Sonnetarium After the Rain & If We Could Meet By the Sea

Good evening! Sorry for not posting for a bit, I've been on a course in Wales. To make it up to you I'm showing you two swatches from the indie brand Sonnetarium. I've had these for a while - I bought them at the same time as Samurai Princess - and I've worn them both before, but kept forgetting to photograph them. Anyway, here they are.

After the Rain has a blue shimmer base with multi-coloured glitter - I could see white, red, green, yellow and purple glitter. The base is pretty opaque so it doesn't need undies; this is two coats on its own. It has a great balance of glitter to base and was a breeze to apply.

If We Could Meet By the Sea has small teal and white hex glitter, smaller white glitter and teal bar glitter in a clear base. It's a really pretty combination and it does remind me a bit of the ocean. I've shown a single coat over Essie Turquoise & Caicos - again, it application was very easy. I think this is my favourite of the two!

Glitzology Swatches - Part Two

Good evening! This is the second part of my swatches from the indie brand Glitzology; you can find the first part here.

Bad Things is inspired by the TV show True Blood, so I knew I had to buy this polish. It has a deep red jelly base with different shaped red glitter, small black hexes, and silver holographic micro glitter. It also has red hearts - you can see one on my middle finger! This is a surprise favourite for me; I didn't expect to like this polish quite as much as I do. You can build it to opacity on its own but I chose to layer one coat over Orly Ruby.

Second is Diet Cokehead. I love love LOVE the name of this one - it describes me perfectly! Hello, my name is Sophie and I am a Diet Cokehead. I drink it every day (sorry, teeth). Anyway, the polish contains red square and hex glitter, black hexes, and red and black bar glitter in a shimmery silver base. Basically, it looks exactly like a can of Diet Coke can. As with Bad Things it's opaque on its own but I layered it over Barry M Silver Foil instead.

Finally I have Snow Day to show you. It has matte white glitter and disco glitter (which looks slightly yellow in my photos for some reason...) with an iridescent blue shimmer. It's a wintry polish but I think it can look good all year round depending on what you wear under it; I used Essie Borrowed & Blue here. It's packed with glitter so I dabbed it on rather than applying normally, but it wasn't really a bother.

As with yesterday's, the polishes needed two coats of top coat to make them perfectly smooth, and there were no curling glitters. I am a huge fan of Glitzology now and I'll definitely be placing another order very soon. :)

Glitzology Swatches - Part One

Good afternoon! Today and tomorrow I'll be showing you some nail polishes from the indie brand Glitzology. It's quickly become one of my favourite indies, both for the quality and uniqueness of the polishes and for the fantastic customer service. The three you'll see today are glitter bombs in clear bases; the ones tomorrow each have a coloured base.

First up is As You Wish. I'm not ashamed to admit I bought this mostly for the name, as The Princess Bride is one of my favourite films. It has large white and holographic teal hex glitter and smaller fuchsia and lavender glitter in a clear base. I layered it over China Glaze Gothic Lolita; there is a lot of glitter in As You Wish so I had to be quite careful applying it that I didn't overload my brush. It gave great coverage in just one coat.

Next up is My Viking Boyfriend. The creator of Glitzology, Stacy, says this is named for her boyfriend, which I think is really cute. This is blue and silver holographic hex glitter, silver squares, dark blue hexes, and silver holo micro glitter. As with As You Wish it's absolutely packed with glitter, so I found it easier to dab it on rather than apply it normally. This is one coat over Nails Inc Baker Street.

Finally I have Skeleton Key. I believe it's inspired by the movie Beetlejuice, which I haven't seen. I absolutely love this one, I think it's my favourite of the three. It has matte black and white glitter (instant WIN) and two shades of purple glitter, all of various shapes and sizes. It contains bar glitter so if don't like that I'd steer clear; I personally love bar glitter! Again this polish is crammed with glitter so you have to be a little careful applying it. I layered one coat over Rimmel Grey Matter; as you can probably tell, I did a slightly thicker coat on my middle finger.

