Ebalay Orchid

Afternoon, and, erm, hai... yep, it's me, and contrary to appearances, I'm still alive. Things have been insanely busy at work recently and I've just not had the energy for blogging (more like get home, eat dinner and collapse into bed! BORING).

Anyways I've finally got far enough through the list of things happening that I can draw breath and stay up past 8pm, so back to blogging! And what a beauty I have for you today.

Introducing Orchid, from Ebalay. Just like Golden Green (reviewed here, Orchid is an unassuming colour in the bottle; a shimmery, translucent pink colour with a blue flash through it, quite pretty, but immensely sheer. You'd need a lot of coats to reach opacity; though if you wanted to, you could use it over a pink or white base and it'd look rather lovely. However, I remembered what happened when I layered Golden Green over black, so that's exactly what I did here.

Over one coat of Wet N Wild Ebony Hates Chris (a basic black creme), a single coat of Orchid is transformed into a gorgeous duochrome beauty, the full effect of which is frustratingly hard to capture on camera, but which in real life is quite frankly amazing. It shifts between a lovely blue (midway between royal blue and denim) and a rich royal purple, metallic, sparkly and shimmery. You will spend a lot of time staring at your nails (believe me, these pictures don't do it justice at all).

The bottle and brush are very similar to OPI in shape and style; this is a good thing, because the cap is easy to hold and the brush splays out nicely to cover the nail, without blobbing the polish everywhere. The formula is pretty thin and runny, but it dries fast and doesn't pool in the cuticles. I didn't use topcoat, which was a mistake: I had tipwear quite quickly, although it didn't get much worse than this, even after three days of wear.

Apologies for the blurry camera phone picture; this was the closest I could get to capturing the blue-purple shift (for some reason my phone is better at capturing duochromes than my real camera, even though the pictures aren't as sharp).

What I liked about Orchid:

- Over black, it's a stunning blue/purple duochrome, very sparkly and eyecatching

- As well as the OPI like bottle, it has a brush similar to OPI too. Application was pretty easy.

- Drying time was fast!

- Wear was pretty good. I got tipwear quite quickly, though I think that was more to do with my base colour than the Orchid, and would have been prevented if I'd used topcoat.

What I didn't like about Orchid:

- It's so sheer that you have to layer it to avoid VNL. Unless you have very short nails, bottle colour without VNL would only be possible if you layered it over a pink or white first.

Overall this is a really gorgeous polish and worth buying for the effect over black alone.

Golden Glow is available HERE from KKCenterHK. It's priced quite reasonably at £4.50 ($7.24),  KKCenterHK also offer a 10% discount until the 31st January 2013 to anybody using the code glitter-mountain at the checkout. (Use of this code does not benefit me in any way)

2 True Crystal Nail Polish : Shade 1 Midnight Blue

Happy hump day!

Sorry it's been a while since my last post; I've been on my first holiday in 8 years! It wasn't anything exotic, just a fun family camping trip to the seaside, but wow it was the most fun I've had in a long, long time. I can't wait until next year when we can go camping again!

Anyway, let me tear my brain away from kite flying and fossil hunting for long enough to show you the fourth and final polish from 2True's Crystal Nail Polish collection: Shade 1, Midnight Blue.

Released around Christmas time last year, the Crystal Nail Polish collection consisted of four jewel toned shimmer polishes, so shimmery they looked almost like sparkly metallic chocolate wrappers! They were perfect for parties and, at less than £2 each, perfect for your wallet too! I reviewed the other three HERE, HERE and HERE and I loved them all. They apply like a dream, and look amazing, and Midnight Blue is no exception to that rule. 

It's opaque in two coats although I found that adding a third coat added more richness and sparkle. It lasts absolutely ages without chipping or showing any signs of tipwear - when I took these pictures I'd already been wearing it for three days. Do you see any chips? I didn't think so. These pictures show it a little more royal blue than it is in real life; it's closer to denim blue really (the bottle colour in the first picture here is closest to how it looks on the nail). The only negative about this polish was that it took a while to dry; not painfully so, but if you're in a hurry you'll need a quick drying topcoat. I did find that leaving each coat to dry completely before adding the next helped a lot.

Pros:

Gorgeous colour, packed with shimmer. 

Opaque in two coats

Applies easily

Lasts ages

Cheap as chips!

Cons:

A little bit slow to dry

Limited edition (though almost a year later I still see it in Superdrug occasionally)

Stash or Trash?

