Four shiny beauties from Daphine Polish (review)

Press sample

Hello and welcome to my post of pure awesomeness! I've got four amazing Daphine polishes for you that I received for review. Daphine Polish is a pretty new indie brand based in Ridgewood, NY. For now, she only ships within the US but she's looking in to the possibility of selling internationally. I think that would be great!
Edit 8/24: Joanne is starting to ship internationally on a trial basis! Be sure to read her shop policy first and have fun shopping!

Joanne was so kind to ask me what kind of polishes I prefer, so she could send me something I'd like. After all, a happy reviewer is a good reviewer. And goshdarnit, I'm happy as a clam! Okay, so let's just dive in!


First of all, I need to tell you about the packaging. I was amazed at how much thought had gone into packing these polishes! There were cute stickers on the wrapping paper and on the box (sadly I had to cut through them), the polishes were wrapped snugly in bubble wrap and there was a hand-written note on lovely stationery included in my blogger package. Everything about this shows how close Joanne feels to her polish, making me feel the same way. I got happy just opening the box, and I hadn't even seen the bottles yet. Speaking of bottles, let's have a look at them!

Daphine Polish uses square bottles with a long cap. Although this isn't aesthetically pleasing to me, the long caps make for great control while polishing. I mean it, I seriously love the longer caps for a neat application! The soft brush helps with this too.

The labels are somewhat mattified, giving them a professional look and feel. I hate it when labels are applied crooked but that was not the case here. And I'm a nit-picker, so you can trust me ;-)

The names are on paper labels on the bottom. As you can see, I received Blue Sun, Grape Is Favorite, The Fashion Club and Boardwalk Carnival. Each mini contains 6,5ml / .22 fl. oz. so that's a bit more than the average mini. Full sized Daphine polishes will come in 16,5ml / .56 fl. oz. size.



The Fashion Club

The Fashion Club is a yummy raspberry jelly polish that gets its name from the Daria TV-series. The pic on the left shows two coats. There's still a tiny little bit of a visible nail line, but the color was just too cute to keep from you.

Confession time! I applied thick coats, which was no problem with this polish. This jelly-goodness has no bubbles, and by the time I got from my pinky to my thumb (that's my polish direction), my pinky was already dry to the touch. How's that for drying time?

Here's three coats. And the shine, ooh the beautiful shine! This is a sweet polish with a kick! While polishing, I could almost taste and smell the sweetness that goes with this color. Oh polish, why don't you have taste *deep sigh* (Disclaimer: please don't ever drink your polish or the supplies! I've never tried it but it can't be healthy LOL)

I used some different lighting for The Fashion Club because it makes for better color accuracy, so please excuse my vampire fingers.

Macro shot! As you can see, The Fashion Club has black and purple stars, white glitter in various shapes ranging from micro to medium hex, some white squares got lost in there too and then the really cool part is the small iridescent glitter that flashes blue purplish and then disappears as I turn my hand. You get to see all the pretties in one close-up shot right here!

And then it was time for some nail art! Because of the deep raspberry hue, I would have drawn a raspberry, with some leaves on top.... But no!

To honor this beauty's name, I went with high heels in some kick-ass colors, because she herself has some kick to her sweetness.

I almost forgot to mention this little tid-bit of information: with the larger shape glitter, you often see some sinkage occur. No worries, just turn your bottle upside down for a little while before polishing. All the heavy glitter will 'sink' to the top and you have glitters-a-plenty! Swizzle around with the brush if they start to sink again, you'll get the darn things on your brush :-p





Grape Is Favorite

Another shiny beauty! Grape Is Favorite received its name in honor of stand-up comedian Brian Regan's favorite snow cone flavor. Our grape colored crelly does her name justice. This polish feels smooth, but looks a tiny bit bumpy so I preferred applying a top coat. After three fairly thick coats, I had no visible nail line left.

There's no large glitter in this polish, so no tips & tricks for fishing or swizzling. Just smooth, easy polishing here.

Because of the crelly properties of Grape Is Favorite, the polish gets a dimensional feel when applied on the nail. Like looking through it, but still you can't see the actual nail. It's amazing! So squishy!

