Rimmel Lycra Wear 10 : Hypnotise

Spring is here!

Okay, maybe not. But I saw snowdrops on the way home today and even though it's still super chilly, it's been really bright and sunny the last few days. So I'm feeling kinda cheerful and ready to come out of hibernation after the long and depressing winter - time to start blogging again!

The polish I have for you today is Rimmel Lycra Wear 10, in Hypnotise. Please excuse the nubbin-nails, I decided to try one last time to have squoval nails, filed them into shape, and then immediately broke one (cleaning my teeth, of all things. HOW DO YOU BREAK A NAIL CLEANING YOUR TEETH??). Anyway. Once I had finished wailing and gnashing my (newly clean) teeth, I filed my nails down past the break, and this was the result.

Of course I then immediately broke another one. It's time to accept that I can't have squovals and that's that: the corners just keep breaking on me. Back to even shorter nubs (sob) for a while and ovals from now on!

Anyway, back to the polish. It's a really nice dark plum creme. It doesn't have the gorgeous wide brush that I adore so much in newer Rimmel polishes, but the brush it does have is pretty decent anyway. It has all the potential to be a great vampy colour (perfect for nubbins - why is it that when I have short nails, I always have the urge to wear dark colours?)

Sadly, it also suffers from horrible tipwear. I kid you not, I had really obvious wear and some small chips after only a few hours, and that was with three coats plus a base coat of Nail Envy. I will admit that I do tend to get more tipwear when my nails are short, but unless I've been especially rough on my nails with housework or typing, I do at least expect my polish to last a bit better than that. Especially if I've gone to all the effort of three coats. At one point I touched up the tips and then added a fourth coat, to see if I could get a bit more life out of it. As you can see from these pictures, taken one hour after the fourth coat, the tipwear is already coming back. GAH!

What I liked about this polish:
The colour. I got two compliments on it within an hour of getting to work.
Application. I didn't have to do any clean-up. It was also opaque in two coats.

What I didn't like:
The wear. Although the colour is pretty, it's nowhere near special enough for me to get over how easily the tip wear appeared. Probably it'd have lasted better if I'd used top coat, but then I'd have had 5 layers of laquer on my nails, and quite frankly my life is too short to sit around waiting for that much paint to dry.

Overall verdict:
I'm normally the first to say how great Rimmel polishes are, especially their 10 day/lycra/pro type polishes. But this one, while pretty, is just too disappointing for me. I probably won't be wearing it on my fingers again although I may keep it for my toes (why do toes always seem to chip much slower than fingers?)

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!

Rimmel Lycra Pro: 385 Hot List

Today's polish is the very lovely Hot List, from Rimmel's Lycra Pro range. I'm sure you're all completely sick of hearing me bang on ad nauseum about Lycra Pro and how great they all are; awesome brush shape, great formula, long lasting and almost no chips, great pigmentation, blah blah etc etc. So I'll spare you the waffle and just say that this polish is no exception to the Lycra Pro rule; it goes on like a dream, dries quickly, looks great and lasts AGES.

This one is especially exciting, however, because it's an almost exact dupe for the hugely popular (and hugely expensive) Chanel Paradoxal. I don't have Paradoxal to make the comparison myself, but there's any number of swatches out there and they're very close; the shimmer is slightly different but considering Paradoxal is currently retailing for £20-£30 on ebay and Hot List costs less than £5, plus Paradoxal is notoriously chip-prone (Hot List has so far been on my nails - two coats over one of Nail Envy plus one of top coat - for 5 whole days without any chips OR tip wear), it's more than close enough for me.

Hot List is a bit of a chameleon polish; technically it's a greyed-out dusky mauve but in some lights it looks much closer to dark beige or taupe, like this:

But there's more! There's a gorgeous purple shimmer running through Hot List which I'd call a 'hidden' shimmer; it only comes out when the light hits it, like this:

  

Isn't it gorgeous? It's such a sophisticated, classy, grown-up colour, infinitely work safe, but not in the least bit boring.

Check out this shot of the bottle's base that really shows the purple shimmer. It's nowhere near this pronounced on the nail but it's so pretty!

You might have noticed that I shortened my nails again and am trying out a new, more squared shape; I'm not convinced it suits me (plus it feels so weird compared to my normal oval/pointy comfort zone!). What do you think looks best on me?

Rimmel Lycra Pro : Night Flight

Can you believe we're already 11 days into the new year? It seems like only yesterday we were celebrating, now I'm back at work and it already feels like I never had a break at all. Boo, Hiss!

(excuse the cuticles - they don't like cold weather, no matter how much I coddle them with cuticle creams and such)

In an effort to cheer myself up after that 'back to work' feeling, I decided it was time for a dark, vampy manicure as it's been a while since the last time and dark nails always seem particularly appropriate when it's dark and wintery outside! Out came my bottle of Rimmel Lycra Pro in Night Flight.

Night Flight is a dark, dark, blackened aubergine creme. In most lights it looks black, but with a purple undertone that is more obvious in real life than in these photographs... it can't quite decide if it wants to be aubergine or indigo; in the bottle it looks more 'blurple' than on the nail, where the blue inky tinge is less obvious and it becomes more of an aubergine. I tried with two different cameras to capture the purple glow that this polish has, and the only shots that came close were these ones here.

