Nail Polish

It’s been a while… In fact I’ve even been absent from Twitter, and I don’t really have a reason. I’m sorry. Anyway, I hit 100 followers while I wasn’t on here – hello to my 100th follower: “evercouldbe” 🙂

I have for you today a very standard black creme, which, if you’ve been reading my blog posts carefully enough 😉 is probably my least favourite choice of nail polish, which is why I couldn’t leave it alone! In fact I only bought this polish to use as a base for nail art and layering. Enter Rimmel London Black Cab!

A very bog standard black: opaque in 2 coats, glossy, tacky. I just don’t like it! It really suits some people, but I’m just not one of those people! Oh, a word to the wise, this polish actually takes a fair while to properly dry, it was sheet-marks galore this morning!

So here are the layering polishes I used – these are all far too sheer to be used alone (i.e. they would NEVER reach opacity, believe me, I’ve tried!)

Left to right: 2true Glossywear Shade 2 (worn on my index finger), MaxFactor Nailfinity Extra Frost (middle finger), 2true Glossywear shade 10 (ring finger), Natural Collection Lunar Haze (pinkie finger).

Onto the beautiful pictures – there’s a few, I’m sorry! 😛

The final photo shows how the polishes look when in a dim light, i.e. in my bedroom which gets no sunlight whatsoever. I’m going to break these down into each layering polish for you.

1. 2true Glossywear Shade No. 2 (index finger) – This is a glitter polish, but instead of a clear base it has purple/pink/blue duochrome shimmer in the base. It also has quite a uniquely-shaped silver glitter suspended in it, which spreads very evenly across the nail. The glitter is kind of linear and almost looks like tiny shreds of aluminium foil 🙂 it gives a very pretty, unique effect. It dries quickly and the effect is reached in one coat. This one looks amazing over pink, purple and blue polishes too 🙂 £1.99 from Superdrug.
2. MaxFactor Nailfinity Extra Frost (middle finger) – This is a very pretty blue shimmer topcoat, which has tiny silver microshimmer particles throughout. The name is very apt – if you think of frost you think blue for icy and glistening icicles etc. I love this one. Dries fairly quickly and the effect is reached in one coat. This one looks amazing over purples, greys, blues etc. Absolutely beautiful. £5.99 from Boots or Superdrug or most large shops (e.g. Tesco).
3. 2true Glossywear Shade No. 10 (ring finger) – This is a gorgeous green shimmer with a very purple base. I wish this one could be opaque in the bottle colour as it’s gorgeous! An amazing duochrome of purple and green. Over dark colours you tend to see the green shimmer with hints of a pinky-purple. It gives this lovely extra dimension to a polish. It’s so hard to describe haha! This looks gorgeous over pale colours too. Over white you see more of the bottle colour purple. This one dries quickly and creates the duochrome green in one coat. I love it! It kind of reminds me of that duochrome you get on some seaside shells and oyster shells and such 😛 £1.99 from Superdrug.
4. Natural Collection Lunar Haze (pinkie finger) – This is a pearly purple-blue duochrome, it definitely leans more blue than the pictures let on. However it’s much more purple-y than MaxFactor’s Extra Frost. It has a very pearlescent finish, it’s probably the most work-appropriate of the four. This one, too, dries quickly and reaches the effect in one coat. £1.89 from Boots.

First things first, I don’t know if you’d noticed but my follower count has significantly reduced as I decided to disconnect this new domain from my old blog, in the hope that people will be able to now see my updates when I post! Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you to all of you lovely people who have re-followed and anyone that may be new to my blog, I’ve never gained so many followers in such a short time haha! I sent a newsletter to my old followers (I think!) but since I don’t actually know what a newsletter is, I don’t know if it worked.

EDIT: I went through it with Andy and we’ve hopefully fixed it now – back to my ole 99 followers! I hope it starts updating in peoples’ Google Readers and Blogger feeds? Check out his businesses here and here, he’s good!

OH oh and I’ve done a guest post over on Polish Wonderland today, you can see this here.

Anyway! GOSH have brought out 4 ltd edition polishes this Autumn/Fall and they are gorgeous, I have 2 so far (Attitude and Forest Floor) but it is more than likely that I’ll have all of them before Spring comes around! Today I have Attitude for you, a gorgeous dark cobalt blue creme.

A very eye-catching blue, it seems to have so much depth. It doesn’t really show in these photos but it seems almost jellyish in the finish, although the formula is decidedly that of a creme.

