Before & After: Milani Hi-Tech

Hello there!!

OMG, stop the presses. Milani has some pretty incredible holo polishes.

I know these have been around for ages, but I never realized how gorgeous they are! I read about them somewhere a long time ago, and they did say they are nicer than they look in the bottle. But that's not saying much, at least when I was looking at this in the light at my CVS, where the polish looked really unattractive. I found it very hard to believe that this was holo at all, let alone a nice holo. But finally the right sale and coupon circumstances combined to allow me to get this for $1.50...and I figured, hey, what the heck--peridot is my birthstone, and this polish is that color, so why not.

As soon as I got it out of the CVS, I could tell a difference even though it was an overcast, dark day. I guess something about the type of lighting my store uses killed any hint of the holo--but believe me, it's there. This polish even shows holo in the crappy light of my house--and when it's in the sunlight, it's really beautiful. It's more like the China Glaze Kaleidoscopes than the OMGs in texture...It's like a combination of a linear holo and a scattered holo (if that makes sense). Better to let the pictures do the talking:

Milani Hi-Tech in sunlight

More sunlight cause I love the sparkle

Sparklelicious, baby

I wore this for almost two days without stamping it because I loved it so much. In fact, I think the only reason I did stamp it finally was because I went to a baseball game with some friends, and I wanted to decorate them in the team's colors (green and yellow). While Hi-Tech is a peridot green color, it flashes gold, so I decided that would work for the yellow part. Here is the manicure I came up with:

I used the Konad plain french tips plate to stamp guides on my nails which I then painted over to darken with China Glaze's Holly Day (this is how I always do my French manicures--plates as guides and then paint over with polish to darken and straighten any crooked lines). I used the same polish and plate BM-202 to stamp the...blobby thingies?

I'm not sure I'd wear this is a 'just because' manicure, but it worked for a baseball game manicure, and I think it might make a good St. Patrick's Day manicure too, possibly. :)

Thanks for looking,

M.