Nail Polish

This is a lovely polish I coveted for a long time. I know it’s probably best used as a glitter topcoat but it looks very very pretty over bare nails, as long as you don’t have overly stained nails 😀 unless you’re looking closely, the free edge is barely visible as the glitter is so reflective.

These photos all showed 3 coats. Next is a photo showing the buildability of the polish 🙂

So, as you can see, it’s never really going to be ‘opaque’. However, as I mentioned before, it’s so reflective and sparkly that the nail beneath isn’t all that visible. Still, it makes a very pretty topcoat :). Lavender Hexograms is essentially a load of lilac square glitter along with silver microglitter, suspended in a clear nail polish. I love the silver microglitter, it gives such a nice touch. Not sure I understand where ‘hexograms’ came from in the name ;).

Application:

Lavender Hexograms dries at about the usual rate of a non-glitter polish. It did take a little bit longer than usual, but I have a feeling that this was due to the fact that I was pushing the squares around so the layers may have ended up quite thick. I don’t think it’s much of a problem at one or two coats, so it should be fine as a topcoat. I did notice that because the squares are quite large, they did need to be ‘aligned’, as the brush drags them to the end and off the nail as you polish. It’s not too much of a bother but worth knowing if you’re one of those people who doesn’t like the unevenness glitter topcoats can give you.

This is another one that my mum bought me directly from the Barry M website – I’ve never seen it before anywhere else.

This polish gets a huge thumbs up from me for it’s uniqueness – I’ve never seen a topcoat with square glitter and the purple makes it’s ever so pretty. What do you think?

x

Disclaimer: Everything mentioned in this blog post was either bought by myself with my own money, or given to me as a gift from friends/relatives. All opinions expressed here are my own.

This is another of the new Revlons that have crept into Boots and Superdrug. Both currently have an offer on Revlon nail polish. In Superdrug it’s 2 nail polishes for £9.99, and in Boots it’s 2 for £10.

Grapefruit Fizz would be a perfect Valentine’s Day polish, it’s a lovely subtle sweet pink with orangey-pink reflects. How was your Valentine’s Day? My Andy cooked me dinner and set up a candle-lit dinner table and bought me the most beautiful decorative rose I’ve ever seen. I love that I can look at it all year round and it won’t fade 😀

In the pictures, I have 4 coats of Grapefruit Fizz on all fingers except my ring finger, which has 3 coats. The polish is very sheer but also very buildable. I love love love the soft sugary pink and I personally am a fan of the sheerness, I feel like it makes my nails look very clean. You could still see the free edge of my nail in bright light, but this doesn’t bother me. If you don’t like visible nail line, I really wouldn’t recommend this polish unless you plan to use it for layering.

Grapefruit Fizz is a sheer jelly. The finish is a lovely glass-fleck, almost flakie-esque, and the polish somehow reflects orangey-pink in certain lights. This is one of those colours I wouldn’t like as a creme and probably not even as a shimmer, but there’s something about glass-fleck that is just irresistable!

The polish is scented – personally I wouldn’t call it a grapefruit scent, it smells very synthetic, I wouldn’t even call it an ester scent. Almost like sweets, perhaps, but very sickly ones! I’m not really a fan of the scentedness. It made me feel quite sick after a while.

Application:

Clearly, this is a very sheer polish, and required several layers to build opacity. However the coats did dry quickly so this wasn’t too much of an issue for me, and the polish applied nicely too. My only problem (personally) was with the scent, but I managed to defumigate with some candles 🙂

What do you guys think? This might just be one of my favourite polishes ever, it’s so delicate and elegant. Subtle enough for work, for sure. I’m loving my week off, and being able to wear nail polish again! I have a huge pile of ‘unblogged’ nail polishes to get through 😛

How was your Valentine’s Day? What did you do?

x

Disclaimer: Everything mentioned in this blog post was either bought by myself with my own money, or given to me as a gift from friends/relatives. All opinions expressed here are my own.

First off, I’ve been having a play around with my blog, as I’m sure my returning visitors will notice, pretty much everything but the content has changed! It’s likely to change more in the coming weeks, I’m not totally happy with it yet. I’ve made many adjustments to the original theme thanks to my Andy. I can’t pretend to be a computer whiz… Andy did pretty much everything, I managed to change the font coding on my own but that was it!!

