Ciate Mini Mani Month Mini Calendrier Manicure....

.... or, "Ciate Advent Calender" to the less posh amongst us ;-)

As a nail polish addict I don't know how Ciate has passed by under my radar but somehow it has. No longer though. After seeing this post on polkaspotsandfreckledots I absolutely had to have one. Now, this year's retails at around the £50.00 mark but you can buy previous year's here for a much more purse friendly cost:

http://www.allbeauty.com/gifts-and-sets/ciate (this is the only one left now, the other 2 featured on Louise's post seem to be out of stock sadly).

It arrived in about 5 days and was 100% perfect. I would never have thought it had sat around for a year (possibly longer, not sure if this one was last year's or the year before's), the packaging was spot on.

I certainly won't be waiting until December the 1st to play with this:

Look at all the prettiness! I was delighted with the variety and can't wait to sample them all, especially the caviar beads, how ridiculously awesome do they look?

After much careful deliberation, I made my choice and it was this one, Starlet:

Described as a "purple/blue 2 tone shimmer".

So, what did I think? Well...not a lot sadly. Read on.

Application was awkward. It went on very streaky and any additional brush strokes on top of an already painted area seemed to wipe off the original polish. It took 3 coats to reach a decent solid colour and even then, you could see some slight patchiness - I think 4 would have been better but as each coat took a good 10-15 minutes to dry, I was fast running out of time. I applied 2 coats of top coat for shine and this was the finished result:

It does look nice in the photos (sorry about my ring finger, I've just noticed the smudging there!) but an hour later it was still a bit tacky and I woke up this morning with lines and dents. It's gone dull as the day has gone on and 2 nails have chipped slightly. So I am really not impressed.

I don't know if it's just one slightly dodgy polish... I'll remain optimistic until I've tried a few more shades. I do hope it's not that the quality has deteriorated over time, if the set has been sat in a warehouse somewhere, as then it would be more likely they will all be the same :-( 

I'll choose another one tonight or tomorrow night and see how I get on with that one. Fingers crossed...