So this year I've finally dove into the world of beauty advent calendars for the first time and bought not one, not two but four beauty advent calendars....In all fairness one is actually from 2013 and another is the Birchbox one, so technically I only have two nail polish advent calendars this year........that's the normal amount...right?
Anyway, onto the boxes. I may do a quick post on the Birchbox one at some point in December because it contains an OPI polish but for the most part I'll be focusing on the three nail polish ones.
This is just a quick summary post though for those wanting to know exactly what's in each box. I'll be doing swatches of everything in later posts this upcoming December.
Ciaté // Mini Mani Month 2013 (no longer available)
I'll start with this one as it's not available to purchase anymore..obvs. It's one of the ones from 2013 and as I believe this was one of three available that year. The others were red and green (in the same pattern) but they varied in the shades included. I found this one off eBay and got it for a grand total of £15. Yep. It was brand new but as you can see from the photos I opened it up straight away to see all the pretty colours.
This one contains:
- 19 x 5ml Mini polishes in the Paint Pot formula
- 1 x 13.5ml Full Sized polish in the Paint Pot formula
- 2 x 10g Glitter & Sequins pots
- 2 x 5g Caviar pots
There are quite a few of the previous Mini Mani Months up for sale on eBay but after some research I went for this one as the other years tend to have the same shades as this years so I didn't want any duplicates.
The packaging is nowhere near as nice as 2018 but the further back you go the more basic it gets (and not in a good way). Clearly they've been improving the packaging each year.
Oh man, look at this majestic beauty. It's just beautiful and I'm racking my brain about how to get the design onto my nails. This one is so much better looking than the earlier years and to think I didn't even know it existed until a couple of weeks ago. This one flew past my radar completely until one night at work I googled "nail polish advent calendars" and this one popped up in an Asos ad. It retails at £50 however, I had a £11 voucher at Asos and a 20% off discount code. I got this calendar for £29 with free postage. #winning
Seeing as how I have so many calendars this year, I've already opened the left side of this calendar just to see some of the shades and swatch them as most of the polishes are their new(ish) gelology range. I've only ever tried the paint pot formula but holy hell these ones are shiny. This calendar also contains some of the amazing shimmer shades Tempest, Purple Rain, Paradise Lost, Cyclone and Supernova. I first saw these on the Ciaté website several months ago and I've been wanting them so bad.
This one contains:
- 20 x 5ml Mini polishes - 8 Paint Pot, 12 Gelology
- 1 x 13.5ml Full Sized polish in the Paint Pot formula
- 1 x 5ml Gelology Top Coat Mini
- 1 x 5ml Cuticle Oil
- 2 x Nail & Cuticle Tattoos
I think with this one, I'll swatch them in weeks (like week 1 etc) and put them up in three posts at the beginning of December as I don't know if I'll be able to do a post a day on two calendars (I've got 3 assignments due by the 24th December).
OPI // The Nutcracker & The Four Realms Advent Calendar 2018 (£59.95)
And last but not least is the new OPI holiday collection. I follow OPI on Insta and last month I saw the shades Dreams Need Clara-fication and Tinker, Thinker, Winker and had to have them. Unfortuantely OPI shades are £13 a pop full size, fortunately this calendar had just been released. They'd sold out on the OPI website but Nail Polish Direct still had them in stock so my mum got it me for my birthday in October. It's now waiting patiently on my shelf.
There are 15 shades in the Nutcracker range and the 3 amazing all glitter shades were left out of this calendar (which was very sneaky of them). So I now have to go out buy the full size set for £29 to complete the collection..their finance department sure knows what they're doing. The other 13 shades are OPI "favourites" but I'm not bothered as I haven't tried any of them and they're the normal formula, not the Infinite Shine which is kinda rubbish in my opinion.
Compared to the Ciaté 2018 one, the packing is a little lacklustre but the artwork is still pretty. My only gripes are that OPI mini's don't have the shade name on them and they didn't include the other 3 polishes in the collection.
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And that's it! I'm trying my best not to buy any other advent calendars this year but Black Friday is soon approaching and I have my eye on this Elle Magazine one (it's amazing but £125 and makeup not nail polish). There apparently is an Essie one out there, somewhere...But Essie don't appear to have updated their actual website since 2017 and neither Boots or Superdrug (the main stockists in the UK) are supplying the calendar.
Nails Inc also have one but it's only 12 days and £49 with only 4 full sized polishes; the rest are skincare and makeup items. So overall, not many nail polish calendars this year. Orly had one last year but I'd love to see a 25 day one from MoYou London or Born Pretty. One can dream....
*none of these links in this post are affiliated, just ones I found off Google.
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