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.

Nails Inc Victoria & Foubert's Place

Good afternoon! I have a couple of Nails Inc swatches for you today.

The first is one of their classics, and a colour I think every nail polish addict should have in their collection: Nails Inc Victoria. It's a dark, vampy red jelly. In terms of colour it's quite similar to Revlon Vixen, maybe a tad darker, but with a much better formula (no bubbling!). I could probably have got away with two coats but I did three just in case.

The other is Nails Inc Foubert's Place. I used this as a base for OPI The Man With the Golden Gun, and it looked pretty great. On the website it's described as a grey khaki shade, which is a pretty bang-on description. It has a smooth, easy formula and was opaque in two coats.

OPI On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Evening! I've got another OPI Skyfall collection colour to share with you today. OPI On Her Majesty's Secret Service has a greyish blue base with a green, turquoise, pink and purple shimmer. The shimmer is pretty special in that it's really lots of very small flakes (my camera is rubbish at extreme macro shots, but A Polish Addict has a great one here). It's really really beautiful. It had an easy application but the formula was a little sheer and needed three coats for opacity.

So I mentioned recently that when I reached thirty followers I'd have a giveaway. I've already bought the polishes but I was wondering if anyone knows the rules about posting polish within the UK and abroad? I had a look on the Royal Mail website but it wasn't very clear and basically seemed to say, 'Nail polish bad'. Obviously others have done it though so there must be ways!

Halloween Spider Webs

When I was in Spain a couple of weeks ago (I can't believe it was that long ago already!) I went on a mission to find some Essence polishes. I thought they'd just be sold in chemists like nail polish is here, but apparently not. After some Googling I found a shop on Calle de Fuencarral called Beautik. It turned out to be a great place - not only did they sell Essence, they also stocked Catrice, Konad, two Layla ranges, and a few other brands. I was quite restrained and limited myself to one Catrice, a Konad plate, and four Essence colours, one of which I'm showing you today.

I really like grey polish at the moment, so Essence I'm the Boss is right up my alley. It's a medium to dark grey polish with sparse-ish silver glitter. It's really pretty and was opaque in two easy coats. To make it Halloween-y I stamped spider webs using a Bundle Monster plate and Barry M Silver Foil. I'm still working on my stamping skills so the image didn't transfer perfectly, but I think it adds to the effect rather than detracting from it (that's my story and I'm sticking to it). Finally, I used Nails Inc Black Taxi and some striping tape to make black French tips.

I went to Waitrose today and they had a section dedicated to Halloween food and decorations. I bought a bunch of it. Apparently if something is coloured orange and black at this time of year, I will buy it. All of it. People don't really trick or treat where I live but I bought some spooky chocolate just in case - and if we don't get anyone, oh well, more for me!

China Glaze Immortal & Glitter Goblin

Oops, I didn't mean to not post for five days but I've been so busy this week that all the days have sort of blurred together. I had a training day yesterday on how to manage pests (insects/rodents) in historic houses, which probably sounds really dull but is actually fascinating. It turns out I knew most of it already so I didn't really learn much, but oh well.

Today I'm showing you the two polishes I bought from China Glaze's Wicked collection for Halloween, Immortal and Glitter Goblin. I actually passed on the blurple colour, can you believe that? It just didn't seem that unique. Immortal, however, is pretty interesting - a medium grey with turquoise and fuchsia shimmer. I'm going through a grey phase at the moment, so I had to have it. Glitter Goblin isn't as cool as I'd thought it would be from promo shots: orange and silver glitter in a clear base. I was expecting awesomeness; I got blah. Anyway, I decided to wear both polishes together, with Glitter Goblin as the accent nail.

You can see that now the weather is dark and rainy and rubbish I am in desperate need of a lightbox. I had to take these photos in the bathroom under the light there, because it's the brightest in the house! Does anyone have any tips for making a DIY lightbox?

Lastly, I decided a while ago that when I got to 30 followers I was going to do a giveaway - I'm only one away now! Come on, let's get me to 30! :)

As Seen On... Rebecca Likes Nails

Hola! Today is the final day of my holiday... I'm leaving sunny (hopefully) Madrid for my dear (but probably wet) Surrey. Today's post features a manicure from Rebecca Likes Nails. She posts stunning nail art and swatches, and I owe her a lot because I got the idea of these posts from her! She always does an 'As Seen On' series when she's away.

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I was originally going to do a different design of Rebecca's, but it shows part of the bare nail and mine are horribly stained at the moment. She recently did this manicure however, which is itself based on someone else's, and I knew I had to try it for myself.

The original version uses a green creme, but as you can see I decided to go with purple instead - specially, my favourite purple creme ever, Nails Inc Little Miss Naughty. The grey is Rimmel London Grey Matter and the black and white are my trusty Models Own nail art pens.

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So that's it for my 'As Seen On' series and my holiday! I hope you've enjoyed seeing these designs as much as I enjoyed doing them. :)

Accessorize Colorado

I realised recently that I've been wearing almost nothing but blues on my nails recently, so I'm making a conscious effort to wear different colours now! Today I'm showing you Accessorize Colorado, a light grey polish with gold shimmer. I had a little trouble capturing the shimmer but you can kind of see it in the first photo. I used three coats for opacity.

This isn't the sort of polish I'd normally wear and I'm not 100% convinced it suits my skin tone, but I kind of like it anyway. It's a nice palette-cleanser. It reminds me a lot of Nails Inc Covent Ballet Garden but at half the price (yay!). I think Accessorize nail polishes don't get as much notice as they deserve - they have a good range of colours and they're purse-friendly. What do you think?