Definitely stash. I love every polish in this collection. I'm wearing this one right now as a mani AND a pedicure. I'm far too fickle to wear the same polish in both places unless I really love it!

Rimmel Lycra Pro : Stormy Skies

Today's manicure is something I picked up a month or so ago when visiting a larger town: Rimmel Lycra Pro, in Stormy Skies.

I hadn't seen this shade before, though I don't know if that means it's new, or if it's just because my local stores only sell limited amounts of Rimmel shades (the displays are always so tiny!). Either way, I spotted this one and had to buy it because it's an unusual blue/grey shade that really does make me think of stormy skies.

In the bottle, it's more blue than grey; a dusty, smoky version of periwinkle that I couldn't wait to see on my nails. Once on the nail it dried much darker than bottle colour and became more grey. In fact I thought it was a basic elephant grey until I put it next to something grey and realised it was still pretty blue after all. 

Application was pretty much a dream. It has the gorgeous wide, flattened, curved-end brush that I love so much about Rimmel Lycra Pro (these pictures show NO CLEAN UP whatsoever, that's how tidy a cuticle line you can achieve with this brush). The highly pigmented, creamy formula applies like butter, without any of the patchiness you can get sometimes with creme polishes like this. It was almost opaque in one coat - if you apply it thickly enough then it could be a one coater - and two coats was enough for perfect coverage. These pictures show three coats, though, because the blue tone in this grey shows up better with three coats than it does with two. Drying time was pretty decent, too - I didn't bother with a quick drying top coat, as it dries well enough by itself (though it's best to let each coat dry before adding the next one, or you get brush marks).

Pros:

Just about everything. It looks great, applies well and lasts ages (only a little tipwear after 2 days, no chipping, and that's without top coat).

Cons:

It dries darker on the nail and I prefer the colour in the bottle. My pictures all show it looking pretty blue, and this is accurate for bottle colour, but in reality it's a little more grey on the nail.

Stash or Trash:

Definitely stash. This is a really great polish!

Nail Art : Jubilee Nails

Happy Jubilee weekend, everyone!

Just in case you're not from the UK and you have no idea what I'm wittering on about, this weekend marked the official celebration of our Queen's 60th year Diamond Jubilee. Most of us had a four day weekend (today is the Diamond Jubilee bank holiday, the last of the 4 days of celebration) and the entire country turned into a sea of Union Jack bunting and tea parties on the village green. Yesterday I went to a Jubilee Fair in the town closest to us; we saw jousting, archery, stunt bikes, scrambled through laser gun mazes and danced the samba around the field. There was live music, food, arts and crafts, quad bikes, bungee jumping, fairground rides and all manner of celebration.

I felt rather festive so I decided to try my hand at a Jubilee manicure - here is the result!

Sorry it's not the best picture - I snapped it quickly on my phone camera before we dashed out of the door. I used Rimmel My Denim for the blue, Rimmel white french tip for the white, Nails Inc Victoria for the red, Barry M Red Glitter for the red sparkle and Mavala Silver Glitter for the silver. Oh, and some little crystals from the nail art box :)

I know it's not the neatest nail art ever, but I was really pressed for time and I'm happy with how it turned out considering it only took about half an hour!

What did you do for the jubilee? Did you have fun?

Rimmel 60 Seconds Vinyl Shine : Denim Dreams

OK so let me apologise up front for the pictures in this post; they're rushed to death, taken on a camera phone and blurry. It's also about the least tidy manicure I've done in a long time... it looks like I don't even know what cleanup means! GAH!

There's a very good reason for this: I'm trying to beat the clock! A very good friend of mine sent me this polish as part of a polish swap, and it's one of her favourites. Her mum is very poorly in hospital and she's flying out to see her this afternoon. I wanted to make her smile, so I'm trying to rush this mani and get it online in time for her to see it before she leaves. Soooo... no time for perfection! LOL

Denim Dreams is one of Rimmel's 60 second fast dry polishes, but unlike the rest of them, this one is supposed to have a vinyl effect once it dries. In reality this makes it a little tricky to apply; it's prone to brush strokes, and doesn't have the fancy Pro brush that Lycra Pro and some other Rimmels have. But applied carefully (and by carefully I mean with a decent, but not excessive amount of polish on the brush, applied quickly, with as few strokes as possible) it does give a rather cool wet look plastic finish that doesn't come across too well in these pictures, but in real life does look rather like you've got a layer of vinyl coating your nails. As with all of the 60 second Rimmel polishes I've tried so far, the 60 second claim is NOT to be believed; I used two coats of Denim Dreams over one coat of Nail Envy and after an hour, I touched something (lightly) and immediately got a dent! I'd definitely say that quick drying top coat is a must for this polish if you don't want to be sat there all night waiting for it to dry.

