Kure Bazaar – nail polish without the chemical nasties

For the final post under this month's theme, Kay passed a nail polish my way to try by Kure Bazaar (a shade called September), that contains up to 85% natural ingredients. Having faced up to the fact that we absorb a lot of the product we apply to our skin directly into our blood stream (you can read all of our 'Healthy January' posts here), it has become important to me to find some good options for nails.

I'm a nail polish addict, I'll admit it. I've been wearing nail varnish of one shade or another almost every day for the last 20 odd years. I recently tried to give my nails a detox and went out with bare nails (oh how exposed I felt!) for a good couple of weeks. It was necessary, as years of slapping on one chemical-laden shade after another and removing them with equally chemical-laden products has left them weak. It definitely did my nails some good but as soon as Kay handed me this incredible shade of pink I had to slap it on my mitts immediately. It's beautiful....

I'd probably describe this colour as a raspberry pink; it's bright but not your typical hot pink. It's so pigmented that one coat is all you need, although a second coat and a top coat add extra shine and make your manicure last that much longer. The brush is a very nice size and shape and the polish glides on evenly. As an extra bonus it dries very quickly – a relief for every cab driver who has ever had to wait impatiently in my driveway when I inevitably decided to paint my nails at the eleventh hour!

So what makes Kure Bazaar so special and worthy of the £14.95 price tag? Well, it's the brainchild of Brazilian model Kartika Luyet, who aims to give us all better nail health by preserving our nails' natural vitality. These polishes are being billed as revolutionary due to the lack of 'toxic baddies' and inclusion of natural ingredients like cotton and wheat.

According to online natural beauty shop Love Lula: Kure Bazaar Nail Colours have NO Toluene, NO Formaldehyde, NO Dibutyl Phthalate, NO Synthetic Camphor. I'll admit I don't know exactly what all of these are but I sure as heck don't want them on my nails!

I feel the packaging is worthy of a mention here. I know that one concern Kay and I have had when looking for beauty products that contain fewer chemicals, is that the packaging should look high end – especially if the price tag is. You often have to pay a little more for natural products but if the product is great and the packaging looks sleek then it tends to be worth it. And this scores very highly.

In conclusion, due to the fact that I get through a horrendous amount of nail polish, I don't normally spend this much on it. However I do believe in almost every case you get what you pay for. Nothing about your typical nail polish is natural – the smell, the colour, the list of unpronounceable ingredients – but this nail polish is different. I'll hold my hand up and say I think it is well worth the price.

Sadly we often associate natural products with a poor performance, leaving a frustrating conflict – do we want fantastic, effective products or ones that are kind to our bodies? Thankfully companies like this are raising the bar and giving us both. This product is vibrant, lasted the best part of a week without chipping, and who knows, in the long term it might even help a nail polish addict like me to improve the condition of my nails.

Kure Bazaar Nail Colours, RRP £14.95. Check out the other fantastic shades on offer at www.lovelula.com