Marks & Spencer Duck Egg (EM)

I realised I haven’t really gone into detail with the M&S; polishes. For just £3 you have a full 8ml of polish. The back label claims that the polishes are “High gloss, fast dry, chip resistant.” I agree with two of these three claims. The polishes all have so far been fast dry, and as far as I can see chip resistant (apart from on my split, peeling index nail, which to be honest is only to be expected). However, I do not agree with the high gloss claim. I would put a polish by Barry M, BeautyUK, GOSH etc in the high gloss category, however I’ve found that the Marks and Spencer polishes, thus far, are incomparable. They have a lovely finish but it’s very muted in that it is not glossy whatsoever. I’m sure a topcoat would solve this issue but I don’t have one since wasting a good £10 on a particularly bad one, but that’s another blog post 😉

Anyways, this is my third and penultimate M&S; polish, as you can see all three so far have been blue-based:

If you click on the photo it will enlarge it, you may even be able to see the green shimmer!

3 coats.

This baby is beautiful right? Well what you can’t see (damn you camera!) is the gorgeous green shimmer packed into this polish, I mean it is stunning! I always worry with shades this pale that they’ll cause havoc clashing with my pale skin, but this one is just perfect. It’s a very very pale blue base with the pale green shimmer and has a gorgeous pearly shimmer finish. I can’t fault the colour. I don’t know if anyone remembers when the Body Shop used to do polishes as a permanent line, but I had three, one of which was a pure white polish with green shimmer and ever since that one dried up I’ve been desperate to find a dupe, and I reckon this is about as close as I’m going to get.

The formula I’m not as amazed by, it was a tiny bit on the thick side and resulted in a couple of tiny bubbles but that’s possibly because I haven’t yet mastered the art of applying a thin layer of quick-dry polish! Nevertheless the bubbles are barely visible IRL and really aren’t a problem.

This took 3 coats to reach full opacity, which I’m not fussed by myself as it’s a quick-dry polish and doesn’t look too bad at 2 coats if you’re in a hurry (I wore 2 coats all today and only added a third for the photos – hence the messy cuticles!)

This is surprisingly flattering to my skin tone and I imagine will be for darker skin too. I can’t tell you how much I love this polish (although I say that every time right? Lol, maybe I’m just psycho about colour!)

The photos are somewhat deceptive because the green shimmer is very much more visible to your real eyes, but was just impossible to capture. So frustrating!

To begin with I wasn’t sure about the name, but looking at it on my nails it really does capture the blue-green combo of duck egg, if in a slightly more unique way, perfect naming is my verdict 🙂

This one I also love too much to take off right away so I’ll be trying some nail art tonight (if I don’t fall asleep first!)

I can’t tell you how much I recommend the M&S; polishes, if only for their unique shades, I am awestruck 😀

Hope you are all well and smiling, I’m so relieved it’s nearly the Easter holiday because with my paper round I just never get a lie-in during term-time, even if it is only an extra half an hour! Also lots of revision to be getting on with 🙁 Ah 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.