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)

SpaRitual : Up At Noon

I woke up the other morning thinking 'it's been too long since I had a SpaRitual manicure'.

(Yes, I'm aware that waking up already thinking about nail polish is a sign of obsession, but I'm beyond help so just humour me, ok?)

Anyway. I have a decent sized stash of SpaRitual in my cupboard, so I stuck my hand in at random and pulled out this little pretty here:

Introducing Up At Noon. Ah, those were the days... before I had a child, I could get up at noon every day. Well, okay, maybe not every day... I did still have to work. Weekends, though... weekends were definitely for staying in bed and watching TV or just plain snoozing the morning away. It was wonderful and lazy and it felt so good - then motherhood came along and the rest is history. Let's just say, the day they bring out a polish called 'Up at 6.30am', they darn well better send me a whole crate of it for free. Until that day, I'll just have to wear this polish instead and call it irony.

Up At Noon is, at first glance, a bright pink, shot through with a violet shimmer (which makes a nice change from the far more common blue shimmer you tend to see in other pinks along these lines). That's not all you get, though. The pink shifts to orange at certain angles and in certain lights. I wouldn't say it's strong enough to call it a true duochrome effect, but it is pretty! The first picture above is how it looks most of the time, with the pink/violet effect most visible. The second picture shows the more orange side to this polish. It's more obvious in real life than it seems in pictures, and much more obvious in the bottle than on the nail.

Another shot of the pink/orange/violet shift. You can see the orange most clearly at the tip and edges of the nail, and the violet in the middle by the light reflection.

Formula wise this is pretty great - applied beautifully, drying time was reasonably fast even with three coats. Apart from a bit of tip wear (and a chip near one cuticle that was entirely my fault for being cack handed), the polish still looks perfect three days later. The only fault I can find is that it's very sheer. If you have short nails, you'll get away with three coats, but long nailed girls will probably need four unless you're not too bothered about visible nail line. In these pictures I am wearing three coats, and although you can't see the VNL too badly here, it's a lot more obvious in real life. The next time I wear this, I will be layering it over a pink creme (I am far too lazy and impatient busy to wait for four coats of polish to dry. Just blame it on 8 years of Not Getting Up At Noon Any More).

Pros:

I liked the colour. Almost fluorescent pink in bright light, orange/muted pink in subdued lighting, violet flashes everywhere. Pretty :)

The formula is mostly great - not too thick or thin, applies nicely, drying time not too bad.

Wears well. I'm doing a TON of typing at work at the moment and still only have a little tipwear after three days.

I love the bottle shape and the rubber cap on SpaRitual polishes. The brush is good, too. 

Cons:

It's too sheer for my liking. Needs at least 4 coats to get rid of VNL (or layering over something more opaque)

Stash or Trash?

Definitely stash. I haven't found a SpaRitual polish I don't like yet. I also love this polish as a pedicure :)

Ebalay Glow 003 - Purple Translucent Glow

Good morning! I have something really fun to show you today.

You'd be forgiven for thinking this just looks like a slightly different version of the Beauty UK Mauve Flash polish I showed you last time; that's because it IS Mauve Flash. I used it as a base coat for this little chap here:

Introducing Glow 003, by Ebalay. (Don't mind the blob on the lid, it had a bit of an incident on the way here from KKCenterHK, who sent this to me for reviewing. It's alright now, though). Glow 003 is the unimaginatively named purple version of their range of glow in the dark topcoats. Yes, it looks pink in these pictures, but that's just because my camera doesn't enjoy purple in the same way I do. Imagine this colour, but a bit more purple-y.

Glow 003 is the most translucent purple known to man. Don't even bother trying to layer it up to opacity, it just won't happen. But then again, it IS a topcoat, so I wasn't expecting to be able to do that anyway. On opening the bottle, I have to admit my heart sank, because it's so thick (it wouldn't even drip off the brush) I didn't know how I'd ever be able to get it onto my nails. I was worrying about nothing, though; it went on just fine. Appearances can be deceptive, I guess.

The thick formula didn't stop it from drying quickly, either. I used two coats here. Close up, you can see tiny little transparent particles suspended in the purplish base; they aren't glitter, or shimmer, and I did wonder what they were for. They give your base colour a slightly milky effect, but otherwise you can't really tell you're wearing this. 

Switch off the lights and the particles reveal themselves: they're glow glitter! I was surprised how well this polish glowed, since I've seen swatches of other glow in the dark polish that weren't anywhere near this bright. For some reason, my camera couldn't pick up the brightness as well as my eyes could - all of this pictures are much less glowy than reality. In fact, my first pictures were frustratingly black - I could see the glow, but not photograph it. Just to see what would happen, I charged the bottle and my nails up with a UV blacklight for maximum glow. The result was amazing! In real life, the UV-charged glow was insane. If you wear this polish in a nightclub, you might need sunglasses to shield your eyes against your own nails! When I took pictures of it, the shots looked more like the glow you get from normal light (and which I'd failed to capture before). I guess my camera just loses a lot of the glow, but at least I can show you what it looks like to the naked eye now!

Again, this is what you'd see with the naked eye if you'd stood in your kitchen and held your hands up to the light, then turned it off. Imagine this ten times brighter and that's what you'd see on a blacklit dance floor.

Isn't it fun? Obviously this is a bit of a novelty polish, I mean you have to turn the lights off before you can appreciate what's special about it. And I don't often go to nightclubs so I can't really make use of the cool dance floor effect. But I really liked the purple glow and it was fun to play with in the dark. I could see people having a great time with this at Halloween.

Ebalay Glow 003 is available HERE from KKCenterHK. It's priced quite reasonably at £5.63 (just over $9.00), but right now everything on their website is 25% off for their 5 year anniversary! 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)

Disclaimer: this polish was sent to me as a free sample for consideration. My opinions remain my own and are unaffected by this.

NYC Expert Last : 165 Carrie'd Away

Things have been a little quiet here at Glitter Mountain : I had some offline drama to deal with and it took me away from the computer (and from polishing my nails) for a while. Sorry about that; I'm back now!

Today I'd like to share a new-to-me brand: New York Color, or NYC. This brand has been around for ages, but it's only recently that I managed to find a shop that stocked it - and how excited was I to discover their polishes are all as cheap as chips, yet there were some really nice colours amongst them! My nails were a bit stained at the time, which made it hard to go 'bare', yet I knew I wouldn't have time to look after my nails much for a while, especially anything that takes as long as buffing out stains. What to do?

Enter NYC Expert Last, in Carrie'd Away. 

This pretty shell pink/nude colour was supposed to cost the princely sum of £2.48, hardly bank breaking in the first place, but I got it on special offer so it worked out about £2. I wasn't expecting too much from anything that cheap, but when I got home and tried it out, I was amazed! 

Firstly, the bottle and brush. I wasn't too keen on the shape - the top is bigger than the bottom, which made it look a bit odd and wasn't too comfortable to hold, but it wasn't unbearable. The brush was reasonable: nothing fancy about it, but nothing unpleasant either. It held the right amount of polish, didn't splay too much, wasn't too stiff etc. It did the job it was meant to do.

Secondly, the formula. This polish is very sheer: don't come calling at Carrie'd Away's door if you're not a fan of seeing your nail line, but I don't count that as a bad point since this is the kind of colour where you're supposed to have VNL. It's like a french mani, but more subtle, without the full on white tips. (It'd also make a great polish for an actual french manicure; just add white tips and you're away!). Pictured here are three coats over nail envy:

I like the colour a lot; it's close enough to my skin tone to look nice and clean, not too pink, not too peachy, and I can see me using it a lot as a palate cleanser as well as for when I want that bare nail look without actually having bare nails. 

Since it's sheer, it also tends to be a little runny; watch how much you're loading on the brush or you'll flood your cuticles, but as long as you use a moderate amount and aim for thin coats, it's not a big deal. Drying time isn't bad, and as you can see it dries nice and glossy (this picture was before topcoat). 

The real surprise for me with this polish was how long it lasted. I kid you not; it stayed completely free from any signs of chipping OR tip wear for a whole week!! SEVEN DAYS! In the end I had to take it off because it started lifting around the cuticles (out of sheer old age!), but still not a single chip or flaw on the tips. I'd used a coat of Orly Sec'n'Dry as topcoat, but I use that for almost all my manicures and whilst I'll admit it does make things last longer, I work in a job that requires a LOT of typing and even with the Sec'n'Dry, the only time I've achieved more than a couple of days without at least a bit of tipwear was with Essie Bordeaux. For a polish that costs so little, I find this utterly amazing; I'm excited now to try the other colours I picked up along with this one!