Nail Polish

Missguided x Cosmopolitan Freebie – Misstaken

July 9, 2011 3 Comments

So basically, in case you haven’t already heard/seen/bought, Cosmopolitan is giving away one of 3 different shades of Missguided nail polish in each magazine this month. Which is pretty good value if you think about it – £3.50 per polish as opposed to £5 online plus something like £3.75 P&P.; There are three shades up for grabs, ‘Misstaken’ (orange), ‘Misstique’ (turquoisey teal), and ‘Misschievous’ (coral). I picked up the first two, I’ve yet to get the coral!
This polish is everything I’d hoped for in Rimmel’s Tangerine Queen – it’s bright, bold and eye catching, the perfect summer shade.
Just an FYI – I compared my nails with a bottle of Barry M’s Block Orange in Superdrug today and they look pretty much the same, I don’t have Block Orange to compare, but I’d say you don’t need both.
The pictures show 3 coats. This is mainly because at 2 coats you could still see some visible nail line (VNL), which usually doesn’t bother me, but it looked quite dark under the orange. The third coat rectified this 🙂
Dry-time wasn’t amazing, but it wasn’t terrible either. I guess it was fairly average – it was touch dry within a minute or two but you know that time inbetween coats where it’s dry but not dry enough to risk another coat and hence bubbles? It was like that. Also, I found that unless I loaded the brush with plenty (what would seem too much) of polish and applied that, the polish tended to drag a little. Nothing that couldn’t be sorted out, but nevertheless it’s worth drowning the brush a little as the polish isn’t too runny, so pooling in the cuticles isn’t really a problem and it’s fairly easy to control.
It took me absolutely forever and about a million photos to manage to capture the actual colour of the polish. It’s very bright, not neon, but bright enough that my camera would only pick up red, which it really isn’t.
Overall, this polish hasn’t wowed me, I feel that there are probably better polishes (application-wise) out there, but it truly is a lovely colour and that alone makes it worth the £3.50. Also it’s a lovely big bottle of 13ml so you aren’t being cheated out of your money *coughminiOrlybottlescough*
Oh, another FYI, in the Cosmopolitan issue comes a Cosmo Readers’ summer ‘chequebook’, which has a fair few discount codes and competitions, which is also worth picking up. Including NYX and Nfu-Oh, amongst other things, which I personally am most excited about!
Hope you’re all well, I’ve been loving this gorgeous summery sun today, especially after yesterday’s miserable excuse for weather. I seem to suffer with SAD quite heavily and grey skies really bring me right down.
I should be reviewing the other turquoisey teal colour tomorrow, all being well.
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.

GOSH Purple Heart

July 8, 2011 5 Comments

First of all, sorry for the large amount of photos, I blame the fact that it’s a duochrome and I’m not satisfied with the usual 3 pics! And second of all, sorry for not blogging as much, I don’t actually have a reason, I just… haven’t. My nails tend to get a bit raggedy before I take photos which I suppose I could use as an excuse but that’s not why- I’m just lazy and unmotivated and as soon as I feel like I ‘have’ to do something I automatically don’t want to do it, which is also the reason why I’ve taken down my ‘Upcoming Posts’ list – because now that everything’s on the list I feel a pressure to do it and that makes me put it off and blah blah blah, enough of my mindless rambling, and well done if you’ve bothered to read all of this! Anyway, I’m in a positive frame of mind and feeling happy about my blog again, hence the appearance of this post. Shut up Emma! Photo time!


Do you see the beauuuuutiful green duochrome?




This is yet another of those black-ish but not quite black polishes that I adore, since you probably have deduced by now that I really dislike pure black polish on me, but I love the very dark, not-quite-black polishes.
GOSH Purple Heart is essentially a graphite-black base with all that lovely purple floating around. I will just mention, the polish looks largely purple-black in most lights, but in some indirect sunlight (don’t ask, I can’t work it out either) it does have a lovely green sheen to it, like the feathers of a raven or crow. For this reason it has nudged it’s way into my top 10 (if I could ever decide exactly what they are) because I have always had a weird fascination with the lovely iridescence of bird feathers, and always had a desire to replicate it. Anyways, enough of my weirdoness.
The photos show 3 coats, although the polish actually only takes 2 coats for full opacity, but I used the third after a day of wear and I needed to touch up a few edges on my 2 problem nails (peeling and flaking – not the polish’s fault!)
Application-wise, I’ve found this a little thicker than other GOSH polishes, but it still is lovely and dries quickly and lasts forever with a topcoat!
All in all I’m in love, I couldn’t stop staring at my nails both times in the last 2 weeks that I’ve worn this baby.
I know this isn’t exactly a new polish, but it’s one I’ve never been grabbed by in the shop, then on a whim I went crazy and bought 3 GOSH polishes and this was one of them, and I am very glad I did! So if you’ve never been totally convinced in Superdrug then maybe this will help you one way or the other 🙂
Hope you are all doing well and lovely, I have a couple of photos of my school ball and my AMAZING (if I say so myself) dress, but I myself am not looking amazing, but I’ll probably put it on anyway. Argh, too much waffling. Too much of my thought pattern is appearing in this post so I’ll leave you with that! (P.S. I have 2 gorgeous brights coming up in the next couple of days! Get your sunglasses ready!)
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.

