Benecos Expressive Mint

Hello my lovelies! How is your week going? Everything went well with my exam on Monday and now I'm preparing for my last one. Only 2 days left and I will finally be free. The polish I'm showing you today is not season appropriate. It's almost December and I'm showing you something minty. Oh well, I don't always wear season appropriate polish, so why should my blog be any different? 

Benecos Expressive Mint indoors, artificial light

First of all, let me tell you that this brand is totally new to me. Not only is this the first Benecos polish I try, but I haven't even heard of them before. This polish came in the goody bag from the blogger meeting we had a few weeks ago in my town. So, naturally, I was excited to try it out because I love finding new brands and because, let's face it, the color is gorgeous. By doing a little research, I found out that Benecos is a German brand that sells vegan or organic cosmetics. Not sure what that means in terms of polish, but I can tell you that the polish is 3free, so no nasty chemicals are in it. I believe the brand is only available in Europe and don't even know where it can be found, but I've been told that organic shops carry the products. You can check out their website if you wanna know more. 

Benecos Expressive Mint indoors, artificial light

Expressive Mint is a gorgeous pastel green, that can be easily called mint leaf. Application was kind of tricky because it needed 3 coats to look decent. It went on streaky and pretty sheer at first, and it was really hard to level out. Seche Vite did the trick and made it look better in the end. 

Benecos Expressive Mint indoors, artificial direct light

The first thing I thought of when seeing this polish was how close it looked to my beloved OPI Mermaid's Tears. So of course I had to do a comparison for you guys. They are indeed very close, although not identical. The OPI is a bit lighter, while the Benecos is darker and dustier than Mermaid's Tears. The difference looks bigger in photos than it is in real life. 

OPI Mermaid's Tears versus Benecos Expressive Mint without top coat, artificial light

The photo above has no top coat and you can see that both polishes tend to apply a little streaky. Truth is, Mermaid's Tears doesn't have a great formula either. They both need 3 coats to be completely opaque, although the OPI is a bit more pigmented. I also noticed that Mermaid's Tears dries faster than Expressive Mint. 

OPI Mermaid's Tears versus Benecos Expressive Mint with top coat, artificial light

After adding top coat, both polishes leveled out nicely. Again, I would like to point out that my camera made them look more different from each other than they really are. I'm sure that for the untrained eye, these would practically look like the same thing. All in all, I'm glad I tried this new brand and found something so close to a famous and hard to find polish. I'm sure you can find Mermaid's Tears online if you really look for it, but for us Europeans the Benecos polish can be a good alternative.