HEMA Holographic Nail Polish - 52 Copper and 53 Blue

Long story short - I've found some amazing holographic polishes. In a real shop. In London. Oh and they cost £3.75 each. I kid you not! Click for a holo picture frenzy...

So the full story is I was visiting family in the capital, and we went for a little afternoon browse in Kingston. We'd spent a painfully long time in M&S and my stomach was grumbling when I wandered past a big glass window, behind which was a lovely big display of nail polishes. I'd never ever heard of this shop - HEMA - but I dashed straight in for a look and unsurprisingly their small range (I think about 5/6) of 'Special Effect Holographic' polishes caught my eye. When I realised they were less than £4 each I couldn't believe it, and it was very tempting to buy them all, but I resisted and tried to pick the best two. Scroll down to see the happy-holo results!

(Note - the lighting in these pictures is different to what I would normally use, and yes it does make my skin look a bit odd. Whilst the polishes do look good in direct sunlight, there isn't much of that going around at the moment so I've had to use some awkwardly positioned bright warm lights to show their full potential)

No. 52 Holographic Copper

First is this lovely light, warm gold shade. I used 2 coats, which was mostly fine, however there were still a couple of bald patches which I needed to touch up. All the coats blended together well, and dried fairly quickly to a smooth finish - no top coat was used. As I say the polish did drag a little on application, I had to be careful to use as few strokes as possible to minimise this. However I think this may be due to the base coat I used. On my thumb nail I skipped the base coat and just did two coats of polish and I found it applied easily in this case. In shade I would describe this as a pale gold colour, not particularly coppery, but the holo effect appears when under sunlight or bright lights.

No. 53 Holographic Blue

I chose this blue polish as I thought it looked like it had the strongest holo effect in the bottle when I was looking at the polishes in the shop. The base colour is a soft, icy shade of blue, but under strong light the bright holo effect appears. Again I used 2 coats of polish, with a few little touch ups, over a base coat. No top coat. In hindsight I do not recommend using a base coat. I think I prefer this one to the gold as it contrasts better against my pale skin, and I think the rainbow is that little bit more defined.

Summary

In case it's not already obvious; I really love these polishes! I'm always seeing pictures of great holo polishes on Instagram but they're very hard to get hold of in the UK, and the couple I have tried have been mediocre. These are the first I've seen in a bricks-and-mortar shop which are truly linear holographic and as a bonus they're really affordable.

If you haven't heard of HEMA before (I certainly hadn't) it's one of those very colourful do-everything shops, a bit like Tiger. You can wander in and easily fill your basket with a bunch of things you never realised you needed! I spent a long time getting lost in the stationary section and managed to pick up a neat little phone case for my old 4S. According to Google, it's a Dutch brand and they've only opened a few stores in London so far but I'm sure they'll soon start popping up everywhere. Until then there is a website I've linked to below.

Shop this post

• Holographic Copper - £3.75
• Holographic Blue - £3.75
• Find your nearest HEMA store (UK)

Here's a cheeky little gif of the live holo action..

Amy

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