Collection: Etude House 2015 Spring/Summer, Afternoon Tea

This summer, I thought I’d try out my first South Korean nail polishes, and chose to start with the popular Seoul-based brand Etude House. I purchased mine on sale for just under US$4 each at Cosmetic Love (referral link).

I picked up three polishes from two of their recent Play Nail collections:

Today’s review is for Tea Champagne (374), from their Spring collection, Afternoon Tea. It’s a cute beige polish with warm golden shimmer.

The formula is semi-sheer, but you can get pretty decent opacity, with just a hint of VNL, using two or three coats. It looks nice and smooth enough with just one coat, as well, if you prefer a sheer wash of beige shimmer.

The brush is wide, and a little on the shorter and thicker side. The bottle is small and adorable, with cute designs on the cap. This particular polish sports an adorable teacup pattern, reflecting the themed collection to which it belongs.

Overall, the polish is perfectly nice and I would certainly buy another if the color looked interesting to me. The quality is good, and, considering the low price tag, it’s a good nail polish deal. If Etude House polishes were sold at my local drugstore, I’d probably eventually amass an embarrassingly large collection of them! Keep in mind, however, the bottle is smaller than usual at 8 mL.

Etude House Play Nail retails for between US$2.90–3.90 (it seems to depend on collection) and is 0.27 fl oz / 8 mL. It is made in South Korea.

Etude House was founded in 1966—their website claims that they are the first South Korean makeup brand—and is based in Seoul, South Korea. It was acquired in 2006 by Amorepacific, another South Korean company which owns Laneige and innisfree, as well as fragrance brands Annick Goutal and Lolita Lempicka.