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.

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 :)

17 Fast Finish : Fury

It's August already! If you're in the UK you'll already know about the loooong rainy spell we had (OK so it was more like a biblical flood), followed by one measly week of actual summer sunshine. That was last week, and it didn't last - we're already back to rain :( It is in honour of the rain's return that I show you today's polish - Fury, by Boots 17. Mainly because if that one week is all the summer we get, I will be furious!!

Now I'm not going to lie. I have a bit of a love hate relationship with 17 polishes. They have some gorgeous colours, but the formula on every 17 polish I have tried before has kind of sucked - especially with the 'Fast Finish' polishes, which seem to take FOREVER to dry. However, I saw this colour, and I liked it so much I figured it would be worth another try. Armed with quick-drying topcoat, I dived in.

In the bottle, Fury is a rich antique gold with a subtle green duochrome shift. Once on the nail, you mostly lose the duochrome effect, although it retains a sort of green 'hint' to the gold, it's not very easy to see the two colours separately. Depending on the light, it's either the same sort of antique gold you see in the bottle and on this picture here, or else it's more of a coppery bronze colour like in the picture below.

Application wasn't as bad as I expected, although patience was required and I had to do a couple of fingers twice. You need to let each coat dry completely (I used two coats here) before adding the next or you get horrible brush marks and the polish underneath smudges. You also need to apply the polish quite thickly for it to look smooth, which can make it a bit of a pain getting a nice cuticle line. Finally, you'll need a lot of time, or a quick drying topcoat (I used Orly Sec 'N' Dry), because it may say Fast Finish on the bottle but frankly Slow Finish would have been a much better name. It's worth persevering though because the end result is actually a really nice colour and finish which wore surprisingly well. In these pictures I have already been wearing Fury for three days and the tipwear is only just starting to show.

What I liked about Fury:

It's a gorgeous colour, quite unusual - there's a lot of gold/green duochromes out there already but this one is more of a bronze/green.
It wore well - no tipwear until the end of the 3rd day.

What I didn't like about Fury:

It takes forever to dry
It needs very careful application to look good.

Bin it or Keep it?

Keep, because I like the colour so much - but if I found a dupe with a better formula then I would probably ditch this one and keep the dupe instead.

Ebalay Golden Green

Good morning, beauties!
My card reader is finally here (after a two week wait and three increasingly irritated emails to the company I bought it from! It was meant to be next day delivery, what a joke!) and guess what? The polish I put on to review for you all just WON'T play nicely with my camera. No matter what I try, I can't get the colour to look right. Luckily my camera phone seems much more accommodating and the colour looks a lot more accurate, but how frustrating to wait all that time and still not use my proper camera!

Anyway, enough ranting. I have another polish from Ebalay to show you, courtesy of KKCenterHK. Just like all of Ebalay's polishes it doesn't have a proper name, just a number, but KKCenterHK have given it the description 'Golden Green'.

In the bottle (which reminds me of an OPI one) it does indeed have a gold/green colour, with a pinky/purply duochrome shift. I tried it on its own and it is incredibly sheer. After 5 coats I still had a ton of VNL. The colour was sort of pretty, but I didn't like the colour enough to warrant the zillion coats it would need to achieve opacity (and it didn't look good left with the VNL). Undeterred, I layered it over black to see if that made a difference, because many duochromes look better with black underwear. (Again, pictures are taken on a camera phone, so please excuse their slight dodginess)

CHECK OUT THE PRETTY!!

I almost fainted when this gorgeous, emerald, super-sparkly colour appeared. Where was this hiding in that bottle of goldish murk??

It's not just green, either. There's a strong shift to purple in some lights (which even my camera phone struggled to capture, but in real life it's a lot more obvious.

All the pictures in which I managed to catch the purple are blurry. Hopefully you can still appreciate how pretty this polish is despite the blur.

There's almost no trace of the gold colour in the bottle: the green is a definite rich emerald colour. But sooooo pretty. Lots of people complimented me on this manicure.

What I liked about Golden Green:

- Over black, it's a stunning green/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 pleasantly fast, even with multiple layers

- Wear was pretty good. I didn't get tipwear until day three and no chips at all.

What I didn't like about Golden Green:

- I don't think the formula is 3-free. It pongs a bit!

- 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 something like a nude or maybe a gold colour.

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 £4.60 ($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)

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

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 :)

Essence Meet Me @Holografics.com : Lil@c

Today's manicure is Lil@c, from the limited edition Meet Me @Holografics.com collection released by Essence recently. The nail polish section of this collection includes five colours - Lil@c, Blue Ray, Gagalectric, Prism@tic White and Holoberry, and despite the name, not one of them is holographic in any way! They are, however, duochromes, and since I'm rather partial to a nice two-tone effect I decided I wanted some anyway.

Essence is sadly not available in the UK, but thanks to the efforts of a fellow polish addict in Switzerland, I now have my glittery tips on a number of Essence polishes - including Lil@c, shown here.

Lil@c comes with a long, thin, quite flexible brush which holds just the right amount of polish (with a scrape) and is soft enough to splay out a little on the nail, which makes a tidy cuticle line much easier to achieve. It's a gorgeous purple colour (all these pictures show it slightly more blue than in real life, as purples are hard to capture accurately) with a green duochrome sheen, is very pigmented - opaque in two coats, though the duochrome effect is more obvious with three - and dries reasonably fast to a fairly glossy shine (though it could be improved with topcoat).

(Excuse the ding in the index nail. I was in a hurry to catch the daylight and didn't wait for it to dry properly!)

Wear is very good, after two days I've yet to see much in the way of tip wear despite lots of typing. 

The green duochrome sheen is actually pretty muted compared to some other duochromes I've seen, even compared to the other duochromes in the same collection... with two coats and indoors light I couldn't see it at all, and it wasn't til I added another coat that I noticed it (and even then it's only really in certain light, when you hold your hand at a funny angle and squint a bit). The effect is much clearer in daylight.

Overall I really like this polish - one thing I noticed (but found it hard to capture on camera) was that despite the slightly disappointing duochrome effect, Lil@c did have a really nice metallic sheen to it that reminded me of some of the coloured Minx overlays (not as metallic as silver lightning - but then again, is anything??). It's a pity they didn't do a fuchsia pink version of Lil@c as I've been hunting for a really metallic fuchsia that wasn't too foil-y or glittery for ages now.