Now this lovely glitter. It has won my heart! The best I can think to describe it is AstroTurf green. The texture kind of makes me think of AstroTurf too. I apologise in advance; the pictures all seem to either pull a little more aquamarine than in real life, or make the polish look paler/less dense than it really is. My camera doesn’t seem to want to play ball lately. I can assure you, it’s a very true green, no blue here!

Read More »

This is the polish I wore underneath Barry M Croc Effects – it’s the perfect ensemble for a sophisticated do 🙂

The pictures show 2 coats, although I think if I had longer nails I would add a third for good measure. Starlight is a gorgeous champagney-silvery-gold foil. It’s subtle in that it doesn’t add a huge amount of colour to the nail but it does draw attention with its shimmery goodness! It’s a bit of a colour-changer too, in the first photo it looks quite a saturated gold, moving through to a very pale, silvery gold in the final photo. Very elegant.

Application:

I can’t really fault it, it glides on and dries quickly, and there were no bald patches.

I know there are dupes out there for this one, but perhaps not so accessible to us UK ladies as those of you in the US. Also I think MaxFactor do a very similar mini, but the Barbara Daly mini (7ml) costs £3 in Tesco, where the MaxFactor mini (4.5ml) costs £3.99. And Barbara Daly is often on 3 for 2 – who is the clear winner?

Have any of you tried Barbara Daly polishes? I have 5 now, all are very much cherished in my collection! I bought Starlight when I was feeling very festive right before Christmas

x

Disclaimer: Everything mentioned in this blog post was either bought by myself with my own money, or given to me as a gift from friends/relatives. All opinions expressed here are my own.

I passed my placement! And my case study got a distinction, woohoo! I’m now free to wear nail polish til my heart’s content. I was wondering in Superdrug feeling chuffed that I’d  completed and passed my placement, and spotted a handful of new Revlon polishes. I don’t know whether these are from the 80th Anniversary collection coming out this year, but I certainly recall seeing Dreamer somewhere to do with the collection. Anyways, behold the beauty 🙂

You’ll have to excuse the bad quality of these photos, I couldn’t get a good pull on the colour unless it was in low lighting. Sorry 🙁 My camera always struggles with blues for some reason.

This is such a pretty blue, I can’t even describe 🙂 It’s a lovely dusky cornflower blue. It leans ever so slightly purple. It definitely has a lot of grey in it. I really didn’t think I’d love it as much as I do but there’s something about cornflower blues that always draws me in.

Application:

Dreamer took 2 coats to be fully opaque. It has a slightly jelly-esque formula, which is super duper because it stops the polish being chalky and gives it a lovely shine. I did find that it doesn’t level itself out very well and that you do need to load up the brush a fair bit to get decent coverage. On a few nails I went over the same spot twice and ended up with ridges but I think that was more user-error than anything else. Nothing a slosh of topcoat can’t remedy! It definitely gets a thumbs up from me for the finish.

As I was umming and ahhing over whether to get Dreamer, I did get a little niggle of worry that it was similar to Essie Lapis of Luxury (I should really re-do those swatches!). I really hate buying dupes as I feel it’s a waste of what little money I have. Thankfully, Dreamer is NOT a dupe for Lapis of Luxury. They are definitely in the same colour family though. Index and ring fingers are Dreamer, middle and pinkie fingers are Lapis of Luxury :

Somehow with Lapis of Luxury in the pic it helped my camera get Dreamer colour accurate with good lighting :s!

Lapis of Luxury leans a lot more purple while Dreamer is more blue. These swatches are at 2 coats of both polishes – you may notice that there is still visible nail line with Lapis of Luxury, while Dreamer is very definitely opaque at 2 coats. I guess it comes down to your skin tone and colour/opacity preference. Also, for us UK ladies, the Revlon is definitely more accessible and much cheaper than the Essie.

There’s an offer on Revlon polishes in Superdrug at the moment: 2 for £9.99, while Lapis of Luxury will set you back a good £9.95, and that’s if you get free shipping.

Oh and I don’t think the new Revlons are available in Boots yet, only Superdrug 🙂 Superdrug also have some pretty cool new scented polishes from Revlon, I bought Watermelon Fizz and it’s divine!

What do you guys think of Dreamer? Would you get it over the famed Lapis of Luxury?

x

Disclaimer: Everything mentioned in this blog post was either bought by myself with my own money, or given to me as a gift from friends/relatives. All opinions expressed here are my own.