As a general note about all three polishes, they gobble up top coat so I did two generous coats of Poshe to make everything smooth. I'm happy to report I didn't experience any problems with curling glitters (hurrah!). Thanks for reading and pop back tomorrow for part two! :)

KIKO Holographic Nail Lacquers

Evening! Did you have a good Christmas? I had a very relaxing day with my family which was nice. My birthday is in two days so I'm looking forward to that now. :)

Today I'm showing you three of the four KIKO Holographic colours that came out a while ago. I got these in London in October but only got round to wearing them quite recently. Shame on me! A general thing I want to mention about these is that the formula is better than I'm used to with holographics - I used a normal base coat underneath without any problems. They all dried to a slightly matte finish so I risked using top coat on them, and I think rather than dulling the holographic effect, it enhanced it. o.0

First up is KIKO 400/Steel Grey, a grey/black shade that was opaque in two coats. This was the most holographic of the three. I decided to test the wear on this so the photos were taken after three days; there is tipwear but it's not horrendous (unlike some holographic polishes that chip after a couple of hours!). I think being able to use a top coat with these is a great advantage.

Second is KIKO 401/Peacock Green - don't be fooled by the name, it's actually a very pretty blue-with-a-splash-of-turquoise colour. I used three coats for full coverage. There is a bonus photo of what it looks like in daylight because I was actually around during the day when I wore this one (gasp!).

Last but not least is KIKO 402/Jewel Pink. The name of this confused me because I thought it was red! I did some Googling and apparently it is pink...but I swear it still looks red to me. Hmmm. Anyway, this was the least holographic of the three and was opaque in two coats.

Color Club Alter Ego & Ulterior Motive

Hello, today I'm showing you a couple of Color Club polishes from their Spring 2011 collection. Except in sets of 7 from TK Maxx, Color Club isn't widely available here - I got these two recently on Amazon.

First up is Alter Ego, the namesake of the collection. It's a grey and purple polish with a gold/silver glass fleck shimmer that was opaque in two coats. As purple and silver is one of my favourite colour combinations, this is pretty much my perfect polish.

Second is Ulterior Motive. I had to use artificial light for these as there was no sun the entire three days I wore this. Boo. (I took the photos on day three so I'm afraid there is some tipwear.) It's a fuchsia pink with blue and purple micro glitter. It was a tad sheer and I needed three coats.

Polished Nail Bar

Last weekend we had a Christmas Fair at work, and I was lucky enough to be one of the stallholders. My colleague in charge of the Fair asked the staff if any of us had anything we wanted to sell and so I suggested a nail bar. To my surprise she loved the idea - the Polished Nail Bar was born!

I had so much fun painting nails. I was there both days and although the weather was rubbish we still had a fantastic turnout (the final figure for the weekend was over 3000 people!). On Saturday I only had six customers, but I was much more popular on Sunday and had a steady stream of people who wanted their nails painted. As it's only a hobby I don't have any professional equipment, but I think I managed to make my stall look pretty good anyway.

The base coat I used on everyone was Nubar Foundation Base Coat, and the top coat was Poshe Super-Fast Drying Top Coat because it dries really quickly and isn't toxic like Seche Vite. Interestingly, although the Christmas-inspired nail wheel I created for the occasion was much admired, everyone went for standard nail painting rather than art or rhinestones. Two of the most popular colours were a-england Avalon and Perceval, which I showed in my previous post.

Finally, here were my own nails for the occasion. On Saturday I wore China Glaze Poinsettia with OPI The Man With the Golden Gun (not my favourite gold leaf combo, it turns out) but I forgot to photograph it, and on Sunday I wore Nails Inc Baker Street with China Glaze Glistening Snow as a French manicure, plus a line of rhinestones.

People keep asking me since if I would do the Christmas Fair again if given the chance, and the answer is: in a heartbeat. I wouldn't want to make a career of it, but if I could spend a couple of days a year painting nails and discussing nail polish...how could I resist?!

OPI The Man With the Golden Gun

Hello! I have a very special nail polish to show you today. OPI The Man With the Golden Gun is the only other polish I bought from the Skyfall Collection (you can see Goldeneye here and On Her Majesty's Secret Service here). I initially passed on buying it because of its completely insane price tag of £30, but guess what? I caved. I know, I'm weak.

The reason The Man With the Golden Gun is so special, and so exorbitantly priced, is because it's a gold leaf top coat. I was so excited when it arrived in the post that I put it straight over what I was already wearing, which was Nails Inc Foubert's Place, a grey/green shade:

This is one coat plus a bit dabbed on where I felt it needed it. The clear base colour was a bit watery and didn't really have enough gold leaf flakes in it, but with a little effort I think it looks great. I tried it over a different colour and I think I like this combination even more. This is one coat over Nubar Boyfriend Jeans:

Do you think the price of this polish is justifiable? What's the most you've ever spent on a single nail polish?