さくら祭り Sakura Matsuri

Spring has sprung here in Australia. About time! I'm over this cold weather and I can't wait to get back into my Summer clothes!  As I mentioned in my last post, I'm weighed down with assignments and exams at the moment, but I've just received nail mail from two indie polish sellers, Gloss 'n Sparkle and Rainbow Honey. The timing of their deliveries couldn't have been more perfect. Since I don't have time for elaborate nail art at the moment, layering glitter polishes is an obvious alternative as it's not so time consuming.

I had such a hard time trying to decide which polish would grace my nails first, but since it's Spring Rainbow Honey's 'Sakura Matsuri' was the obvious choice. 'Sakura Matsuri' (さくら祭り) means 'cherry blossom festival' (my Japanese classes are coming in handy for something!). It's the namesake polish of the collection, and I've been lusting after it for quite awhile. Luckily for me Rainbow Honey just re-released the collection, so I jumped on the opportunity to pre-order it and it's finally in my hot little hands!

Full sunlight

Full sunlight

Indoors

Close up - full sunlight

In the above photos I've layered one coat of 'Sakura Matsuri' over China Glaze's 'Secret Peri-wink-le'. I've only ever seen 'Sakura Matsuri' layered over greys, blacks, and light pinks, and while it looks very pretty (and absolutely stunning over a black) I wanted to see what it would look like over a colour that wasn't so neutral. I'm quite pleased with the combination. Perfect for the start of Spring!

The description on the website reads: "The Sakura Matsuri Namesake is full of pink and white blossoms, adorned by holographic and iridescent glitters. It is a fun and festive layering polish that perfectly captures the spirit of the collection." I entirely agree!

I had absolutely no problems with the application of this polish whatsoever. No fishing for glitters (even the blossoms!), it's a perfect consistency, and the distribution of glitter throughout is even. I get a bit OCD if one nail ends up having more of one coloured glitter on it than the others, but Rainbow Honey clearly have the ratios of their glitters down to an exact science.

Bottle close up - amazing glitters!

Bottle close up - more of the red glitter apparent here

Now for the nitty gritty. You can find Rainbow Honey's polishes here. They're $10 for a 15ml bottle or $5 for 7ml. They come very professionally packaged, complete in their own boxes with colour swatch stickers on top. They're well worth the $10 for the full sized bottle in my opinion. International shipping is a flat rate of $16.95, so I recommend ordering a few polishes to help even out the shipping costs. If you're in America where Rainbow Honey is based (lucky you) shipping is $5.95. It took just over two weeks for my polishes to arrive in Australia, and the crew at Rainbow Honey were very friendly and fast to respond to any queries I had. Finally, all Rainbow Honey polishes are the big 3 free and not tested on animals, gotta love that!

Cute packaging!

 So that's it! If you've been considering buying some indie polishes, I definitely recommend you check out Rainbow Honey. Over the next couple of weeks I'll be showing you my other Rainbow Honey polish as well as my new Gloss 'n Sparkle polishes. I'll be getting back to my assignments now I guess :(

P.S. If you do place an order with Rainbow Honey, add the 'Sakura Matsuri Cuticle Balm' to your order. Only $3.50 and it smells DIVINE.