Beauty UK Glam Nails : Mauve Flash

Good morning! It's a lovely sunny day here in the UK and I've finally managed to find time for writing a post! I have a couple of things lined up already and I'm really excited to get back to blogging :)

Today I'd like to show you a polish I've actually worn several times now. Beauty UK Glam Nails, in Mauve Flash:

This unassuming, dinky little 9ml bottle contains a raspberry pink jelly that looks just so pretty on the nail... it's not really mauve (so what's with the name, I'm not sure) since it's most definitely pink - but it is on the purple, berry toned side of pink, even more so in real life than it is in these pictures. I don't know why, but in every picture I took, the bottle was a lot closer to the real colour than my nails were: the one above is about the closest of all.

Since it's a jelly, it goes on sheer: it took me four coats to get it opaque, though three coats was alright if you didn't mind faint VNL. It takes quite a long time to dry (typical of a lot of jellies) but this can be fixed easily with a fast drying top coat. I didn't use top coat at all because I had plans for this manicure; all will become clear in my next review :-p

I was surprised to see that Mauve Flash actually dries with a sort of satin, almost rubbery look to it. It also lacks that annoying tendency to flood the cuticles that jellies often have: a definite plus at clean-up time!

Isn't it pretty? It isn't the most unusual colour out there, but I like it. I'm such a sucker for berry shades, magentas and the like. Wear was pretty good, I had a little tipwear after 24 hours but nothing too bad and that's without topcoat. 

The only criticism I have is the packaging. The Beauty UK label is printed onto a clear sticker rather than directly onto the bottle, and on my bottle, it was doing its best to come off; it was bubbling and wrinkled and it looked a bit naff. I suspect I had a duff bottle, though, as the other colours I've got aren't doing this. I'll forgive the label though as I literally only paid £1.99 for this polish and it behaves a heck of a lot better than a lot of my pricier purchases. In fact the whole Beauty UK brand is pretty awesome; it's sold in Superdrug and almost every product I've tried (nail polish, lipstick, eyeshadow pencils, blusher) has been a lot better than I was expecting for the super cheap price tag. 

Have you tried any Beauty UK products? Which ones were your favourites?

Beauty UK: Glam Nails - Aztec

OK so I admit it. I'm too addicted to last more than a couple of days without polish ;)

I caved yesterday and tried out a cute polish from Beauty UK. This is a brand I've only just started seeing round here, it's a pretty cheap drugstore type brand that I found hidden out of the way on a tiny, scruffy display in my local Superdrug and almost didn't look at it. On closer inspection, though, they seem to have some really nice stuff! Shame on the store for not putting it in a better spot!

They have some nice looking eye palettes, eye pencils and what not (including eyeliners with big sparkly gems on the packaging - the magpie in me is excited already), but as I am a polish addict first and foremost I decided to test the polishes first. I picked up two of them to try and here is the first: Glam Nails, in Aztec.

Glam Nails is the name for Beauty UK's standard polish collection: it doesn't make any wild claims about lasting forever or drying in milliseconds, but they do have cute, cheap little bottles and come in a pretty decent range of colours from brights to darks and in between. This one is a warm and shiny, metallic yellow gold and it applied nicely enough, nothing special about the formula or the brush but nothing horrible either. It took quite a long time to dry (shown here is three coats though it was opaque in two), but not painfully so, in order with most non-quick-drying polishes really, and didn't streak or bubble.

Once dried, the finish was pretty good: nicely metallic with a good foil sheen, but with minimal brush marks (something which can plague metallics and foils at times). Wear is good so far; after one day and plenty of typing there's minimal tip wear, nothing more. 

Overall I'm very impressed with this dinky cheapie; I'll definitely be trying out some more Beauty UK polishes and probably some of their other make up products too.