A big pro for this polish is that, since it's a Lycra Pro, it has the lovely wide curved brush that Rimmel uses for its Pro range. It also comes with a good, pigmented, reasonably fast drying formula that goes on evenly and is opaque in two coats. The finish is glossy (so much so that in most of these pictures, it looks like there are marks in the polish, but it's actually reflections of other things in the room!).

Wear was really good, although since it's a dark polish the tipwear etc is much more obvious than it would be with something lighter. I used two coats and no topoat, and did a lot of typing as well as some hardcore manual work dismantling a machine at work, and after three days I had some tipwear and only the vaguest hint of a chip on my index finger (one of those that you only really notice in a close up photograph but in real life it's not obvious).

Overall rating for this polish would have to be an 8 out of 10. It goes on beautifully, dries well, lasts a decent amount of time and it's a gorgeous colour. The only con is the slightly increased tipwear compared to other Lycra Pro's (it won't meet the 10 day lasting period claimed by this range) but this is a common problem with dark colours anyway so not that surprising.

Rimmel Lycra Pro : Ultra Violet

I have an unusual colour for you today : Rimmel Lycra Pro, in Ultra Violet.

This bright violet shade was released as part of Rimmel's summer collection in 2011 and I haven't seen many others like this (especially not amongst the drugstore brands) so it definitely stands out on the shelves! It occupies a bright and cheerful niche between neon and pastel and got several compliments from my co-workers when I wore this the other day.

Since it's a Lycra Pro polish, it comes with Rimmel's excellent wide brush that makes application a doddle. The formula itself is well pigmented and very creamy in texture so it applies beautifully and is opaque in two coats over a base coat. Interestingly, in these pictures, my middle finger has bald spots, and that finger does not have a base coat (because I smudged it on first application and re-applied in a hurry). So if you're not going to use a base coat, and you want a perfect application, you might need to use three layers of the Ultra Violet. (Although in real life the bald spots aren't as visible as they are here so it's not that big a deal).

Drying time isn't the greatest - it touch dries fairly quickly but stays tacky and dentable for a while, though this isn't surprising as most polishes with this kind of thick and creamy formula tend to behave the same. I added a layer of quick drying topcoat and the problem was solved :)

Wear was average. The bottle claims that it should last up to ten days, and in general I find Lycra Pro polishes to wear very well (not quite ten days, but at least two or three). This one, however, had tip wear after the first day and chipped (though only slightly) on the second. Again something I've found tends to happen with creamy polishes like this, so not really that surprising.

Overall, a really pretty polish that applies beautifully, needs a little patience (or a quick dry topcoat) for drying and attracts a lot of compliments when worn. I was especially pleased to find that it looks nice against my skin tone, too - normally, any sort of lilac/lavender/paler purple tones look dreadful on me!

Rimmel Lycra Pro : Oyster Pink

Today's mani is an unusual one for me: I'm not usually a pink polish person (and when I do wear it, it's usually more at the fuchsia end of the spectrum), so you won't be seeing too many posts like this. But never let it be said that I don't enjoy pushing the limits of my comfort zone! Oh, and excuse the somewhat bizarre pictures and lack of cuticle preparation: I didn't plan to take these until the following day, but half way home from work the sun came out! It's been so overcast recently that taking any sort of swatch pictures has been alnost impossible, so I of course screeched to a halt and took swatch pictures right there in my car at the side of the road. Good job too; it poured with rain 5 minutes later and for the rest of the day!

Rimmel Lycra Pro (anyone noticed yet that I have a lot of Rimmel? I have a LOT of it. I love Rimmel, plus it has a display right there in the shop I get all my groceries from. It's just too tempting. I'll be reviewing other things too, I swear!) is the earlier formulation of what is now called Lycra Pro Colour Memory, and shares its 10 day finish claim and awesome mistake-free maxi brush.

The shade I'm wearing today is called Oyster Pink, a shimmery frosted pearly pink that looks kind of salmon colored in the bottle, but lighter on the nail. When I first bought it, I was a little concerned that it would turn out to be a little.. well... grannyish. Is that even a word? When I saw it in the bottle I was reminded of the old fashioned frosty pinks my grandma used to wear, back when nail polish came in pretty much two shades: tarty red and nondescript frosty pinkish-salmonish-beige. I decided to try it anyway, and I'm glad I took the risk.

Shown here are three coats over one layer of base coat. It's pretty sheer; you'd have to use a lot of layers to make it opaque, but then it isn't really supposed to be. To be honest two coats would have been enough, there was very little difference between the second and third (except for me being in a hurry to get finished and leave for work, thereby rushing the 3rd coat and introducing the horrendous bubbles on my middle finger and the strange line on my ring - ignore those, it's my fault, not the polish!).

Drying time was pleasantly short and application was a breeze, I didn't do any clean up at all and yet the result was pretty tidy (especially considering the speed I was working, about a minute per hand!). The frost finish was less pronounced on the nail than in the bottle - sometimes frost can mean obvious brush marks and frosty looking 'smears' where the pearl pigment isn't evenly spread, but here it translated to a nice, even pearlised glow rather than an obvious frost. I'm sure the wide brush helped matters here, only having to swipe twice per nail leads to far fewer brush marks!

Wear was good although I only wore it for one day; I took it off that evening because my red hair dye stained the polish a strange rusty colour!