Adorned Nails: Herôme Ottawa

All right. This is a first for me. White nail polish. I'll put it simply. It's frosty white, it's a shimmer and hey, it's matte!

That matte part, I wasn't expecting. It isn't super matte though as it does have a dull sheen. You can probaby see that finish in these first two images. This is the other bottle of polish that the folks at KOH had kindly sent to me together with KOH Meditate a few weeks ago. Herôme is a sister brand of KOH, by the way.

Ottawa is part of Herôme's Winter Collection called Canada. All Herôme's coloured nail polishes are named after cities around the world (they are collectively called World Inspired Colours - W.I.C.). So, it follows that all six polishes in the Winter Collection are named after Canadian cities - Ottawa, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Québec, Surrey and Mississauga (Toronto and Montreal are already in the core collection, in case any Canadian is wondering).

Ottawa the polish and I didn't get on too well at first. Application went well but drying time was weirdly long. The following started a week and a half ago, when we had snowfall.

First attempt: Everything went perfectly but half an hour after applying two coats, I had a dent on one nail. Okay, perhaps I should have done thinner coats, I thought. So, I re-did that one nail and got the photos with the snow outside. I removed the polish later that day.

Second attempt: Again, all went well. This time, I was mindful to apply thin coats (three). Three hours later, I went to sleep. I woke up the next morning with some wrinkly dents on several nails. Bedsheet marks. Let's just say I wasn't a chirpy bird that morning. I didn't feel like re-doing all the nails, so I just applied a fourth coat on top. If you notice some covered up wrinkles/dents in the images, you know why.

I couldn't resist doing some adornment on this one. A kind of Ruffian, but just a skinny one. A Skruffian?! Also, it's not flat. A 3-D Skruffian, maybe? Or perhaps, put less elegantly, purple cuticles. I used Essence Nail Art Freestyle & Tip Painter: Metallics 4 Ever.

Okay, this is the part that amazed me. This (second attempt) manicure lasted from Sunday to Saturday. I was soooo not expecting this. Again, I deliberately avoided using a top coat: (a) to keep it matte, and (b) I'm reviewing the nail polish, not a top coat.

Monday

Thursday

Saturday

No visible chipping. In fact, it was the 'purple cuticle' that came off a bit. The moral of the story with Ottawa: once it's completely dry, it's pretty durable.

More information: Herôme website (it's in Dutch though)