First thing I have to do in this post is to say sorry to anyone outside the UK, today's polish is by a UK brand called Pretty that's exclusive to Poundland.
Poundland now have two exclusive nail polish brands Pretty and Jess, both have some really nice shades and I've built up quite a collection of both partly helped by the fact that they're all just £1.
Now some cheap polishes can be a bit hit or miss, and usually they stink to high heaven and never dry, but this one is a polish well worth searching for, I've not seen anything else like this in other stores and for a pound I can forgive the pong.
It's a labeled as a concrete effect, not sure if it really looks like concrete, but the finish is certainly cool. It's a lovely turquoise with silver glitter mixed in, the base is quite thick but the glitter still peeks through. It dries matte, so you end up with a polish that's smooth to the touch, but looks like it could be gritty. Overall I really love this polish, and wish there were more colours in the range.
Todays polish is from a UK brand called Gallery Colours, they make cheap polishes that sell for around £1. I get mine from my local market and I think you can probably find them on ebay if you don't have anyone near you that sells them.
Lilac Shimmer was on it's own on the market stall, I think it was the last one left, so I'm not sure if it's been discountinued. It's a pale pinky lilac base with silver microglitter mixed in. It does tend to look warmer or cooler toned depending on the light and in real life the silver glitter shows up much more than it does in my photos. The microglitter gives the polish a textured look as the glitter looks like lots of little bumps and it can also look like a foil if the light catches it right, it's quite an interesting polish.
Today I've got a golden oldie for you, it's one of my old Maybellines. I love the old Express Finish bottles, especially with their gold caps. I've got a few amazing colours and really wish I had more, they look so cute all lined up in my Helmer.
Out of my collection I picked Pure Gold, I tend to over look it quite often as it's not an in your face colour, but I decided that it was it's time to shine.
Pure Gold is a nice yellow gold, it's quite reflective for a shimmer and has a lovely glow when the light hits it. It seems to change depending on how much light there is, it can look quite light in bright sunlight, or much richer in the shade. All in all it's a really classy gold polish and it's not leaving my stash any time soon.
Okay, so I loved this combo of Ruby Wing Sweet Cream and Seventeen's Monochrome glitter so much that it's been on my nails for a week and a half, which might be a record for a manicure staying on that long and still looking decent.
During that time it's been getting exposed to the sun every now and then, and it's happily going from light to dark as if by magic, but something weird has happened as the days have passed, it's turned orange and I've no idea how or why. It's kinda cool though.
I thought I'd take some photos as I'd like to know if this is normal, or have I got a bad batch?
I have to admit I do rather like how it looks, it reminds me of a tiger's colours, and as the photos below show, it still changes colour.
When I saw Ruby Wing polishes in my local Sally's I was soooo excited, I grabbed all of the ones they had in stock and literally skipped all the way home.
If you don't know, Ruby Wing polishes are colour changing and scented, they react to UV light, so are one colour indoors and change in the sun when you go outdoors, the light through glass is also enough to activate the change as well.
I decided to try out Sweet Cream first out of the ones I got as I thought it'd make a fun layering polish, I wasn't wrong as you can see below. The photo shows the colour change as it goes from light to dark, it's pretty awesome.
For this combination I started with two coats of Sally Hansen's Complete Salon Manicure Ivory Skull which is my white of choice right now, then two of Ruby Wing Sweet Cream, and then on top of that one coat of Boots Seventeen Monochrome.
Today's polish was found in a pound shop, I'd never heard of Freshcover before but the polishes I found were cool looking so I took them home with me.
I think Freshcover is a US or Canadian brand as I've never seen it for sale in the UK and all the mentions of it online on other blogs seem to be from that part of the world, if you know more about the brand feel free to fill me in.
Black Gold is a sexy vampy colour and I have no idea what so ever why it's got the word gold in it's name as there's no gold to be found here. Anyway's, the colour is a deep blackened dark red shimmer, it's one of those polishes that glows from within when the light hits it and catches the shimmer, but when there's no light it almost looks black.
Hi, today I've got a wonderful vintage polish for you, it's a lovely old L'Oreal LaquiResist called Rome.
I adore old polishes like this, I wish I could find out when it was made and what collection it came from but I think I'd have to do alot of digging online to find out, I shall just have to be satisfied that it's in my stash as it is rather lovely.
