Review & Swatches: pa nail color in AA66

Before I get into this review, I'd like to mention that lately I've been receiving requests to review affordable Asian beauty products. For those new to this blog, I have actually reviewed several Asian beauty products in the past (with many more to come). You can view them all by selecting the "Asian beauty" catagory on the right-hand sidebar of this blog. Hope that helps, and expect more Asian beauty reviews in the weeks to come!

Now, for those of you who are already aware of my love of Asian beauty products, you probably already know that I love me some pa. Dear Laura is a Japanese cosmetics company, and one of their lines is pa, which includes nail polish and other beauty products. These adorable little pa polishes retail for about $6 at most Asian markets here in the San Diego area (I purchased this polish at Marukai Living) and I know from other bloggers that you can find them in just about any major city that has a Japantown or Little Tokyo type of district--sometimes they can even be found at Asian grocery stores.

pa nail color in AA66

(retail: between $4-$6 in the US)

Keep reading for more info and swatches...

The thing I love about pa is that, after a nail trend becomes popular here in the US, I can almost count on the fact that the pa displays here in San Diego will add versions of the trend-of-the-moment. They did this with flakies a while back (remember my pa flakie polish?) and when I was at my local Maurkai Living store recently, I just about fell over after I noticed that they had added about six new milky-glitters to the regular pa display! If you saw my post from last week, you know I've been obsessed with milky glitters ever since the Nails Inc. Sprinkles came out and I was super excited to find a drugstore version here.

Back to the pa display: the one I really wanted (pastel pink) was already sold out. I contemplated getting the milky nude, blue and white glitter polishes but ultimately ended up getting just the white (it was the one that really stood out to me--I love the cookies-and-cream vibe to it).

I don't know know the weight of these polishes, but here's a pic for comparison:

I told you, they're small!

I love that they embed holo glitter into the caps.

All swatches were photographed after three coats of AA66, no top coat:

I heart milky glitters!

Now that I've gotten that out of my system, I will say that this polish isn't perfect, but I think it's worth a purchase if you're looking for a milky white with black glitter and you happen to find a display. The first coat basically deposited zero glitter onto my nails. But don't let that scare you--you do have to fish a little bit for the glitter, but it becomes more apparent and more abundant with the second and third coats. You'll definitely need three coats for good opacity and a decent amount of glitter on each nail, but I want to emphasize that the overall look gets better after each coat and I think it's definitely worth the extra trouble.

Another thing I want to emphasize is that the glitter in this polish is very small. The large hex glitter you see above is deceiving--it's actually quite small when compared to the chunky hex glitter we see in lots of US drugstore polishes. And the small hex glitter in this polish actually just looks like specks to the naked eye. In fact, in person, my nails sort of look like speckled eggs (which makes me love this polish even more).

Dry time is average; just be sure to allow each coat to dry before you apply the next and you shouldn't run into any problems.

Do you own any pa polishes? How do you feel about milky glitters?  Do you already own some? Is this a trend you're currently embracing?