I wanted a more mainstream color to wear at work after wearing the in-your-face Lynnderella Cauldron Drippings the week before. I also didn't have much time for my manicure and wanted something easy to apply. I love the Hits Speciallita No Olympo holo polishes, and I had not had any trouble with the formulas before. I picked Ares because the Hits No Olympo holo polishes I had tried before resulted in quick and easy manicures. Not so with Ares, but I still love it because the red holo shade is beautiful.
The polish is appropriately named after the god of war; I felt like I had been at war with the polish to try to apply it. My brush was mop-like which made it difficult to be precise. I have not had that issue with any other No Olympo holos, so I assume I just had the one bottle with the bad brush. It happens. The polish was thick like syrup, and it forms a "skin" quickly as it dries, so if you like to use an orange stick around your nail edges as you go, you can rip off a bunch of connected skin-like polish . . . like I did. My first coat was streaky, but a very heavy second coat covered that and any bald patches up. I still had the issues with the tricky skin-like polish threatening to rip as I used an orange stick around the edges as I went along. There was no way I was going to suffer through a third coat, though, so I just tried to be as careful as I could. I still love the polish because it's so pretty.
It is a very attractive shade that's between cherry red and thickened blood red, depending on the lighting. The HBO series True Blood started back up the day I put on this manicure, and the blood red manicure seemed appropriate, although I had not planned it that way. The holo is noticeable. Seche Vite as a top coat did not dull the holo. Cleanup was not too hard. I developed a new technique in my cleanup routine; I used the side of my cleanup brush bristles to smooth out polish bumps (some from my use of the orange stick as I went along) on the edges of my nails. The wear was pretty good. It lasted a full week until I took it off.
Here are some pictures after a day of wear:
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| Sunlight. |
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| Sunlight. |
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| Sunlight |
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| Indoors, office lighting, without flash. |
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| Indoors, office lighting, with flash. |
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| Indoors, office lighting, with flash. |
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| In indirect sunlight. |
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| Sunlight. |
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