Make Up Academy Nail Varnish

Despite being quite the make-up virgin (for someone of my age and generation anyway) I’ve recently been getting into nail polishes since a couple of my university friends have started getting into nail art. To start keeping my nails looking nice when they weren’t willing to paint them I decided to purchase some basic nail polish to try myself, and MUA’s nail polish fit the bill!

For those unaware, Make Up Academy, or MUA, is the Superdrug store brand of makeup, everything of which costs only £1! As somebody who doesn’t wear makeup on even a daily basis (!), I like trying the Make Up Academy items as their low price (combined with 10% student discount for me) makes them almost risk-free to experiment with- if I don’t like the product at least it wouldn’t be a colossal waste of money even compared to the other budget makeup brnads. I picked up Shade 3 of this nail polish because I’m quite a fan of purple and the darkness of this particular colour I think suits my skin tone (quite dark) the best.

The bottle is comparatively and nothing special other than name and logo appears on the front. However at least the bottle transparent and you can see how deep the shade of polish is, plus it seems to be filled up as much as possible instead of being a clear gap between the level of polish and the lid. The ingredients are on the back of the bottle and although I’m listing them all here I didn’t spot any chemicals that would raise eyebrows. It’s very easy to open and close without causing spillage.

Although this particular shade is very dark and pigmented, I would thoroughly recommend putting two coats of this on. Painting on my first coat you can tell the polish is very streaky and thin, but let that dry for about 5-10 minutes then put on your second coat and it comes out much better. The brush covers your nails evenly and doesn’t let the polish drip off it. It dries in about 15 minutes which I think is a decent amount of time given the price!

I don’t expect this nail polish to last weeks and weeks but I find that it doesn’t chip off by myself two days after application. After a week or so the majority of it is still there that I could just put on a top-up coat if I was feeling lazy and it would look fine.

Overall then I would certainly recommend MUA’s line of nail polishes. Not only are ridiculously cheap but the quality is still beyond the price tag. Even if two coats are needed unless you repaint your nails daily it isn’t that much of a problem given how much you’re paying. This shade is a lovely colour and lasts longer than you expect, so I’d check their line of colours out!

(Review also on Dooyoo under the username Anti)