Summer Flashback with Kiko

Happy Boxing Day to those of you celebrating today! I myself am at work after two days off for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The weather is rather overcast (of course it is; I put on a holo polish last night), and I've got a cough/cold that I've been battling for two weeks now, so to cheer myself up I took a break and was looking through my nail photos from this year to start coming up with my Top 20 for 2013. In the process, I found some Kiko swatches from last summer that I never posted, probably because I was so excited about the Sugar Mat polishes I'd gotten from my swap buddies that I got distracted. These non-textured Kiko colors deserved better from me, so today they'll get to see the light of the internet; better late than never, I suppose.

First up, I have four colors from the Sun Pearl collection, which I believe was limited edition for this past summer: 427 Amable Chartreuse, 429 Blue Spot, 428 River Green, and 430 Chili Pepper Red. Those names do a pretty good job describing the colors; too bad they don't show up on the bottles anywhere (I had to look them up online).



I did Skittles with these colors, index to pinky in the same order as the bottles above. Even though I swatched these four months ago, I did manage to find my notes about them—only to discover that I hadn't written down how many coats I used. I guess I was distracted by those Sugar Mats.



These are all flecked shimmers, with River Green being the most shimmer-packed. Kiko didn't just dump the same shimmer in all of these; each color is different. Amable Chartreuse has a golden shimmer, while Blue Spot has silver.



River Green has brighter green and golden shimmer, and Chili Pepper Red has bright orange.



I also got my first Kiko Quick Dry in those swaps; here's 834 Golden Tiffany, a light Tiffay blue with pearly golden shimmer. I did jot down how many coats I used of this one: 3. I didn't note that it dried super fast, but really with something so pretty, it doesn't really matter. It didn't dry super slow, and that's the important thing.



The shimmer is fairly subtle, but does show up in regular room light.



It has a soft glow in direct low light:



I really am spoiled, that I have so much polish to swatch that I forgot I'd done these. May I never take for granted that I'm lucky and blessed to have made connections with so many great people in the nail polish world that make it possible for me to grow my collection with beauties like these Kikos.