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.

2 True Crystal Nail Polish: Shade 3 Mysterious Turquoise

An update: Nail Envy seems pretty good. At least, after a week of using it, my nubs have 1) failed to completely break all the way back to the quick like they usually do without acrylic overlays, and 2) they seem to have grown. Just a little bit. Also, the new cuticle butter I've been using seems to be helping my poor long suffering cuticles. They're still not perfect but they're getting there!

I've been putting the Nail Envy on religiously but I have to say... I'm bored of looking at my naked nubbins :/
The Nail Envy instructions do hint at the possibility of using nail polish at the same time (it says 'remove along with any nail polish after a week') so I figured it couldn't hurt too much to restore some colour to my nails!

So without further ado I present to you: 2True Crystal Nail Polish, in shade 3.

Now before we start, I'd just like to say I wish companies would stop only using a number to describe their shades instead of a name. It's boring, uninspiring, and uninventive. A little poking around on the 2True website has revealed that this shade is actually called Mysterious Turquoise: still not that inventive, but at least they tried. I'm just not sure why they don't actually put the name on the bottle? It'd make it a lot easier to picture the colour when you don't have the bottle in front of you, for a start.

Anyway, mini rant aside, this polish is from a limited edition collection 2True have released in the run up to Christmas this year. There's 4 shades: a red, a purple, a blue and this turquoise, all are very pretty, vivid jewel toned metallic/shimmer shades, with more than a hint of sparkle and an attractive price tag of £1.99 for 7ml (I got 3 for £4.99 on a special offer deal).

Application is surprisingly good for such a cheapie polish: the first coat is disturbingly sheer and you catch yourself thinking 'oh no... it's going to be an 8-coater'. But appearances are deceptive and it's actually opaque after two coats; I did three for the extra depth of colour. The brush is long and thin and quite narrow, nicely flexible without being floppy, and holds just the right amount of polish for a neat and tidy cuticle line - handy for me at the moment, since whilst my cuticles are recovering from their recent trauma, clean up, and any more acetone than absolutely necessary to remove the mani once I'm done wearing it, are banned!

Drying time is average, though it's touch dry pretty quickly, it's a while longer before you can risk poking it any harder without expecting it to leave a mark. Wear is good; considering my nails are so short now and chip much faster than they did when long, I only got a little wear and no chips after 24 hours even though I didn't use a topcoat. The finish is really good: heaps of really fine grade glitter that catches the light well and gives an eyecatching shimmery metallic effect. There's no hint of brush strokes or patchiness either (once you get past that uber-sheer first coat: brace yourself, it's all going to turn out fine!).

Overall, I really like this polish. It's cheap and cheerful yet with a decent formula: a colour that hasn't been too done to death by the other brands yet, and is pleasantly sparkly, yet with fine enough glitter that removal isn't a big deal. I suspect that the sheerness seen when you only use one coat might make it a good polish for layering, too... some experimentation needed, methinks! It looks pretty festive, without screaming 'Christmas Manicure', and with the trend this season for jewel toned clothes and accessories, you'll get use out of it for more than just the office Xmas do.

Layering: Revlon Gold Get 'Em over Avon Green With Envy

Morning everyone!

Today I want to show you this accidental layering that I did just to test out the bottle of Revlon: Gold Get 'Em I bought at the weekend. I wondered what the finish was like, so I painted it over one nail of my existing mani for a quick look-see and I liked the effect so much I kept it and did the other 9 the same!

On it's own, Gold Get 'Em is a really sheer, shimmery gold (I'll do a post with it on its lonesome at a later date) but layered over the dark green of Green With Envy, it transforms into a beautiful rich colour that reminds me of aged copper verdigris.

It's bronzey and shiny and antique-metallic and (I'm told) expensive looking; I had quite a few compliments on this manicure :)