Rimmel London Lyrcra Pro Colour Memory: Peppermint

Today's mani is actually three days old; the moment I first laid brush to nail the skies opened up and it's done nothing but rain ever since. I've taken a million indoors pictures and none of them do justice to the awesome minty green of this polish, but with rain continuing to fall and my fingers itching to change my mani to another colour, I've decided to post the best I've got for now and replace them with better ones when the sun is shining!

Rimmel Lycra Pro polishes are a favourite of mine; they generally have a decent, easy to work with formula, a not too slow drying time, they go on evenly and they last longer than most of the other polishes in my stash (although I'm not sure about the ten day claim they make; I never keep a polish on that long!). They also come with the awesome maxi brush: a super wide brush with a rounded end that makes application dead easy, two swipes and the nail's covered, with nice tidy cuticles and not much need for clean up, if any. Up until recently the colours available in this range tended to be mostly vampy darks, play-safe pinks and the obligatory basic red, coral and nude shades - but all that has changed now as Rimmel have reformulated the range to include an 'anti colour fade' ingredient (not that I ever noticed it fading in the first place) and introduced some new, bright and cheerful shades for summer, including this eye catching fresh minty green: 'Peppermint'.

I loved this colour in the bottle, though once on my nails I loved it a little less - it seemed to lose some of it's zing. Although in all honesty this is probably because of my skin tone; I'm quite olive skinned and pale greens and other pastels don't always suit me. Application was good, two coats was enough to be completely opaque, it dried within 20 minutes even though the creme is quite thick and.. well... creamy (!), something that can sometimes slow drying time down. The finish was a semi-glossy satin 'sheen' like you often get with pastel cremes like this one. Pictures you see here are without topcoat, and as you can see after three days of wear and no top coat, there are no chips and next to no sign of tip wear.