Some of you European girls may suggest the trusty Affiniti who ships internationally. But their definition of "international" does not include Hong Kong, so this option is out. There indeed is a local beauty store who carry a limited selection on Nfu-oh. The selection is so limited that I haven't seen any of the color on any of the nail blogs. A couple of boring reds and pinks, frosty blue and green, I couldn't find any reason to justify paying $10 for them.
And then one day, Lucy from Lucy's stash talked about some replacements of Nfu-oh flakies. The replacement polishes looked strangely familiar. They are Golden Rose, which happens to be available in the very same beauty store that sells boring Nfu-oh.
I rushed there, found them, covered in dust, hidden in the unorganized pile of polishes. Some were missing chunk off the bottle, some covered in dried up leakage, some were not full. But what can I complain? They are $0.8 after all.
How do I like it? I'll let the photos do the talking
It takes my breath away. Look at those blue and green flakies, how gorgeous they are!
I used 2 tricks that I learned from The Manicured Manatee - nude base coat and partner polishes here.
Partner polishes - I guess flakies are supposed to be used for layering, so they are extremely sheer and no matter how many coats you put on, you are never going to build it up to the bottle color. The genius Manicured Manatee came up with the solution by layering them over polishes that match the base color of the flakies. (I used Zoya Kotori here for its blackened blue)
Nude base coat - Zoya Kotori is quite sheer itself, I wanted it to be opaque in 1 coat as it was just a base coat here. What should I do? I gave it a base coat! Yes, yet another base coat. But this time, it was a nude polish. I used Models Own Nude Beige which matches with my complexion. With the nude polish, it covers the nail bed so the following polishes can build up coverage in less coats.
I'm quite happy with the result, it looks exactly like what it looks like in the bottle.
To give you a better look on its color, I layered it over a black creme and a white creme.
Over white - it gets very interesting here, the colors changed! Pink, which did not appear over dark polish, became the dominant color.
The flakes are packed densely in the bottle, so I had no problem in getting them on the nail. It did not dry to a bumpy surface, so you don't have to put a lot of top coat to make it smooth. As for drying time, I think it's average.
If you are interested in this cheap replacement of Nfu-oh flakies, stay turn. I have more to show you!
