Imagination In Colour UK Nail Polish Blog

So, it’s been a while… I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to get round to posting because I love my blog and I’ve had my nails painted with new polishes practically every day since I last posted, but for some reason I just haven’t had the motivation to blog. Anywho, I’ve missed you all 🙂 and I have a lovely polish in store for this post!

Look what M&S has sneakily produced, all ready for the party season!

Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve always had Marks & Spencer pegged as a conservative brand for a more dignified lady. But I have been surprised by their increasingly adventurous polish colours!

This polish doesn’t have a name so I’m going to name it “Cherry Rainbow” 🙂 if you look closely, it’s a pinky-red shimmer, filled evenly with holographic silver glitter. But what’s unusual about this polish (and seemingly impossible) is that the base colour is almost jelly-ish. A shimmer jelly glitter?! It makes it very easy to apply though 🙂 No dragging streaky mess here!

This is 2 coats of the polish, and totally opaque. I really can’t fault the application, the shimmer base made the formula nice and workable, and I barely had to cleanup, apart from where I accidentally slipped and painted my cuticles (user error!)

It dried super-fast, which I guess can be attributed to the glitter in the polish. The polish dried slightly rough and gritty due to the glitter particles but had a wonderful glow due to the shimmer in the base, so you can really wear it with or without top coat. 1 coat of top coat pretty much evens out the nail.

This polish is perfect for Christmas parties! It’s so pretty, the holo reflects in the glitter are even more apparent in person. In the bottle, it doesn’t look like the colour will work with it, but it totally does 😀

And you can probably guess that I didn’t buy this for the lipgloss, but I did a quick swatch for you just in case you’re interested 🙂

The lipgloss is a kind of deep mulberry shimmer which is gorgeous on darker skin tones. It has a doe-foot applicator, but I personally found the lipgloss to be quick tricky to work with – I couldn’t get a nice line around my lips and if I rubbed my lips together I lost the pigmentation in areas and gathered it in others, so I’d recommend that if you’re thinking of buying this set just for the lipgloss, don’t, it definitely isn’t worth it! I suppose the problems could be alleviated with the use of a lip pencil or base lipstick but is it really worth it?

The nail polish on the other hand is definitely worth the whole £6 😉 it isn’t available in their permanent line, so get it while it’s still around! You can get it in several different gift sets, the one I’ve shown you is here (along with another colour choice of gold, which is available as a single polish in some stores) , and there’s a nail gift set of three here, and there’s a nail, lip and lashes gift set here (the lashes aren’t permanent either).

Oh and any Hello Kitty lovers? Check out the M&S (Cruelty-Free!) Hello Kitty range here 🙂

This is a really unique polish, I kind of feel like it’s the cherry pink cousin of GOSH Green Hawaii 😛

What do you guys think? Super duper long post I know, but that’s just me I suppose. How are you all? Everything’s going really well for me at the moment, I’m now fully into my course at Uni and loving every minute of it. I am so so so tired at the moment though due to the very early morning buses I have to catch! I feel in a really good place at the moment though. Hope you are all just as well as me 🙂

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.

So, they’ve FINALLY brought Revlon Top Speeds to the UK! They still haven’t brought Revlon Royal over though, 🙁 I reaaally want it haha. Anyways, I picked up two of the Top Speed polishes (I’m currently lusting over Revlon Guava too, think I may have to splurge on it next time I have the money!) one of which is Hazy!

Was this worth Revlon’s fairly large £6.49 price tag? Personally, I don’t think so. I have to be honest, I bought this when it was on offer in Boots at £4.49, so I didn’t pay full price. I probably wouldn’t have bought it otherwise. Because while the formula and finish is nice, I don’t think it’s a unique enough colour to pay £6.49 for. Anyway. It’s unfortunately no longer on offer, but Boots has an offer on at the moment of 3 for 2 on a lot of beauty items, including Revlon.

Dry time was good, although I have to say, for a ‘top speed’ polish, it wasn’t exactly top speed! I’d say it was probably comparable to the speed at which Rimmel I <3 Lasting Finish polishes dry. In any case, it was manageable, certainly a lot better than the normal line of Revlon polishes I’ve used!

The polish is quite opaque, this took just 2 coats. I can’t really fault it, there’s nothing wrong with it,  I suppose I’m just not so keen on the price! Oh and I have this pet hate with Revlon polishes, when you put the brush back in the bottle, it scrapes the glass at the mouth and that scraping noise is just so… arrrghh. I hate when nail technicians on YouTube dip the brush in and out in and out scrape scrape scrape *cringe*. Ever since I’m so careful not to make the noise haha.

My only other tiny qualm is that it was a little trickier than some polishes to keep the start of the polish near the cuticle neat, but that’s easy to fix with some cleanup.

I did a tiny comparison of Hazy with Rimmel London Grey Matter for you guys 🙂 I compared them in the shop, I really hate to waste my money buying dupes!

Rimmel Grey Matter is shown on my ring finger. So Hazy is a fair couple of shades lighter than Grey Matter, as you can hopefully see. Grey Matter is more concrete, Hazy is more breeze blocks haha.

My general feelings about Hazy are that if you’re a grey hoarder, it’s a good grey to have,  very work-appropriate, quite sophisticated etc etc but it’s not a very unique colour for the price you pay. Though I suppose it depends on how much you love it as to whether the price matters! For a poor student like me… it really does 😛

I think I’m guilty of being taken in by Revlon’s pretty polish names, “Hazy”, “Stormy”, “Cloud” – all fairly standard coloured polishes but somehow the name just makes me want them!!

I know I keep promising this giveaway guys but I can’t find the polish I really really wanted to give away – would you rather a giveaway minus that one polish or would you rather wait til I have it, making the total up to 6 polishes?

I hope you’re all doing good, anyone else starting university in the next few weeks? I start on Tuesday, I’m soooooo nervous haha.

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… 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