Orly Royal Velvet

I first mentioned this polish in THIS post - It was my pick as the most unique shade from Orly's new "Precious" collection, which is now available at  http://www.spicebeauty.co.uk/ for £38.95... I've just had a quick search on there though, and they are currently closed for a stocktake as they have new owners... but a quick twitter plea revealed that ORLY are also available on http://www.beautybay.com/ and http://www.soorganic.co.uk/ although unfortunately neither seem to be showing this collection yet... Mysterious!

As with all the ORLY range - love the packaging, the size of the bottle and the easy grip rubberized cap with helps with application. If you can find these for free postage in the UK, then please share where because I think that for higher end polishes, they are one of the better value brands.

In the bottle this is a rich-purple duochrome shade, which looks divine in the bottle, although I was a little bit worried that that gorgeous duochrome would fail to translate onto the nail - its a very dark purple with a midnight blue micro shimmer

Happily my fears were unfounded – this does definitely require 2-3 coats depending on the thickness of your application, and the first coat can look a little streaky for sure. I’d say two thicker coats with plenty of drying time works best for this.


One word of caution though – the first time I applied this I used Seche Vite top coat over it, and I was really dismayed to see that somehow this altered the look of the polish and made it appear a metallic blue – all of the purple disappeared. Since then I’ve applied without a top coat and not found this problem. It wears reasonably – 2-3 days without any wear on me, which is good considering I rarely wear rubber gloves for washing up, and I type a lot.


Oh, and please make sure you wear a base coat with this one – I failed to the first time I applied it, and it stained both my nails and skin quite badly.

Overall though, a gorgeous colour, and in my opinion, unusual enough to purchase - the pictures I've taken don't quite capture how pretty this is!

Disclaimer - This polish was sent to me free of charge for review purposes. I was not paid for the review, and my opinion is honest as always - I've worked too hard on this blog to bother wasting your time with false reviews for the sake of a free product!