Marks & Spencer Quick Dry Sherbet

July 1, 2011 3 Comments

I stumbled upon the new M&S; beauty range last Sunday on my shopping trip, which, can I say, is HUGE compared to how it always was (in my M&S; at least!) They have a huge range of nail polish so obviously I was in heaven. You can have a browse here. I am absolutely in love with the beauty range as you can probably guess, because it is BUAV approved (non animal-tested).

I limited myself to one polish, which was this one, from the Quick Dry range. It retails at £5. The pictures show two thin coats.

So the polish – the polish was opaque in one coat but I added a second for good measure. It dried quickly and glided on my nails beautifully 🙂 it dries very glossy so doesn’t require a topcoat and lasts wonderfully, I didn’t experience any tipwear, which I usually do with most polishes after a day of wear without topcoat. The ragged edges on my cuticles were because I was watching Being Human all day and was chewing on my nails 😐 don’t ask…

The polish was also unusually ‘tidy’ for a red, I don’t know about you but I always find that reds make an absolute mess of my nails and fingers during cleanup and also removal, which wasn’t a problem with this colour, so I was very happy about that!

The only thing I’m not sure of is the name – I’ve never seen any sherbet of this colour!

What do you think? I am very happy with the polish, I know the colour isn’t unique but they have a big range of colours, and at £5 for 10ml (compared to GOSH’s £5 for 8ml for example) I’m happy!

Hope you are all doing good, I have a few lovely polishes coming up so look out for them 😀 Spent a lovely day at the Garden Centre with my mum, we bought the most beautiful Dahlias I’ve ever seen (they’re called Mystic Enchantment, Google them if you haven’t already seen them!) and also some bright pink Gerberas for my room (which I am utterly convinced I will kill within a day but there we go). What have you been up to in this gorgeous sunny weather?
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.

China Glaze Peace on Earth

June 30, 2011 5 Comments

My first ever China Glaze 😛

I love love love this colour. It makes me feel very posh 😛 It was released as part of the Holiday 2010 collection (around Christmas time) It has a kind of pearly finish and flashes green and gold. It has a blue-grey base (although you can’t see it) which seems to give it a lovely dusky, muted tone, and when the light hits it it gives a green-gold flash in the centre while the sides of the nails look dark – it really is beautiful.
This polish took 2 coats, as the first is rather patchy and you can see the blue-grey base colour, but 2 coats covers it all up and smooths it out. Dry-time could have been better, it was touch dry within a few minutes but I felt it wasn’t really dent-proof for quite a while after, but it’s not a problem if you’ve got the time to be careful. It doesn’t need a topcoat, but a topcoat enhances the green-gold flash and really brings out the colour, but the polish is still fairly glossy without.
The one thing I am a little disappointed with is the brush, which is thin and not amazingly useful in neat application. It’s fine, but I personally prefer a wider brush.
However all in all I LOVE this polish and I am super duper happy with it. I bought it from eBay for £6 including postage from Ravendawn71 and it arrived within the specified timescale so all in all je suis un satisfied customer 🙂
How are you all? I had a mahoosive shopping trip with my Mum on Sunday and she bought me some lovely things, including 2 beautiful dresses, one of which I will wear to my school ball on the 6th, I may post a pic if you’re lucky 😉 and some beautiful horsey pajama bottoms 🙂 I also confess I went on a nail polish binge too after Andy let me loose with £20… always a big mistake! I managed to get my hands on some beautiful polishes though, I can’t wait to show you all 🙂 Hope you’re all good.
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.

Rimmel London 416 Night Flight

June 28, 2011 4 Comments

Just a prewarning – there are about 5 pics in this post because yours truly couldn’t decide which pictures best portrayed the colour – sorry!
3 coats of inky black beauty 😛 Now this polish certainly won’t be for everyone. Personally, I love it, because it’s like black with an edge, and I really really hate wearing plain black on my nails, it feels cheap and tacky and it’s messy and I just really really hate it, always have done, even in my emo/rock addict phase I just couldn’t bring myself to wear black nail polish. In fact I had a very similar polish at that stage called “Extreme Blackcurrant” by Maybelline which I adored, but since I’m now boycotting Maybelline I had to find an alternative, which is when I found Rimmel’s Night Flight 🙂 Enough of the life story now.
So if you haven’t already died of boredom… this polish is very streaky on the first coat, so definitely requires a second and if you’ve got time, a third will really set it off but you can get away with two. In fact the main reason I added a third coat is because my index and middle fingernails keep flaking off taking the polish with them but there you go, that’s another rambly story.
Night Flight dries in a good time, although I’d advise, for speed, that you apply the coats thinly. It applied smoothly, no complaints, and the finish was wonderfully glossy and beautiful. The only think I’d recommend you watch out for is how you paint near the cuticles because, as my photos exhibit, it’s lighter near the cuticles so mistakes and messiness are easily noticeable.
The polish, which I’m assuming all the Lycra Pro polishes have (?) is quite wide, it’s a bit longer than that of the Rimmel 60 Seconds range, and seems a lot easier to use in terms of neatness when applying.
Unfortunately, again, I can’t really comment on the wear of this polish as I only had it on for a day or two. I noticed a tiny bit of tipwear but I’m sure a topcoat would seal the deal 😛
Hope you are well everyone, I’m slowly getting into the habit of taking photos of my nails now – I have a lovely one coming up next 😉
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.