Miss Sporty Crack Me Up Top Coat : Blue

This mani is courtesy of my next door neighbour, who swooped into my house brandishing her new bottle of Miss Sporty Crack Me Up polish, painted my nails with it, then ran away laughing before I could take a picture of the bottle. 

Unhelpfully, I can't seem to find a stock photo of it anywhere, either. So here's a helpful link to the Boots.com website, whereupon you can gaze upon the black version of this polish (you'll just have to picture it in blue, I'm afraid). 

Pictured is one coat, over Rimmel Your Majesty. Like all crackles, it dried quickly to a matte finish (I added a layer of top coat to make it shine). Compared to other crackles I've tried, the crackle effect is a bit more hit and miss. One finger on my other hand didn't crackle at all, and my ring finger on this hand crackled kind of strangely compared to the other nails. 

The cracks also tended to be mostly vertical - not so many crosswise cracks as I saw with the Barry M Instant Nail Effects and Rimmel Crack Your Colour. It was quite sheer, too, which I thought made for quite a nice effect over the silver Rimmel as it turned the blue colour metallic :)

Wear wasn't the best - I had chipping by the end of the day, although this might have been because it was over a manicure that was already two days old, so I wouldn't write it off as an easy chipper until I'd tried it again. Overall, I liked this a lot more than I thought I would - I wasn't that keen on blue crackle until this, but actually it was a pretty nice shade of blue and looked rather festive, especially with the shiny metallic effect it gained from the silver base. 

Miss Sporty : Clubbing Colours 328 (Blueberry?)

A very frustrating colour for you today! I've been wearing Miss Sporty 328 for a couple of days now, and it's such a stunning colour but my camera just won't capture it properly, the way it looks on my nails! I can't wait until Christmas when I will be the proud owner of a brand new and much better camera, hopefully I won't have to spend so much time muttering and taking yet another shot of a lovely polish that looks completely different when converted to image form!

Please excuse the blurred picture, but this is literally the one and only shot that I could get where the colour looks true, and even then it's just the colour you see in the bottle. When on the nails, it looks darker in pictures than it does in real life. le sigh.

Anyway. Miss Sporty Polishes are all rather boringly named with numbers, unless you go searching around on the website, whereupon you find out that 328 is actually called Blueberry. I think I've moaned about this already so I'll avoid the rant and just roll my eyes before moving swiftly on (though I have to say, I've never seen a blueberry this colour, but never mind eh?).

(A less blurry, but not quite as colour true bottle shot. It's not as dark as this in real life).

Blueberry is a gorgeous indigo creme - essentially, it's blue, but a very vivid blue that has strong purple leanings. In some lights it looks navy, in others a purplish inky colour. It applies beautifully, with its nice, wide, short brush that reminds me of a smaller version of Rimmel's new style Lycra Pro brush, and the formula is very workable - not too thick, not too runny, dries fast (to be expected, since it's a quick dry polish), and very little clean up required. Pictured are three coats over one of Nail Envy - it was opaque after two, but I added a third because like a total klutz, after the second coat, I managed to squish one against my jeans before it dried and gave myself sheet marks. Yeah. Only I could manage that with a quick drying polish, right?

(The most colour true 'on the nail' shot I could get. See how it's a little purple as well as blue? So pretty!)

Wear is average. I got slight chipping after a few hours, but that was after building an art straw bridge with some kids, and I had a lot of sticky tape sticking to my nails the whole time I was working. I think any polish would have chipped a bit in the face of that treatment! Some of the nails that survived 'BridgeGate' went on to chip by the morning of the second day, so I'd say this isn't the longest lasting polish ever, but it's alright considering it's a super cheap and cheerful drugstore brand, and so long as you don't go picking any fights with sticky tape bridges, you'll get a good day out of it at least!

Miss Sporty: Clubbing Colours 320 (Pop Fiction)

Today's NOTD is Miss Sporty's Pop Fiction, from the Clubbing Colours collection.

Miss Sporty is one of those surprise drugstore brands with polish that costs very little, but turns out to actually be rather good indeed. I'm far from a drugstore snob; if it does a good job and doesn't cost much, then so much the better!

There are several types of polish in the Miss Sporty range; Clubbing Colours is their quick dry version and is available in a range of vibrant and cheerful shades. Pop Fiction (the bottle doesn't have a name; it just says 320, but the shelf and the website both claim otherwise!) is a glorious cobalt blue, very bright and rich with a slight periwinkle tone to it that I couldn't seem to capture with my camera. 

A creme, it dries fast despite its quite thick formula, needs only two coats, and has a decent, rounded brush that reminds me of a smaller version of the Rimmel Lycra Pro maxi brush - ie. it makes application fast, easy and practically mistake free.

Wear was okay - two coats had some tip wear after one day, but that was without top coat and with a lot of typing. And I got a lot of comments on this colour! It's very eye catching and pretty; I'll definitely be wearing this colour again.