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.

Olympic Torch Manicure

I've been feeling pretty apathetic about the impending Olympics, but when the Olympic torch came through the grounds of the historic house I work at today, I was actually quite excited. We had around 4000 people, including 2000 children (!!) and their teachers from the local schools, turn up to watch it. It was a logistical nightmare, but it turned out OK in the end. It tipped it down the whole time though!

I wanted to do some fancy nail art to mark the occasion but didn't have time, so I settled on a cling film/saran wrap manicure. I started by painting my nails with two coats of Revlon Pineapple Fizz, a yellow glass fleck polish. Once this was completely dry I did a coat of the shimmery orange China Glaze Riveting and, while it was still wet, dabbed it with a scrunched up piece of cling film. This removed some of the orange and allowed the yellow to peek through. It's supposed to look kind of flame-y.

In truth it looks more like the surface of the sun than flames, maybe, but oh well. Here are some photos I took of the torch relay today:

Revlon Grape Fizz

Here is the second of the Revlon scented nail polishes I bought, Grape Fizz. It's a vivid purple polish with a glass fleck finish. I'd say it was red-toned, but I swear I could almost see a blue flash at certain angles. As with Grapefruit Fizz it's very sheer but I was silly and didn't layer this one. I used three coats in the photos below; I should've used four. It's not very obvious in real life, but in the photos you can see some VNL.

As the name suggests, when the polish dries it smells like grapes. It genuinely did, and it really made me want some grape juice! Even though I used a top coat the smell persisted for a couple of days, which was a pleasant surprise, and probably would have endured for longer if I hadn't decided to take it off.

Revlon Grapefruit Fizz

When I was younger, maybe eleven or twelve, my friends and I were obsessed with gel pens. They were pens (obviously) that came in an array of colours, anything from pastel yellow to metallic green. We used to love writing with them at school - and even drawing on our skin with them. Our favourite thing about them, though, was that you could get scented ones. Grapes, bananas, apples...they had them all. We'd sniff these like they were crack.

So you can imagine my excitement when I was in my local Boots the other day and spotted some of Revlon's scented nail polishes. I've never actually seen them in there before. They only had three colours/scents, Grapefruit Fizz (pink), Grape Fizz (purple) and Watermelon Fizz (red). I bought the first two, because I need another red nail polish like I need a hole in the head. I've used scented nail polishes before (more on that in another post) but they usual smell disgusting and make me feel nauseous. I've heard such great things about Revlon's scented polishes, however, that I decided to take a chance on them. Am I glad I did? Read on to find out.

The one I'm showing you today is Grapefruit Fizz. It's a Barbie pink polish with large glass flecks. I could tell just from looking at the bottle that it was going to be very sheer, so I layered it over a coat of Models Own Baby Pink, which is, erm, a baby pink polish. Baby Pink is a bit paler than Grapefruit Fizz, but it's the closest match I own. I then did two coats of Grapefruit Fizz. The formula was so-so, a little thin perhaps, and I did have a bit of pooling on the cuticles. I immediately sniffed my nails afterwards (good thing I did it in the privacy of my bedroom or I would've looked really weird!). To be honest it smells more like a poor imitation of grapefruit than the real thing, but it's not an unpleasant smell. It's just generically fruity.

Yup, it's veeeeery pink. Perhaps a bit too pink for my tastes, but oh well. I put a coat of Seche Vite over the top for these photos, and I was surprised to find I could still smell the grapefruit afterwards. The scent lasted about two days before it faded completely - it would probably last longer if I hadn't used a top coat.

I thought these polishes were new for Spring 2012, but I've had a little look at some other sites and apparently these have been out since last year! They seem to be new to the UK, anyway, so you can probably find them in your nearest Boots right now. They're £6.49 each, but Boots has an offer on at the moment where you can buy two Revlon lip/nail products for £10.

Valentine's Day Mani #1 - Red, Red Rose

Oh my luve is like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June:
Oh my luve is like the melodie,
That's sweetly play'd in tune.
- Robert Burns

I made a pilgrimage to Colourcopia before Christmas and bought a bunch of nail polishes. For those who haven't heard of it, it's a store that sells an extensive collection of OPI and Nicole by OPI polishes in Westfield shopping centre. It is basically heaven. One of the things I picked up was the OPI & Serena Williams Glam Slam! US duo, so today I'm showing you Love is a Racket from it.

Love is a Racket is a cherry red glass fleck. The flecks are much more apparent in real life than they are in my photos, unfortunately. I used two coats for full opacity.

I don't wear many reds to be honest, but I really like this one as it's not a bog-standard red creme. And as Valentine's Day is only a couple of days away, I added nail stickers from Claire's to my thumb and ring fingers to make it a pseudo Valentine's manicure!

P.S. As you can see, I've filed my nails down to little nubbins! This wasn't entirely through choice; the nail on my index finger broke, so I had to shorten the others to make them match. Sigh.