I needed 2 coats to give a near-opaque finish, the streaks you see in the photo aren’t nearly as noticeable in real life but if it bothers you, a 3rd coat would easily remedy that. It has a very glossy finish – no need for a topcoat. Drying time was average – not super speedy but not deathly slow; manageable. Good for a TV sesh. As always it was very easy to control during application.

I’ve had my eye firmly set on Revlon Royal for a long while now and for the moment, my quest for it is postponed while I gaze lovingly into my beautiful Attitude nails… where was I?

Oh, in case you’re curious, this is very definitely darker than Barry M’s Cobalt Blue, but you can check that yourself when you’re in Boots. I promise you it’s darker (I accidentally forgot to do a comparison – sorry!) The other 3 polishes are a dark green creme, a raspberry pinky-red creme and a dark indistguishable green-grey-blue-black-brown creme. (I say indistinguishable as really, under the glare of Superdrug’s horrible lighting I really couldn’t tell). In any case, they all look lovely, somewhat similar to the upcoming rubber texture polishes from Illamasqua (check them out they look ahmayzing!)

In other news, on rather a whim I decided to dye my hair, having spent a good 2 years growing out my natural colour. It feels very refreshing. I used Clairol’s Nice’n’Easy Non-Permanent dye in 82- Dark Warm Brown. Beware, it is a little more red than one might anticipate from the box colour. Unless that’s just my hair. Anyway, the only problem I’ve encountered is that when I wash my hair some of the dye runs out in the water – don’t wear white while your hair is wet! I have one lovely (rubbish) before and after photo for you:

Left = before, right = after

I like it! I’ve had lots of compliments on it, it’s nice to have a bolder colour than my bog standard natural hair. I did need 2 boxes though – they’re £4 each.

Hope you’re all well my lovely lovely readers, I have a giveaway coming up soon but not until I can find a polish I’m hunting down as my local Superdrug is utterly utterly inadequate.

Emma xxx

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.

It’s been a while – I’ve spent the last couple of days converting my blog to WordPress, which I haven’t completely managed to do (I still can’t figure out how to redirect all my followers – anybody see this in their Blogger/Google Reader feed?) but on the whole I like WordPress a lot more than Blogger.

Anyways, here is a beautiful BeautyUK polish for you 🙂

So, this beautiful polish comes at the delightful price of £1.99. It’s a lovely sea-green shimmer, leans more green than most ‘turquoises’. It has a wonderful texture once dried, almost rubbery, quite unlike any other polish I’ve tried. It dries with a glossy shine.

However, I did require 3-4 coats to cover up the VNL, which was still slightly visible in some lights. From a distance though this isn’t noticeable. It dried lovely and quickly and didn’t need a topcoat, so this one’s a winner with me, not to mention it’s holy grail beauty 😀 it’s a very flattering but eye catching polish, I’m so pleased I bought it after eyeing it up in Superdrug since like, forever!

I have absolutely no idea whether my old readers will see this but I really hope you do. I’m still quite confused with WordPress, for instance, I had to resize all my photos to put them on here, although I’m sure they have a plugin for that. Let me know what you think if you can still remember my old blog layout!

Hope you are all well my lovelies, I’ve just received about half of my OT textbooks so I’m super duper excited about that, especially the anatomy & physiology books because I just LOVE anatomy and physiology 😀

Emma xxx

Hello girlies (and guys… any guys other than my boyfriend read this?), I saw this in Boots and absolutely HAD to get it, no question. Aesthetically a wonderful idea.

• It looks best over a light colour such as white, silver, pale blue, pale pink, mint green or neon pink etc. – the gold glitter drowns out darker colours so the crackle effect isn’t as noticeable. Hopefully I’ll get a few pics up to demonstrate the light colours thing.
• It doesn’t crackle as much as other polishes – I find the thinner you spread it, the more it crackles… but then you lose some of the glitter. It takes a bit of getting used to.
• The glitter tends to all stay at the base of the nail (or wherever you start painting from) and I’ve gone over some areas with more than one stroke, which may account for less crackling.
• It crackles more if you blow on it as it dries!
• It dries matte, which can dull the contrast between the crackle and the base so it’s worth putting a topcoat on.
• It is a typical glitter, it will take that extra bit of rubbing with the remover to get it off!

Behold a beautiful Deborah Lippmann Bad Romance near-dupe, for the very reasonable price of £6.49: