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)

Barry M : Silvery Lilac

I have an unusual polish to share with you today: Silvery Lilac, from Barry M.

I don't usually get on all that well with lilac polishes - they give me lobster hands. But this one is a foil, and I love foils, plus it's unusual to find a foil amongst the drugstore brands that isn't just silver or gold. Also, it's a duochrome. Foil AND duochrome?? Sold. 

This is a real chameleon polish, almost a multichrome; in some lights it appears silver, in others a dusty lilac, sometimes a sort of shimmery gunmetal shade, and at certain angles it even looks green. Although in the bottle the green flash is quite obvious, it's less visible on the nail, but not completely lost. It's very sheer, but three coats is enough to reach opacity. These pictures are of three coats, and you can still see a little VNL, but it's not visible in real life.

This shot shows the green duochrome flash quite nicely. It's a subtle effect, but adds an ethereal sort of 'glow' to the polish that makes me think of fairies or unicorns.

Application is pleasant, but not perfect. It goes on nicely, not too thick or thin, and the brush is decent. I didn't need to do any clean up with this one. It is a little prone to bubbling though, and the drying time could be faster, so several thin coats are preferable to fewer thick ones (you can see on my index finger where I got a bit impatient and used a thicker coat, resulting in a few bubbles, though again this is invisible in real life. Cameras are not kind!). 

Please excuse the blurry camera phone shot here - I wanted to show how Silvery Lilac becomes a darker lilac/gunmetal kind of shade when lit indirectly, and I found that my camera phone was better at capturing the lilac tones in this polish. My digital camera preferred to see the silvery side :-p

Pros: 

I loved the colour and had a lot of compliments on it too. It's shiny and pretty and unusual, but in a muted kind of way - you could still wear this to work, for instance.

Wear was great - 3 days in, no topcoat, and I am only just starting to see tipwear.

Cons:

The formula could be better. It's sheer. Though I wonder if that would make it good for layering... hmmm...

Prone to bubbling (though only very slightly, can be avoided by careful application)

Stash or Trash?

Stash. I really like this polish and will be experimenting with it for layering too.

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!

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 :)

Bare Minerals : Holy Grail foundation!

'Ooh, you have olive skin! You're so lucky!'

It's something I've heard many times and I've always thought 'that's what you think'. Sure, olive skin can look beautiful, bordering on exotic, hinting at mediterranean origins - and sure, it looks great when we tan (not to mention the way that olive skin rarely burns). But considering we have about 2 minutes of sun in the UK per year, unless you want to live on a sun bed it feels like a pretty lame trade-off against the major draw back of having a light olive skin tone: never, ever being able to find a foundation the right colour. EVER. I've tried truckloads of foundations and concealers from drugstore to high end and not one of them, from Rimmel to Dior, has come through. Cosmetics manufacturers all seem to think that we're pink, or orange, or deathly white, none of which apply to us olive skinned girls!! The very few I have found who catered for olive skin tones all seemed to think that olive = dark mediterranean, so their offerings were way too swarthy for my light olive skin. This wouldn't matter so much if I had perfect skin but I don't. I NEED foundation. For about 20 years now I've been 'getting by' with foundations that made me look satsuma orange or chalky pale. Until now.

Enter Bare Minerals foundation - now officially my Holy Grail Foundation. It has SPF 15, it covers without looking heavy, it's buildable, and it comes in 20 different shades to suit pink, yellow/olive, rosy, neutral, and even rich red undertones, from porcelain-pale to deepest dark. I bought it as part of the 9-piece Get Started kit, which cost £49 but is absolutely worth every single penny (the brushes alone would cost £57 if bought separately!) You get three really great, high quality brushes (concealer brush and two different face brushes, for full and lighter coverage), two different shades of foundation (I have the 'Light' kit, which comes with 'Light' and 'Fairly Light' foundations), a Mineral Veil (translucent fixing powder), a 'Warmth' bronzer and a 15ml tube of Prime Time foundation primer, plus a DVD that teaches you the swirl, tap and buff method of applying powder foundation. The foundations, veil and bronzer are all reduced size 2g pots, whereas the full sizes are normally 8g (and cost £24 each), but I've used the 'Light' foundation at least 20 times since then and have barely even scratched the surface. A little bit goes a very long way!

Application is really easy. Moisturise as normal, use a teeny bit of primer if you like (I've used it with and without primer and been happy with the results both ways), then apply the powder, just tapped into the lid and picked up by swirling with the brush until it disappears into the bristles. Tap to remove excess, then buff into your skin - face brushes with a circular motion, and the concealer brush kind of 'scrubbed' over the blemishes as if you're trying to rub them off with a pencil eraser. You use the concealer brush with a little of the powder foundation to conceal your worst flaws, then the same powder with the face brush over your whole face, applying as many layers as you need to get the coverage you want. On its' own, you get a glowy, fresh faced look, but you can fix it with the mineral veil if you prefer a more matte effect. Wear is impressive, too - I'm a subconscious face toucher (yes, I know it's bad, but I can't seem to help it) and by the end of the day most of my skin has normally gone back to its' pre-foundation state, my fingers having undone all my hard work by about lunchtime. Not so with Bare Minerals, which still looks freshly applied at the end of the day.

Want evidence of how great this is? Check out these before and after shots. Brace yourself, the 'before' is a little scary :-p

It hides dark circles like they were never even there. I can't believe it covers so well and yet it feels like I'm not even wearing anything.

Blemishes, too.  No cakey, mask-like feeling. And it's the right colour for me! 'Light' is perfect right now, while I have a little bit of colour. 'Fairly Light' is a little pale for me, but it's not meant for olive skin anyway (it's for pink undertones, and just came as part of the kit). However, it's easy to mix shades, and I'm going to keep the 'Fairly Light' because combined with 'Light' it looks like it'll be perfect for the depths of winter when my skin turns even more pale.

Incidentally, I've had fewer break outs since using this. I don't think that this is down to some magic skin treating property in the Bare Minerals, but I do suspect it's because it's gentler on the skin than my old foundation. Since it's just mineral powder and none of the other chemicals and junk they put into traditional foundation creams and lotions, Bare Minerals should be less likely to block my pores. Either way, I'm not complaining!

With just a hint of 'Warnth' bronzer, used as blusher

A few days ago, someone said to me yet again: 'Ooh, olive skin. You're so lucky'. And you know what? For the first time ever, I agreed with them. Because for the first time ever I can look in the mirror and actually enjoy the colour of my skin instead of cringing at my dark circles, blemishes, and tell tale orange tide mark of mismatched foundation.

What I Liked:
Perfect colour for my light olive skin (YES!!)
So easy to apply you could do it without a mirror
Flawless finish and amazing coverage without feeling heavy
Lasts all day
Fewer breakouts
No need for separate concealer

What I didn't Like:
The click-lock lid (specially designed lid that you twist to close up the holes after use, so the powder doesn't get everywhere) on my Light foundation sticks and makes it hard to open. I don't know if this is a common occurrence with all Bare Minerals foundation, just a quirk of the smaller pots, or whether I was just unlucky (my other three pots are OK so far), but I've had to stop closing it and block the holes with a cotton wool pad. Hoping it won't happen again when I buy the full size!

Stash or Trash:
Are you kidding me? Just try and take this stuff away!!

Accessorize : Pin-Up

Happy Saturday! At last it's the weekend, ugh this week really dragged :( Why does the time always seem to move slower when you're waiting to go on holiday? Next week is the last week of work before I get the week off to go and do fun stuff with my family. I can't wait!!

Anyway the slowly dragging week somehow gave me the urge to have vampy nails. I haven't done that for a while and it felt like a nice change. My partner in crime for this vampish excitement was the lovely Pin-Up, by Accessorize. 

Pin-Up has an aubergine (eggplant, to you US types) base, filled with magenta glitter. It's opaque in two coats, applies nicely, dries smoothly and has a not-too-shabby drying time. This polish has multiple personalities! From a distance it looks like a dark vampy purple with purple shimmer...

...close up, it looks like this...

...and in the shade, it looks different all over again:

Isn't it pretty?

I really like this polish. EXCEPT. It is TERRIBLE for tip wear. I had tip wear within an hour of first painting! Undeterred, I wrapped my tips with it - and the tip wear came right on back.

This is after one day. It looks worse here than in real life (macro is brutal).

 It was weird though, because although it appeared fast, once it was there, it didn't get much worse. It just doesn't like sticking to tips! 

Pros:

I love the colour. 

The formula is great (apart from the tip wear) - goes on nicely, dries smooth, not too slow.

Wear - apart from that intial tip wear, it lasts ages! I didn't change this for four days and it still looked the same as it did after the first day (ie the last picture above)

Cons:

The tip wear :(

I was a little disappointed that the glitter doesn't show up on the nail as well as it does in the bottle. It sinks into the base too much.

Stash or Trash?

Hmm... it's borderline for this one. Although the tipwear wasn't bad enough to make me take it off for 4 days, I didn't love how quickly it appeared or the fact that wrapping my tips didn't help at all.

I did love the colour though. I'll probably try wearing it again, and wrapping my tips with top coat AND polish.