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)

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.

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.

Ebalay : Purple Gold Dust

Happy Spring, everyone!

I had this plan to do a cute Easter manicure with pastels and stuff, but I haven't had two minutes to rub together and I've only painted my nails once in about a week now. But it's OK because the colour I have to show you today is gorgeous and spring-like anyway, so I still win :-p

Let me introduce you to the second of the two colours sent to me by KKCenterHK: Purple Gold Dust, by Ebalay. (Click HERE or the banner below to check out their website).

(Halogen light)

Like Olive Gold Dust (reviewed here), Purple Gold Dust is actually just given a number (#011) by Ebalay, however on the KKCenterHK website, it's described as Purple Gold Dust, so that's what I'll call it here.

(Halogen light)

Like Olive Gold Dust, Purple Gold Dust has a coloured base (though in this case the olive green has been replaced with a really pretty lavender purple) and it's absolutely jam packed with fine glitter, although this time the glitter is silver instead of gold. In certain lights, if you squint a bit, it kind of looks a bit golden in the bottle, but once it's on the nail, it's 100% silver and that's that.

(Halogen light)

The glitter in this polish is absolutely gorgeous - it's actually a bit more sparkly than the glitter in Olive Gold Dust, but still subtle enough to wear anywhere and any time. Unfortunately I couldn't get any natural sunlight while taking these pictures so you'll have to picture everything a bit more twinkly than it seems here.

(Halogen light)

 The formula is almost exactly the same as Olive Gold Dust : quite thick, possibly a bit thicker in fact, but it goes on smoothly and evenly and dries in a reasonably fast time considering how thick it is. It's pigmented enough/glittery enough that you could get away with one coat, though it looks much better with two.



(Natural light)

Since Olive Gold Dust lasted for such a long time without chipping (5 days before even tipwear!) I decided to put Purple Gold Dust to the test: I skipped topcoat completely (all pictures show two coats over two of Nail Envy) and STILL it refused to die! Without topcoat, I had a little bit of tipwear after 4 days, but quite honestly I still have this stuff on my nails today and 6 days after painting them, there's still no chips at all on my left hand. My right hand has only one coat - I wanted to see how it would wear that way - and although there's chipping, it's about the amount I'd normally expect to see after 3 or 4 days of a two coat manicure of your average polish. This stuff LASTS, people.
 

(Natural light)

From some angles/in some lights, it looks more silvery than purple. It's one of those polishes that changes colour, like a chameleon.

Close up bottle shot. Check out that sparkle!

Overall, I love this polish every bit as much as I did Olive Gold Dust. It applies well, lasts ages, costs little and looks stunning. It also removes easily, despite the glitter. Just like before, the only improvements I'd made would be to reduce the thickness of the formula a little and give it a slightly more interesting name.

KKCenterhk have kindly offered any readers of Glitter Mountain a 10% discount on all their products until the 31st of January 2013. Just use the code glitter-mountain at the checkout! (please note, use of this code does not benefit me in any way)

This is a PR sample sent to me for review by KKCenterhk. The opinions I have given are my own, honest and unbiased and I was not paid to carry out this review.



 



Ebalay : Olive Gold Dust

Hey, I'm back! Finally! Sorry I've been quiet for so long, it's been completely mad around here and blogging has been pretty much impossible. But I've missed you all and I'm back at last!

Today I have a special manicure to show you : 'Olive Gold Dust' from Ebalay. You'll have to excuse the number of pictures: it's absolutely gorgeous outside today and when the sun shines, it's a lot easier to take nice pictures of manicures!

This beautiful polish came from KKCenterHK. (Click HERE or the banner below to check out their website). When I saw this pretty olive/gold shade I knew I had to try it right away! KKcenterHK is located in Hong Kong and I'm in the UK: when I've ordered things from Hong Kong in the past it's sometimes taken a long time to get here but this only took about a week to arrive. Not bad for such a long journey.

The colour is really just called 'EBALAY 020' - not such an exciting name :( But the website describes it as Olive Gold Dust and I'd say this is pretty accurate so that's what I'm calling it from now on. In the bottle it's an olive green with dense, fine gold glitter. On the nail it loses some of the green and the gold becomes more dominant, though the green is still definitely there.

The glitter is so fine that I almost thought it might be a holo once I got it into the sunshine; it has that same sort of muted yet grainy appearance in the bottle that you see with polishes like GOSH holographic. Sadly it isn't holo at all, but it is extremely pretty and catches the sunlight beautifully. Because the glitter is fine, it's not too in your face; it's classy as well as sparkly and you could easily wear it to work.

Application looked like it might be a pain when I opened the bottle: the polish is pretty thick and I have to say I expected it to be gloopy and slow drying - but actually, it went on really smoothly and evenly. It's also so pigmented and full of glitter that you could easily use this as a one coat polish! (All pictures here are two coats, over Nail Envy, with Orly Sec'N'Dry topcoat).

Drying time was good, too. I thought I'd be there for ages waiting for the second coat to dry; but it took no longer than any other (thinner) polish. I did use quick drying topcoat, but not until the second coat was already touch dry. The brush was quite thick and soft and reminded me a little of an OPI brush. Mine was a little bent to one side, but it didn't make it any harder to paint my nails.

The bottle is a generous 15ml for £4.30 / $6.92 so you're getting a good amount of polish for quite a cheap price; in the UK this is about the same sort of price you'd pay for a low to mid range polish brand like Rimmel or Maybelline, but you'd probably get 5-10ml for that price so this is pretty good value.  

In the shade, the glitter is much less obvious; it looks more like a suede effect/textured metallic, or perhaps a glitter that's had a matte top coat added. It's still very pretty though.

It kind of looks like a sandy texture here, doesn't it? Like I dipped my nails in gold dust and it stuck, hence the name! Actually when it dries, it's got a slightly sandy feel to it - not gritty, but not completely smooth. This went away when I added the topcoat, though.

Close up bottle shot, to show the fine glitter! It's greener than this in real life, but my camera couldn't cope with showing that plus all the glitter all at the same time.

Overall, I really like this polish. It's a lovely yet slightly unusual colour, applies nicely and so far in 5 days of wear (including doing laundry, typing, washing my hands and general household chores) I haven't had any chips OR tipwear. It still looks like the day I first applied it. I couldn't really find any faults with it, other than I wish it had a proper name instead of a number and the formula could do with being a bit thinner. It also smells quite strong. I was also a bit confused because the bottle says 'Rose Water' on the bottom, as did the other bottle I was sent, yet neither polish is scented in any way. I guess they just have rose water as an ingredient?

EDIT: KKCenterhk have kindly offered any readers of Glitter Mountain a 10% discount on all their products until the 31st of January 2013. Just use the code glitter-mountain at the checkout! (please note, using this code does not benefit me in any way)

This is a PR sample sent to me for review by KKCenterhk. The opinions I have given are my own, honest and unbiased.