The slightly tricky application and slow drying time are more than made up for the unusual vinyl look and the really pretty denim colour of the blue. Most of the pictures I took showed this polish as a much brighter shade than it really is, but this one solitary shot here has the colour pretty much perfect. (Excuse the lobster red fingers; apparently my camera can't cope with photographing blue AND flesh tones correctly at the same time!). Those two bright spots on my index and middle fingers are light reflections in the wet look plastic finish :-). I've worn this polish a few times now and it goes nicely with my favourite blue denim dress, as well as jeans.

Thanks Hilde, hope your trip goes well and your mum is OK!!

Collection 2000 Hot Looks : Blue Hawaii

Happy New Year, everyone! Hope you all had a great end to 2011, and that 2012 is filled with promise and exciting new opportunities for all of us! New years bring change and new experiences and I have lots of fun things planned for this blog - watch this space!

Here's my first mani of the year : Collection 2000 Hot Looks, in Blue Hawaii. I received this polish as a Christmas gift and I really like its bright, almost milky sky blue, which makes me think of tropical islands. Yes, I know it's winter here, but recently I've really been craving hot summer colours on my nails. Must be the lack of sunshine from pretty much the whole of 2011 :(

Anyway. Let's get the elephant in the room out of the way first: this mani is not exactly well applied and looks rather blobby. There's a very good reason for this: 

Check out the nightmare brush! There's a split in the side of the 'stalk' and the bristles are escaping out of the side of it. I did the best I could, but you'll have to excuse my nails not being very tidy! I had to kind of blob it on with the side of the brush and it wasn't a whole lot of fun.

Now on to the polish itself. 

Despite the brush, I was actually really impressed with the application and formula of Blue Hawaii, which is actually a shade darker in real life than in these photos. It's creamy, thick (without being gloopy), and smooth, and could actually be a one coater if you're careful - shown here are two coats with topcoat, three on my ring finger because I dinged it just after application and the brush issues made it too traumatic to strip it all off and start again! Blue Hawaii is supposed to be a quick dry polish: I wouldn't call it that since it did take a while to dry - not painfully so, however, but long enough for me to resort to quick dry topcoat to give it a helping hand! As to wear, I'm torn. I chipped a nail on my other hand about 10 minutes after the mani finished drying. However, since fixing it, it's been well behaved ever since (8 hours and counting), so I'm inclined to say that wear is average overall. We'll see how it holds up tomorrow, since I'll be back at work and typing most of the day!

2012 blogging/new camera discovery number 1: Macro Is Brutal. You  know how you think your nails and cuticles look alright, right up until you see them in super-super-zoomed-in-close-up mode? Yeah, that. Please bear with me on this one - apparently, I have work to do :-/

Rimmel I Love Lasting Colour : Azure

Now I know I post quite a lot of Rimmel polishes and I do tend to bang on a fair bit about how great most of them are, how they manage to include a good formula, pretty colours, often a great brush and excellent wear for very little money. However, every so often, one comes along that's just so great that I have to forcibly restrain myself from shoving my nails under people's noses and saying 'look at the pretty!'. One such polish is Rimmel I Love Lasting Finish, in Azure.

Now, I do love me a nice bright blue. I'm still searching for the ultimate eye wateringly bright, electric blue neon, and while this polish from Rimmel isn't quite that holy grail, it's a long way towards it.

(Hey, look! It's my swatching hand, returned at long last from its exile in nubbinsville! Hi there! Long time, no see!)

Azure is a bright electric blue shimmer with a slight hint of frost. It has a standard brush - not one of Rimmel's nice wider ones, sadly, though in truth it doesn't really need one; it goes on nice and smooth and clean and dries at a reasonable speed; my only slight criticism is a tendency to bubble if applied too thickly. 

This picture is a little blurry but it captures the intense electric brightness quite well. Azure is very pigmented and one coat was *almost* enough to be opaque, but not quite: shown is two coats over nail Envy and no top coat. Wear was good too: this mani didn't chip for almost three days and even then it only gave up because I was wrapping presents. I don't know any polish that can survive prolonged exposure to sticky tape!