Wrapping my tips was a bit of a challenge. Sure, I can pile up the polish on the surface of my nail, but try doing that on a tiny ridge! Some creative polishing got rid of the white line that wanted to stay visible so desperately, but I did that sucker in.

There's white square glitter in this polish, as well as some mysterious kind of iridescent flaky goodness. They are elusive in front of my camera, but I managed to capture some. See, there in the lower right corner? Yes! We have definite flakage!

Really? A snow cone? How original!

Confession time again! We don't know snow cones in the Netherlands! The closest things we have are slushies in a cup or ice cream in a waffle cone. So I drew a waffle cone before I knew it was supposed to be a cardboard one. Whatever. This looks better anyways. What do you mean I'm obstinate?












Blue Sun

Gah. Just gorgeous. Blue Sun is definitely blue, even your mother can't deny that. With a smooth application and such an intense color, I can't help but fall in love with this polish. Shown here are three normal coats (meaning not too thick, but not super thin either), no top coat because mine has started to dry out and leave bubbles all over the place. I really need to go to the store and get a new bottle *sigh*

Smooth as a baby's butt, n'est pas? You can even see my light box reflected in the surface, it's that smooth. Are you impressed yet?

The color is just. Wow. And the shimmer. You would expect streaking with this kind of shimmer polish, and no, I don't mean the no pants on version. I mean the visible lines in the polish direction, but luckily, I didn't experience either.

Tadaaa! A polish named after a mysterious corporation in the Firefly TV-series deserves to be paired with the logo of said corporation. So I drew it. Just for you.  Here's a pic for reference:



Boardwalk Carnival

Boardwalk Carnival is the last polish I will show you today. It's a very bright, happy polish with neon and holo glitters. Yay for neon! I was stumped as to which color to layer this one over. I tried it out over many different colors before landing on OPI's Mod About You. The accent nail is Kleancolor Neon Purple because I really liked that combination too and I couldn't choose :-p

There are so many combinations possible with Boardwalk Carnival that I could just do a whole post with different layering possibilities. The yellow, blue and pink glitters have their own complimentary colors so they stand out differently on various colors. It's fun!

Did I mention this polish has no bubbling issues whatsoever? I didn't apply this one single coat you're seeing here too sparingly, but she was a good girl and applied smoothly and evenly. Even though I did some weird dabbing motion to spread out the larger glitters, she evened out perfectly so I didn't even need a top coat.

Look at the glitters! I just love the holo glitters, they make my eyes hurt in a good way. I could just turn and turn and turn my nails all day to catch the light in just the right way. Warning: not a good polish for when you actually have to pay attention to your surroundings.

When I went outside to relax and enjoy my polish, the sun hit my nails just right and WOW! Would you look at that holo? It looks like a giant diamond ring! As I turned my hand, I got some blue and turquoise too. Just so gorgeous. Yes, I can honestly say that I love this polish!

Time for another macro shot! In this polish, you'll find short neon blue bars, large neon pink squares (love those), small yellow squares, silver holographic diamonds (love those too) and small blue & purple holographic glitter. The holographic diamonds are camera shy, I think they ran away just before I took this picture. Maybe if we whistle, they'll come back?

Confession time, AGAIN! We don't have boardwalk carnivals either in the Netherlands. Sorry to disappoint you :-p I actually had to google it to find out what it was. I saw a lot of ferris wheels in the pictures so that's what I drew, I made one with yellow carts to match the yellow glitter. That's also what that weird flag is doing there, being neon for the sake of the neon glitter. The white lines in the front were supposed to be the white beach fences you tend to see around... well, beaches and boardwalks. I'd say, not my best nail art if it needs this much explanation, but a nice try indeed.

That's it for today, folks! If you like what you see here, feel free to visit Joanne's shop on Etsy. She's also on Facebook and Instagram so you can keep up with beautiful swatches, new releases and sales. Feel free to contact Joanne, she's really nice and will answer any of your questions! Thank you for watching!

I received all of the polishes in this article as a press sample for an honest review. Opinions expressed are 100% my own and not influenced in any way other than the quality of the product itself.