Rome (or number 193) is a funny orange, it's a bit of a colour shifter depending on the light, in the sun it's a bright orange but it's a more subdued dusty orange in the shade. It's a shimmer that it on the edge of being frosty, but whatever it is, it's pretty swoon worthy.
If you've read my haul posts lately you'll have noticed that I've been picking up quite alot of polishes by a brand called Jess from Poundland. One thing I love (other than the £1 price tag) is that they are quite free and easy with their colours, I've found several polishes with one name but with different glitter mixtures inside, although the main colour seems to remain the same.
One of these polishes is Disco Diva. I thought I'd post some swatches of the different versions I've found as it's one of the colours that there's still several versions available in my local store and it might be the same by you, hopefully with my comparision swatches you can decide which version you want to hunt down.
Barry M really do make some lovely polishes, I've got quite a few in my stash and what I like about the brand is that they have such a huge range of colours and finishes, as well as the cool limited editions that they release every now and then.
Most of my Barry M's are glitters, and todays polish is one of them. Gold Mine is a black jelly with gold glitter mixed in. I've seen loads of polishes that are black with silver so it's nice to see a gold version, and I like that the glitter shows up really well and isn't swallowed up by the black base.
I don't know much about the brand 2true other than it's only sold in superdrug in the UK, at least I've not seen it for sale anywhere else. It's a cheap brand, the polishes cost £1.99 each and you can usually get 3 for £5.00. I haven't got anything from the brand for a while, but the other day I saw three glitter polishes that tickled my fancy so I snapped them up.
They were from the Glitterati range, and today I'll show you one of them, it's called Shade 5, I know, why oh why can't they give the polishes a name, it's pretty enough to deserve one, I'm going to call it Mermaid Scales, as I think that's a much more suitable name, especially as it's a blue and green multi sized glitter.
I got some good news yesterday, I'm going to be starting work as a bus driver soon, they've got a place for me now so I'll have a bit more training and then go to my local garage after that. I'm a bit nervous about carrying passengers as it's such a precious cargo, but I think I'll enjoy it once I start, and I'm certainly looking forward to getting paid, there's a huge list of things I want to buy, although I think I might have to save up a bit before I can buy a pinball machine. :-)
Right, on to polish, today's polish is from Sinful Colors. Last Chance was a pound shop purchase, and I was pleased to get it as I didn't own any dark green cremes. It's a deep dark forest green, and it dries slightly darker than the bottle colour.
Today I've got a brand new polish for you, I popped into town the other day and while in Superdrug saw a new limited edition collection from Maybelline. The new polishes are called Polka Dots and are part of the Color Show range, there's four in the collection and I love everyone of them, probably because they are full of black and white glitter which I don't have yet in my stash.
The polishes in the collection all have the same black and white glitter in them but the base colours are different, Shooting Stars has a blue jelly base, Speckled Pink is a pink jelly base, Rain Forest Canopy has a green jelly base, and the polish I'm showing you today is Chalk Dust,which has a clear base so you can layer it over any colour you like.
I decided to layer Chalk Dust over Bourjois So Laque Jaune Trendy (you can see my swatches of it on it's own here), I thought it'd be fun to have a yellow base and I think it shows off both black and white glitter perfectly. It has a mix of four different sizes of glitter, and just one coat gives you plenty of glitter on your nail while still letting the base colour shine though.
Hey,
Yesterday I did a really stupid thing, while in a pet shop I put my little finger through the bars of a cage to give a cute little degu some fuss, I have degu's myself and they were acting like happy little fellas, so when when one came up to the bars to say hello, I thought I'd give him a tickle, well he had other ideas and with no warning tried to take a chunk out of my finger. It didn't really hurt much, but it bled everywhere, I've never seen so much blood come out of such little cuts. Luckily it didn't bleed for long and I went home cursing myself for being so stupid.
The other thing I was annoyed about was that he bit my swatching hand, so in my next two posts you'll have to put up with a cut finger as well as my normally bad cuticles and dry skin, so sorry about that.
Anyway, let's get onto the good stuff shall we? Today I've got a Bourjois So Laque polish, it's
from the Paris Show Time Summer 2011 collection, and it's called Jaune Trendy. It's a mustardy yellow creme that is bright enough to satisfy lovers of bright colours, while being the kind of yellow that will appeal to those who'd normally shy away from anything too in your face.
At Christmas I picked up this lovely polish from Boots, it's from their 17 range and is called Wishing Star, I managed to grab the last bottle on the shelf and I'm glad I did as not only was it limited edition, but it's also quite a stunner.
