Rimmel I Love Lasting Finish : Tangy Tangerine

Today's manicure is a sweet Rimmel I picked up a couple of weeks ago when I was in Asda (well, a girl's got to have treats to get her through the weekly grocery shop, right?). Although I'm not really into orange as a colour in general, it's really been growing on me as a manicure colour these last few months and when I saw this one, Tangy Tangerine, I had to just slip it into my basket.

Now I don't normally get on that well with pastel colours like baby pink and lilac (they look funny against my olive skin tone), and let's face it, the nail polish market is fairly saturated with those sorts of colours too. This one just seems a little bit more unusual, though... a pastel orange? Yes, please :) I love that it's bright, yet muted at the same time: a good colour to try if you want to dabble in the summery bright citrus polishes out there, yet don't want to take the plunge into full on neon territory.

Unfortunately the application was a lot more of a pain than I've come to expect from Rimmel's I Love Lasting Finish formula; it tended to be streaky despite the fact it's well pigmented, and needed to be applied quite thickly to counteract this. This is pretty standard for most pastels, though; I don't think I've used one yet that was a dream to apply. These pictures show three coats, over one coat of Nail Envy, with a top coat of Orly Sec 'N' Dry. Even with the Sec 'N' Dry it took ages to dry completely, something which is demonstrated quite well by the sheet mark on my middle nail, obtained when I went to the bathroom over an hour later :-/

What I liked about Tangy Tangerine:
It's a really pretty colour - bright enough to be eyecatching but muted enough you could still wear it at the office. I love that it's an orange pastel - definitely less common than some of the bog standard baby pinks and lilacs out there.
It wears well once it's completely dry. Two days in and no tipwear yet.
The brush is nice. Not as nice as their rounded pro brushes or the mini versions of the pro that come with their 60 second polishes, but it's soft enough and wide enough to flatten out nicely on the nail and give you good coverage and a tidy cuticle line. The pictures above show no clean-up whatsoever.

What I didn't like about Tangy Tangerine:
Like most other pastels, it manages to be both thick and streaky at the same time.
It takes forever to dry, mostly because it's thick.

Keep it or Bin it?
Keep, unless somebody comes out with a very similar colour without the application problems. It's a really good pedi colour too, really summery and cheerful :)

Rimmel I Love Lasting Finish : Hot Shot

It's been weeks since I had anything other than plain or nude nails; longer than I've lasted in a long time, but I finally cracked yesterday and broke out the first bright colour I saw on opening my stash drawer: Rimmel Hot Shot.

(Without flash. Please excuse the scratch on my finger; a wardrobe bit me)

Hot Shot is a hot pink creme from Rimmel's Lasting Finish range; in the bottle it's pretty darn bright already but on the nail it dries brighter, almost neon pink but not quite. The above picture is without flash: the colour of the bottle is accurate but the nails are not as bright as they are in real life.

(with flash)

This flash shot more accurately captures the brightness; it's not quite this purple toned in real life but it's definitely this intense. If you imagine something this bright but with a colour closer to the first picture then you're there!

(without flash)

Formula wise this polish wasn't quite as good as some of the other Rimmel Lasting Finish shades I've tried; it's a little on the thick side and difficult to apply nice thin coats, and it tends to apply a little streaky: watch out for bald spots. It's not unworkable; just needs a little more care over application, and you'll need two coats for sure. Drying time wasn't too bad, although after the second coat I did use Orly Sec'n'Dry to hurry things along.

(with flash)

Wear was okay... I had tipwear by the end of day two but not unbearably so, and there weren't any chips. 

Overall, I would wear this polish again; I didn't love the formula, though it's not unworkable, but the colour is really nice (and this is coming from someone who doesn't wear that many pinks) and I enjoyed wearing something so bright and summery even though everything outside is icy and cold!

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 :)

Rimmel I love Lasting Finish : Your Majesty

Something festive for you today! 

Another one of Rimmel's lovely Lasting Finish polishes, Your Majesty is a beautiful metallic silver polish that I've worn several times now. It goes on nicely with minimal mess - though it's a bit of a glitter bomb when you remove it; your skin will be rather sparkly until you wash your hands. It is very pigmented (one coat could be opaque if you put it on thickly, I used two thin coats) and dries fairly quickly to a bright silver, almost chrome effect shine. It's not a chrome, though - it's pretty sparkly, almost enough that you'd call it a glitter, but not quite. This is a good thing; chromes show every single lump and bump and imperfection in your nail, but that sparkle makes this polish more forgiving. This is my non swatching hand for a reason; my nails on this hand are far from perfect and I don't really want my polish to broadcast that fact to the world!

Here it is without the bottle, in better focus. Apparently bottle + nails is too much twinkle for my camera to handle in one place!

Wear is really good. I wore this alone for two days, then added a crackle polish and wore it for another day. There was no tip wear at all and I only saw chips at the end of the third day. 

An attempt at a Christmassy pose, with glittery tree decoration; cue more freaking out of camera at all the sparkle!

Overall I love this polish. I don't have too many silvers in my collection but most of the ones I've tried have been more like a silvery grey than a proper metallic silver. This one fills that niche nicely and is my go-to silver, with its nice formula and great wear, yet cheap price, it'd be hard to beat this one!

Rimmel I Love Lasting Finish : Double Espresso

Just a short post today; I had a severe allergic reaction to something (not sure what yet) earlier this week that lasted several days and I haven't felt up to epic blog posts (or indeed painting my nails in the first place).

However, my naked nails have been taunting me and today I caved in and did this quickie manicure: Rimmel I Love Lasting Finish in Double Espresso.

This is a rich chocolate brown micro-shimmer; smooth and glossy when dry. The brown is shot through with very fine gold metallic particles which are most visible in the bottle (colour shown lighter than real life to highlight the gold sheen more clearly):

They also show up fairly well in pictures of the polish once applied (please excuse the messy cuticles - it's actually coloured hair spray from DS's 'messy hair day' at school, which washes easily out of hair but stains cuticles so completely it even laughs in the face of acetone!):

Frustratingly, however, in 'real life' the shimmer is very hard to see without squinting at it from less than an inch away. This doesn't really matter though; it's a rich, dark velvety brown which is pretty with or without the shimmer. 

Pictured are two coats over a single base coat, no top coat. Application is good, like most Rimmel polishes; the brush is the traditional shape and holds just enough polish for one coat without smearing, applying unevenly or blobbing everywhere. The polish flows nicely and drying time isn't bad; a few minutes for the first coat, maybe ten for the second (and I did pretty thick coats as I was in a hurry at the time and didn't waste too much time scraping the brush after each dunk!).

Wear: I Love Lasting Finish is formulated to resist colour fade and chipping. After one day of wear without topcoat, I had no chips, and only a little tip wear on two nails (and I did a lot of typing today so that's not bad).