Isn't it pretty? You can't see it here, but there's also a slight purple flash to this polish; it's not quite a duochrome, but it's trying hard to be. The purple is a lot more evident in the bottle than on the nail; though you do see it at certain angles and in certain lighting. It's very camera shy, though. I took a million pictures and couldn't capture the purple flash no matter what I tried. Oh, well. You'll just have to believe me that it's there... it's like a little secret you only get to see in person :)

Miss Sporty Crack Me Up Top Coat : Blue

This mani is courtesy of my next door neighbour, who swooped into my house brandishing her new bottle of Miss Sporty Crack Me Up polish, painted my nails with it, then ran away laughing before I could take a picture of the bottle. 

Unhelpfully, I can't seem to find a stock photo of it anywhere, either. So here's a helpful link to the Boots.com website, whereupon you can gaze upon the black version of this polish (you'll just have to picture it in blue, I'm afraid). 

Pictured is one coat, over Rimmel Your Majesty. Like all crackles, it dried quickly to a matte finish (I added a layer of top coat to make it shine). Compared to other crackles I've tried, the crackle effect is a bit more hit and miss. One finger on my other hand didn't crackle at all, and my ring finger on this hand crackled kind of strangely compared to the other nails. 

The cracks also tended to be mostly vertical - not so many crosswise cracks as I saw with the Barry M Instant Nail Effects and Rimmel Crack Your Colour. It was quite sheer, too, which I thought made for quite a nice effect over the silver Rimmel as it turned the blue colour metallic :)

Wear wasn't the best - I had chipping by the end of the day, although this might have been because it was over a manicure that was already two days old, so I wouldn't write it off as an easy chipper until I'd tried it again. Overall, I liked this a lot more than I thought I would - I wasn't that keen on blue crackle until this, but actually it was a pretty nice shade of blue and looked rather festive, especially with the shiny metallic effect it gained from the silver base. 

Miss Sporty : Clubbing Colours 328 (Blueberry?)

A very frustrating colour for you today! I've been wearing Miss Sporty 328 for a couple of days now, and it's such a stunning colour but my camera just won't capture it properly, the way it looks on my nails! I can't wait until Christmas when I will be the proud owner of a brand new and much better camera, hopefully I won't have to spend so much time muttering and taking yet another shot of a lovely polish that looks completely different when converted to image form!

Please excuse the blurred picture, but this is literally the one and only shot that I could get where the colour looks true, and even then it's just the colour you see in the bottle. When on the nails, it looks darker in pictures than it does in real life. le sigh.

Anyway. Miss Sporty Polishes are all rather boringly named with numbers, unless you go searching around on the website, whereupon you find out that 328 is actually called Blueberry. I think I've moaned about this already so I'll avoid the rant and just roll my eyes before moving swiftly on (though I have to say, I've never seen a blueberry this colour, but never mind eh?).

(A less blurry, but not quite as colour true bottle shot. It's not as dark as this in real life).

Blueberry is a gorgeous indigo creme - essentially, it's blue, but a very vivid blue that has strong purple leanings. In some lights it looks navy, in others a purplish inky colour. It applies beautifully, with its nice, wide, short brush that reminds me of a smaller version of Rimmel's new style Lycra Pro brush, and the formula is very workable - not too thick, not too runny, dries fast (to be expected, since it's a quick dry polish), and very little clean up required. Pictured are three coats over one of Nail Envy - it was opaque after two, but I added a third because like a total klutz, after the second coat, I managed to squish one against my jeans before it dried and gave myself sheet marks. Yeah. Only I could manage that with a quick drying polish, right?

(The most colour true 'on the nail' shot I could get. See how it's a little purple as well as blue? So pretty!)

Wear is average. I got slight chipping after a few hours, but that was after building an art straw bridge with some kids, and I had a lot of sticky tape sticking to my nails the whole time I was working. I think any polish would have chipped a bit in the face of that treatment! Some of the nails that survived 'BridgeGate' went on to chip by the morning of the second day, so I'd say this isn't the longest lasting polish ever, but it's alright considering it's a super cheap and cheerful drugstore brand, and so long as you don't go picking any fights with sticky tape bridges, you'll get a good day out of it at least!

China Glaze : Secret Peri-wink-le

Good morning! Life's got in the way recently and forced a short break from blogging... sorry for the silence, everyone! I'm back now, and hopefully things will stay quiet(ish) this time!

I thought for my next mani it would be nice to use a polish I've worn a few times before now : Secret Peri-wink-le, from the Operation Color collection by China Glaze.

