, which I think would be a nightmare for polish beginners. In general the colors are pretty, but I think not worth the amount of money I paid for them (~5 € each). I own a bunch of other KIKO polishes which I really love, but sadly these were mostly a fail for me.

Even though the polishes are not available anymore, I hope this review was helpful.

Have a great sunny monday and let me know what you are up to at the moment.