I stopped by Ulta a couple of weeks ago and picked up two polishes from the Barielle Holiday Hustle Collection.  I wasn’t really planning to look for these, but I don’t get to Ulta very often, and when I saw the display they looked so pretty and shimmery that I wanted to try them.  Keep reading for swatches and a review!

The Barielle Holiday Hustle Collection has a lot of glittery and metallic shades in it, but I chose only the two that jumped out at me–Snow Day, which is a light blue, silvery color, and Gelt Me to the Party, a bronzy, dark gold.  Both are frosty metallics and you have to be a little careful of the application to avoid brushstroke lines.  I’m not used to frosty polishes, and after trying these two I’m thinking they are just never going to be as perfecty uniform as sparkly finishes, but the brushstrokes in these almost fade away once they’re dry on the nail, and don’t really bother me.   I did have to use three coats of each of these, but I liked the application and the brush, which both seemed pretty nice.

Snow Day is very metallic on the nail, it made me suddenly crave more frosty, metallic shades like the China Glaze Khrome Collection.  I wasn’t paying attention to nail polish at all when those came out, but I now have Millenium on order!  Snow Day is beautiful and wintery, it gives a cold feeling.  I like that it is definitely light blue but in some light looks almost straight silver, or grey–it’s so light of a blue that I felt fine wearing it at my fairly conservative office.  It’s subtle.

Gelt Me to the Party was the first polish I chose from the display–it’s the kind of color I really like, just a little bit unusual.  To me, the best description would be that it looks like tiger’s eye (the gemstone)–it has a dark base, but a very yellow-orangy gold and uniform shimmer, so it also catches the light.  So pretty!  I think it would be a nice color for fall, not just the holidays, and I bought it sort of imagining that I would wear it earlier next year.  I do think the name is a little weird.  I guess it’s because of gilt?   But a lot of reviewers who posted about it early on thought they might have received a misspelled bottle.  It appears not.  They’re all spelled like that.  That spelling makes me think of those kind of goopy jars of gefilte fish at the grocery store which is not a happy association for me.  Too much odd ‘ge’ and ‘l’ close together.

I bought these at [smartlink id=”2″], and they’re also available at [smartlink id=”1″] .