A gorgeous dusty periwinkle blue creme, this polish differs from my other periwinkle shades (I have several, mostly because it's a colour I can't seem to resist buying) because it leans quite noticeably towards a lilac tone. Of course my camera completely refuses to capture this hint of lilac and would rather make me look like I'm imagining it, but I promise it's there in real life!

The formula is a little odd. It's quite thick and creamy, so you'd think it would have good coverage, but it tends to dry a bit patchy. Two coats can be opaque if you're careful but I had to do three because of patches on a couple of nails. Drying time could be better, probably because of the thickness, but it's not terrible (just don't do it if you're in a rush). On the other hand, application is pretty tidy, the brush is nice (no bells or whistles or funny shapes, but the length and flexibility are good and together with the thicker polish, it allows for good control). I didn't have to clean up this mani at all.

 

The slightly blah formula is more than made up for by the wear. Three coats with no topcoat - three days later and a lot of typing and hand washing have had NO EFFECT on this polish - I kid you not, I have no chips, my cuticle line is intact and there is no tip wear at all! It also dries pretty glossy - this is definitely a polish you can skip the topcoat on, if you want!

Whilst I have you, check out my new shape! I'm testing out a shorter length on my thumb nails - since squares and squovals don't really look right on me, I played around and came up with this kind of almond shape. What do you think looks better? Long and pointy or short almonds?

2 True Glossywear : Shade 14

First off, apologies for not having posted a mani for a while; I've been dealing with some RL issues that have kept me from blogging. I'm back though, and this time it's a dip into the GlitterVault again with 2 True Glossywear.

This uninventively named colour (don't you hate when things are just given a number? It's so uninspiring) has lurked at the bottom of my stash for a while now, though it's still available all new and shiny in the shops. 

(Apologies for the lack of cleanup - I originally didn't intend to blog this mani so pics are taken at my desk at work, later that day when I changed my mind about blogging it but had no cleanup kit at hand)

It's not that exciting looking in the bottle and it's depressingly sheer to apply (shown are three coats plus base and top, there are still some 'bald' patches though they're hard to see if you're not looking for them). It also dries slowly; hence the dent in my middle finger when, after half an hour, I gingerly tried to take my glasses out of my bag. And that's with a layer of quick drying topcoat, too.

Sounds terrible, doesn't it? But despite this rather negative write up, I actually really like this polish. It dries to a pretty decent, shiny, brushstroke-free metallic finish and is a good, bright, eyecatching blue that got me a surprising amount of compliments throughout the day. It also wears well, no chips and only a tiny bit of tip wear after almost a week, although it does tend to scratch a little bit owing to the metallic finish. It's not perfect, and if I come across another brand with a similar finish and colour that applies easier, I'll probably take the new one over this. But for now, I like this and will wear it again).

I also noticed something a little strange. My nails tasted kind of metallic whilst wearing this polish... not that I was sucking on them (!) but whenever I ate with my fingers or touched my mouth I noticed a faint metallic tang. It kind of reminded me of the smell of cheap, old fashioned tinsel. Now I'm wondering if this is common to all metallics and I just never noticed before, or if this is a unique phenomenon!

(Can you just picture me now, licking my nails every time I use a metallic from now on? If I disappear, I probably poisoned myself).

Miss Sporty: Clubbing Colours 320 (Pop Fiction)

Today's NOTD is Miss Sporty's Pop Fiction, from the Clubbing Colours collection.

Miss Sporty is one of those surprise drugstore brands with polish that costs very little, but turns out to actually be rather good indeed. I'm far from a drugstore snob; if it does a good job and doesn't cost much, then so much the better!

There are several types of polish in the Miss Sporty range; Clubbing Colours is their quick dry version and is available in a range of vibrant and cheerful shades. Pop Fiction (the bottle doesn't have a name; it just says 320, but the shelf and the website both claim otherwise!) is a glorious cobalt blue, very bright and rich with a slight periwinkle tone to it that I couldn't seem to capture with my camera. 

A creme, it dries fast despite its quite thick formula, needs only two coats, and has a decent, rounded brush that reminds me of a smaller version of the Rimmel Lycra Pro maxi brush - ie. it makes application fast, easy and practically mistake free.

Wear was okay - two coats had some tip wear after one day, but that was without top coat and with a lot of typing. And I got a lot of comments on this colour! It's very eye catching and pretty; I'll definitely be wearing this colour again.