Wishing Star is an interesting little polish, it's a beautiful golden foil that has a slight duochrome colour change at certain angles. In some lights it's a pale gold and in others is much more yellow, and it even leans a bit blue, whatever light conditions it's in, it's always super reflective.
As always I've taken loads of photos, I've tried to show it in as many different lights as possible to show you how it changes.
Yesterday I showed you Rimmel's My Denim, well today I'm going to show you what I put on top of it. :-) What with My Denim being a creme I thought it'd be a good idea to try out Models Own Snowflakes over the top.
I've lusted after Snowflakes for a while, I love flakies and I don't have any quite like this so I couldn't wait to add it to my stash. The flakies are more like torn up peices of irridescent glitter as they're alot thicker than traditional flakies, they flash, pale gold, green, blue and purple.
So, I should love this polish, but I don't, the clear base is so thick that it makes the polish really difficult to use and I would've thought that Models Own's base for their glitters would be a billion times better than a cheap unknown brand from the pound shop, but it's not, it's worse.
Maybe I got a bad batch or something, I hope so as if I didn't I won't ever be buying a Model's Own glitter ever again, I hate paying out good money for something that's no good. But I do have to admit, it looked super pretty....
You know what, I don't own all that many creme polishes, I only tend to buy them when they're cheap (I'm talking £1 here) or I really, really like the colour, but what's really interesting is that most of my creme polishes are modern Rimmels, I collect Rimmels, and I just can't resist it when there's a colour I don't have and it's only a pound, that's how today's polish ended up with me, I do love pound shops. :-D
I always think that cremes are boring, and every time rimmel proves me wrong. My Denim is from the Lycra Pro range and comes in a 12ml bottle so you get plenty of it, which is good as this is a pretty sweet colour. It's a sopshicated blue, not bright and in your face, and it's also not too dark (I'm not really into colours that are so dark they just look black), the finish is lovely as well, all glossy and rich.
Today's polish is a pretty well known polish, and there's countless swatch photos out there already, but I'm still gonna post about it as it's my blog and I'll do what I like. :-)
I got my bottle of Orly's Fowl Play last year, I was a bit late to the party as this polish was released as part of the Birds of a feather collection in autumn 2011, but better late than never, especially with a polish this cool.
Fowl play has one of my favorite things in it, flakies (they go from red to green), as well as blue glitter and silver microglitter, all contained in a rich purple base...
Yay! It's the weekend, which for me will mean watching lots of Formula One action on the telly. :-)
Today I thought I'd share a really nice glitter with you, it's Barry M's Yellow Topaz Glitter, it's a clear base with a mixture of gold and holographic glitter in three different sizes, microglitter, small and larger hex glitter. I love the combo of gold and holo, it just seem so much more exciting than just plain gold glitter.
I decided to use black as my base coat, I thought the contrast would be good, I liked how it made the glitter stand out and I think it's certainly the right choice.
Well the weather here is still beautiful, normally in the UK as soon as it's a bank holiday it rains so it was nice that it didn't yesterday. I've spent most of the weekend in the garden, I've been trying to get on top of the weeds and decide where I'm going to plant some new plants I got cheap, I'll do a post about it all soon. :-)
Today is yet another nail polish post (what a surprise!), and today I thought I'd have a modern polish instead of vintage. I picked a BYS called Pink On The Brink, it's a cheap brand I picked up from a market stall in Coventry. As with most cheap brands it didn't want to dry, but it did look pretty so next time I get it out I'll be grabbing my bottle of quick dry top coat.
Pink On The Brink is a pink jelly with a mixture of super tiny silver glitter, small pink glitter and slightly larger holo glitter. I used two coats in the photos below.
Hi, I can't believe it's snowing again, I'm meant to change the wheel on my boyfriends car, but there's no way I'm doing it in the snow. If you're wondering I'm the one that does all the car stuff because I used to work on cars for a living and have training, my fella's the computer wizard and helps me out when I kill my laptop. :-)
Today's swatch is from before Christmas, my nails were loooong then, I think I might prefer them shorter, what do you think? Anyway, the polish on my nails is Rimmel's Tangerine Queen from their Lasting Finish range. In the photos I used three coats, it needed them as it looked streaky, but it worked out okay in the end. I found this quite thick and it dries quick, so you don't have much time to get it right, but it levels out nicely so that's a plus. It's a great Summer colour, although, I'd happily wear this all year round, I love having something bright on my nails.
